Pinterest is one of the best Social Network in getting traffic to your website. Recent surveys have shown that between Facebook, twitter and Pinterest is the network is the most likely to drive spontaneous online sales.
At it’s heart Pinterest is a service that helps people to find, share and save beautiful moments and images that inspire them. Pinterest can help business owners in creating a community around their brand which will increase the traffic and sales of your products.
Here are 4 ways you can get people from to purchase:
1. Create Pins that Resonate
Before discussing how customers might come from Pinterest to your website ready to buy something from you, it makes sense to take a look at what makes a pin successful.
Creating pins that get likes, repins and clickthroughs is an art that takes a bit of practice, but there are some common strategies you can take advantage of to help ensure that your pins resonate.
First, try to pin professional looking, high quality photographs or collages – not stark, cookie cutter product photos against white backgrounds. As an example take a look at the Gap on Pinterest.
The Gap, which has over 40,000 followers at the time of writing, is certainly showing off its products, but there are relatively few images directly from the Gap’s ecommerce product pages, rather their boards are filled with images showing happy folks doing fun stuff while they happen to be wearing Gap clothing.
Specifically, see the Gap’s “Individuals of Style” board, with its black and white celebrity images, and the company’s “Styld.by You” board which features images of real gap customers wearing their clothes.
Collage pins that put together a collection of products can also be excellent for standing out to potential customers. American Eagle Outfitters puts this strategy to use well on some of their boards.
Another creative pin format that is gaining popularity is the “pinfographic”. This is a pin that combines a number of images or elements to create an instructional graphic explaining how to do something like a make a recipe, combine clothing options or assemble a craft.
Playfull Learning has a great one on “10 Ways to Beat Summer Boredom” that currently has 403 repins.
If you’re an online clothing retailer, you could create a ‘style guide’ pinfographic showing how to compose an outfit with your products.
Last but not least, when looking for images to pin, don’t be afraid to pin images from around the web that aren’t your own. Simply pinning your own product photos can get repetitive for your followers and it’s important to demonstrate you care more about creating a valuable experience for them than simply a promotional channel for yourself.
For further inspiration and pin ideas, here’s a list of all the top brands on pinterest. http://mashable.com/2013/05/08/pinterest-most-popular-brand-boards/
2. Focus on Getting Repins First
When it comes to making sales from Pinterest, it’s all about driving repins.
In fact recent research from the Harvard Business Review has shown that when it comes to sales via Pinterest, 19% of purchases were discovered through a friend, and 24% through a stranger, compared to just 7% being discovered on a retailer’s Pinterest board, and 10% through Pinterest search.
In other words, its not enough to just post photos to Pinterest, you need to make sure they are resonating and getting repinned. The strategies mentioned in the section above will help but you can increase your chances further by including pin buttons on your actual website.
Having someone repin something you posted to Pinterest is great but having them create the original pin is even better.
Girl Meets Dress does a good job of including pin buttons on all their product pages.
3. Follow Up and Connect With Repinners
According to the same Harvard study, more than 40% of Pinterest-inspired purchases are made within one week of pinning, and 80% are made within three weeks.
In other words, your best opportunity to proactively drive Pinterest sales is within one to three weeks after someone repins one of your products.
How?
Start by heading over to your pinterest analytics and looking at your most recent pins by others.
With this information at hand, you have an opportunity to engage these people by thanking them for pinning your stuff or reaching out and offering to answer questions about your product.
This should help keep your brand top of mind in the time period they are most likely to buy from you.
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