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Why Pinterest?

What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a visual discovery engine. People come here to find ideas, and they look for experiences. They see it in a visual way. So if I'm looking for a black dress, if I search little black dress on Google, I'm just gonna get a black dress with a white background, and I'm not gonna give an idea where to wear that dress. If I go on Pinterest, and I search LBD, oh my gosh, the inspiration that comes out of Pinterest is insane. I'm gonna see a New York lady wearing an awesome sleek sheath black dress, or I'm gonna see a black ball gown. I'm gonna see all these options, but I'm gonna see the women that wear it, and where they wear it. It takes your idea to the next level. Pinterest ultimately helps you discover and do what you love. Pinterest is a place that wants to better your life. It is a place that people come for future things too. Everything is a future intent. People come to actively consider what to do or buy next. So if you are a product or a service, they'...

re coming to find out if they should buy your product or service. What is the best crib I should buy for my baby? What is the best car? What is the best tips on business? They are coming to actually take action, and do something with this idea, or do something with the question that they have. So let's talk about the behavior, what happens on Pinterest. Everybody pins something with intention of action. And people save ideas from websites so they can revert back to it, and time and time again, I know I have certain recipes that I'm constantly going back to. And now, by the way, I don't know if you know this, you can move pins. So if you have that favorite recipe that you found two years ago, and it's really hard because you have to scroll and scroll and scroll, or create a new board just so, I need a secret board to find that, you don't need to do that now. You can take a pin and you can move it to the top. Great thing Pinterest did there. People save ideas within the platform. So as they're in their home feed, they're constantly finding ideas there, based on interests, and they're saving it to their boards. And ultimately Pinterest is just a smarter way to search. If they know that if they just say recipe, or let's see, spring party ideas, or outdoor entertaining ideas, that they're gonna get flooded with a ton of ideas, instead of just literal, a picture of a picnic table outside, and that's all they get on Google. There are a 100 billion ideas on Pinterest. And the top categories on Pinterest, which will help you discern if this is a platform for you, food, home, beauty, and style. That's not to say though that travel, or fitness, or architecture, or holidays, aren't popular too, but those are the main ones. So who is on Pinterest? This is important to note, if you want to try to reach your target audience. So there's 200 million monthly users. And 70% of those users are female. And 30% are male. That's not to say if you have a male-focused product, that you shouldn't spend time here, because as we know with ads, we can target males, right? But the fact that organically, more women use the platform, is just an easy drop in the bucket to say I know that my customer is female, and I'm gonna hang out with her where the ladies are. So, you know that versus Facebook, which is more 50-50, and you definitely have to pay more in ads to target those people. 98% of pinners try new things they find on Pinterest. So we know that the users of Pinterest take action with the things that they see. Which means that if they see your product, they're probably gonna wanna take action with it, if it's good content, or good product. And 75% of the content that is saved on Pinterest is from a business. So, right there and then, we know that people don't mind being marketed to, and advertising. Whether that's a promoted pin or not, you know that you can put your content out there, and people are like, hey, I don't care that you're marketing to me. As long as it's good and helpful, I wanna know about it. Tell me about your product. And 60% of Pinterest households have children five and under, so we know that parents are on Pinterest, and we know young parents are on Pinterest. And so, if I described anybody just then that is your target market, you should definitely consider, not only being on Pinterest, but running paid on Pinterest. So let's talk about what promoted pins are. Pinterest calls their ads promoted pins, because basically they're pins. So, when you decide to put money behind a pin, that's an ad. You have to upload your image asset, just like any other pin that you were to share organically without money behind it, it's an actual living and breathing pin. And then what makes it a promoted pin, is that you put ad dollars behind that. And you can choose your promoted pins to align with whatever goal. So, I want to drive more traffic to my website. Or I wanna create more awareness about a new product offering. And as I mentioned, ads are so useful that people actually save promoted pins to their board. It's not like a one and done thing, where I'm gonna run an Instagram ad, and then bye bye, it's no longer there. It is an ad that people save, so long after your ad dollars are over, it continues working for you long after. So the money that you're investing