Pinterest Retail Eseller Guide 2012

Everything you need to know about selling on Pinterest

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Pinterest

Contents

What is Pinterest?...........................................................................................................................................3

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Why is Pinterest a big deal for ecommerce? (By Seamus Whittington, ChannelAdvisor)...............................................................................................4

Is Pinterest right for me? (By Jacob Dutton, 383 Project)....................................................................5

How do pins work?........................................................................................................................................6

How to encourage pinning from your own site (By Laura Brown, KISS PR)...................................7

Top tip: include the price tag......................................................................................................................8

Top tip: Use high-quality photography to sell more (By David Brint, SpinMe)................................................................................................................................9

Top tip: Partner and engage with other pinners(By Meredith Oliver, Creating WOW Comms).......................................................................................10

Top tip: Use social media to promote Pinterest....................................................................................11

The importance of the soft sell (By Jacob Dutton, 383 Project)......................................................12

Using Pinterest to try out new product lines (By Avin Wong, WhichSocial.com)........................13

Final notes to sell more...............................................................................................................................14

Recommended reading from eSellerMedia.com.................................................................................15

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Pinterest1What isPinterest?

Pinterest is the latest social media phenomenon to take the web by storm.

This is not an exaggeration: according to comScore,

Pinterest is the fastest social media platform in history

to surpass the ten million unique visitor mark.

While for users, the draw is that Pinterest allows

them to share and discover beautiful images, videos

and products; for ecommerce entrepreneurs, the

marketing potential is obvious: Pinterest is a perfect

platform to increase interest – and therefore sales – in

your products.

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Pinterest2Why is Pinterest a big deal for ecommerce?

Pinterest is everyone’s favourite current example of the power of social and, with eighty per cent of pins being products, it’s a perfect forum for ecommerce.

With Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten’s recent

$100m investment in the site, Pinterest is clearly on a

path where it will monetise via ecommerce.

Rakuten is an interesting partner for Pinterest, as it

will allow the platform to benefit from Rakuten’s vast

network of marketplaces, affiliate networks and other

ecommerce assets.

The site is already more commercial than Facebook

and Twitter – most of the conversations on Pinterest

are product-related.

Combine Pinterest’s 12 million actively-engaged and

product-centric consumers with an open community

of new curators and tastemakers, and you have

a strong new ecommerce channel for customer

engagement, market research and, most importantly,

online sales.

You cannot predict the future with social, however, so

we’ll have to wait and see how image-based players

like Pinterest fare on the social commerce scene.

Seamus Whittington is MD EMEA at ecommerce

specialists ChannelAdvisor.

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Pinterest3Is Pinterest right for me? What sort of business should use it?

When considering whether Pinterest is right for your business, it’s important to understand the psyche and needs of the consumers using it.

There has been a lot of focus on the fact that Pinterest

is perfect for women in their mid-30s, planning a

wedding/new home/baby shower. However, while it’s

still “new”, it also has a trendy vibe, which offers a lot of

opportunities for businesses to engage with younger,

tech savvy consumers.

A number of fashion brands such as Forever 21

and Fossil have shown how attracting followers on

Pinterest can be of benefit. However, neither appear to

have created content specifically for the network, so it

is impossible to gauge its real potential yet.

As an engagement opportunity, Pinterest could be

right for any business which has data that can be

presented in a visual format.

Infographics have become a powerful marketing tool

in recent years and Pinterest is a great platform to

share them with a growing audience (currently over

12 million) – as long as they have been designed to be

engaging of course!

Jacob Dutton is a senior client partner at creative

agency 383 Project.

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Pinterest4How do pins work?

Each pinned item can then be “Liked”, clicked on to

open into a larger picture, or re-pinned to the visitor’s

own Pinterest profile.

The most important thing you need to do is add a

“Pin It” button to your website, inviting your users to

pin your products onto Pinterest. It’s a simple process,

which you can do from here:

www.pinterest.com/about/goodies/

The “Pin It” button is made to look and feel like the

Facebook and Twitter buttons that internet users

already use every day. For best results, place the “Pin It”

button near your other social sharing tools.

Pinterest is a picture-sharing platform where users can create themed boards to pin pictures, videos and discussions too.

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Pinterest5How to encourage pinning from your own site

1. Cross-promote your Pinterest site:

Like Twitter and Facebook, you can add a follow

button to your website. Find out how:

www.pinterest.com/about/goodies

2. Competitions:

Encourage people to pin things by holding a

competition asking them to create a board and send

you a link, or pin something and tag your ecommerce

site or campaign name – the coolest entry wins a

prize!

3. Pin brand-related images:

Don’t just fill your boards with pins of your products;

it’s boring. Interject pins with other images, which also

reflect your brand’s lifestyle or products, or some pithy

quotes to express your brand personality.

4. Be specific:

Organise your boards well, and ensure they follow

a theme and are titled clearly – this will attract more

followers. Also incorporate key words onto boards

already used in your SEO strategy to ensure maximum

exposure.

Laura Brown is social media manager at KISS Public

Relations

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Pinterest6 Top Tip:Include theprice tag

Pins with prices get 36 per cent more “likes” than those

without, so it’s vital to remember to include a price on

the image, in the description and tag.

By tagging the price when uploading your pin, your

product will be pulled into the gifts section. This is a

visual display of products categorised by price, with

links through to purchase.

Don’t forget to include a price tag!

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Pinterest7Top tip:Use high-quality photography to sell more

The keywords here are honesty and integrity.

If they can spin the product image around and control

it by zooming in on their preferred points of interest,

that’s the closest an image is going to give to a real-life

experience.

