Is your business on Pinterest yet? If not, this week’s article may convince you to reconsider jumping onboard. John Kaplan — Pinterest’s Chief Revenue Officer — makes a strong point:
“The past year has accelerated a rapid worldwide shift to e-commerce but it has left something valuable behind: inspiration. Based on our research, 89% of weekly Pinners use Pinterest for inspiration in their path to purchase. That’s because Pinterest includes inspiration at every part of the shopping journey, not just for Pinners, but for advertisers, merchants and creators too.”
Pinterest saw massive growth during the pandemic, and while its growth has slowed a bit this year, Pinterest is planning to expand it’s shopping trend with a range of new brand showcase features and eCommerce offerings that’s sure to wow many of our clients — especially our retail friends!
Pinterest has been hard at work developing upgrades to their popular app that will give companies more ways to connect and increase sales. Here are few of the changes we’ve heard about:
1. A new ‘Slideshow for Collections’ promotion option features a slideshow that will appear in-stream in relevant searches to help identify viewers who have previously showed interest in similar products. It will allow you to uploaded your catalog, which will automatically generate ads. Cool, huh?
When a viewer taps your image, it expands into a detailed collection of your products that again, is automatically generated based on your inventory — which in turn, will aid in reaching your prospects at just the right time.
2. Next up, Pinterest is adding a new “merchant details” to your brand’s profile which enables businesses to showcase their values in the app. Pinterest describes “merchant details” like this:
“[Merchants can] display brand values like “responsibly sourced,” “invested in good” and “inclusive” on your profile. You can also highlight communities you belong to, such as “Black-owned,” “Latinx-owned,” “Woman-owned,” “LGBTQ+ owned,” “Disability-owned” and more.”
It’s another way to connect your brand to your audience and align with their values.
3. They created an expansion of its Verified Merchant Program. This program highlights those businesses that meet Pinterest’s customer service and brand connection guidelines with a verified blue check mark in the app.
The Verified Merchant program also ensures that an increasing number of businesses are linking their products to the app and adhere to Pinterest’s customer response standards. This helps build trust between buyers and sellers.
It could be worth your time to explore these changes; learn more about Pinterest’s Verified Merchant program here.
4. There’s even more! Another exciting update that’s being tested is Idea Pins, which are sponsored pins displayed with a profile image of the creator along with a “Paid Partnership” tag for transparency regarding the brand relationship. Here is how Pinterest explains how Idea Pins will work:
“Building on our immersive Idea Pin format, we’re testing Idea Ads with paid partnership. This new format is a joint partnership between creators and advertisers. The creator makes an Idea Pin, and tags a brand partner. From there, the advertiser can promote the Idea Pin as an Idea Ad.”
Idea Pin was inspired by the latest social media trends, including video creation tools, advanced sharing options, such as sharing an Idea Pin to Facebook and Instagram stories, for example.
This new feature will allow Pinterest to connect and attract a wider audience who are looking to shop via stories for products and inspiration – and allow sponsored pin creators to get paid for their efforts. A great incentive to keep the content and quality high and the creative ideas coming!
As the holidays are rapidly approaching, this would be a good time to consider how you use your company Pinterest account. Maybe it’s time to try one of the above programs to get more out of Pinterest?
It’s a statistical fact that more people shop in the Pinterest app than any other platform – and more frequently. Also, active users have shown they are 7x more likely to say the app influenced their purchasing decision than any other platform too. So, why not try it?
While Pinterest isn’t right for all service-based businesses, it may be right for some – and for retail, it’s fantastic (and very under utilized) — so please let us know if you need more information or have any questions on Pinterest or any of your social media marketing needs. As always, we’re here to help at amy@elementsdesign.com or 203-776-1323.
– Amy
