Pinterest Holiday Marketing Guide: Inspire, Influence, and Convert
If you’ve ever used Pinterest, you know it’s a playground of positivity that provides the perfect hiatus from the usual internet fanfare of popularity contests and breaking news alerts.
On Pinterest, you can discover new things and be inspired to plan a life you love. It’s no secret this is the case, with over 400 million people flocking to the platform monthly for fashion, home décor, recipe inspiration, and so much more. [1]
Inspire, Influence, Convert
If you haven’t used Pinterest for your holiday marketing, you may want to consider it since it’s the number one inspiration platform in the US. [2] And unsurprisingly, Pinterest is also number one for holiday inspiration. [3] If you can inspire pinners while they’re planning for the holidays, you have the opportunity to influence their purchasing decisions, and convert them into customers.
Simply put: inspiration is the new influence, with 1 out of 5 holiday shoppers saying the content on Pinterest influenced at least half of their holiday purchases in 2021.[4]
On Pinterest, you can be known for your expertise and unique perspectives, not just your celebrity. So, go ahead and pocket your influencer marketing budget this holiday season because you are the influencer.
That’s right; pinners are looking toward your brand for inspiration, with 8 in 10 holiday shoppers on Pinterest saying it helps them discover new brands and products for the holiday season. That’s 60% higher than what they say about other social platforms. [5]
It makes sense seeing that pinners are super open-minded to new brands, with 97% of searches on Pinterest being unbranded. [6] That open-mindedness carries over when searching for gifts, too. In fact, 97% of the top 1000 gifting searches on Pinterest are not product or item-specific.
That’s not even the most impressive part; pinners then leave decided. Pinterest drives 10x higher branded searches off the platform. [7] This means pinners discover your brand and then leave Pinterest to find your website.
That buying intent is likely why Pinterest shoppers are super shoppers, purchasing 85% larger baskets at checkout. [8] It’s also why pinners are super gifters. It’s no wonder that Pinterest is a gift inspiration destination. A whopping 9 out of 10 people use it for gift-giving ideas. [9]
So, how do you leverage the fertile ground that Pinterest provides to inspire, influence, and convert pinners for your own brand? Keep reading, because I will walk you through ‘the how’ in the next section and download the Guide to Holiday Marketing on Pinterest as a reference to get started today!
Create Content to Reach Pinners Where They Are
The true power of Pinterest is its ability to nurture a pinner at every stage of their buying journey. Not only that, but the entire process seems organic in how Pinterest organizes its platform and how easy it is for pinners to pin content they love.
The reason why Pinterest is a top destination for inspiration and planning is because of its visual search. It’s much easier to look at images to identify what you’re looking for instead of figuring out which exact keyword phrases to type. So pinners are starting their journey by being inspired by the imagery on the platform.
Then, Pinterest makes it easy for pinners to start the planning process by gathering ideas from inspired images and saving them to boards to return to later. If you can get in front of pinners early in the holiday season, when they are planning, you have a much better chance at staying top-of-mind during decision time.
What’s unique about this holiday season is that pinners are planning for even more moments than in years past. The pandemic forced people to rethink their holiday plans to include more intimate and smaller gatherings.
This year, people are pumped to get back to bigger celebrations - but a funny thing happened along the way. People saw the virtue in the more scaled-down festivities and plan to keep them as new traditions.
So, pinners are using Pinterest to plan for even more moments than ever before, big and small. 1 in 2 holiday shoppers on Pinterest expect more big traditional holiday moments, and 82% expect smaller ‘mini-moments’ during the holiday season. [10]
More moments mean more opportunities to inspire pinners. Give ‘em your best ideas to properly introduce your brand early in the holiday season. Get creative and have fun with your content!
Here are some blog ideas to help pinners plan and gather ideas for the holidays, including gift ideas, events like Friendsgiving, party outfits, and more. Be sure to creatively connect your brand to your blog content to make it relevant to the reader and your products.
Unexpected Ways to Sneak In Self-Care Moments this Holiday Season
Connect your brand: List your favorite “me gifts” to spoil yourself.
Tips for Hosting Your First Friendsgiving
Connect your brand: List of the best hostess gifts.
