When someone first starts looking at the social network Pinterest, he or she may not realize just how robust it is as well as all of the options that it can offer to businesses. It actually is far more than just a photo pinning and sharing site. It is quickly becoming one of the best sites out there for online retailers to find new customers, connect with buyers and to meet new people, as well as to sell their products. In fact, research shows that many people look at items on Pinterest and then decide to buy them.
The site recently added a new feature that could well help your business to start really using the site for marketing. Best of all, the marketing is “customer friendly”, meaning it is not overt or intrusive to the people who use the site. There is no worry that it might come across as a hard sell tactic. This new feature is called Rich Pins, and all it does is add a few more details to the pins, or photos, that you put up on your boards. Currently, they have five different types of Rich Pins:
- Movies
- Recipes
- Articles
- Places
- Products
Naturally, retailers will only have an interest in the last category. You can add a variety of information to these pins, including where the viewers can buy the product, real time pricing, and availability. Since so many people are using the site to look for items they might want to buy anyway, this is a great way to improve their sales, and it takes just seconds to do. One of the other nice features of the Rich Pins is that they will also notify the people who pin your photo when there is a reduction in price.
If you are already on Pinterest, it makes plenty of sense to get started with these as soon as you can. If you aren’t on Pinterest yet… it is time that you got started.
What Do Retailers Need to Do?
First, you will need to add the right meta tags to your site. They currently offer two different options for product pins, oEmbed and Semantic Makeup. For single product pages, you can include URL, title, price, currency code, brand, description, and more. They also have some optional items you can include, such as rating, rating scale, color, and gender.
Pinterest offers in depth examples on their site of just how to create the codes for the pages and images to get the rich pins up and running. Those who do not have much technical experience should still be able to get it working, but it might be prudent to have a little help from an outside source that can make sure you are using the right codes and information.
Make the Images Appealing
People are on Pinterest because they enjoy the images that are there. Images can make them want to learn more about a product, or they could turn them away before they give the product a chance. Therefore, it is quite important that you create images that really are high quality and appealing. A simple product photo of an item sitting on a plain white background might work well with actual marketplace sites, but it does not cut it here. The photos on Pinterest tend to have more artistic value to them for the most part, and that’s what you need to infuse your own photos with. Let them tell a story, and let them show off just how great your products are. Show viewers why they need to buy what you are selling!