7 Surprising Pinterest Insights Every Marketer Needs

Pinterest: What The Numbers Tell Marketers [Research]

Have you steered clear of Pinterest because you’ve heard talk that it’s a female dominated, crafting ghetto? If so, you’re missing out on an important social media marketing opportunity regardless of whether your business is B2C, B2B, not-for-profit or solopreneur oriented.

As social media’s answer to scrapbooking, Pinterest started as one of the few social media networks where early adopters were women. With its meteoric growth this year, Pinterest’s audience has shifted. As with other newer social media platforms, it’s critical as a marketer to stake out your turf and build your base before you discover you’re significantly behind your competitors. (Check out my five tips to get started on Pinterest with examples!)

Here are seven useful data-driven insights and the related marketing implications to persuade you to hop onto Pinterest. This data has been aggregated and presented in a dense infographic by Tamba, a UK based agency.

  1. Audience is shifting. 28% of Pinterest users were male as of March 2012, up from 20% in January 2012. That represents a significant shift in a short period of time. Actionable Marketing Insight: Given this accelerated shift, it’s safe to assume that, if your specific target market isn’t on Pinterest now, they’ll be there soon. Therefore, get the welcome mat out by building your presence now. To this end, it’s useful to examine your marketing persona and social media persona.
  2. Audience is not too young, not too old. Roughly four out of five Pinterest users are between 25 and 54 as of March 2012. Further, the age break out is relatively equal across sub-age groups. Actionable Marketing Insight: Since this is the breadth of the peak working years, don’t assume your Pinterest audience is only stay-at-home moms. From a marketing perspective, make your visuals into eye-candy to draw users in and engage with them because there’s a good chance that they’re juggling multiple activities and you want them to spend time on your boards. Remember Pinterest consists of easy-to-consume snack content.
  3. Audience is engaged. The average time spent on Pinterest per visit is 14.2 minutes and there were 4 million daily unique visits to Pinterest in March 2012. Actionable Marketing Insight: Users on Pinterest are there to engage. They’re looking for information and fun. Figure out how to make your brand and offering accessible on this visual platform. Consider curating content in addition to creating targeted content to keep visitors engaged on your pinboards.
  4. Audience is motivated to visit other sites from Pinterest. Pinterest’s referrals to other sites increased from 0.85% in January 2012 to 1.05% in February while referrals from both Facebook and Twitter to other sites declined in the same period. Actionable Marketing Insight: Like other social media platforms, you shouldn’t assume users will leave Pinterest to visit your site. That said, Pinterest does better at referring visitors to other sites. To this end, make sure you provide the link to the original source (so you don’t anger other users) and add context to entice them to get more information.
  5. Audience has buying power. 50% of users have a household income of $50,000 or more.  Almost one tenth of all users have household income of $100,000 or more.  Actionable Marketing Insight: Since Pinterest’s audience has the means to purchase stuff, use your pinboards not only to showcase your products in their best light, but also to support the purchase process by putting products in context, supplying additional information (such as how to put together outfits) and offering how-tos (in the form of recipes and patterns).
  6. Audience is smartphone savvy. About 250,000 dedicated Pinterest iPhone apps have been downloaded. Actionable Marketing Insight: As an always-on device, plan for your audience to use your content in diverse ways. Take a creative approach to how you can use Pinterest to attract and engage with prospects and customers. Remember one third of shoppers use their phone to take a picture of product at retail establishment according to Shop.org, comScore and The Partnering Group research.
  7. Audience interests are diversifying. We’re no longer only in Craftland! The top 10 audience interests on Pinterest are fashion designers and collections, music, art and memorabilia, vineyards and wine tourism, Utah, crafts (we didn’t say it was dead!), public relations, venture capital, Iowa, search optimization and marketing, and graphic design. Looking at the list, you can still discern Pinterest’s Midwestern roots but the marketing wagon trains have started to stake their claims. Actionable Marketing Insight: Any business can find a way to present their offering, whether it’s in the form of photographs, images (including infographics), or text based on the diverse array of top topics. (Here’s how to ensure your images are social media savvy.)

As a marketer, keep your finger on the pulse of newer social media offerings like Pinterest. As these offerings grow and mature, they provide new opportunities for astute marketers.

Have you used Pinterest to support your marketing? If so, what did you do and what were your results?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


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Photo credit: http://www.techiestuffs.com/blog/pinterest-icon-set-free-psd-download/

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