10 Unusual Ideas to Pop the Question this Holiday Season
Connect your brand: Include your custom ring design process.
Easy Ways to Produce Less Waste this Holiday Season
Connect your brand: Mention you create your work from recycled gold.
7 Killer Party Outfit Trends You’ll Want to Try this Holiday Season!
Connect your brand: Outshine the other guests with these sparkling statement makers.
See what I did there? Creating click-worthy and engaging content that inspires pinners is easier than you think.
Make sure you create at least five pin designs for each blog post and publish them to Pinterest early in the season. Then, use different imagery and messaging in your text overlay in each pin design to reach more pinners and to keep your pins fresh.
Now it’s your turn. Write down at least three ideas for creating blog content and creative ways to tie them back to your brand.
Inspire Pinners with an Exceptional Shopping Experience
Make gifting easy and captivate pinners while they’re considering their options. Additionally, put yourself into a pinner's shoes during the chaos of the holiday season. Searching for gifts is time-consuming, and pinners are extra busy balancing work, planning family gatherings, and attending parties.
So how could you present your products in a way that would be useful for a busy pinner and makes your jewelry easy to shop?
A fun and festive gift guide is a perfect solution.
It’s curated to give pinners great gift ideas for different budgets or style preferences. In addition, it narrows down the options to help pinners make an easier choice. It even guides “shopping procrastinators” whose perfectionism or overwhelming feelings keep them from making decisions until the last minute.
Pssst…guess what? A gift guide is also an excellent way to engage your existing list.
Go a step further and use your gift guide to build your list.
You can use your gift guide as a compelling lead magnet to generate new leads if done correctly. That’s right; a gift guide is a powerful tool for building your list on Pinterest during the holidays.
Bonus tip - Create even more value with your gift guide by including a resource that makes it even easier for a pinner to plan their best holiday, such as a gift tracker, party outfit planner, or a calendar with important shipping dates.
The more pins you create to promote your gift guide, the merrier! The more pins you have on the platform, the more chances they have for one of them to rank and go viral. Get these published to Pinterest as early as you can manage during the holiday season. Remember, Pinterest is a long game, and your marketing efforts will be much more effective the earlier you start.
Download the Guide to Holiday Marketing on Pinterest as a reference and get started planning today!
Hot tip for your pin copy: People come to Pinterest open mindedly and undecided about what to buy. However, when pinners search for gift ideas, they have specific recipients in mind, such as their mom or sister. Including that specificity into your pin copy and messaging will help your pins meet pinners where they are.
If you need a little inspiration for your own pin designs, here’s a board that Pinterest put together of high-converting holiday pins from its platform. These curated pin designs can help inform how to make your pins visually appealing, original, positive, relevant, and actionable.
Enhance a Pinners Buying Journey with a Landing Page
To increase sign-up conversions, you’ll want to consider creating a special landing page to speak about the benefits of your gift guide, your brand, your products, and to present social proof to entice pinners to download it in exchange for their email. In addition, make sure you have an email welcome series to deliver your gift guide and nurture them throughout the season.
Why a landing page? The simplicity of a well-crafted landing page keeps the focus on your gift guide offer and your call-to-action to sign up to your email list. Use your landing page URL with the pins you make to promote your gift guide to pinners in the consideration phase.
Give your gift guide extra curb appeal by including an irresistible offer exclusive to new subscribers. It can be an extension or add-on to your other holiday offers. Additionally, it can encourage even more email signups and help with checkout conversions later.
Craft an Irresistible Offer Pinners Can't Resist
It’s no secret that a great holiday offer can give your customers value and create extra sales. But, now you know it has the potential to bring in new customers too. So, below I’ve included some offer ideas to implement for your brand.
Keep in mind that complicated offers will be more challenging to convert with brand new leads. Therefore, it’s best to save those for current customers who may be willing to keep track of a more elaborate holiday campaign.
That being said, here are some ideas to kick-start your brainstorming. These links go to plug-ins that handle these different types of discounts on your Shopify e-commerce site -
Site-wide discount
Free shipping
Daily deals and flash sales (Best for your existing audience)
If you’ve noticed a trend of the “early bird getting the worm” when it comes to Pinterest marketing, the same idea applies here. Getting your promotion pins published early in the holiday season will help pinners anticipate your offers and plan their purchases. Then, when they are ready to convert, your brand will be top of mind by the time Black Friday comes.
