Why Pinterest is bound to become the next New Customer Acquisition Channel in Germany
When talking about social media marketing most advertisers consider Facebook and Instagram to be the most effective traffic generators for new customer growth. However, with over 200m monthly users and over 100bn pins, Pinterest is starting to gain considerable traction.
Pinterest has one big advantage over other social networks – it is a visual search engine with access to the consumer’s decision making process. The social media channel allows users to create and share their personal mood boards and offers good value to users when preparing informed decisions.
While individuals visit Facebook and Instagram to share their own stories, images and opinions, Pinterest allows for a more inward-looking focus. It’s all about getting inspired on the personal level rather than self-portrayal. No matter if you are into food, recipes, clothing, interior design, cars, sports or any other subject, consumers can collect and manage inspirations and ideas by creating their own pin boards.
Describing itself as visual search engine with social features, Pinterest strongly emphasises the development and optimisation of its visual search function. With success – Pinterest now has up to 2bn search queries per month as reported by company.
Pushing ahead, Pinterest has launched a few exciting features:
Promoted Pins – Accessing a Pinterest ads manager, brands now have the option to place promoted pins in order to build brand awareness, increase sales and traffic or drive further online actions. So far, this option is only available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand but likely will be launched soon in Germany.
Rich Pins – There are three different kinds of rich pins on Pinterest:
- Product pins – show further product details such as price, availability and website
- Recipe pins – for more recipe details such as ingredients, cooking time and portions
- Article pins – showcase article details such as headline, editor and summary
Providing additional information directly on the pin, rich pins are perfectly suited for creating awareness for a service or a product as well as to increase website traffic.
Shop the Look is a new variation of the product pin – With Shop the Look Pins, users “can find and buy products right inside fashion and home decor Pins” (Pinterest). This is particularly relevant for local PR activities. You can find more information about local PR approaches here.
Lens function – The lens function enables you to discover ideas inspired by anything you point the Pinterest camera at. Users can find the camera on the search bar and can browse for similar products online and offline.
Pincodes – Comparable to QR codes, Pincodes are used to bridge offline and online experiences. By putting a Pincode on any physical brand asset, the user is automatically directed to the advertiser’s Pinterest content after scanning the code.
Combining these tools with a well thought through content strategy puts advertisers in a position to generate new customers and engage existing customers. This is by embracing the customer journey as a process. Pinterest provides access to potential new and existing customers at an early stage (inspiration) and later stages (product search) of their purchasing decision making process.
In this way, Pinterest already can be a useful extension of integrated marketing campaigns and is well suited for co-operations. Advertisers can work with testimonials or influencers that already have a high reach on Pinterest in order to drive traffic. You can find more information on influencer marketing in Germany here.
As it stands today however, Pinterest has fewer details on the user than Facebook, the degree of personalisation is lower and local features play a greater role when expanding to foreign markets. The race is on!
As the number of marketing options increase, the challenge for advertisers remains to identify and employ the best combination of marketing channels. Selected channels all have short and medium-term implications for content strategy, measurement of target achievement, timing, target group and tool selection.
Becoming an early adaptor for marketing on Pinterest in Germany can be worth the effort for those marketers that are looking for market driven momentum in their marketing channel mix.
We’ll keep you posted on more developments and please don’t forget to contact us for advice on your growth plans for Germany.
Contact: info@bbrassociates.de
© BBR Associates GmbH 2018 – www.bbrassociates.com
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