With all the buzz last week surrounding Pinterest’s introduction of its own free analytics tool for business accounts, many small business owners may feel motivated to jump onboard. As the fastest growing social media platform in the past two years, Pinterest users generate the second biggest source of social traffic, spend nearly twice as much money as Facebook users do[1], and on average, spend more time pinning than on Facebook[2]. It’s no wonder that Pinterest users have become a highly coveted market for business owners to tap into. However, before you invest your valuable time and resources to grow your Pinterest following, think carefully about using Pinterest for marketing your business and how it aligns with your business and marketing goals.
Here are a couple of guidelines to help you determine if Pinterest is the right platform for your business:
- Determine if the demographic of Pinterest users aligns with your customers. Pinterest caters to a demographic with very specific interests, figure out whether your customers are engaging the platform.
- Almost a fifth of online women in the US use Pinterest[3] and out of the 48.7 million users[4]
- 68.2% of users are female, and 31.8% are male.
- 41% of users’ household income is over $50,000[5] with the average annual household income over $100,000[6]
- 50% of users have children[7]
- Users from ages 25 to 34 represent 27.4% of Pinterest’s traffic, followed by users from 35 to 44 with 22.1%[8]
- Business categories that generate the most engagement on Pinterest are “Food & Drinks”, along with “DIY & Crafts” and “Home Décor” [9]
If your target audience is on Pinterest, begin by exploring the type of content they’re pinning to generate ideas for your own content. From your potential customer’s boards, you can understand what inspires them and what drives their spending behavior.
2. Do you have the time and resources to create visually compelling content?
Pinterest only provides business owners with analytics about content re-pinned from verified sites or that you have created yourself. Re-pinned images or videos from other users won’t provide you with any metrics about pins, repins, impressions, or clicks. If you don’t have the tools or time to create attention-grabbing visuals, then Pinterest may not be the most effective platform for your business. Look through Pinterest to gauge the quality of content and see if you can provide Pinterest users with similarly appealing visuals.
3. Does your website or Facebook page have conversion mechanisms in place to convert Pinterest traffic into sales?
Pinterest is a major player in moving traffic onto business’s websites and Facebook pages- driving more online sales than any other social media platform. It’s a great tool for ecommerce businesses, but for other businesses it’s key that your website has some type of conversion mechanism in place. Optimize your landing page to lower your bounce rates and make sure your call to action is prominently displayed.
Pinterest is a great tool for business owners to cultivate their brand identity with dynamic content but it can be overwhelming for a small business owner to keep up with managing all their social network platforms. Before you give in to the hype, make sure you are targeting the right audience and that you have the right tools to optimize what the Pinterest platform can offer. Once you’ve determined that Pinterest is right for your business, take the steps to grow your Pinterest following!
