Whilst not as established as other social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest is rapidly becoming a major area of opportunity for digital marketing and social commerce.
The unique nature of the platform gives it advantages over the aforementioned social media websites, such as a greater amount of spontaneity and inspiration for its users. Read on to learn how Pinterest is reinventing the online shopping experience.
How Pinterest makes Shopping an Experience
When it comes to online shopping, some might hold the view that this is more of a simplified buying process rather than an enjoyable experience for consumers. Just 4 in 10 people say they prefer shopping online to shopping in real life (Source: ComScore survey, US, Inspired Shopping 2021, commissioned by Pinterest, Feb ‘21).
The main reason is because online shoppers want to discover new products for themselves. Reading reviews and filtering by price is useful if you already know what you want to buy, but not if you want to be inspired while you’re shopping. 66% of people say that one of the biggest factors in their decision-making process is being inspired. (Source: LRW, US, Inspired Shopping on Pinterest, Jan 2020).
That’s where Pinterest comes in. To start with, there are over 475 million Pinterest users (Source: Pinterest, Global analysis, March 2021) internationally who all use the platform as a source of inspiration for their buying habits.
They are also far more likely to be actively shopping than users of other social media platforms. For example, they are 3 times more likely to say they’re always shopping, have 30% bigger basket sizes than users of other platforms, and spend 40% more than users of other platforms (Source: Dynata, UK, 2021 Shopping among Monthly Pinners and Non-Pinners in Fashion and Beauty combined, April 2021).
Pinterest is able to achieve statistics like the ones above via the way it manages the online shopping aspect of the platform. A focus on stunning visuals allows advertised products to be displayed in an accessible and attractive format.
The personalized recommendations Pinterest offers also assist the user by making their shopping experience more spontaneous. It may help them discover brands and products that they might not previously have considered.
Continuing to Enhance the Shopping Experience
Pinterest are not content with how they have already innovated online shopping and advertising, they are always introducing new features and have plans to implement many more in the future.
- Setting up Shop
In relation to setting up your own store page, Pinterest have introduced features that include being able to schedule when your products are uploaded and being able to upload multiple product feeds to a single business account to help build a global presence on Pinterest.
Pinterest has also added the International Shopify Partnership expansion, which allows Shopify merchants to upload their catalogs in just a few clicks.
An advanced Product Group Management will also be introduced in the future, which will further help users create, filter, and manage products on Pinterest.
- New Advertising Solutions
Pinterest has introduced new dynamic retargeting enhancements, such as being able to exclude and bid by lookback windows and bidding by event type, and has also introduced Automatic Bidding for Shopping.
In the future, Pinterest plans to introduce Enhanced Product Details, which includes additional details on shipping, reviews, and promotions and a more seamless checkout experience, and Slideshow for Collections ads, which will be immersive, video-like shoppable experiences through your catalogue.
Finally, they are also planning to implement Campaign Budgets for Shopping aims, which will allow you to allocate your budget across ad groups to drive more results at an efficient price.
- Proving Impact
Pinterest have added Conversion Insights to the platform to allow businesses to see the results of their paid and organic Pinterest presence, as well as Conversion Analysis to help brands take a deeper look at the performance of their online storefront and how it can be improved.
Pinterest also plans to introduce Key Insights in the Pinterest Ads Manager, which will display metrics such as time to order to help businesses better understand their Pinterest audience and their conversion behavior.
Ready to get started?
Williams Commerce has an experienced social media marketing and PPC team that can help create tailored online advertising strategies, including on Pinterest, for your business based on your needs and budgets.
Whether you are a retailer, a B2B company or interested in selling directly to your customers (D2C) we can help you engage with new audiences and increase your sales, by taking advantage of the latest features available on ever-changing platforms such as Pinterest.
