Tapping into the easy, long-term ROI of Pinterest

By Matthew Perosi

In 2011, Pinterest was the fastest growing social network to ever break the 10 million unique visitors mark. It swiftly grew because of its new way of presenting photos using the “infinite scrolling” feature that is now commonplace on every social network. Pinterest gave us all a way to organize collections of photos, called “pins,” into topics we cared about. The topics are called “pinboards,” named after the physical photo/message cluttered corkboard you might have at home.

Pinterest’s explosive initial growth quickly slowed down as users realized that they didn’t have a daily need to organize their photos. The social network currently claims about 200 million users worldwide. In recent years, I’ve noticed that users will engage on Pinterest mostly when they have specific projects to research, organize, and share with others. Once the project is completed, they move away from the network.

It’s Great For Finding Ring Ideas

Pinterest is very popular for people interested in DIY handcrafting, home projects, wellness, and beauty. You can always find the current, most popular Pinterest categories if you visit pinterest.com/categories/popular. “Wedding ideas” is usually one of the top five most popular categories, which is why I feel Pinterest is one of the best social networks for jewelers and jewelry designers.

When looking into the wedding category on Pinterest, you’ll find thousands of ideas for wedding cakes, wedding dresses, groom suits, bridal party gifts, and wedding rings. According to the Pew Research Center, only 16 percent of the men surveyed during their January 2018 social media study said they were using Pinterest. Based on the correlation of data, we know that women are using Pinterest for research on their engagement rings and wedding bands.

Let me be very specific in saying that Pinterest is where people go to find and organize ideas as “visual bookmarks” that link back to source websites. The platform does allow for a “Buyable Pin” so you can sell directly through Pinterest, but it’s better for jewelers to use it for lead generation rather than direct sales.

Generating Leads

To use Pinterest as a lead generation platform, you could pin photos of all your previous custom jewelry to a pinboard called “custom wedding jewelry” or “custom engagement ring ideas.” In addition to regular photos, you could create photo collages or infographics to educate people about different metal types and gemstones. For example, I’ve seen several pins showing wedding bands made of different metals along with comparisons of scratch-resistance, durability, and hypo-allergenic qualities. You could create your own infographic using photos and words to explain the area of your expertise.

Because it is a research and idea social network, you can use it to educate with imagery instead of long-winded blogs. People who like what they see will follow a link back to your website. As with all social media activity, you should always monitor Google Analytics to see how often users are referred to your website from your social media posts.

Another way to measure the success of your social media activity is to monitor how many times people will share your post. Although Pinterest users will share found pins with their friends, they are more likely to “re-pin” something they like onto their personal pinboards. People searching for engagement rings are likely to organize all their favorite pins into their own accounts while they are contemplating a purchase decision.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that Pinterest pins have a much longer lifespan than anything from Facebook or Twitter. As new cycles of people begin their wedding research journey, they are finding and re-pinning old images. Through Google Analytics I’ve seen referrals from pins that were more than a year old consistently bring new customers back to a website. Overall, this means the long-term ROI of your Pinterest activity can be considerably higher than that of other social networks.

Don’t Think Local

It’s easy to view Facebook as a marketing platform that can reach your local audience. With 2.2 billion users worldwide, it’s likely that thousands of Facebook users are within driving distance of your location. On the other hand, with only about 200 million users worldwide, it’s less likely that you will find local customers through Pinterest; therefore, your website and business model must be positioned to handle remote clients.

I know many custom jewelers and jewelry designers that never meet their customers in person. Using sketches, CAD images, and photos, they are able to work with customers all over the world to create unique jewelry. If you have a procedure for working with remote customers, then you have a great opportunity to thrive when using Pinterest. By seeing examples of your past work and learning about the possibilities of unique creations, intrigued customers will re-pin what they like and investigate your website for more information or to contact you.

To solidify your Pinterest strategy, I recommend that designers and custom jewelers add catalogs/libraries of their past work to their websites. Unlike an e-commerce catalog that has forever changing inventory, these permanent reference libraries of past work are the inspiration for the next customer idea. It’s these same catalog pages from your website that should be pinned into your Pinterest account.

It will be a little tedious to initially pin your previous custom work into Pinterest, but you only have to do it once. People will find your pins time and time again and follow the link you shared back to your website.

Getting Started

To get started, create a business account on Pinterest. Fill in the business profile completely and ask your web developer to add the Pinterest Save button to all the catalog pages on your website. This button makes it easy for your customers to pin products they like, and it’s also an easy way for you to initially pin all of your own items into your business account.

Pinterest has a lot of tools for businesses to track engagements, grow audiences, create ads, and sell directly, but don’t worry about those right away. Initially, I recommend that you share photos of your previous custom designs as well as some educational images, such as the ones I mentioned earlier.

Pinterest accounts with a few hundred pinned items will attract more customers. Unlike the other social networks that you must update frequently in order to stay relevant, you can invest a lot of time into your initial Pinterest setup, then relax. Make sure to monitor your direct messages on a regular basis and then pin new photos in groups every few months to keep your account fresh.