Back in 2010, Pinterest was a social media platform replicating the bulletin board of a college or a school, but in 2018 with more than 200 million monthly users, it has quietly risen to success as a powerful search engine and an important shopping platform. Unlike other social media platforms such as Facebook, which primarily drives your selfie habit, Pinterest opens a sea of opportunities for the small business owners. 93% of the Pinners use the platform to plan purchases, and the platform has seen a 40% increase in the number of users over the last two years.
SMBs and Pinterest – A match made in heaven
For SMBs, the platform is a crucial marketing toolbox because it works as a visual discovery engine and helps the customer find what they love. In 2017, 67% of the Pinners discovered new brand or products from business content on Pinterest. Whether you’re looking to increase the brand awareness, drive the web traffic to your website, or drive customer engagement – Pinterest in your one-stop-destination. The social media platform effortlessly makes the promoted content as useful as the organic content. Furthermore, Pinterest caters to SMBs with tools to optimize results and make the most of marketing budgets.
Let us understand, how the platform is lending a helping hand to the SMBs in their marketing efforts.
1) Chatbooks
The SMB captures memories from social media and brings them to life, recently ran a Promoted
Pin campaign and encouraged Pinners to bring their summer memories to life. The campaign was a massive success because the sales team witnessed up to 3x more clicks on their ads and 15% lower cost per clicks within the first 90 days of launching of their ads.
2) LitJoy Crate
The company which is a monthly book box decided to use Pinterest’s promoted pins to drive acquisition among their audience of women aged 20-35. LitJoy Crate achieved a CPA 70% lower than their average CPA on marketing channels, acquiring new customers for only $3-$5 per customer.
The sky is the limit for business using Pinterest!
How to get started?
The first step in the right direction is always crucial for an SMB. Here are a few tips for the newbies to use the platform to enhance their business growth.
1) Set up a business account
To set up a business account, you need the logo or the visuals of the products (for a profile picture) and a business description containing the link to the website, contact details, and location. For those who already own a personal account, converting to a business account is as simple as waving a magic wand. A business account outperforms a personal account because it comes loaded with additional features such as Pinterest analytics and Pinterest Ads.
2) Claim your website
Claiming your website on the social media platform unlocks an array of features such as Pin stats and Pinterest analytics. Learn more at Pinterest.
3) Set up your boards
If you want to make your board look professional, set up the board and categorize the Pins based on the products, audience segment or the topic.
4) Start Pinning
Don’t forget to create new Pins daily to help the Pinners discover your brand and Pins. Consistent activity on the social media platform is the key to reach the right customers at the right time. Furthermore, link all your Pins to the website as it will help increase the web traffic.
What Next?
Getting started on Pinterest is simple, follow these tips to leverage the maximum benefits from the social media platform.
1) New business profiles
Pinterest is thriving to make life easier for SMBs by helping them connect with their target audience. Recently, the company launched a new business profile which is empowering the brands to take control of how their brand will appear on Pinterest. The new profile is allowing the companies to highlight the content they deem as necessary for their customers and want them to see first. Furthermore, the new profile offers a dynamic cover image that is helping in capturing the attention of the ideal customers.
2) Key metrics
Running a promoted campaign will never yield the desired results unless the SMBs track the progress of each campaign. A few key metrics will give deep insights into how engaged the Pinners are with the content. It will help the SMBs, tweak changes in their content strategy. To further assist the small businesses, Pinterest allows the companies to access valuable metrics on their Pins to make critical business decisions.
3) Following tab
Staying one step ahead of competitors always work wonders for SMBs and is probably one of the leading ways to discover new ideas and see what other brands are saving to attract their audience. And, for that Pinterest has a following tab – entirely focused on the people and boards you follow on Pinterest.
4) Promoted Pins
To further de-stress the life of small businesses, Pinterest offers the ‘Promote’ button, which helps a brand of any size to promote their Pins. Business can set up a promoted Pin in less than 9 seconds.
Pinterest is the goldmine for your bottom line because it’s a new way of flipping through magazines and scrapbooks, which quickly captures the attention of the customers. As an SMB, never overlook such a big chance to mint money, especially from Pinners who have the biggest spending power on the social media. The household income of 40% of Pinterest users is more than $100K. Don’t miss the golden opportunity!
Authored by:
Lisa Fong, SMB Marketing Lead at Pinterest
Lisa Fong leads the Pinterest SMB Marketing team focused on inspiring and empowering businesses to grow and succeed on Pinterest. She has over 12 years of experience in digital advertising, technology and marketing. Her passion for mobile ads led her career to adtech companies Google, Apple and Sharethrough. She received her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. – headshot is attached
