Pinterest & Small Businesses
Pinterest is a social media site that allows consumers and businesses to discover items, brands, and more in a visual format. As we mentioned in last week’s “Fast Facts”, it has reached over 400 million users.[1] So what does that have to do with small businesses? Well, it opens up another way to generate leads and brand awareness for businesses. And if you are interested in opening another lane of potential leads and customers, then let’s start by going over who has recently joined Pinterest.
Who is hopping on the Pinterest train?
Gen Z’ers (born between 1995-2015) with a growth of 50% compared to last year
Men with a 48% growth
Last but not lease, the Millennials (born between 1981–1996) with a 36% growth [1]
So, if this looks to be your target audience for your business, you may want to consider adding Pinterest to your marketing efforts. Even in this large sea of consumers and businesses, small local businesses have found success adding Pinterest to their marketing plan.
How can small businesses market their brand on this medium?
There are many ways that a business can work within Pinterest to achieve their business goals, but here are some of the options:
ORGANIC CONTENT: Pinterest allows you to create your own pins and boards, for free! Businesses can take advantage of this free service by taking high quality images or video of your product, and display them with the potential of 400 million eyes seeing it. Talk about branding opportunities!
Here is a retail example- in.pinterest.com/anthropologie/ get visual with your merchandise www.pinterest.com/closetcandybtq/
BLOGS / ARTICLES: Link a blog or website article to one of your pins to help educate and share your story with consumers. If you are an eco-friendly store, you can share the importance of being green to give people a second layer as to why they should shop with you, while using an image of a cute outfit as your pin.
*Remember people go to Pinterest for eye-appealing images and graphics, so make sure your blog has some eye catching graphics!*
PAID ADS: Like other social media sites you know, Pinterest has the ability to push paid ads across it’s platform. Take your already created pins, and turn them into an ad. Pinterest has several different ad format options to choose from such as video, standard, shopping, and more.
You may notice that Pinterest has third party companies or partners that they include for businesses to choose from, but one that sticks out to me is their partnership with Shopify. You can now create catalogs with product pins that directly connect your potential customer to your online shop to purchase a product.
Just think of the potential to showcase your quality products or services, and the ability to link customers to your site! If you have the time and budget, Pinterest may be a great added layer to your marketing plan.
Interested in taking the next step? Check out Pinterest Academy to familiarize yourself with Pinterest, or to Pinterest Business to get started.
