Nathan Dippie 5 Most Common Pinterest Marketing Campaigns The Start Up Business Hub
Pinterest is fast becoming a marketing platform for many companies. Originally meant for social networking, businesses found a new way to utilize Pinterest by creating marketing campaigns to endorse themselves.
In spite of being relatively new, Pinterest have already earned the third spot as most popular social network in the U.S. in terms of traffic, accumulating 14.9 million users as of July 2012 according to AppData and 3.3 million unique visitors last October as reviewed by TechCrunch. And the statistics is just growing at a rapid rate.
Pinterest offers great marketing potential because of its easy click-throughs by “re-pinning” and the possibility of it to go viral. Because it is image-based, users can effortlessly find interesting images that they like and pin them on their Pinterest board. As far as marketing is concerned, companies can present their products more effectively without the heavy sales pitch that usually goes with it. Since people are more visual in nature, Pinterest is an ideal avenue to win customers.
Attract a large audience and create new followers while engaging with your existing fanbase through interesting boards. However, more than offering your products by posting pins of it, there are other creative ways to advertise them.
Let me show you the 5 most common marketing campaign styles used in Pinterest…
First, the contest campaign. Viral sweepstakes, most votes or re-pins or best pinboard contest are just some of the contest approach applied by companies. This marketing campaign is the most prominently used style among all others. Participants are instructed to create their pinboards of certain images from the company’s gallery based on a particular theme. Then users may either win by random selection, most number of likes or re-pins or by creating the best pinboard.
For example, Kotex featured 50 inspiring women and the things they pinned on Pinterest. They created a contest by sending the women a virtual gift and sent them a real one in the mail if they pinned it. Since it was an inventive approach to the usual online contests, the women went beyond Pinterest and mentioned something about it on other social media networks. Because of this, their company gained more than 2,200 interactions from the 50 gifts they gave away. Talk about effective marketing.
Second, pinning videos. Even if Pinterest is more known for posting photos, it also allows pinned videos by providing a section dedicated to it. Not many companies have taken advantage of this yet so you can leverage on this. Distinguish your brand by posting attractive Youtube videos of your company, your products and your services.
Third, the Pinterest shop. You can make use of pinboards to exhibit your products as pins. Pinterest provided an opportunity for these pins to be featured in their “Gifts” section. Companies can even add the price to the pin, although currently it is only limited to US Dollars ($) and British Pounds (£).
Fourth, the blog connections. If companies have WordPress-based websites, they can use a Pinterest widget to feature their recent pins. Also with its embed option, pins may be published as content in blog posts or websites. You may even pin your blog entries in Pinterest although we strongly advise not to overdo it.
Fifth, the story board approach. Come up with a pinboard that tells who you are in pictures. Feature your products and how they can be related to people’s daily lives. You may also introduce your mission as a company and your key team players through pins. Highlight your customers and clients by sharing their stories in visual appealing images. You may even make it seasonal by designing pins that are apt for the occasion.
Pinterest is an effective tool for online marketing because of the high traffic and its knack for making your company more engaging and visually interesting. Make the best use of this social media channel to spread awareness for your brand and reap the benefits that the pinning brings.
Author bio:
Celina Conner is a Yoga Instructor, a holder of a Marketing Diploma from Martin College Australia and a mother of a beautiful daughter, Krizia. She has a passion in cooking and formulating vegan recipes.Follow her adventures on her Twitter.
© Nathan for The Start Up Business Hub, 2012. |
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Post tags: Celina Conner, guest post, pinterest, pinterest competition, pinterest marketing, pinterest story board
