Old-fashioned shopping lists are so passé. According to a recent study, more than two-thirds of female shoppers use mobile phones to access their Pinterest boards for research and inspiration while in-store. 93% of Pinterest users use Pinterest to plan purchases—so it makes sense that women refer to the site when they’re shopping. With the recent addition of shoppable pins, Pinterest offers advertisers new opportunity to connect with consumers. Women’s Marketing looked deeper into how women are using Pinterest as part of their path-to-purchase.
Pins to Purchases
Pinterest users pin more than two million pins every day—that’s 20 times more than there are daily shoppers at the Mall of America. What’s more, 87% of survey respondents reported that Pinterest helped them decide what to purchase. Interestingly, as more women are using their mobile phones in store, researchers found that they are increasingly turning to their Pinterest pinboards as part of the purchase funnel. More than half of Pinterest users polled said they looked up recipe ingredients at the grocery store, 48% checked the supply list for a project, and 45% looked for inspiration while shopping. Additionally, 40% women reported that their pins drove them to retail stores to check out the item in person. “This is a reflection of what we’re seeing in the marketplace,” says Andrea Van Dam, CEO of Women’s Marketing. “Social media is having a profound effect on women’s path-to-purchase—either directly, through brand’s social media sites or via influencers,” she continues.
Pinterest is a “Go-To” Source for the ABCD’s
Apparel, beauty, cooking, crafts, and decorating are the leading content categories for which female consumers considered Pinterest a “go-to” source and in-store mobile activities largely revolved around these topics. Among those who looked at a pinned item on a smartphone while in-store, more than half did so to find ingredients for a recipe or look up supplies needed for a project and 45% looked at their wish lists for fashion, beauty, and decorating inspiration. Remarkably, 36% of those consumers purchased the pinned item. “Again, this reinforces what we’re seeing as the new mobile-to-retail purchase funnel. Women are discovering products through social media and it’s leading them to retail,” says Van Dam.
Purchase Through Discovery
“Pinterest can be an excellent barometer of consumer demand,” says Van Dam. “Brands can learn which items appeal to consumers by watching the pin frequency of certain items. Research found that two-thirds of all pins are from a brand website and the average pin is repined eleven times. When you think about brand and product exposure, that’s significant over the long term,” she continues. Brands can optimize their sites by adding a pin button to images to make it easy for consumers to pin items to their boards, and now, Pinterest is offering advertising in the form of Promoted Pins, which allow brands to target their audience and optimize for keywords. “Pinterest has more than 73 million monthly users, so brands have a real opportunity to drive traffic online and in-store by optimizing their experience,” concludes Van Dam.
Could Promoted Pins be part of your marketing strategy? Contact Women’s Marketing for a review of your media plan and discover how we can help your brand to grow and thrive.
(We've previously looked at what makes Pinterest essential for your marketing strategy of advertising to women online with 7 Reasons Why Pinterest is Unique for Marketers and The Rise of Visual Social Media.)
Sources: eMarketer Pinterest: In-Store Mobile Shoppers’ Little Helper, August 2015; Mashable, A Growing Audience 2015; The Pin Cycle, Pinterest Business
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