Are Pinners Purchasing?

The popularity of Pinterest has led many brands to utilize it for promoting their products and services. Though Pinterest hasn’t been on the scene for very long, it has quickly signed up millions of users, and is now the third most popular social networking site, just behind Facebook and Google. Though many people are devoting their time to the virtual pinboard, the question that most marketers want answered is: “Are pinners purchasing?”

Many websites and brands are seeing an increase in traffic from their Pinterest account, but the main question remains, does this traffic result in sales? In a study conducted by Vision Critical and Emily Carr University that involved 500 Pinterest users from the US, Canada, Australia and UK, they discovered a pretty high correlation between pinning and purchasing. It seems one out of five Pinterest users has pinned an item or product that they purchased eventually.

This is definitely a big discovery for brands. As a small business owner, you can’t ignore the reach of Pinterest, since it can potentially drive revenue. If you want to have a successful social marketing campaign, you need to utilize most of the tools at your disposal.

In another study by Shopify, they discovered that Pinterest users even spend more on average compared to their Facebook counterparts. Pinterest has become the third largest referral source to Shopify’s partner sites, with Facebook and Twitter continuing to lead. And Pinterest users also tend to shop more – they spend an average of $80 per order, which is double that of what they spend on Facebook.

Though Facebook continues to be the giant among social networking sites mainly due to the fact that it has the most number of users, Pinterest’s unique image-based site definitely offers a lot of potential for social marketing. Rakuten, an e-commerce giant based in Japan, recently made a $100 million investment on Pinterest. It plans to use the site together with the Rakuten ID, which is already being used by 75 percent of Japan’s population online, or roughly around 80 million people. This puts the value of Pinterest at $1.5 billion.

Though purchases may not be frequent and constant, still, brands can’t ignore the power that Pinterest holds nowadays. A significant number of people are raving about the site, using it to showcase the things they love, and sharing these things with their followers. Since this can translate to sales, it would be disadvantages for your small business to ignore Pinterest.

Even though pinners are purchasing, however, it’s important that you use Pinterest properly in order to increase the traffic to your site as well as increase sales. You can create pinboards of all the products you’re selling, but too much self-promotion can end up backfiring on you. So it’s important that you strike a balance between promoting your products and services, and sharing what you love on the site.

Mix and match what you post. Showcase your products with other things that complement them. Find unique ways to showcase the services you’re offering. If you sell make up for example, don’t just post pin pictures of your products – you can add make up tutorials, pictures of made up people that you like, and comparisons of what make up is best for day and for night.

Even if you’re someone who offers services, not products, you can make Pinterest work for you. As a lawyer, for example, you can showcase your advocacies through pictures. You can even show a bit of humor, since this lets people see you in a more personal way.

But of course, the real challenge is getting people to buy from you. Sure, it’s easy for people to follow your Pinterest account, join your contests, comment on your pinboards, like and share them on other social networking sites, and so on. But these things don’t always translate into sales.

Also, there remains the question: Are pinners purchasing what they pin, or are they pinning what they already decided to purchase? What comes first… the pin, or the plan to purchase? This is an interesting question to answer since it gives you an insight on what the users are doing. Does the pin come before the plan to purchase? Or the plan to purchase comes first before the pin?

If the pin comes first, then this can be really advantageous to brands. This means that people are pinning what they love, then they can’t resist purchasing. On the other hand, if the plan to purchase comes first, then it means that Pinterest may not exactly have anything to do with why the user is buying the product or service.

Truly, there is still a lot of uncharted territories with regards to Pinterest. As brands begin to learn what works on Pinterest or not, they can really come to engage their followers and increase their sales in the end.