What is Pinterest Shopping?

“Pinterest is the visual discovery engine. Our mission is to give people the inspiration they need to create a life they love.” This is how the social network defines itself. Its name is a portmanteau of the English words pin and interest, meaning respectively “to pin” and “area of interest”.

The success of Pinterest Shopping: figures that speak for themselves

More recent and perhaps less popular than Facebook or Instagram when it comes to implementing marketing strategies, the platform nevertheless reveals figures demonstrating that Pinterest Shopping is a channel that should not be overlooked when promoting your business.

Pinterest around the world

Since its creation in 2010, Pinterest has enjoyed growing success. In the space of 3 years, the platform has more than doubled its number of users worldwide, currently reaching 291 million monthly users. In addition, 1.5 million businesses are already present on the platform.

Pinterest in France

In France, the platform has 10 million unique monthly visitors, half of whom are between the ages of 25 and 49, while 60% are women. This also represents 3 million images saved every day and an 80% year-over-year increase in searches. These figures certainly provide food for thought and highlight the importance of being present on this catalogue of ideas.

How does Pinterest Shopping work?

As a source of inspiration for consumers, the platform has developed features that allow its members to search for, discover and purchase their favourite products or discover new brands. It therefore offers them a large number of product Pins available for purchase on advertisers’ websites. These can easily be identified by a label displayed in the corner of the image, containing the title, description, price and availability information for the item.

For businesses, this translates into advertising features that enable them to effectively reach potential customers. On the one hand, e-commerce businesses have access to the Catalogs feature, which allows them to import their complete product catalogue and automatically offer products for sale as product Pins. On the other hand, the Shopping Ads feature allows them to automatically create inspiring and useful ads from their catalogue.

Why use Pinterest for your business?

97% of searches performed on the platform do not contain a brand name. This percentage shows that users visiting the platform are often undecided and come there for inspiration before making a decision. It therefore represents a real opportunity for any business to reach users while they are considering their next purchase. By presenting them with images and videos designed to help bring their ideas to life, advertisers can potentially influence their purchasing decisions.

The advantages of Pinterest Shopping

Pinterest’s very principle — sharing images — represents an undeniable advantage when it comes to showcasing your products in an attractive way. These are more compelling types of content that are easy to browse on mobile devices and can deliver a better conversion rate. On this network, creativity is undoubtedly the key to success. With this in mind, and depending on your industry, we recommend, for example, highlighting your packaging, showcasing the ingredients in your products, or adapting your campaigns and messaging according to different times of the year to match users’ state of mind.

Pinterest Shopping offers different ad formats, placements and bidding solutions. However, its undeniable strength lies in its more specific and better-targeted advertising, made possible by the data collected and the options available. It is therefore possible to target users:

• by interests;
• by age group;
• by keywords;
• by audience: existing customer lists, retargeting of users who have already visited the advertiser’s website, engagement retargeting for users who have interacted with Pins or ads, and users who resemble or behave similarly to an existing audience list;
• by further refining the audience through a combination of location, device, language and gender criteria.

Finally, to mention just one more advantage, every image acts as a link to your website, providing an opportunity to increase traffic to your site.

If it suits your industry, Pinterest Shopping has tremendous potential waiting to be tapped. Would you like to take your first steps on the platform, improve your campaigns or build loyalty among your followers? Feel free to contact us to benefit from expert advice.