in your ad spend, you reach your spend cap, and it's done spending, but then the ad continues to be propelled into the Pinterest stratosphere. Because people keep saving, and saving, and saving, and sharing, and sharing, and sharing. So come on, that's like free money right there. So why else use promoted pins? This statistic blows my mind. And this is from Pinterest. I worked with Pinterest. They reviewed this presentation. We made sure that this is good information that's right on the money, as far as the statistics go. I love this. One out of two people, one out of two people make a purchase after seeing a promoted pin. Oh my gosh. You guys. Spend your money here. I don't even get a kickback for saying that. I'm just saying that to help you seriously sell your product. People are actively engaging on Pinterest, so much so that one out of two people that see your promoted pin make a purchase. 72% of users say it helps them find ideas for everyday life. So people feel that their time on Pinterest is well spent. In fact, users are two times more likely to say that their time was well spent on Pinterest versus other platforms. Come on. How many times have you gone on Instagram, and you're like, yeah, I wanna go back to bed. I just feel bad about myself right now. Pinterest isn't that place, because it's not about people sharing their lives. Pinterest is like that place that's like, oh my gosh I could do so many cool things. I'm so excited. Oh yeah, this could help me plan this next vacation. Sure, there's aspirational things like, oh my gosh, I just put out cups and pizza for my kid's party. I am not doing that kind of party. That definitely happens. But for the most part, people say they're two times more likely to say their time was well spent. That's encouraging. And it keeps you ahead of trends. Using Pinterest, and using promoted pins, and just spending time on Pinterest, helps you keep a good pulse on what's happening, because everything is future. So you're engaging with your customer at the beginning of the customer journey. So you know, okay, they just bought a new house, and they're interested in a sofa. You have an opportunity to connect with them when they're planning. And then we know that as they're thinking about their sofa, ooh I noticed that they're not really pinning as much mid-century style, as they are pinning more traditional. I can tell that maybe this is a shift. Maybe I need to focus more on this kind of style for my product line. Or the fact that teal became a huge color. I painted my bedroom teal two and a half years ago, and now teal is a huge color. Do you wanna know that I found that color teal through Pinterest. I got that idea because of Pinterest. And two years later, it is crazy, and the virality of that one bedroom pin that I have, I can't tell ... I've outsold that rattan bed in my bedroom for Anthroplogie twice over, and living spaces rug is one of their top pins. And all because those ideas started with Pinterest. And you'll continue to accrue earned media long after the campaign has ended. So it's just a good way to spend your money. But does it fit your brand? Because it might not. So, these are some questions. I would say these are good questions to ask, anytime you're gonna spend ad dollars, not just Pinterest ad dollars. Just anytime. So we're gonna go, do the demographics fit my brand? If I, am I U.S. based ... Pinterest is an international platform, but if I'm really just trying to target just California, it's really kind of hard to do that on Pinterest. If you're a really local brand, that's a bit harder on Pinterest. Do our competitors use this network? So if I'm a furniture company, is West Elm on there? Is Pottery Barn on there? Check out your competition. Is this wedding photographer on there? Is this beauty company on there? Okay they are, what are they doing? Okay, maybe I should be spending dollars here. Does my target audience engage here? So why would you, if I have males who are 65 and older, maybe not. Maybe they are on Pinterest, and you could hyper target those people, but I don't think that's the main user base. Not to discourage you from spending time on Pinterest for other reasons, but it might not be the best place to cultivate your customer. Does my content organically perform well here? So as I'm sharing my content, do people like it? If they're not really engaging with my content, and they're not really liking it, chances are if you run an ad, it might not perform well there either. It's worth testing. But truthfully, organic performance is a great indicator of when you should spend ad dollars. I don't want you guys to waste your money. I want it to be very effective. So what are some first steps? If I want to run ads, what do I do? First thing, you need to create a business account. You can't run ads without it, so you need to go to business.pinterest.com. And you need to, you just go to business.pinterest.com, and you can, if you don't have a Pinterest account at all, you can just sign up there, or you can switch from a personal to a business. And that's gonna give you the ability to do analytics, and run ads. Then you need to setup your business profile, which is using your work email, or just choose an email that you actively check. Your address, your business name, your business type. And then you wanna make sure you're adding your payment information.