As we previously
blogged about, technology is changing at breakneck speeds, and so are
your customer’s habits. One of the areas where technology is changing consumer behavior
quickly is in social media. Seems new platforms and channels appear every
month. One that has really taken off this last year, especially with the female
demographic, is Pinerest.
You probably have heard of Pinterest and maybe
even used it. But, probably a lot of retailers are unsure as to how to
integrate it successfully into their marketing mix. This post is about one way
you can. Recently, we worked with one of our clients to create a Pinterest
contest that was successful for them across a number of metrics.
First off, what is Pinterest?
On Pinterest, users share links or pictures they find interesting or inspiring on their pin boards. It is a sort of digital
scrapbooking that would be easy to overlook as a marketing tool, except that
Pinterest is a high driver
of traffic for retailers. Visually appealing products are frequently pined,
which is great news for those of you with products in categories like fashion,
food and home décor.
Think about it, the user goes to your website, sees
something they like, pins it to one of their theme-specific boards and all their friends get to see it. If their friends like it enough they can follow
the image to your website and even buy the product, if you offer ecommerce on
your site! With one simple Pin from your site, your products are getting
exposure, you are getting leads, your SEO is improving via incoming links and
people are potentially buying or thinking about buying your product. Armed with this knowledge about Pinterest, we
decided to try it out for ourselves.
Strategy
Whenever you are dealing with social media, you have to remember that it is not
a stand-alone platform, it needs to be integrated with your overall goals and
strategy. To add social to our marketing mix, we used it to complement a New
Year’s Sale for one of our retail furniture clients, Grand Home Furnishings.
Our task was simple: generate excitement about their New Year’s Sale online.
Our client already started testing Pinterest, and wanted to grow the account by
trying something new. We decided to generate excitement
by running a contest.
We took advantage of all the features Pinterest
provided and brainstormed fun pin ideas that would get the customers thinking
about New Year’s, furniture and having people over. The customer would have to
create a new Grand board and pin 10 specifically themed pins, three of which linked
to Grand’s website. Our final list of
what they needed to pin is listed below. Each number describes what they needed to use as the theme for each pin:
1. Re-pin the contest pin
2. The perfect Grand furniture to snuggle up
on
3. Favorite holiday party food
4. A Grand New Year Resolution for
you!
5. A New Year's Eve outfit
6. Grand furniture perfect for
entertaining
7. New Year’s centerpiece or party
favors
8. Best late night appetizer
9. Midnight
10. A Grand mattress or bed to fall asleep on
Tools
Our set up for the campaign looked like this:
Landing
page –The first step of the process was to set up a landing page with
clear and easy to follow directions. We closely followed our strategy and kept
the page fun. Participants had clear calls to actions and could easily find out
about the contest in under a minute by reading the rules.
Traditional
Media – unless you have a very large social media following, you want
to continue utilizing different communication channels to drive traffic to your
page. We mentioned our contest on a number of traditional mediums, including
print and direct mail pieces that were sent out leading up to the event.
Social
Media – we promoted the contest on Grand’s Facebook page and answered
any questions the customers might have through that platform.
The
Prize
– we used a $500 gift card to our furniture store as a prize. This not
only was a good prize, but it drove the winner into the store and potential
winners thinking about what kind of new furniture they would like to have in
their homes.
Results
-The campaign reached a combined total of 8,688 Pinterest users
-Over 61 people entered the contest – providing over 180 new links back to Grand’s
website
-Grand’s Pinterest page tripled in number of followers during this promotion.
-The campaign generated delight and excitement
among Pinterest users and attracted bloggers
Conclusion
Retail marketers can find success in their ability to stay connected to
the consumer. Staying flexible and having a willingness to try new things will yield success when combined with the right
strategy. Take baby steps with new technologies and build on your
accomplishments.
Dmitri Pivtorak, Yaffe Social Media Coordinator
Related Posts
3 Ways Retailers Can Improve Their Social Media Using the 80-20 Rule
How to Use Contests and Giveaways to Drive Store Traffic
6 Things Retailers Should Be Thankful For This Thanksgiving
Here’s Why Regional Retailers Should Add Digital to Their Retail Marketing Mix
Even Smaller Retailers Can Take Advantage of Database Marketing- Is the Newspaper Circular Dead as a Valuable Retail Medium?
Pinterest can work wonders for businesses outside of retail as well. The key is in focusing on images that promote the ideal end result of using your business’s product or service.
I can really vouch how promising Pinterest is. It works pretty well and very effective in gaining traffic to our homepage. You just have to research and experiment with your pins in order to gain popularity on this platform.
I really have to say I really adore your site, the way you write is hilarious!