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7 Reasons Why eCommerce Businesses Should Be Advertising on Pinterest in 2021

When it comes to social media marketing (SMM), the general buzz is around Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. While they are definitely important for your eCommerce marketing strategy, ignoring other networks could put you behind the competition.

Pinterest is a powerful social media channel. Today, it's already more popular than Twitter. Since the platform is showing steady growth, it's likely to beat some other social media giants in the nearest future.

eCommerce brands shouldn't underestimate the growing power of Pinterest. While it's still in its infancy in New Zealand, Pinterest is already the third-largest social media network in the United States.

Taking full advantage of this channel before the competition does can help you steal market share while securing your position as an industry leader.

A Few Statistics

These statistics can help you understand the importance of including Pinterest in your eCommerce marketing strategy:

In the past year, Pinterest gained more than 100 million monthly active users (MAU), bringing the total number to 459 million (Statista)
The number of international monthly users grew by 46% in 2020 (Hootsuite)
71% of Pinterest users are female (household decision-makers) (Statista)
80% of weekly pinners have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest (Pinterest)
89% of Pinterest users buy what they pin (Bussiness2Community)
More than 50% of Pinterest users are outside the United States (Pinterest Stats)
Pinterest is the 2nd source of all referral traffic to Shopify (Oberlo)

Source: Pinterest, Global analysis, Q4 2018; Pinterest, Global analysis, Q1 202

Let's take a closer look at key reasons why your eCommerce brand should be advertising on Pinterest in 2021.

1. Diversifying Your Social Media Portfolio

Today, it's highly likely that a big part of your target audience is on Pinterest. Developing your presence on this platform can help create an omnichannel experience for your buyers.

Meanwhile, it helps you diversify your social media portfolio, thus pulling a couple of eggs out of the proverbial basket.

All social media networks have different user demographics. By conquering Pinterest, you are targeting an audience that may never spend too much time on Facebook or Instagram.

Even if you don't take full advantage of all available Pinterest paid advertising features today, working on the profile now can make you build a following for organic leads and conversions.

2. Staying Competitive

While the number of monthly active users is rising, not all brands are realizing the full potential of Pinterest. While your competition is working hard to become the highest bidder on Facebook Ads, you could be getting your ads through on Pinterest with half the effort.

Currently, two-thirds of pins are from business websites. If you don't start using the platform now, you may have a hard time gaining a competitive edge in the future.

Both small and large eCommerce brands are embracing Pinterest. You don't want to fall behind.

3. Building Your Brand Image

Just like Instagram, Pinterest is all about visualization. With its options, you can build your brand image by taking advantage of the visual aspect. Essentially, Pinterest is a virtual shopfront for eCommerce companies. You can use it to tell your brand story and sell products simultaneously.

Pinterest offers a variety of options for your brand-building efforts. They include:

Creating niche boards
Posting on popular boards
Re-pinning customer content
Working with influencers
Using brand keywords in pins
And much more

Even if you are just making the first steps toward building a presence on this network, you are working toward fortifying your brand image.

4. Creating Long-Term Content

The content you create for Pinterest has a much longer shelf life than content for other networks like Facebook and Instagram. With the majority of social media channels, you post content, it gets reposted, and then disappears somewhere down the users' feed.

With Pinterest, the content journey is different since it's not just a social media network. It's a visual search engine. Your pins can get rediscovered days, weeks, or months after they are posted.

By optimizing your Pinterest marketing posts for views and saves rather than comments or likes, you can make the most out of your content. Pins will be saved over and over again, spreading across the community. This can increase your marketing ROI tremendously.

5. Engaging with Your Customers

Since your target audience is actively using Pinterest, it's turning into an additional channel for customer engagement. By developing a comprehensive marketing strategy, you can gain insight into your customers' behaviour and preferences in a way Facebook and Google Shopping simply can't match.

Today, 62% of Gen Z'ers and Millennials want visual search capabilities more than any other technology. Pinterest Lens gives them this option. By mastering Pinterest marketing, you can optimize your pins for visual search, bringing more customers to your virtual doorstep.

6. Fortifying SEO

Search engine optimisation remains one of the most powerful eCommerce marketing tools. Since Pinterest is a visual search engine, you can optimize your pins for keywords to generate leads and convert more customers.

When building your Pinterest boards, it's imperative to keep SEO in mind. You would also need to optimize your website for Pinterest SEO. While this type of optimisation doesn't require immense effort, it can produce impressive results.

7. Reducing the Buyer's Journey

The visual aspect of Pinterest turns browsers into buyers quickly, shortening the buyer's journey tremendously. The "see it, like it, buy it" algorithm works well on Pinterest because this network reduces the number of steps from discovery to conversion.

For eCommerce brands, such sales cycle reduction can drive profitability and increase marketing ROI.

Including Pinterest in Your Marketing Campaign

Pinterest is quickly becoming a highly popular social media network. By implementing it into your marketing campaign, you can build your brand, improve SEO efforts, reach a larger target audience, sell more products, and stay ahead of the competition.

Pinterest's unique visual search capabilities shorten the sales cycle, increase the shelf life of your content, and drive your marketing strategy forward.

Would you like Pinterest to become a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal? Schedule a discovery session with us today.