A Glimpse at Four Brands That Are Pinterest Pros
By Amy Bruining
“Did you get that from Pinterest?” I can’t recall the number of instances I’ve been asked that, but it’s clearly a lot — and I’m not even overtly stylish or chic. I’ve also overheard this question in passing conversations. It has become obvious to me that it is a textbook compliment between women of all ages.
Whether it’s a resource for inspiration or a definitive tool for promotion, Pinterest is buzzing with benefits begging to be pinned down (pun intended!).
You see, long gone are the days where girls would pore over magazines, cut out images, and actually paste them to cardboard posters. Today, Pinterest is the on-trend social network that’s been delivering lifestyle, fashion, and home-interior inspiration since 2010 (aka housing every girl’s digital dream boards). Thanks to creator Ben Silbermann, women are learning to save their pennies by becoming their own wedding planners, interior designers, and chefs. And while Pinterest is noted as the quintessential DIY how-to guide, it has now become a retail resource.
The digital era has provided us ways to organize our entire lives through websites and apps. So Silbermann was ahead of the game (in the digital playing field, so to speak). His network has achieved what no other social channel has: a chance to subtly inspire, connect, and guide, all at once.
Originally intended to be a social network between women, the site now has a widespread user audience. Men, women, professionals, homemakers, major brands, and small retailers, have all capitalized on Pinterest’s advantages. Whether it’s a resource for inspiration or a definitive tool for promotion, Pinterest is buzzing with benefits begging to be pinned down (pun intended!).
Include optimized images; pin and curate relevant content; target your demographic; streamline through other social channels; and, most importantly, think outside the box.
The following brands have undoubtedly discovered the ways Pinterest can drive consumer purchasing and be the ultimate social channel for brand marketing. With three of the highlighted brands being major fashion and interior retailers, their following is significant and their strategy on target. And while unlikely, one leading account comes from the store that vows to “never stop improving.” How fitting. Take a look and you’ll see why.
Nordstrom
As a top-tier name in retail, Nordstrom was one of the first companies to showcase the powerful promotion that Pinterest packs and delivers. With over 4.3 million followers, the retailer realized early on that the social network could “inspire customers and tell a visual story.” The retailer’s strategy revolves around making its followers feel like they’re part of a part of an exclusive community.
Nordstrom began to coordinate images from its website, utilize and follow influential bloggers, and provide style tutorials. It promoted its board, Our Favorite Things, as a resource to consumers to view top store products and trends. And Nordstrom created a Top Pins board to offer both recommendations and power to pinners themselves. Bryan Galipeau, the retailer’s director of social media, pointed out, “Our goal is to inspire customers — in the way they shop, share and pin. One of the things we love most about Pinterest is that customers can get inspired and take an action on their own terms. In many ways, it’s the world’s biggest wish list.”
We’ve figured out the ways that our favorite brands strategize and conspire to create engagement, and we’re anticipating how this multifaceted channel will continue to evolve with layers
Nordstrom has tested numerous avenues that have proven profitable for sensational sales and marketing. It’s encouraged live pinning at Fashion Week and created seasonal boards for trends, boards for holiday gifting, and boards dedicated to exclusive catalog looks. The retail giant learned that success stems from streamlining — streamlining Pinterest into the rest of its social strategy. From email marketing to Facebook, customers are encouraged to become pinners just to stay updated on Nordstrom’s latest offerings.
In 2013, Nordstrom believed that Pinterest could also act as a key tool to assist its store associates. Thus, an internal iPad app was developed to let employees view popularly pinned merchandise — allowing them to reference specific items for customers and check store inventory. Nordstrom also placed Pinterest logo tags on merchandise throughout its stores (especially on shoes and handbags) to indicate top pins, realizing that the digital platform’s crowd-sourced recommendations could be influential.
The retailer attained a significant following because it engages followers and intrigues them in new ways, which Nordstrom accomplished by staying up to date on all Pinterest features. For instance, the brand was one of the first to rollout buyable pins this past year. Obviously this was developed to make online purchases happen that much faster — because it seems that it was all too difficult to click through to Nordstrom’s external site. And we’ve noted this “stepping stone approach to a purchase” approach before. By introducing the feature, true satisfaction was achieved for those want-it, need-it, and gotta-have-it shoppers. No one wants to wait in anticipation to actually see that it’s … oh wait … out of stock. That little blue Buy It button was a major Pinterest game changer, and a major department-store moneymaker.
