Here’s the short answer:
Because unlike TikTok, Facebook an most of the other social media platforms, when people go on Pinterest they are looking for inspiration or solutions to what’s on their mind. If you can provide them the answer then you have their attention, and if you have their attention you can translate that into sales.
Pinterest is an important but sometimes overlooked tool that is very useful especially for small businesses. Small businesses can use Pinterest to post pictures and information about their products and services, and to interact with potential and current customers. By doing so, small businesses can increase their visibility, reach a larger audience, and promote their products and services in a cost-effective way.
6 Reasons Pinterest Should be Part of Your Marketing Strategy
In a world where social media is constantly evolving, it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends – especially for small businesses. Pinterest is an important but often overlooked tool that can be extremely useful for small businesses. With over 433 million monthly active users, Pinterest is still a great way to reach potential customers.
Here are 6 reasons why, and a bonus reason too.
1) Increased brand awareness
As a visual platform, Pinterest has a massive global reach with over 433 million monthly active users. The site is focused on ideas and inspiration, and allows users to save images and videos that they find online onto virtual boards.
And those users are looking for ideas and answers to their questions. If they find yours and pin it to their board, they will probably go back and look at it again. And even better, they will be telling Pinterest to show your pin too others like them.
If you can create a recognizable look for your pins, people will see them more and more and start to associate your brand with the solutions they’re looking for.
What’s more, pins can show up on Google searches, which makes Pinterest an effective tool for increasing brand awareness even off of their platform
To maximize the platform’s potential, businesses should create pins that are visually appealing and relevant to their brand. They should also use keywords in their descriptions to make sure that their pins show up in relevant searches. In addition, businesses can take advantage of Pinterest’s advertising options to reach even more people.
2) Pinterest drives traffic to your website
As a very visual platform, Pinterest is great for driving traffic to your website. Pictures just naturally get more attention than text.
Think about your own habits. When you do a search and images or video thumbnails show up, aren’t you more inclined to be drawn to them first?
Same thing goes for your posts on Pinterest. An eye-catching graphic will make it irresistible to click on that image which can then take the user to your site.
Not only that, but Pinterest has more inbound links than any other social media platform, which means when people are looking for answers they are more likely to be directed there than to other sites. And that means people are more likely to see your pin which in turn means Pinterest is a powerful tool for driving traffic to your site.
And just to hammer home the point, people are increasingly using Google to search for images. I know I do that. Search for a term or phrase and then find the picture that looks most like what I was looking for, then visit that site. Research shows that I’m not the only one. And with more people searching by image, and more of the search results coming from Pinterest, your site is more likely to come up in search results if you’re using Pinterest.
3) Pins are evergreen content
If you don’t know what I mean by evergreen, it’s content that doesn’t go stale. The latest videos posted to TikTok, and the latest Tweets on Twitter have a very short shelf-life. The content may still be there in a few weeks, but no one is going to see it.
Pinterest is different. It serves up content based on what people are looking for and what they (and others like them) seem to engage with. If your pin is relevant to them, they will get to see it even if it is weeks or months old – even years.
Other social media platforms are based on a chronological presentation of content. New stuff shows up first. Pinterest is different. Pins have a longer shelf life, and they show up right along with the newer pins. They may not be new to you, but they are new to that user and that means they can continue to drive traffic to your website long after they’re posted.
Even seasonal content which you’d think has its own built-in expiration date can be evergreen. A pin related to Halloween for example my have little use to people in November, but the next year it starts showing up on their feeds a few months before the holiday.
That’s one of the things Pinterest does on its own. But even better, there are ways that you can make your older seasonal pins show up when you want them to and more prominently than your competition’s. And I don’t mean by paying for ads – though there is that option too.
4) Pinterest is a business-positive platform
Pinterest is especially catering to businesses these days, providing tools and resources that can make content production more cost-efficient.
For example, boards allow you to learn more about your audience and what they’re interested in. This information can be extremely valuable when it comes to creating marketing material that resonates with them. And not just marketing material, but also products – whether physical products or informational – that will appeal to them.
To make marketing easier for businesses, Pinterest provides tools like Rich Pins and Promoted Pins. Rich Pins include extra information about the Pin, like the price of an item or the author of an article. Promoted Pins are pins that businesses can pay to have shown to more people.
Additionally they provide free tools that allow you to do a great deal of research into trends and give you insights into your audience. That can help not only to guide your pinning strategy, but also to inform decisions for your other marketing efforts.
Overall, Pinterest is an incredibly useful tool for businesses of all sizes. If you’re not utilizing it as part of your marketing strategy, you could be missing out on a lot of potential customers.
5) More focused users means more focused buyers
Independent of other social media trends Pinterest is a go-to platform for ideas and inspiration. It is also the leading destination for users looking for solutions to a problem.
When they do that, they search for the solution and for the most part not for a particular brand. Therein lies it’s greatest power in my opinion. If you have a solution for them, it doesn’t matter that your brand is not already in their mind at the start. If you can successfully solve the problem for them, then YOUR brand is the one they will associate with their success.
And Pinterest does not live in a vacuum. It’s up to you to decide if you what to direct them to your blog, or to content you have on a different platform of your choice. Pinterest is where they find you.
Are we talking about a small percentage of users that follow this pattern? Nope. 78% of Pinners say they’ve discovered new brands or products on the platform, and 87% say they’ve made a purchase based on something they saw on Pinterest.
With more and more users coming to Pinterest with specific intent, businesses have an opportunity to meet them with relevant content that speaks to their needs. This type of focused engagement can lead to more loyal customers down the line.
6) Increase your sales
That’s what this is all about, right?
If you build it, they will come. Except that’s not true. You have to let them know you built it. and Pinterest is an excellent way to do that.