The Definitive Guide to Pinterest Marketing – Chapter 4
Buyable Pins
Pinterest has shaken up the online commerce world with its new Buyable Pins. Even though they were only rolled out to certain sellers in June 2015, retailers are getting ready for a new stream of business coming through Pinterest.
What Are Buyable Pins?
Buyable Pins allow Pinterest’s partner retailers to add a buy button to pins so their followers can purchase through the platform. These retailers must use Shopify and Demandware to use Buyable Pins. If you’re still waiting to see the buy button, be patient; as a Pinterest user you will be emailed when you’re able to shop Buyable Pins.
The buy button is searchable and can only be used on Rich Pins that have lots of information on them. When a customer clicks on the buy button they are prompted to provide their payment and shipping information; after they provide that once it is saved in their settings, allowing them to make single click purchases from then on. So a buyer finds a pin product he or she wants, and with one click the user pays via credit card or Apple Pay and the product is shipped to them.
According to Pinterest, about two-thirds of the platform’s content is pinned from the websites of businesses. So far buyable pins are not subject to paid promotion.
This is a big step for Pinterest and a great opportunity for businesses with a Pinterest presence. Users used to pin something they wanted and then seek it out in another step in order to buy it. Thanks to Buyable Pins, active Pinterest users can cut out that next search and buy right away when they find something they like. And business who use them will be motivated to get on Pinterest every day, a major boon for the platform.
How Buyable Pins Work
Buyable Pins are designed to make use of the fact that pinners are also shoppers; around 87 percent of Pinterest users have bought something after finding it on the platform. This number will be growing. 93 percent of pinners use the platform as a shopping list—a visually appealing answer to the Amazon wish list.
Shoppers can use the buy feature via the Pinterest app and filter search results by price, color, and other criteria. So if you find a pin of a product you love there’s no need to find other pins; if there are other colors or sizes available you will be able to buy it from that one pin. This along with the one click purchase capability mean that the shopping experience on Pinterest is easy, mobile-friendly, secure, and seamless.
Pinterest isn’t taking a cut of sales through Buyable Pins, and there is a huge group of pinners at the ready who want to buy through Pinterest. It’s not surprising that so many in e commerce believe this will be a real money making feature for sellers who know how to pin. The task now is to make sure your business is among those sellers.
Examples of Buyable Pins
Here are examples of a Buyable Pin:
Buyable Pins and your Marketing Strategy
There are a few important things you should be doing to get ready to use Buyable Pins. Research your Pinterest audience. Knowledge about the products they like, share, and repin is tied to your future sales; following the movements of your pinners is listening to them describe exactly what they want to buy.
Staying consistently active on Pinterest is going to be absolutely necessary to successful retailing. Now more than ever it is key to interact with followers and other influencers. Make sure you are at the top of your game in terms of your Pinterest presence before using Buyable Pins.
Optimization is also critical. Test and retest your Pinterest strategy on your smartphone and tablet, not just your computer. About three-quarters of Pinterest traffic on any given day comes from mobile users, and the platform is very aware of that. This is why Buyable Pins hit mobile devices first.
Use your promoted pins as the cornerstone of your marketing strategy. You can select and optimize your best pins and then pay to promote them to your target buyers. Then track how those promoted pins do to hone your strategy.
The traffic that will be generated by Buyable Pins means that now more than ever you need to find ways to streamline and automate your page and pinning strategies. You can use tools like Curalate to ensure that your pins are staying current without spamming or letting your boards descend into chaotic messes.
Remember: as important as high-quality images are to your regular pins, they’re many times more important to Buyable Pins. Sales will hinge in large part on your images. You’ll also need to tighten up your captions to make the sales; you have 500 characters to seal the deal but use brief, clear, powerful language. And it probably goes without saying, but be certain that your captions and titles are filled with naturally-placed keywords.
Shopify and Demandware
Shopify, a cloud-based sales platform, brought Buyable Pins to small and medium-sized businesses first. It allows Pinterest sellers to plan and set up their stores and then manage them across all of their sales channels so they have a bird’s eye view of each aspect of their business. Demandware is similar to Shopify in many ways, but uses a revenue share business model.
Pinterest has now partnered with both of these e-commerce options to make Buyable Pins work for smaller businesses. This means that if you use either one for your business, you can add Pinterest to your sales arsenal quickly and easily. If you don’t use either of them, you should join the waiting list for Buyable Pins.
Analytics for Buyable Pins
Pinterest Analytics provides a great deal of information for all business users, and it will be even more important to users with Buyable Pins. Pinterest Analytics provides you with data on the number of clicks, impressions, repins, and views your pins are getting so you can take action and refine your strategies. It also provides demographic information on your users including countries, genders, interests, metropolitan areas, and languages.
Remember, only business account Pinterest users with verified websites can use Pinterest Analytics, so the business account is basically a must for anyone who wants to use Buyable Pins.
Conclusion
Pinterest marketing for businesses is here to stay for several reasons, including Facebook’s purchase of Instagram. Even the big boys like Apple and Wal-Mart are using Pinterest marketing to their advantage. In fact, there was a 27 percent increase in Pinterest accounts among Fortune 500 companies in 2014.
People are visually-motivated and curious; no wonder we are drawn to Pinterest and its endless boards of pinned possibilities. And the extremely useful, integrated business account features provided on the platform ensure that you can get the most out of it. Hard research backs up Pinterest marketers; great pins draw brick-and-mortar customers as well as online shoppers. You can’t afford to opt out when it comes to Pinterest.
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