The recent emergence of Pinterest onto the online scene may profoundly change the way brands engage with consumers.
The website, which, according to Forbes, is now the third most popular social network behind Twitter, is a user-curated service that allows users to “pin” images they like to create their own boards. Easy-to-use and with a visually pleasing interface that features high-quality photos, Pinterest is becoming more popular each day.
Pinterest’s traffic rose by half just between this last January and February, the LATimes reports. And its users are predominantly women, and the site has been an especially big hit in the South and Midwest. As a result, Pinterest is proving to be a major driver of traffic to retail websites and online publications, referring sometimes more visitors than even Facebook, according to a study by RJMetrics. The study also found that Etsy.com, the online retailer of homemade goods, was the most popular host of Pinterest images.
Many brands have already caught on, creating their own Pinterest pages to engage users. While most are focused around apparel and food, such as highly-followed ModCloth and Whole Foods, more unexpected names such as General Electric have proved themselves to be compatible with the website’s design.
In turn, consumers are recognizing brands’ growing presence on the site. Mashable recently reported on a study by Pinreach that evaluated the effect of brands affixing price tags to their images. It found that products with their prices displayed were a great deal less likely to be “repinned” by users. However, the study did not find a major difference when users posted images with prices displayed. Users, then, are definitely conscious of brands’ presence on the site and know advertising when they see it, even though they are not averse to buying products they see on the aggregation tool.
With 104 million unique visits last month, according to Experian, and a design that heavily features products, Pinterest has created an exceptional mine of resources for marketers, allowing them an even closer look into what interests online consumers than information gleaned from search engines. Users create profiles tailored to their own interests, giving marketers a great deal of insight into what would catch their attention and perhaps opening the way for increasingly effective online advertising for more brands.
