Retailers considering using Pinterest should provide “helpful” content that is “beautiful” and "actionable", advised Pinterest UK & Ireland country manager Adele Cooper at RBTE 2017 today.
Pinterest has 10m monthly unique users in the UK and 87% say they have purchased something because they saw it on Pinterest.
Cooper said that while rival social media platforms are about what people have done in the past or are doing in the moment, Pinterest is about “future” plans.
For instance, users draw inspiration from the platform ahead of big home renovation projects such as installing a new bathroom or kitchen.
Therefore, savvy retailers can get in front of consumers when they are considering a purchase by targeting them with promoted pins in their home feed or promoting content to them based on what the users are searching for in Pinterest search box.
“With most other digital platforms it is about connecting and sharing, but Pinterest is about discovering and doing,” said Cooper.
Pinterest also features a visual search feature that allows its users to take a picture of a product and be served up pins of similar products.
In the US, users can can purchase products directly on Pinterest by pressing the ‘buy’ button, click pins to be taken to the retailer’s ecommerce site.
In the UK only the latter is available, and it is not clear at this stage if the ‘buy’ button will be integrated into the main Pinterest site.
“In the States the idea is you could save payment information once, and buy across any retailer on Pinterest without having to enter any information again,” said Cooper. “It is going really well, but what we’ve found is sales we drive directly through to retailers’ sites still dwarf anything being driven through the buy button. People often prefer to go to the retailers’ own sites, so we have not launched it in the UK yet.”
