Visual search: Why Use Pinterest and Why Do People Use Pinterest? Are people wasting time, energy and your happy mood by the overload of distracting content on current Social Media platforms? Pinterest is a alternative and people are jumping on board! But as business owner, do you? Or do you need to?

Why Pinterest? People are creating smaller circles of friends and family, and getting more picky what they want to see on daily basis. This is why visual content platforms like Pinterest are attracting more and more people. Pinterest is a perfect example of a platform that inspires people with content they want to see, therefore other tech giants are watching them closely and even started copying them.

77% found a new brand or product on Pinterest

Mission: The best possible content per person

In my perception Social Media will change over the upcoming years towards video and visual. The platforms and search engines provide more connecting & inspirational posts to add value to the lives of their visitors. Google is one of the giants that has one big thing in mind, with every search they want to give that person the best possible personalised results. The search query can be the same, but the results can be different per person based on search queries and data collected in the past. Based on this personal bubble and data these platforms make it easy to find additional (visual) content matching with your values, behaviour and taste.

Example of Inspirational Social Media: Why Pinterest?

Visual Social Media platform Pinterest has (sep. 2019) 250 million active users per month and is growing fast. Where they started with mostly female users on the platform is now changing. The new signups are 50%/50% male vs Female. With Pinterest you can create digital boards and easy pin the visual content you just found on the internet. Later on you can easy find that content again by going to your themed board. These boards are often used in pre-buying phase to get inspiration for a certain moment or item to buy.

Example of creating a board on Pinterest

Someone bought a house has 5 months to think about the interior design. With Pinterest its easy to find and save matching furniture and be able to see where you can buy it. The person creates a couple of boards. Living-room, Bedroom, Kitchen and easy saves the pages on the different boards.
Do you have a product that you can visually advertise? Please read the stats below carefully.

Why Pinterest? Interesting stats from early 2019

• 250 million people use Pinterest every month
• 98% have tried something new on Pinterest
• 77% found a new brand or product
• 84% use Pinterest when they try to decide to buy
• 47% of Pinterest users utilise Pinterest to plan for upcoming big life events.
• People who use Pinterest start the buying and planning process two times earlier than other consumers.

Source adespresso

Great examples of content that is doing very well on Pinterest:

• Recipes
• Art
• Travel
• Wedding / Event planning
• Fashion / Design / Styling
• How to and DIY guides
• Niche related information / Infographics

Top 100 Pinterest trends for 2019

Pinterest Trend One: Travel

1. Searches for less travelled islands +179%)
2. Searches for surprise destination +192%)
3. People are falling for autumn getaways. Searches for autumn scenery +94%
4. High-end resorts to out in nature. Searches for hot springs +32%
5. Searches for abandoned castles +142%
6. Thrifty travellers are boarding the bus. Searches for bus travel +32%
7. Searches for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil +142%
8. Bucolic views, unique B&Bs and low-key R&R. Searches for small town travel +276%
9. Cycling enthusiasts and casual peddlers are trying bike tours—plus, all that cardio means more cheese-eating en route. Searches for bike tours +64%
10. Searches for zero waste travel +74%

See all 100 Pinterest trends for 2019 here

Driving traffic with Pinterest

Pinterest is an awesome source for traffic. Its like visual SEO. When you create good visual content with the right tags people will start noticing your content. The better quality your content is, the more pins etc the more likely your content is shown higher in the search results. The awesome thing is that people can collect certain content to their boards and look back what they found before. QUESTION for you: Can you easy find back what you looked up on images Google last week, without saving the image on your computer? With Pinterest you can.

Examples of a travel trip in Pinterest

Someone booked a summer holiday to Thailand, bought the airplane tickets and knows roughly what places they want to go. With Pinterest it is easy to create some boards for cities you visit, add highlights, activities and tours on the different boards. For the traveller the boards are nice and organised and a big opportunity for the travel industry to gain more customers online by creating high quality content.

1. Travel Guides in Thailand
2. Travel Guides per City (747 pins)
3. Travel Tips per Country, how to avoid mistakes (14.000 pins!)

 

 

Opportunity: Advertising on Pinterest

Since 2019 businesses in more countries (9) are able to advertise on Pinterest. When you’re one of the first in your country it can be very beneficial for your company to advertise on Pinterest. Especially because the add to cart stats on Pinterest are so high. Pinterest has almost the same advertising structure as Facebook campaigns, Ad groups and Ads in different levels, matching audiences and retargeting options.

Can you imagine what it can do for retail and beautiful visual products when you retarget people on Pinterest? Also other product groups can definitely benefit of Pinterest by their advertising options.

84% use Pinterest when they try to decide to buy

FULL List of countries you can advertise on Pinterest at this moment (nov. 2019)

1. Greece
2. United Kingdom (UK)
3. Malta
4. France
5. Slovakia
6. Sweden
7. Luxembourg
8. Spain
9. Denmark
10. Germany
11. Portugal
12. Poland
13. Switzerland
14. Canada
15. Romania
16. Czech Republic
17. Italy
18. Ireland
19. Belgium
20. Hungary
21. Finland
22. United States (U.S.)
23. Netherlands
24. Norway
25. New Zealand
26. Australia
27. Austria
28. Cyprus

How to create a business account

Ads targeting on Pinterest

On Pinterest you’ve different options to (micro) target your audience. You can do that by location, interest, search queries, demographics, keywords and matched behaviour, Pinterest names the act like audience where Facebook will name them Look a Like audience. Combined with, people that interacted with your pins, a custom audience list you can upload and the retargeting option Pinterest provides a strong online advertising platform for business owners.

Omni Channel Advertising & Pinterest

With all the different platforms we are able to create an Online Marketing Strategy with focus on omni channel advertising and reach the right people on the right moment. So for example we can show people display ads when they have visited a specific page on our website, saw a certain video, downloaded a lead magnet or have an abandoned shopping-cart on our commerce website. With the right strategy you can create user journeys, guide people through their buying process & build trust till the moment they are ready and willing to buy your product or service. (read also more about this strategy in the module Know, Like Trust & Love)

47% of Pinterest users utilise Pinterest to plan for upcoming big life events.

Google makes progress to copy Pinterest

What Instagram did with Snapchat (copy the main features of Snapchat) seems to happen now with Pinterest. For a good reason Google will test new images searches, connect data like recipes and will create search results pages that look like the Pinterest layout.

• See this article about Google looks more like Pinterest on Techcrunch
• Google is connecting the recipes and products like Pinterest does
• Google Fashion is looking more and more like the Pinterest Layout
• Google shows Ads in their image search (update 7-03-2019)

Interesting for advertisers and brands

All of these changes are very interesting for business owners, marketers and brands. As Google already has a lot of visual content and a very good working search engine plus advertising platforms. Google Search Ads but also think of the more visual components Google shopping and Display Ads, what can both be very beneficial for a lot of businesses in combination with the new visual Search Engine from Google.

Let me know your thoughts on this Social Media Trend!