Lighting-wise, absolute clarity is important so that

people can see true colours. (But you do need to

bear in that colour is affected by monitors – the same

image seen on three different screens would look

different.)

Make the product look as expensive as possible

without losing the honesty of what it really is. Shot

correctly, you can make a £5 product look like it’s

worth £25, providing the product stacks up to that

value.

Put your brand and identity across. Rather than

photographing all products with a white background,

use a colour associated with your branding – this can

often set each product off in a cleaner fashion.

David Brint is marketing director at online imaging

specialist SpinMe.

From an ecommerce

professional’s point of view,

the art is to provide extremely

high quality imaging that

gives consumers the

confidence that they are

seeing the product online

just as well as they would see

it in-store.

The most effective images

have good lighting, good

focus and a large, clear

product picture that the

consumer can interact with.

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Pinterest8Top tip:Partner and engage with other pinners

Just like any other social network, you need to make an effort to encourage interaction with other pinners and bloggers.

Repin and like other people’s content. Look for alliance

partners to cross-promote each other’s products and

services.

Part of this is also creating new and interesting content

which other pinners and bloggers will engage with.

Post new content consistently; this will attract new

followers and increase visibility. Pin images that relate

to how-to articles and other resources.

When you establish yourself as an expert in your

industry, more users will show interest in your

business, and ultimately create more sales.

Meredith Oliver is the founder of web marketing firm

Creating WOW Communications.

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Pinterest9Top tip:Use social media to promote Pinterest

While Pinterest is a social network in its own right, ecommerce professionals should leverage other social networks to make the most of the site.

Pinterest’s success is, in part, due to how tightly it is

integrated with Facebook.

Yet the site is already more commercial than Facebook

and Twitter – most of the conversations on Pinterest

are product-related.

It is also tightly integrated with Facebook, using a user’s

existing social graph to attract more “Pinners”, as pins

are automatically shared with all of the user’s Facebook

friends, creating a viral effect.

Pinterest’s success is in part due to how tightly it is

integrated with Facebook. Pinterest uses Facebook

data from a user’s existing social graph to attract more

‘Pinners’, as Pins are automatically shared with all of

the user’s Facebook friends, creating a viral effect.

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Pinterest10The importance of the soft sell

Pinterest has been heralded as the first real opportunity for brands to turn a social channel into a sales channel.

Like Tumblr before it, Pinterest offers a fantastic

opportunity to share visual content and make

customers feel like they are being given something

extra.

A great example of this is the recent Hunger Games

premiere. The Capitol Couture blog was created on

Tumblr from the point of view of The Hunger Games

universe, featuring exclusive content.

Fans were encouraged to re-blog images and take part

in “District Style Challenges” where, by submitting their

photos to the blog they had the chance to win tickets

to the premiere. It is this content that can’t be found

anywhere else that will drive the best returns for brands

in these new channels.

For brands to be truly successful through Pinterest,

they need to embrace the culture of the network and

contribute to it. Simply sharing existing catalogue

images isn’t enough.

Jacob Dutton is a senior client partner at creative

agency 383 Project.

However, rather than trying

to drive a financial return

from it, brands should be

looking to leverage Pinterest

for what all social channels

are best at – increasing

engagement.

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Pinterest11Using Pinterest to try out new product lines

Enlightened brands and ecommerce professionals are increasingly using Pinterest to test new product lines.

In fashion retail, for example, Pinterest provides huge

opportunities to reach the right audience with the right

offers, at the right time. Women’s apparel is one of the

most popular categories on the site, with one of the

highest levels of pinning activity.

Companies have adopted “pin it to win it” strategies,

which incentivise consumers to pin or re-pin products

in order to win prizes or discounts.

Ecommerce entrepreneurs can create boards

specifically for new product lines and ask followers to

vote by re-pinning their favourites, for example. This

could be a great testing ground and a cost-effective

way of analysing the popularity of new items, while

also driving consumers towards a purchase.

Avin Wong is director of marketing analytics software

firm WhichSocial.com

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Pinterest12Final notes to sell more

The key to getting more sales out of Pinterest is, as with all social networks, engagement.

Here are our final tips on how to get the most out of

Pinterest:

1. Pin powerful images: The most effective images

are simple and engaging; they help to showcase your

products in their best light.

2. Create killer captions: When you upload your own

content to Pinterest, include a call to action in the

description (such as “click here” or “sign up here”).

3. Use keywords: Include a hashtag in front of your

keywords so that your pin shows up in searches

4. Include a link to your product page: A backlink to

your site will drive potential buyers to your ecommerce

website, but it will also improve your site’s SEO.

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Pinterest13Recommended reading from eSellerMedia.com

Monetising Pinterest: challenges and advantages

http://esellermedia.com/2012/07/03/monetising-

pinterest-challenges-advantages/

Pinterest: The Power of Pinning for eCommerce

http://esellermedia.com/2012/04/26/pinterest-the-

power-of-pinning-for-ecommerce/

The seven steps to great content

http://esellermedia.com/2012/06/17/the-seven-steps-

great-content/

How Pinterest drives sales online

http://esellermedia.com/2012/08/03/how-pinterest-

drives-sales-online/

Pinterest and the power shift in fashion retailing

http://esellermedia.com/2012/06/03/pinterest-and-

the-power-shift-in-fashion-retailing/

Pinterest backed for $100m

http://esellermedia.com/2012/05/18/pinterest-backed-

for-100m/

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Pinterest Retail Eseller Guide 2012

Technology

Transcript of Pinterest Retail Eseller Guide 2012