Early and often is the game's name when publishing pins for all stages in the buying journey. Below I've included a rough timeline to give you a framework of how this should look for your planning purposes. The focus of the latter months is to engage your existing audience.
Pinterest Marketing Paints a Picture for All Marketing
So there you have it, a complete picture of a pinner’s buying journey on Pinterest from inspiration, consideration, and conversion. But that’s not all; if you understand a pinner’s journey, then you know all buyers' journeys.
Even yours as a consumer.
At the end of the day, marketing is not trying to convince someone to buy your product but to serve in a way that is useful and helps your customers get to where they want to be.
It’s not coercion; it’s a service with authentic empathy for your customers' needs and desires. Showing up with value at every stage of their journey sends a clear message that you truly do care about them, whether they end up converting or not.
If your attitude is to give only to get, you will struggle to show up genuinely for your community.
So give generously, and do it with a kind heart, because it’s that kind of transparency that will earn the trust it takes to make them finally decide to buy.
Pinterest Pivots to Prioritize Shopping
I’ll leave you with one final thought. Pinterest plans to become an even more full-funnel platform by optimizing the pinners' user experience and more effortless connectivity for merchants.
From the start, whether intentionally or not, Pinterest has played into the natural evolution of commerce, moving from one-way to two-way with the rise of social media and smartphones.
Now, everyone seems to be in a race to better understand a user's preferences on the internet. As a result, algorithms are getting eerily accurate at serving up content. It’s not just tracking pixels that are painting a picture of our interests; other software can do this too. For example, have you ever used a dating app or YouTube? It’s not an accident that they reliably pair you with stuff you like.
Pinterest has smartly recognized personalization's substantial role in the customer journey, and they plan to leverage it within their built-in social commerce. Pinterest plans to implement more personalization in users’ tastes and preferences to help them get to the right things faster, starting with Women’s Fashion.
This focus on taste preferences and personalization in Women’s Fashion is excellent news for jewelry designers because Women’s Jewelry and Accessories are a major interest category in Women’s Fashion. Lucky for us, we’ll be in the first interest category to benefit from Pinterest making massive pivots to become one of the top shopping destinations.
Pinterest’s recent acquisition of shopping platform YES and the rollout of a new Shopping API (application programming interface) and merchant features point to its commitment to building the best shopping experience. The new API is in beta. It hopes to replace (super exciting news!) your tags. But the new merchant features are live just in time for the holidays.
These latest moves are exciting because Pinterest is already a destination for inspiration and planning. Adding a fantastic shopping experience that’s personalized and relevant is like a gold mine for product sellers.
If you haven’t started Pinterest marketing yet, now is the time. To begin setting up shop, read my previous article on Marketing Your Jewelry on Pinterest and download the Guide to Holiday Marketing on Pinterest to jump-start your holiday sales season.
Sources:
[1] Pinterest, Global analysis, Q3 2021
[2] Custom Nielsen study commissioned by Pinterest. Custom Return on Inspiration survey was conducted in the United States between June 18-29, 2021, among adults 18+ who have used at least one media platform in the past month
[3] TalkShoppe, US, Holiday research among weekly Pinterest users making holiday purchases during the 2021 holiday season vs. people on other social platforms, Jan 2022
[4] TalkShoppe, US, Holiday research among weekly Pinterest users making holiday purchases during the 2021 holiday season vs. people on other social platforms, Jan 2022
[5] TalkShoppe, US, Holiday research among weekly Pinterest users making holiday purchases during the 2021 holiday season vs. people on other social platforms, Jan 2022
[6] Pinterest internal data, global English Searches, April 2020
[7] Nielsen custom study commissioned by Pinterest. Return on Inspiration survey, US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Jun 18-29, 2021
[8] Dynata, US, 2021 Shopping in fashion and beauty among weekly Pintere4st users and people on other platforms, April 2021.
[9] GWI, US, gift purchase behavior, Q3 2021.