Where do I promote - Pinterest

Unlike what many people think, Pinterest is not social media but digital media. It resembles a search engine more than a traditional social network. From a business perspective, Pinterest is a storefront for your products. It provides you with a great opportunity to show off your products to a very engaged user base.

Many believe that Pinterest is a US-centric platform that has a small userbase based on niches. While this might have been the case a few years ago, this has changed dramatically in the past years. With 454 million active monthly Pinterest users, it is a rapidly growing platform that outperforms competitors like Snapchat with 60 million users. While Pinterest has seen a dip in its user base driven by loosening restrictions, it’s expected to continue its growth entering 2022.

Monthly active Pinterest users worldwide. Source: Statista.

Pinterest is one of the channels that have truly benefited from the pandemic, both from a dramatic increase in usage- and advertising base. And it’s not just from a pivot of people’s user behavior; it’s fairly complex causality in play that has made Pinterest one of the marketing channels marketers find to be valuable in these times. With advertisers seeking digital advertising platforms as a safe way of ensuring a steady ROI, leaving traditional channels like radio and TV, prices of an advertisement on Facebook and Google have seen a dramatic increase. This has led digital-native companies to look for new possibilities for good traffic and exposure. Pinterest has been the go-to platform when diversifying for many that look for cheap, effective platforms that provide a good ROI.

Who uses Pinterest

Many believe that Pinterest is just a platform for designers and visual creators. This is wrong, but you have to be a good fit for the platform users to have success. While it’s no longer a niche platform, they have specific demographics that are easier to reach.

As we can see above, predominantly women use Pinterest in the US, while the global user attribution is 60% women. The age is more evenly distributed than channels like Instagram, but the biggest user-growth is mainly among Gen Z and Millenials. However, what is most interesting is that Pinterest users are well educated, urban people with high income. While this is among US users, their user base is very international - with almost three times as many users internationally than in the US as of Q1 2020, meaning that it’s not just a platform for US companies. In fact, the majority of Ad-spend on Pinterest is still located in the US, which means that there is still a big opportunity for cheap, high-quality traffic for advertisers globally.

How do people use Pinterest?

Unlike other Digital Platforms where users have different experiences, users go to Pinterest, mainly for two different purposes. The first is viewing photos, of which 57% of respondents use Pinterest for. The second, and most important, is that 48% go there with the intention of finding and shopping products. That is 34% higher than Facebook, which is the second-best platform. This means that if you have the intention of selling a product, Pinterest is, by far, the best channel for bottom-of-the-funnel conversions.

Pinterest is a great way to drive conversions and high-quality leads for an eCommerce company, but more B2B-focused companies should look elsewhere to optimize their Media-mix. However, that does not mean you should exclude it. 85% of Pinners say Pinterest is where they first go to gain inspiration for their projects, meaning it is an opportunity for people to find and save your content, making it a good top-of-funnel channel as well. Best of it all, 98% of Pinners try new things they find on Pinterest, and 89% use it for purchase inspiration.

How do Marketers use Pinterest?

If you are having an eCommerce store or need a place to display products visually, Pinterest is your storefront. Pinterest is a no-brainer as a full-funnel conversion machine with high-quality, cheap traffic. But don’t write it off if you’re B2B. It can be a great way to get your brand out there. However, as priorly mentioned, you shouldn’t treat Pinterest as another Social Media. You have to treat it like a Search Engine. With several billion searches happening on Pinterest every month, you have to know what keywords you want to rank for and what your target audience searches for. A Pin also provides you with the opportunity for your brand to be found on Search engines like Google, with 40% of the traffic on the network coming from external search engines.

Why Pinterest

While there are many positives about Pinterest, the rest of the platform's content might be the best. 9 of 10 find Pinterest to be a positive platform with positive content. The platform's trust is high, the ROI of the platform is high, and your customers have a full journey from discovery to purchase. No matter what, If you have products to sell, Pinterest can be the platform for you. If not, you should consider it anyway.