Customer Experience

By adaptive - March 4th, 2015

With rapid expansion, Pinterest has become the social media network to watch, as it moves towards increased commercialisation of its services.

• 28% of Pinterest users earn more than $100,000 a year (Omnicore).
• The average pin will generate 78 cents in sales and drives two website visits (Piqora).
• 21% of Pinterest users bought an item in a store after pinning or re-pinning an item (Harvard Business Review).
• 69% of online consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item they’ve purchased or wanted to purchase (Bizrate Insights).
• Nearly 85% of consumer purchasing decisions is made by women.
• The overwhelming majority (80%) of Pinterest users are women (RJMetrics).

David Doctorow, senior vice president of global marketing at Expedia, one of Pinterest’s charter advertisers told Forbes: “One of the things we’re trying to figure out strategically is how to tap into consumers earlier in the inspiration or planning phase. We don’t have great ways to identify consumers in that part of the journey.”

Also, eMarketer concluded: “According to new estimates from eMarketer, the social network’s US user base will reach 47.1 million in 2015, up 11.4% year over year. Though smaller than Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, Pinterest has an attribute other social platforms don’t: users who willingly share their product preferences, plans and aspirations.

“[Pinterest’s] growth may be more limited than other services, simply because what you do on Pinterest—find and pin things that you like—isn’t necessarily something that large numbers of people may want to do,” wrote Debra Aho Williamson, principal social media analyst at eMarketer and author of the report. “[But] in a year when marketers are starting to worry about ‘dark social’ platforms where most conversations are private, there’s a polar opposite—Pinterest. More than one-quarter of US social network users and 18.1% of internet users will use Pinterest on a monthly basis this year, eMarketer projects. By 2019, the network’s monthly user base will be 59.3 million—nearly 30% of US social network users.”

The power of Pinterest is clearly with its curated content. The propensity to share is now well documented across social media, but none more so than with the visual networks. Video continues to rule here, but Pinterest is offering consumers a platform to not only share, but to also connect brands with potential customers. With a Pinterest buy button on the way, all corporations need to ensure they are paying close attention to how Pinterest is rapidly developing as a commercial channel in its own right.

Read more about visual marketing.