Pinterest ROI: The Value of Pinterest Marketing – Why is it worth investing time and money in Pinterest? If you are a social media professional, this type of question will sound pretty familiar to you. How to measure the ROI of any social media marketing is THE question that pre-occupies business decision-makers before devoting any money and resources to it. One thing is for sure: to reap the benefits of Pinterest marketing, you need to invest time and effort, but it may well be worth it. Read on to find out why.
Does marketing your business on Pinterest make sense for your business?
Since a successful presence on Pinterest takes a while to build and maintain, you need to be sure that Pinterest is a good match for your business. Is Pinterest a wise investment of your time and money?
Your Audience – Is your audience on Pinterest? Use the Pinterest search function to see how popular the areas of interest of potential clients are on Pinterest. Check out if businesses similar to yours are active on Pinterest and see how successful they are. Do you know if people are already pinning images directly from your website?
Your Business Objectives – What are your business objectives for marketing on Pinterest? Sell products on Pinterest (directly or indirectly)? Drive traffic to your website? Grow your mailing list? Increase brand awareness? Reach an audience in another country?
How do I measure progress?
The measurements you are going to track depend on your Pinterest business goals. There are many tools to help you track progress. Pinterest Analytics is a great resource (you need to have a business account for this). Google Analytics also provides a wealth of information showing you what percentage of traffic Pinterest is driving to your website. You can see which pins drove the traffic and trace them back to the original pinner.
GET STARTED TODAY!
Grow Your E-Commerce Sales with Pinterest
Examples of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you could track:
Number & Type of pins directly from your website (see tip on how to do this here). This gives you an indication whether or not your on-site content strategy is working.
Clicks & Visits to your website – How much traffic is driven to your website directly from Pinterest? Gauge how your calls-to-action on Pinterest impact traffic to your site. What type of content drives clicks?
Number of Repins – this gives an indication of your popularity on Pinterest. Your aim is to get content on your Pinterest account shared as much as possible. Do certain types of pins work better than others?
Impressions & Reach – How often do your pins turn up in feeds or search results (Impressions) and how many people viewed your pins (Reach)?
Audience Relevance – Are those engaging with your content part of your target market? Pinterest Analytics gives you some basic insights, such as gender, country, language and interests of your audience.
TIP: Add UTMs to your pin links (see tip on how to do this here) to track engagement of your pins in Google Analytics.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. If your business is in e-commerce and you are leading pinners directly to product purchase pages, Pinterest ROI will be easy to measure. However, the time and money you invest in Pinterest may bring you many other business benefits that are not directly measurable.
Pinterest as a business catalyst
In his book, The Tao of Twitter, Mark W. Schaefer describes three vital ingredients that are behind every social media success story:
For Pinterest, I would add: Meaningful and Strongly Visual Content. You must include the sharing of attractive, vertical images in your Pinterest strategy to be successful on Pinterest.
Consistently using the above elements to guide your Pinterest strategy, will not only contribute to your success on Pinterest, but will have other benefits too:
As with all social networks, growth on Pinterest takes time. The amount of time varies depending on the frequency and the quality of content you publish. You can easily measure success with some readily available KPIs. Reassess your Pinterest strategy if your efforts are not paying off. However, Pinterest ROI is not all about tools and measurements. It is also about investing time and effort in understanding Pinterest, sharing and creating good content, a touch of creativity and a clear strategy to reach your business goals.
Do you track and measure Pinterest ROI? What has been your experience? Please share in the comments.
Mary Lumley - Conversion Focused Pinterest Marketing
Pinterest ROI: The Value of Pinterest Marketing