In an earlier time, people could not even think of an e-commerce as a platform for buying products and services. Whereas today, we’ve come to a whole new arrangement, where shoppers are just choosing what to buy on their mobile sitting in their living room.
This immense shift in shopping style has occurred almost everywhere on the globe. Even in India, 292 million people use smartphones and even more use E-commerce services on their laptop or desktop.
As you may know, Pinterest is a visual platform, where images are pinned on boards and can be liked & repinned. Users extract images from different sources and pin it on Pinterest. Followers see this pin and can like or repin the post depending on their preference.
So essentially Pinterest acts as a catalog of images, in which each user has their own personal collection. This collection is intimate and can give a pretty great perspective into the lives and likes of the user.
A fun fact about Pinterest is that “number of people who see your pins is larger than number of people who follows you”. That’s Pinterest for you. Still need more reason? Ok, here they are.
As per a study, 88% of the users who pin a product on Pinterest, make a definite purchase. That’s a pretty solid percentage when you compare it to other social media networks where even ads are unable to pull these kind of numbers.
For example: 80% of the Pins on Pinterest receive a repin compared to 1.4 % retweets on Twitter. This gives us a basic view of Pinterest’s efficacy when it comes to business oriented aspects.
And if we look at the Pinterest ads; my God! Aren’t they beautiful?
You cannot ignore the fact that how exquisitely South African Airlines have given a beautiful impression along with the promotion of their airlines.
User loves what they see and that is why Pinterest can be seen as a galleria of several gorgeous images pinned on variegated boards.
Well, let’s see some listed reasons, why Indian brands should use Pinterest as their marketing platform.
Demographics and Stats
Out of 1.23 billion people, only 243 million uses the internet. It’s good because 243 million still uses the internet and we have 81% of prospects left.
As per predictions, total users may increment up to 500 million. What does it mean for marketers like you?
A totally new customer pool of 250 million users is under process. There will be millions of users to reach with such a simple and elegant platform, where you can simply promote your products by pinning images.
Talking about mobile integration with social media platforms, around 92+ million active users are there on mobile. Much to your amaze, this is only 41% of total mobile internet users, which means a huge chunk is still left to tap (which is already predicted to come to play in next 2 years).
Alongside, Digital media market in India is also increasing at a swift rate. With already 8.9 million active users in India, Pinterest is swiftly penetrating the Indian markets with ease.
As per the research, around 58% of the digital marketers are still focusing on customer acquisition, which means there is huge untapped customer-pool. It also, means 42% of total digital marketers have controlled the market.
Predictions
Many marketers are predicting that Pinterest’s buying user number will see an increase of 24% till 2019; i.e. reaching 60 million. In the month of November 2014, it was studied that this impeccable platform has doubled up the number of men signing up as compared to 2013.
Since times have changed now; Marketers are now assessing social media by not seeing the number of followers but by actual sales conversion done there.
You may say that Facebook has 66% bigger customer base than Pinterest. But have you accounted that people come on Facebook with a purpose to interact, do networking and see the news. Facebook too has not set its focus from being a social networking site to a marketing-focused platform.
This has opened a gate for Pinterest in India since India ranks 2nd in Facebook users across the Globe, U.S. being the first.
A Toddler now Maturing
Pinterest was started by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp as a closed beta in the year 2010. In the preceding years, Pinterest has matured a lot in terms of user engagement, UI and design parameters.
Many brands still talk of Pinterest as a ‘Toddler’ in the context of advertising but no one debates about its immense potential. The introduction of promotional pins has been an open declaration from Pinterest of their arrival in the field of advertisement.
Pinterest has always been a bit different and quite visionary when it comes to social networking mediums. Comparing to the existing social media platforms, one could say that Pinterest is ‘the best’ platform available for users to product sales. The same goes for the sellers; as a marketer you get ample space and audience to communicate the intended message effectively.
Compared to Indian user number of 2.1 million in 2014, now Pinterest has been able to tap 8 million users in 2016. That is just not a sign of toddler anymore. Showing an increase of around 400% is just another example of saying that Pinterest is going to be “The next big thing” on Internet very soon.
What Does Pinterest Offer?