Wayfair
Boasting the title of the largest online retailer for home goods and furnishings — and the most active company with the most boards — Wayfair naturally and seamlessly uses Pinterest as an inbound sales and marketing tool. Selling more than 7 million items from over 12,000 brands, the website has made great efforts to wield the full power of the social network.
Like many brands, Wayfair recognizes Pinterest as an ideal platform on which to share content, engage more shoppers, and promote products. With over 130,000 followers, the online retail site appears to know what works in terms of capturing and creating referral traffic. Lindsey Bachelder, the e-commerce store’s community manager, stated, “Pinterest provides an amazing forum for consumers to share and collect our product images, so it’s a really organic way to build brand awareness and drive direct sales. Every day we are unlocking more of Pinterest’s potential for our brand.”
It’s true. While most online stores have integrated the Pin It button for their merchandise, Wayfair was one of the first retailers to exploit this feature on its site. Back in 2002, when the brand was still a newbie to e-commerce consumers, it needed an effective way to increase brand awareness. When Pinterest entered the scene, the store had a chance to capture potential shoppers because Wayfair itself was already very visual and image-driven, as we’ve previously discussed.
Pinterest works well in conjunction with Wayfair, as its products are promoted by having multiple optimized images. For CEO Niraj Shah, it is the ultimate catalyst for sales. “Visual imagery drives inspiration, it’s what makes you want to buy things.” Shah said on Pinterest. “We sell things [on our sites] in the same way.” Hence Wayfair has boards dedicated to holiday gifting, outdoor entertaining, and even recipes, like The Art of Grilling. So what do we learn from this? Good imagery sells, folks.
But Wayfair’s real winning achievement comes from understanding that it’s not about them. It’s about its consumers, the pinners. What would they find interesting? What content are they more likely to follow? For the target demographic and consumers (mothers and women in their 30s and 40s), Wayfair is on target with what it’s created through its boards. Boards such as After School Snacks may not directly relate to products, but they interest consumers, sneaking in an opportunity to score further following. Way to go, Wayfair.
Tory Burch
An American luxury designer of shoes, apparel, and accessories, this Tory Burch suits Pinterest to a T, as it’s garnered over 180,000 followers.
Similar to most apparel and retail companies, Tory Burch categorizes collections and seasons into boards for pinners to note, follow, and discover new products. Tory Daily and In These Shoes, the brand’s most popular boards, have amassed a significant following, with 150,000 and 151,000 followers, respectively. Tory Burch creative director Honor Brodie noted, “We love shoes, our community loves shoes, and we also know that when people buy shoes they want to know what they can wear them with.”
Tory Burch understands the importance of not only pinning relevant content but also doing so on a consistent basis.
And not only does the brand promote shoes, but it also promotes its unique overall look, feel, and aesthetic. Tory Burch is inventive with boards that are centered on differing cultures or trips — like Road to Myanmar, Marrakech Express, and Gateway to India — and recognizes how ideas abroad can shape and influence future collections. Designers take into account diverse textiles and fabrics to create new looks for each season. This demonstrates how Tory Burch values the world around it — and the potential consumer audiences everywhere — allowing for collaborative pinners to contribute to boards, showing that inspiration comes from a variety of places and people. “Some of our favorite pinners are from Japan, Sweden, and Brazil,” Brodie explained, “and seeing what they’re pinning is fascinating.”
The brand also strategizes with its staff and uses Pinterest’s feature of secret boards to collaborate and come up with potential future boards. Both the creative and the design teams use the hidden boards to keep what they’re working on in one place, to be viewed by all staff involved. “Tory Burch is a collaborative company that thrives on different point of views,” Brodie said. “Our team uses the private boards to share inspiration. When we look at the boards, they show a layered, multifaceted but curated point of view.”
The company uses Pinterest tools so customers can locate products and make more purchases. All products on the Tory Burch website are “pinnable,” and the company has incorporated Rich Pins on Pinterest to view instant product details, such as pricing and availability. Rich Pins also feature email notifications, which are sent when products that are pinned drop in price.
