The online catalogue of visual discovery, Pinterest has been slowly but surely building up its reputation as a great place for businesses to reach new customers, and they are still growing! In April, the platform announced that 1.5 million brands now advertise on Pinterest to 250 million monthly users, and a recent report shows their sales jumped 58% last year.
While Instagram started out as a place to keep up with friends, Pinterest has always been more about finding lifestyle inspiration. This has resulted in their users going to the app to plan their future purchases. The very act of pinning things for an occasion or event — 30th Birthday Party, New Kitchen, First Child etc — means adverts can be well targeted to users with almost definite purchase intent. Pinterest carried out their own research on user shopping behaviour to confirm these assumptions, surveying over 4000 people who use the platform weekly. The results of this (displayed in the below infographic) show that Pinterest’s user-base are highly intent shoppers, with 90% saying they use the platform to make purchasing decisions.
Back in March Pinterest expanded their Shopping Ads to hundreds of new businesses, as well their in-app shoppable posts. This positioning creates huge opportunities for brands and users, and shifts Pinterest’s status from a social media mood board to a curated shopping basket.
One of their early Shopping Ad partners, Venus Fashion, said of the platform:
“We see Pinterest as both a source of inspiration for future buying decisions as well as a shopping trigger. It’s critical that we continuously balance the need to be an inspirational style guide to women, while making sure our brand is the first thing they see when their shopping intent is the strongest.”
This harmony between ‘inspiration’ and ‘sales’ sets Pinterest apart from similar platforms, giving them a unique stand-point in the ever-growing world of shoppable posts. With visual search features such as Pinterest Lens and ‘Shop The Look’, Pinterest make it incredibly easy for users to find things they are likely to want to buy. For example, when clicking on this photo of a living room layout on my Pinterest feed, I can highlight the leaf print on the bookshelf and the app will instantly show me the link to go and buy it:
Pinterest reported that users carry out more than 600 million visual searches every month using this Lens feature, and they only released it just over a year ago. This has huge potential to keep developing with modern technology, and it doesn’t look like the platform are slowing down with their new releases.
Though they might not have the reach numbers of the social media giants like Facebook and Instagram, it’s proven that when Pinterests users are on the app they are looking to buy. Their growth rates of users have also recently exceeded Twitter AND Snapchat, gaining 25m new users every 4 months. So when considering social media budget spend, Pinterest should certainly not be overlooked, particularly for those selling to consumers.
Do you include Pinterest in your social media strategy? Let us know in the comments!