A lot has been already said for the Indian market and users. We’ll discuss more about Pinterest and its offerings.
This image-based social platform is becoming more than what it was aimed to be. Owing to its elegant UI, large user base, and shopping-oriented design, Pinterest is becoming a major tool for shoppers of today.
Let us go through some of the basic terms related to Pinterest:
- Pins: It is simply the pins posted by you
- Boards: Collection of pins categorized as per your preference
- Followers: People following your profile, pins or boards
- Repin: If someone likes your pin, he/she can repin it.
Some more terms are there; go here for further clarity.
Since social media is considered as the best form to perform research on products/services, so how should you use it?
Just put an image of the product as a pin and ask the customers for their feedback.
Mentioned below are few offerings by Pinterest that can surely help you are a marketer to promote your brand and increase the sales:
Boards
A board is a collection of images or pins on your profile. Once you log in to your Pinterest account, just create a board by clicking on your account name on the top left side of the page.
The main advantage of having boards is that if your business is targeting a specific group of audience, you do not have to promote your product like a blind marketer. Instead, you can select what sort of boards covers your audience, make that category and cover a larger client pool.
Brands having niche marketing goals should take Pinterest as their mentor because a board simply solves all the bottlenecks that were previously available in all other social media platforms.
For example, if you are selling luxurious watches, just make a board naming it relevantly and selecting groups such as luxury, fashion, men’s watch, and watches. You will cover a larger segment of users who are following these categories and will be interested in purchasing the product.
So, Pinterest filters out a large group of people and lets you target users relevant to your brand or product.
Action Oriented
Do not get misinterpreted by the fact that Pinterest is a place, where users just give an impressive look to the images and move on. No. As said earlier, most of the shoppers get influenced by Pinterest to make a purchase. Also, most of the pins on
Pinterest pins are themselves action oriented.
Recipe pins aid users in figuring out what to cook, home décor pins helps people decorate their place as per their preference and fashion pins enable the user to decide what to buy.
Serving as a mechanism of discovery, Pinterest has users who tend to spend more money. Pinterest users are 10% more likely to make a purchase on e-commerce platforms than users who are referred from other social media platforms.
Another important feature of Pinterest is that users can save the pins they like for later; thus serving as a bookmark for products. For a bride, who is planning her marriage Pinterest can serve as a digital wedding planner, where she can save whatever she likes and can review the options later to make a purchase.
Advertising Platform
Pinterest has been taking a special interest in the promotion of brands. The introduction of promoted pins or Rich Pins has been a major step in advertising by Pinterest. Rich Pins are total of 6 kinds:
- Recipe
- Product
- App
- Movie
- Article
- Place
Each meant for the different purpose, these paid/promoted pins are utilized for getting a better & effective user engagement. For example, app pins include an install button, which enables users to download the app without even leaving Pinterest.
For people who love traveling, Place pins tell them everything about a place such as providing a map and giving address & phone number.
Indian brands who wants their products to be showcased on Pinterest can use product pins, which makes it quite convenient for the buyers to reach and purchase your product.
Campaigns
It is quite hard to engage customers with your brand on social media platforms, especially when there are so many. Pinterest includes Campaigns, where you as a marketer can start a contest or campaign to bring more and more users at a single platform to discuss.
You can see here, two different kinds of campaigns are available; Engagement campaign and Traffic campaign. Either you can choose to engage customers by boosting the interaction with your pins or you can direct a motivated audience towards your content.
Brands that are finding it difficult to start a conversation or do not know how to tap the client pool, can utilize this feature and benefit themselves by engaging with users at a macro-level.
Pinterest Analytics
It is every marketer’s dream to track even the minutest activity of their strategy to assess its performance accordingly. Pinterest has made this dream come true for marketing professionals. Although, many social media platforms have their own analytical tools, but none has such a huge shopping enthusiast users on their platform.
So a combination of millions of users (80% of them) who just want to shop and a tool, which can help brands to monitor their activities in order to promote the product in accordance with the consumer behavior, can be a deadly one.
Not only analytics tells the performance of your Pinterest profile, but it also gives insights on small issues such as what kind of pins are performing best & worst, when are your target audience online most, what does your target audience like most (which boards and pins), and so on.
