Pinterest – How Visual Content Marketing Got Sexy

Imagine having a shop window that was viewed by 56 million women regularly.

And those women spend about 15 minutes looking into that shop window every time they visit.

If you were the owner of that shop, you’d make sure that shop window looked amazing, was constantly refreshed with new stock and contained items that engaged, surprised and delighted those customers, wouldn’t you?

And that’s exactly how the best brands use Pinterest, the fastest growing visual content marketing site on earth.

Launched in March 2010 and now winning 2.5 billion page-views every month, Pinterest is the globe’s most potent shop window – whatever you’re selling.

The secret of why Pinterest is such a rich platform for content marketeers?

It’s largely aspirational. Like all the best shop windows, it offers potential customers something inspirational that they aspire to own or offers them stuff that will make them feel they are improving their life.

Apart from the fact that its visual impact makes it the sexiest of social networks, pinning something beautiful, useful, easy-on-the-eye on Pinterest is akin to having a new product in the window at Harrods – instant credibility.

It’s the perfect launch-pad for new product or boosting brand awareness.

There’s far more to it than motivational quotes emblazoned on cool images (though that genre is plentiful).

Look at the new Star Wars, The Force Awakens movie, for example. Pinterest is a natural home for anything Star Wars – from Droid Cupcake recipes, through Darth Vader fan art, to beautifully presented posters promoting fan conventions and new Star Wars products – it’s Star Wars geek heaven online.

While Disney has its own dedicated Star Wars pages on Pinterest, there’s so much more out there to ramp up the anticipation for the new movie among the Jedi aficionados. And that’s the point. As a content marketing platform, Pinterest may still be very much in its infancy but it’s already doing an amazing job of promoting content of every description.

Got great images, infographics, pictorial information you want to spread among the masses of potential customers out there? Pinterest is your shop window.

Pinterest users spend an average of 15.8 minutes on the site each time they visit, that’s almost three minutes more than Facebook and almost 12 minutes more than Twitter. They’re happy to devote their attention and browse – so its crucial, as a brand, that you give them something visual that will sustain their interest.

You need to use Pinterest to post pictures of how your product can be used, share tips and expert information, share infographics, tell your company’s story in pictures and let your customers peek behind the scenes.

The latest market statistics suggest that 49% of Pinterest users have replaced using catalogues with Pinterest viewing. Some 75% of the site’s daily traffic comes through mobile apps and 83% of that is via a smartphone.

There are approximately half a million Pinterest business accounts currently registered. And the biggest – Nordstrom – has a massive 4.4 million followers.

More than a quarter of Pinterest users (27%) follow more than one brand on the site. More important is that 52% of daily Pinterest users consult the site for purchasing advice while in a store – a new layer of shop window within a shop.
The average order value for consumers referred by Pinterest is £36. And the most repined domain on the site is also hugely commercial – Etsy.com.

Crucially, that means Pinterest users are more than happy to spend on the basis of recommendations, advice and the eye-candy displayed in this formidable digital shop window.

As a brand, can you really afford to ignore it?

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