Pin descriptions are crafted in a specific way so that there’s a strategy to searching and maintaining SEO. For instance, a pin of the Chelsea ballet flat has been repinned over 2,000 times (and is now one of the brand’s top five most repinned items of all time). This is because the description is rich with keywords and optimal search terms: “A minimalist’s must-have, the Tory Burch Chelsea ballet flat brings understated femininity and polish to any outfit.” The brand has learned to reference and exploit the search bar for suggested popular words or phrases.
More importantly, as a business on a social site, Tory Burch understands the importance of not only pinning relevant content but also doing so on a consistent basis. Similar to many other successful Pinterest brands, it knows to post what’s relevant to its business and to its key demographics. For example, the board Cover Stories is a collection of books that are meant to inspire consumers. While it may not be products, Tory Burch knows that it is appealing and will retain followers for its account. The brand even makes it a priority to repin old pins in order to have users rediscover content and create popular demand for products that are no longer in stock.
Lowe’s
Lowe’s, the home-improvement retail giant, has been an unconventional leader on Pinterest. With a following of over 3.4 million and housing 65 different boards, Lowe’s has learned not to push products, but rather to create distinct boards centered on projects or events. In creating boards titled Father’s Day or Family Projects, the store has boards that appeal to various audiences.
And sometimes this means veering away from pins centered on home improvement and including things that various demographics would find interest in. These are boards such as Oh the Places We’d Go!, a board dedicated to scenic destinations and traveling.
Lowe’s also knows that establishing a relationship with Pinterest as a company is important. It meets with development executives often to discuss new rollouts for the platform and how Lowe’s as a brand might benefit from new improvements or features. In doing so, the company understands the importance of staying one step ahead of everyone else in the bidding for followers.
Lowe’s has learned not to push products, but rather to create distinct boards centered on projects or events.
Lowe’s account often acts as a springboard for many DIYers to find ideas and spur creativity. Case in point: The company began a creative campaign titled Create Your Own Colorful Doormat. Pinners would decorate their own doormat and post it to social media as part of a DIY contest. The initial pin received over 20,000 repins, prompting an overall DIY marketing campaign that was developed to target further consumer interest. The campaign became a great learning tool, assisting Lowe’s in learning what content or products consumers are searching for.
Pinterest is a great asset to forecast colors that are trending — helping consumers create the looks they’re looking for from fashion and interior inspiration. Lowe’s.com has a section called Creative Ideas for Home and Garden, which works alongside Pinterest so that consumers can have blog content, videos, product features, and home-makeover tips that flow between both websites.
Pin It to Win It
For these brands, and many other companies, Pinterest is winning as an easy, powerful asset due to the social channel’s engaging visual capabilities. And it’s clear that it’s more than a network to connect and pinpoint trends. It’s a prime source for sales conversion. David Pogue, tech columnist for the New York Times, predicted that Pinterest will continue to flourish because of its capability to be “pure, uncluttered, and non-blinky. There are no ads, scrolling columns or pop-up blocking.” So unlike when they deal with other social media contenders, pinners won’t feel irritated as they explore content.
Recently, I attended a keynote speech given by blogger Erin Loechner, who shared a story about a chance opportunity when she met Ben Silbermann (at the time, Pinterest was just starting to take off). When discussing the site’s swift success, they both agreed it was because the 70 million consumers decided it was something worth caring about. The consumers determined its worth, therefore, making it worthwhile and useful to the companies desiring to win followers.
Now that many brands and retailers have become such Pinterest pros, as consumers and pinners, we wonder what other features are in store. We’ve figured out the ways that our favorite brands strategize and conspire to create engagement, and we’re anticipating how this multifaceted channel will continue to evolve with layers. For those needing a final recap, take note, as these are the surefire ways to pin it and win it: Include optimized images; pin and curate relevant content; target your demographic; streamline through other social channels; and, most importantly, think outside the box (or board, shall we say).
Follow BMDG on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Subscribe to our newsletter
Thank you for reading this blog post. If you think others might enjoy this, would you mind giving it a recommendation?
Photos: PhuShutter for Shutterstock.com; Pinterest accounts: Tory Burch, Nordstrom, Wayfair, Lowe’s.
