PINFLUENCE – The Success of Marketing with Pinterest

Just a few months ago, Pinterest was the new kid on the social media block, but is now the number three social network in the world, behind only Facebook and Twitter.  It has attracted 10 million monthly visitors faster than any other site in history and its number of daily users has grown by 145 percent since January. The mass appeal of Pinterest is directly correlated to its ease of use and “stickiness” – the amount of time users spend on the site – and is also rapidly becoming the hot spot for brands to be seen and be pinned.

Pinterest users create boards by topic, and then fill them with pictures, articles or videos “pinned” from their own collections or from various websites. The bulletin boards are public and searchable, and visitors can “repin” images from any board to use in their own creations.  Offering an endless variety of subjects to peruse, boards become online visual communities for people with similar interests.

For businesses and marketing professionals, Pinterest also presents a unique opportunity. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a pin has even greater impact. Pinterest has already proven to be highly effective at converting sales and driving traffic to websites, with estimates that it will account for 40 percent of social-media-driven purchases by the end of 2012. The emerging impact of Pinterest is undeniable, as the site now drives more visitors to third-party sites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

On the surface, it may appear to be just about pinning individual pictures to boards. But the reality is Pinterest puts the power of shareable content into the hands of users, with tremendous potential to influence brand perception and affect purchasing decisions. Fifty-nine percent of Pinterest users have purchased a product or service based on a recommendation on the site, compared to 33 percent of Facebook users making purchases based on seeing an item in a Facebook ad, on a friend’s wall or in their news feed. This makes Pinterest users 79 percent more likely to make a purchase based on something they’ve seen on the site. While Facebook fuels awareness, Pinterest fuels action.

While Pinterest’s early adopters were visually appealing consumer brands – think  beauty, food and home décor — other businesses are starting to jump on board. Oreck and its vacuum cleaners might not be the most obvious choice for adopting Pinterest, but they use their board to show just how clean floors can be.  Oreck expands their range with a board featuring beautiful flooring styles and layouts. The images are gorgeous, and they make you wonder how much better your floors could look if they were cleaner.

Pinterest’s growing appeal capitalizes on both on users’ desire to express themselves visually and brands’ ability to provide users with compelling content. It may have started off as a fun way to create collages online, but it is evolving into a powerful engine to express any message. If there is a topic of interest, there is a pin for it. And it turns out that, for marketers, pinning is winning.