Your customers are hanging out on Pinterest. You aren't there yet?

Pinterest. The first things that comes to mind are moms, recipes, design mood boards and wedding photos. Rightfully so, 6/10 Pinners are female, making them an audience of 300 million active monthly users. The dominant topics are indeed fashion, beauty, home/design and food/drinks. Now, that's obvious.

Similar to all of you, I was an eCommerce founder struggling to market my brand. FB ads were a pretty good option until they weren't. The IOS update was a huge hit because I didn't have buckets of VC money to pour into the FB machine. Desperate for options, I asserted: "There must be a different way to reach the consumer."

Soon enough I discovered Pinterest. I was not initially impressed. Marketing my brand on Pinterest didn't seem cool. The advertising algorithm isn't as advanced as Facebook's, meaning it would take longer to self-optimize. Who is even using Pinterest these days?

Just because I didn't and you don't doesn't mean that 478 million people aren't actively pinning, finding new brands and searching for inspiration for their homes, recipes and outfits. When I dived into Pinterest stats, I was more than surprised. In fact, Pinterest is unique in how it's a visual search engine. More than 2 billion searches are carried on Pinterest every month, 97% of which are unbranded. More than 75% of weekly Pinners have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest and 8/10 Pinterest users have bought products based on their brands Pinterest content.

On top of everything, only 28% of worldwide marketers are actually using Pinterest to promote their brand. Turns out social media still has unexplored territories! So 72% of brand marketers aren't pumped about Pinterest. The result? Lower average CPC compared to FB and lots of uncharted territories. Now, what does this actually mean? It means that an active Pinner is getting on Pinterest and searching for ideas for what to buy just like that; not mindlessly scrolling but looking for a product to buy. 

Although there is a growing male percentage, Pinterest is a mainly female-dominated with 46 % of US women adults using Pinterest. Still not convinced? 45% of people in the US with a household income over $100K are on Pinterest.

Lastly, Pinterest ads are also way cheaper than other platforms:

Promoted Pins for brand awareness: $2-$5 per 1000 impressions

Driving traffic with Pinterest Ads: $0.1 -$1.5 per engagement

How to get started?

1. Claim your website from a Pinterest Business Account- Pinterest’s ecommerce features allow for product integration between the website and your account. This will automatically  feed your products into the Pinterest feed. 
2. Find a good competitor to copy - no need to invent the wheel here. Simply find a great account and analyze what they are doing that you could apply to your strategy

So here are a couple examples of great Pinterest accounts. Look around and get inspired!

Fashion: Free People SKIMS

Accessories: Liingo Eyewear

Jewelry: Mejuri

Home: Ruggable Outer

Food: Larabar Clif Bar Misfits Market Reese's

Beauty/Self-Care: Billie

Kids: Beaba

Drinks: Ghia

3. Conduct keyword research - find top-performing keywords for your niche and use them throughout the account. 
4. Create pins- reuse your creatives from other platforms, but make sure to resize them properly for Pinterest and for mobile. 
5. Launch an ad campaign for 25 days - choose 4-6 great pins and launch an ad campaign on Pinterest. Give it up to 25 days to observe pinners behavior.

Lastly, here is an amazing perk for first-time advertisers. Through Heydorado’s partnership with Pinterest, you can get $1000 in ad credit for free by spending $1000 on advertising in this quarter. Do not miss this opportunity to prepare your Pinterest presence for Q4. 

At Heydorado, we launch, manage, optimize and strategize everything Pinterest-related. Reach out at mariyam@heydorado.com