To Pin or Not to Pin: That is the Online Marketing Question

Pinterest has definitely outgrown the phase of being “just another social media channel” to one of the mainstream networking and content sharing channels in the internet universe. For brands and businesses, the pertinent question that needs to be resolved is whether to jump into the Pinterest bandwagon and how to use it for their online marketing and how it can be utilized to complement other conversion optimization services.

Probably, the most accurate answer to this question is to go ahead and ride the craze, but be flexible in terms of your activity level on the site – turn it up when things are rosy and tone it down when results are glum.

The numbers surrounding Pinterest is very convincing and makes for a strong business case:

• There are currently 10.4 million active accounts and this number continues to escalate.
• It is the source of 3.7% of all referral traffic on the internet which is impressive considering it is a newcomer (Twitter is just slightly ahead at 3.61%).
• The number of unique visitors to the social networking site is growing drastically.
• In a single session, the social channel’s users spend more time on the site compared to Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Things to Consider

While the statistics above are remarkable, you still need to decipher whether Pinterest should be used as a primary or secondary platform. You can do this yourself or you can hire an SEO company to do it for you – whatever route you take, the important thing is to identify your business objectives in using the social medium. Basically, a marketing channel should accomplish one of these goals:

1. Communicating with your target market and other relevant stakeholders
2. Long term brand building and reputation management
3. Conversion optimization services or positively influencing the decision of customers at point of purchase to generate sales

Keep in mind that Pinterest is not a social media miracle worker and it cannot fulfill all of these objectives. Identify which of these business objectives can be fulfilled by the said social networking platform. Again, be realistic when it comes to setting your expectations.

Define Your Success Metrics

Once you have your goals defined, the next step is to determine what your key performance indicators (KPIs) are going to be. Below are some of the most common success indicators:

• Brand awareness –number of unique visitors, number or re-pins, shares
• Lead creation – number of inquiries, etc.
• Sales – new orders, etc.

When outlining your KPIs, do an extensive research or hire an SEO company to do so to make sure that you are within industry standards –not way below, not way above. If you set your measures way below, you might think you are doing really good when in fact you’re not. On the contrary, when you set the bar really high, you might be unnecessarily disappointed.

Stay Objective

Numbers are what they are – empirical and factual. Don’t get smitten with Pinterest – let go if you need to. You can also use it as a secondary marketing channel. At the end of the day, be impartial and don’t use it just because everyone’s there. It’s not the be-all and end-all of your online marketing campaigns.