starting a pinterest Marketing campaign
Before leaping into a Pinterest campaign, ask yourself some questions about your products and services, and then identify some strategic objectives for your Pinterest presence. First, sketch out a vision of what you hope to accomplish with a Pinterest presence. Are you an established brand trying to strengthen your brand? Are you the new kid on the block that no one knows and you want to start a marketing campaign? Are your products visual and can your brand be expressed in a set of pictures? Most products have a visual component, some more compelling than others. Today, most Pinterest marketing campaigns involve clothing, jewelry, home furnishings, food, and art/crafts. If your product is hip implants, for instance, it might be hard to portray your products to likely consumers (but not impossible if you are creative). Is the consumer accustomed to seeing the products in your industry expressed through photos? Food is increasingly a visual experience with the growth of food magazines and Web sites. Next, consider the target demographic for your products and services, and compare it to the Pinterest demographic. Currently, Pinterest visitors are over 80% women, primarily in the 18–34 range, and while this might change over time, your offerings will have to be attractive to women. Do your products or services appeal to this demographic? Think about strategy in your marketspace. What are your competitors doing? Are they on Pinterest? Do they have an effective presence? What types of people follow your competitors and what are the users pinning? How many followers, re-pinners, brand pages, and product pins are there? Because photos are central to a Pinterest pres- ence, where will the photos for your brand pages come from? Are you, or a member of your team, a skilled photographer? You can pin photos from all over the Web, and from other Pinterest boards, but then you’re just sharing content, not creating unique and unusual content. Pinterest is an adjunct to a fully developed marketing plan, both online and offline. You will want to integrate your social and online marketing efforts with a Facebook and Twitter presence. You can share photos from your Web site, and send Web photos to your brand pages. The same photos can be used on your Facebook page and on Twitter. Your customers will be using all these platforms and you will have to follow them to keep up. Once you have envisioned your Pinterest campaign and developed a marketing plan, you can start implementing your plan. In order to implement your Pinterest plan, you should have a traditional Web site where your products are displayed (a catalog) and can be purchased. Second, you should also have a Facebook brand page to develop followers and a method for informing your followers of new Pins. Once these are in place, you can begin your Pinterest campaign:
• Create a Pinterest brand page and start pinning photos of your products. Grow, and change your pins and board regularly. Be sure your photos are the same quality level or higher than those of your competitors. If necessary, hire a skilled pho- tographer. Brand pages generally do not allow followers to pin photos but only to follow and comment. The idea here is to control the content of your brand page, and develop other boards where followers can pin pictures. • Improve the quality of your photos. Computer screens limit the resolution that can be displayed to users, but the lighting, composition, and color in your pinned photos are under your control. • Use URL links and keywords. Make sure your pins have a URL link to your store, or to vendor stores, so followers can easily buy as well as “see.” Be sure to use keywords and hashtags to classify each of your photos so they show up in Pinterest searches. Remember, Pinterest cannot “see” a photo or understand its content. It only “knows” the content based on your tags.