However, there are some third party tools also available for managing the business account of Pinterest to fill some uncovered issues. Viralwoot is an M&M (management & marketing) suite of Pinterest. Using a simple UI that users can handle, monitor and track, Viralwoot is able to tap around 70000 users and associate itself with 4000 brands across the globe. Some of the brands that are using Viralwoot are listed as following:
- Industry: Company
- News: Buzzfeed
- Knowledge: Wikipedia
- Travel: Trivago and Cleartrip
- Clothing: Wrangler and Lifestyle
- Retail: Infibeam
- Jewelry: Nakshatra
- Movies: Bookmyshow
This M&M suite Viralwoot has following main attributes:
- Pinterest Scheduler
- Promotion on Pinterest
- Pinterest Analytics
- Content Manager
- Influencer Manager
Top 10 Indian Brands on Pinterest
I will now list the top 10 Indian brands that are using Pinterest as a platform to market and promote their products:
1. WedMeGood
WedMeGood is a new wedding planner destination for all the to-be brides & to-be grooms. Incepted in 2014, this firm has been using Pinterest solely for the purpose of marketing their services and reaching a larger audience.
This is one of the few companies in India, which is wise enough to utilize the potential of Pinterest in order to reach their sales target. With 35k followers, WedMeGood is quite popular on Pinterest and hence it remains active by continuous engagement with the customers.
2. Myntra
Launched in 2007, Myntra is an e-commerce platform for branded apparels. Ranked as top four startups for India, Myntra is aggressively using Pinterest for increasing their visibility.
With 3000 followers, Myntra is surely using Pinterest as a booster to increment its sale and build a bigger customer base.
3. Jabong.com
Incepted in the year 2012, Jabong.com, one of the leading e-commerce sites in India, has been able to mark its presence on Pinterest. Seeing the Jabong.com Pinterest account, you can simply figure out that it has been effectively using this exquisite image-based platform to ensure a proper customer engagement.
Jabong has been using promoted or Rich pins continuously to showcase its product for the target audience.
4. Times of India
Pinterest has been a wonderful place to start a discussion; i.e. interacting with customers on a large scale. Times of India, country’s leading print media player has been taking full advantage of Pinterest. With around 10k followers, TOI has been gaining a competitive edge as it started before everyone else.
5. ScoopWhoop
ScoopWhoop is a new-bee internet media and news company launched in the year 2013. Started as a viral content generating and sharing website, the company is now providing news on the portal and also acts as a medium for discussing & sharing social concern issues. Pinterest has been an active stage for ScoopWhoop altogether with approximately 1.4 thousand pins and 2.5 thousand followers.
6. PepperFry
One of India’s most eminent names in online Furniture and Home & Living destination, PepperFry is making the difference at Pinterest. With around 6ooo pins, PepperFry is drawing the attention of customers quite smartly.
7. FabFurnish
Started in 2012, FabFurnish is making its name in the online furniture, furnishing, décor, and kitchenware. If you see its Pinterest page, you will know how FabFurnish is highly involved with the customers by pinning different pins.
8. Swayam India
Swayam India is an online store for home furnishing products, which is covering around 70 cities in India at 400 plus counters. This E-store has been promoting its product line effectively on Pinterest. Different boards of varied categories show the diverse products Swayam India can offer.
9. Utsav Fashion
Shipping to over 200+ countries, Utsav Fashion is a leading online name in Indian Ethnic Fashion. Utsav Fashion’s exclusive designs and appealing color combinations have been exquisitely exhibited on Pinterest, so much so that it has more than 30 thousand followers.
10. Fabindia
Being an Indian chain store, which is involved in the retail of fabrics, garments, ethnic and furnishing products, Fabindia is truly a treat to watch on Pinterest. With its followers reaching two thousand, Fabindia is surely cashing the sales opportunity at the Pinterest platform.
Conclusion
A lot has been discussed about why Pinterest is important for Indian brands for various marketing purposes. The Indian market is still nascent in social media and marketers should leverage this opportunity to scale their businesses. Then only you can be termed as a smart marketing professional. So, Pinterest gives you an opportunity to engage large customer pools. You can sit back and use the traditional mediums or let Pinterest reel in the sales. Choose wisely!