Calling all Mark Cubans in consumer brands: Pinterest may be a greener pasture for brands to connect with customers than Facebook.
Pinterest analytics and marketing company Pinfluencer announced this morning that 50 brands including Gilt, Martha Stewart, and Shape Magazine ran Pinterest promotions on its platform, which launched in private beta in October. The brands boosted follower acquisition rates by 156 percent and pins/day by 125 percent.
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Another company, JetSetter, ran a scavenger hunt that generated seven million impressions of the companies’ pins, according to JetSetter’s head of social, Jonathan Goldmann.
Facebook, on the other hand, noisily lost GM as an advertiser earlier this year and is currently struggling with how many brand messages users should see on the site … and how much companies should pay for the privilege. Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, of course, very publicly dumped on Facebook just a month ago when he realized how few of his Dallas Mavericks followers actually saw any of the Mavs posts. Now Pinfluencer is showing companies just how to engage with followers on Pinterest — and boost both followers and viral views … and eventually sales.
Sharad Verma, Pinfluencer’s chief executive, talked to me a few days ago about his new platform, which has delivered 25 million total impressions for the 50 companies in the beta program.
He said.
“There are four types of promotions on Pinterest. First, asking users to come to your website and pin the products they like; second: creating a board and pre-populate it with pins, asking users to re-pin; third: creating a scavenger hunt; and fourth: running daily winner contests for prizes for those who pin your content.”
Using them wisely, he said, is helping brands get a huge increase in followers and brand-associated pins. There’s a reason for that, according to Verma.
Verma told me.
“Pinterest contests are fun and creative. They’re very open-ended, not forcing you to do something you wouldn’t want to do. You simply pin products from a website.”
And that in turn generates a lot of eyeballs, clickthroughs, and sales.
He said, adding that Pinterest drives sales.
“This is better than Facebook. Facebook is really about conversation and brand awareness.”
Naturally, Verma has a vested interest in Pinterest: his entire company is built around the marketing and analytics for the site, which might make his impressions a little suspect. But he’s not the only one singing this song.
Separately, retailers such as Indigo have used Pinterest to drive increased social sharing and a 50 percent bump in sales from social traffic compared to other sources. And a wider sample of retailers who found that Pinterest drives more revenue per click than Facebook or Twitter. More recently, RichRelevance found that while Facebook is still driving more clicks to retailers … Pinterest, which has started growing again after leveling off this summer, is where the big spenders are coming from.
Fortunately for brands that have invested in massive Facebook fan counts, Pinfluencer has a tool in its kit Verma said in a statement.
“Marketers can host their contests and sweepstakes on a Facebook tab powered by Pinfluencer and convert their Facebook fans into avid pinners on Pinterest.”
Which means that Pinterest certainly can be a part of any brands’ social story, even those are already heavily invested on Facebook.
COMMENTARY: I am absolutely amazed just how rapidly Pinterest has grown since it launched in late 2011. According to internet traffic analytics firm Quantcast.com, Pinterest had 55.6 million unique monthly visitors at the end of October 2012 and was ranked #12 in the U.S. based on traffic. NOTE: This is an estimate only and has not been quantified by Pinterest.
Pinterest traffic growth has been unprecedented, beating out Facebook during its early years. At the end of December 2011, Pinterest had only about 2 million unique monthly visitors. However, traffic exploded from 5.5 mllion unique visitors at the end of March 2012 to 38.5 million unique visitors at the end of April 2012.
According to Quantcast, Pinterest traffic may have peaked in the U.S. Growth has been basically flat between July (53.6 million UMVs) and October 2012 (55.6 million UMVs).
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Pinterest 101
- What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse boards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. People use boards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.
- What is a Pin? A pin is an image added to Pinterest. A pin can be added from a website using the Pin It button, or you can upload images from your computer. Each pin added using the Pin It button links back to the site it came from.
- What is a Board? A board is a set of pins. A board can be created on any topic, such as Cool Posters, Recipes For Dinner, or Wishlist. You can add as many pins to a board as you want.
- What is Following? “Following” someone means you'll see that person’s pins shown to you in real-time on Pinterest. If he/she creates a new board, you’ll automatically follow the new board as well.
- What are Pinterest's demographics: Pinterest users are predominantly female (80%), overwelmingly between 25 to 54 years of age (81%), college educated (85%), and have above average incomes (between $25K and 75K).
- How does Pinterest make money? At the present time, Pinterest is focused on refining its business model and making the site more valuable for its users. To fund these efforts, it have taken outside investment from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Pinterest makes money by driving traffic using affiliate marketing. Pinterest is also considering placing advertisements, but as yet has not made any formal announcements.
- How much does Pinterest generate in revenues? Pinterest is privately-owned and does not publish financial results. However, some analysts estimate Pinterest generates between $10 to $40 million in revenues mostly from affiliate marketing, but there is no way to verify this amount.
- How much is Pinterest worth? In May 2012, AllThingsDigital confirmed that Pinterest raised had $100 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion from Japanese commerce giant Raukten (investe $50 million) and other undisclosed investors. Rakuten’s CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, in an interview with TechCrunch, said. "Pinterest is growing very fast," in Japan where Rakuten does business.
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Pinterest Demographics - DoubleClick for Google (Click Image To Enlarge)
Courtesy of an article dated December 5, 2012 appearing in VentureBeat
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