Pinterest surged into the spotlight earlier this year when it was revealed
that it drives more web traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.
What's so compelling about a website that lets you make virtual bulletin boards
of "pinned" images, observers wondered, and does this service now belong
in the pantheon of must-use social tools like Facebook and Twitter? Perhaps
most important, marketers are asking, is this something that will drive
revenue?
The results: Pinterest users reported a surprisingly high correlation
between pinning and subsequent purchasing: more than 1 in 5 Pinterest users has
pinned an item that they later purchased. In the social world, this is a high
conversion rate.
Surprisingly, the correlation between pinning and offline purchasing
(16%) was stronger than the correlation between pinning and online purchasing
(12%). (The overall number of people who have pinned and then purchased comes
to 21%, because some purchased both ways.)
The people who are purchasing pin three times as many items (59) each month
as non-purchasers (19). No wonder: the purchasers visit Pinterest almost three
times as often, 27 times a month, compared to an average 10 for non-purchasers.
More than 60% of these purchasers joined Pinterest before January 2012, in
other words, before the hype. This could be because they are more loyal early
adopters or because those who've joined since haven't had as much time to
convert their activity to buying. Probably, it's some combination of both.
Click the image below for an infographic representation of the survey results.
It's hard to assess any causal relationship between pinning and purchasing.
Are people buying because they pin, or pinning what they always intended to
buy? Still, the implications for marketers are clear: Pinning, especially among
loyal, active Pinterest users, is intimately intertwined with buying. Pinning
is a signal that says, "I'm thinking of purchasing your product".
If you're already running a social media customer relations team, you're
well positioned to respond. At a minimum, your team should be monitoring the
Pinterest page that shows every item pinned from your site(s): http://pinterest.com/source/yoursite.com. Take a peek at what that page looks like for brand like Adidas or Michael's and you get an instant snapshot of the opportunities for moving customers
from pinning to purchase.
Pinboard names also offer clues about how seriously your customers are
considering a purchase: in general, anything with "lust" or
"inspiration" in the title implies fantasy rather than purchase
intent, while lists named for specific product categories ("red
shoes") usually read like pre-purchase shortlists. Work from these clues
to reach out to customers with product information or discounts and promotions.
But, take care to avoid being intrusive or creepy: if Sarah posts your product
to her "Birthday Wishlist" pinboard, it's not your job to look at her
Facebook profile, find the name of her boyfriend, and let him know you're happy
to help him get that perfect gift.
At a higher level, our research on Pinterest speaks to the necessity of
asking some tough questions about any new social media platform, and taking a
data-driven approach to finding the answers.
After all, there has been a Pinterest every year for the past decade. If
you cringe like I do at the memory of joining Second Life, you know how hard it
is to resist the siren song of the Cool New Social Web Thing. Investing some
personal time in CNSWTs can help you get inside the heads of the customers who
are spending time there, and to understanding the social media zeitgeist, but
taking the leap from personal interest to brand investment requires a much
higher threshold of confidence. To justify a real resource commitment (dollars,
technology, time) a new platform has to demonstrate that it's moving the dial on
one of your key metrics, whether it's your total revenue, your average cost of
sale or production, or simply the number of applications you get in response to
each job ad.
Knowing the relationship between platform and metrics isn't just a matter
of proving ROI, but rather, crucial to aligning your strategy for a new social
media platform with the strategy for that part of your business it can
reasonably be expected to enhance. To achieve that kind of alignment, you have
to go beyond the aggregated stats on visits and users that any trending
platform produces to dazzle its potential business audience. You have to hear
about the platform's impact from the users themselves.
by Alexandra Samuel
http://bx.businessweek.com/
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