How Pinterest Contests Can Be Integrated Into Your Marketing Mix

As we previously blogged about, technology is changing at breakneck speeds, and so are your customer’s habits. One of the areas where technology is changing consumer behavior quickly is in social media. Seems new platforms and channels appear every month. One that has really taken off this last year, especially with the female demographic, is Pinerest.

You probably have heard of Pinterest and maybe even used it. But, probably a lot of retailers are unsure as to how to integrate it successfully into their marketing mix. This post is about one way you can. Recently, we worked with one of our clients to create a Pinterest contest that was successful for them across a number of metrics.

First off, what is Pinterest?

On Pinterest, users share links or pictures they find interesting or inspiring on their pin boards. It is a sort of digital scrapbooking that would be easy to overlook as a marketing tool, except that Pinterest is a high driver of traffic for retailers. Visually appealing products are frequently pined, which is great news for those of you with products in categories like fashion, food and home décor.

Think about it, the user goes to your website, sees something they like, pins it to one of their theme-specific boards and all their friends get to see it. If their friends like it enough they can follow the image to your website and even buy the product, if you offer ecommerce on your site! With one simple Pin from your site, your products are getting exposure, you are getting leads, your SEO is improving via incoming links and people are potentially buying or thinking about buying your product.  Armed with this knowledge about Pinterest, we decided to try it out for ourselves.

Strategy
Whenever you are dealing with social media, you have to remember that it is not a stand-alone platform, it needs to be integrated with your overall goals and strategy. To add social to our marketing mix, we used it to complement a New Year’s Sale for one of our retail furniture clients, Grand Home Furnishings. Our task was simple: generate excitement about their New Year’s Sale online. Our client already started testing Pinterest, and wanted to grow the account by trying something new. We decided to generate excitement
by running a contest.

We took advantage of all the features Pinterest provided and brainstormed fun pin ideas that would get the customers thinking about New Year’s, furniture and having people over. The customer would have to create a new Grand board and pin 10 specifically themed pins, three of which linked to Grand’s website.  Our final list of what they needed to pin is listed below. Each number describes what they needed to use as the theme for each pin:

                      1. Re-pin the contest pin

                      2. The perfect Grand furniture to snuggle up on

                      3. Favorite holiday party food

                      4. A Grand New Year Resolution for you!

                      5. A New Year's Eve outfit

                      6. Grand furniture perfect for entertaining

                      7. New Year’s centerpiece or party favors

                      8. Best late night appetizer

                      9. Midnight

                      10. A Grand mattress or bed to fall asleep on

Tools
Our set up for the campaign looked like this:

Landing page –The first step of the process was to set up a landing page with clear and easy to follow directions. We closely followed our strategy and kept the page fun. Participants had clear calls to actions and could easily find out about the contest in under a minute by reading the rules. 
Traditional Media – unless you have a very large social media following, you want to continue utilizing different communication channels to drive traffic to your page. We mentioned our contest on a number of traditional mediums, including print and direct mail pieces that were sent out leading up to the event.
Social Media – we promoted the contest on Grand’s Facebook page and answered any questions the customers might have through that platform.
The Prize – we used a $500 gift card to our furniture store as a prize. This not only was a good prize, but it drove the winner into the store and potential winners thinking about what kind of new furniture they would like to have in their homes.

Results
-The campaign reached a combined total of 8,688 Pinterest users
-Over 61 people entered the contest – providing over 180 new links back to Grand’s website
-Grand’s Pinterest page tripled in number of followers during this promotion.

-The campaign generated delight and excitement among Pinterest users and attracted bloggers

Conclusion
Retail marketers can find success in their ability to stay connected to the consumer. Staying flexible and having a willingness to try new things will yield success when combined with the right strategy. Take baby steps with new technologies and build on your accomplishments.  

Dmitri Pivtorak, Yaffe Social Media Coordinator

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How Retailers Can Use The 3-Phase Mobile Path To Purchase

Stats: Who uses Pinterest and why is it important for marketers?

Comments

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Pinterest can work wonders for businesses outside of retail as well. The key is in focusing on images that promote the ideal end result of using your business’s product or service.

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