Each month, Firebelly Marketing offers an executive briefing to keep our clients and community up to date on social media happenings and industry trends.

Pinterest is a platform that breeds creativity. It’s literally a platform for planners. The concept is all about getting people inspired with ideas to take offline and experience in the real world. Their philosophy is to change “idea” to “I did.”

Unlike Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest is not a social medium per se, but a search engine that focuses entirely on images.

The platform is extremely popular among users for finding and saving inspiration on various topics. It is an easy way to collect and organize useful content.

To give context on how Pinterest works for brands, here are my insights for utilizing this social media marketing tool.

How It Works

Pinterest is purely involved in collecting ideas and future inspiration. According to Pinterest, this is described as a “planning mindset.”

Pins and boards are created around favorite ideas and imagery. This allows pinners to quickly access pins. It’s visual discovery, with billions of pins to share. It’s also a social network, where users can comment and interact, just like Facebook.

Benefits

Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest loves to send search engine traffic directly to your website, making it a great driver for organic website traffic. Users that search on Pinterest are also much more likely to experiment and try new brands or concepts they aren’t familiar with.

Since Pinterest is an image search engine, pins don’t expire. As long as pins are relevant, pins from months or years ago can still be powerful drivers of organic traffic. This is a huge benefit over other social media channels since they do not reward old content the way Pinterest does.

On Pinterest, there is no bullying or politics permitted. No drama means customers are a lot happier when they’re on the platform.

Unique Opportunities For Paid Ads

Since Pinterest is known as a channel for discovery and ideas, people tend to forget that the platform has full funnel capabilities. Featuring ad optimizations from Brand Awareness to website and in-platform conversion.

On Pinterest, when ads show up in the right context, they naturally work because they don’t interrupt. The feed experience – including your paid ads – is all part of the discovery process for pinners in planning mode. This discovery process is projected to generate $1.2 trillion in sales for global social commerce by 2025.

As per Inside Intelligence, Pinterest is ranked as THE most trusted digital platform in the world.

Plus, if you do decide to run ads on Pinterest, the platform has 3x more conversions and twice the ROI on ad spend compared to other popular social channels. Additionally, Pinterest has 85% larger checkouts in comparison to rival social media apps.

Tips For Success On Pinterest

Here are some of the steps I’ve found help with discoverability on the platform:

Use Pinterest’s keywords insights and trends predictions when planning content.
Follow SEO best practices by making use of keywords in your pin’s title, description, and image file name.
Add graphics to photos that include text overlay and your company’s logo in the image.
Avoid using stock imagery; this fails to be inspirational or imaginative. Use original, high-quality images.
For advertising, Pinterest recommends $50 a day. However, lower spends of $10-$20 per day can be successful as well.
Test a variety of audiences that include interests, engagers, act-a-likes, and retargeting efforts.
Promote top-performing organic pins so your ad naturally blends into the user’s feed.

Trends & Predictions

The platform has sophisticated trend algorithms that feature accurate predictions. They’re based on months of data, rigorous analysis, and evaluation by a cross-functional team of Pinterest employees. The dataset has the unique capability of determining future trends better than any other platform.

Specifically, the Pinterest algorithm boosts high-quality original images, trending keywords, and active engagements. It focuses on four primary factors: domain quality, pin quality, pinner quality, and topic relevance.

Trends on Pinterest also last nine months. This gives brands that own these trends more opportunities to have impact. Remember, it’s a DISCOVERY channel. The audience is actively visiting for products and inspiration.

The platform also has a built-in tracking feature, measuring trends with high search volume within the last month. Users can filter between growing, seasonal, monthly, and yearly trends. Interests, keywords, age, and gender can also be evaluated. These include the most popular global growing trends for your audience, including users that follow you or have engaged with your pins in the last three months.

Just some trends predicted in 2023 by the platform include: “Pool Pawties For Dogs” and “Barkitecture” based around pet activities and doggy based treats; “YOLO Years” focusing on elderly people fulfilling dreams on their personal bucket lists; and “Free Spirits” emphasizing cocktail creation without any alcohol.

Examples Of Successful Food & Beverage Pinterest Campaigns

Here are some examples we found to support Pinterest’s role as a successful social media marketing tool.

Bake Believe

Our client Bake Believe is a dessert brand that offers no sugar added chips and bars. Last year, we were able to increase growth (+44.7%), engagements (+12.7%), and post link clicks (+29%) cross-platforms. By using Pinterest consumer trends in their content planning, they were able to easily identify trends and produce highly engaging content that drove website traffic and sales. Here is an example of a simple recipe ad that achieved a 4 ROAS on Pinterest.This is a prime example of buyers on Pinterests being more eager to buy and make larger purchases compared to other social media channels.

Envy Apples

Our client Envy Apples is a fruit company, creating offerings using natural plant-breeding methods. Over the last two years, we were able to increase audience size (+21.3%), impressions (+159.2%), and total clicks (+502.2%) cross-platforms. Chances are, if you’ve gone to Costco recently, you’ve spotted Envy. By using Pinterest consumer trends in their content planning, they were able to drive massive amounts of clicks to their website and post saves that allows people to easily find and access their content at a later time.

BON V!V

BON V!V is a seltzer company fermented from cane sugar with natural flavors added. By using Pinterest consumer trends to craft their creative strategy, the beverage company was enhanced at every stage of their customers’ journey. The campaign highlighted sophisticated flavor blends and targeted individual’s passions, ensuring that each pin spoke to a trending insight, like a self-care checklist or an easy cocktail recipe.

Interested in using Pinterest for your social media strategy? You can catch the replay of the event completely free here. It’s the best 30 minutes you will spend today!

Stay tuned for future upcoming executive briefings on more on social media happenings and industry trends.

Executive Brief: Grow Your Brand On Pinterest