How to Use Pinterest Rich Pins to Sell Your Product

As the holiday season approaches brands are considering new ways to ramp up their efforts to sell products directly to customers online. Aside from comprehensive eCommerce website optimization retailers and other businesses are tapping into social media more than ever before. Certain networks are very effective in delivering consumers from casual online browsing directly to your virtual shopping cart. In particular, Pinterest leads the way as this bridge that catches “window shoppers” and turns them into paying customers. The untrained eye may deem Pinterest to be nothing more than a place to post a great picture of your product and link to the page on your website where it can be purchased. While that may be the gist of it, there is certainly more to consider. Today we will take a look at Rich Pins and how they can be a very effective tool to help you sell products on Pinterest.



5 Points on the Importance of Pinterest Rich Pins and How They Can Help You Reach Customers

1. Recognizing the Necessity of Pinterest to Reach Your Customers

Last month’s social media pop quiz detailed some very important statistics regarding Pinterest. First of all, a number many of you have already heard is that 80% of Pinterest users are women. What’s even more one-sided is that over 90% of pins made/shared on Pinterest are by women. Now let’s consider the implications of these staggering numbers when matched with consumer spending in general. Recent statistics show that women account for 85% of all consumer purchases and 58% of all total online spending. Another interesting fact that speaks directly to daily activity on Pinterest is that 92% of women pass along information about deals or finds to others. Which social network should you as a retailer start focusing on? Yep, that’s right.

2. The Definition of Rich Pins

Traditional Pinterest pins display your product image and only provide additional information to users when they hover their cursor over it. Even then that is the extent of the engagement unless the users clicks through the link to the product landing page on your website. Rich Pins however provide extra information directly on the pin itself, requiring no extra effort from the user to view it. This information can include items such as price, brand/retailer name, and where specifically it can be purchased. Rich Pins take users further along the purchase decision making process. If a user clicks the pin knowing this information “going in” then you know at that point that they are more qualified and less likely to opt out.

3. Types of Rich Pins

Currently there are five types of Rich Pins. There are Place Pins, which include a map/address/phone-number and are applicable to vacation property rental sites such as AirBnB but also have clear implications for the likes of real estate agents. There are Article Pins, which include a headline, author and article description to help users discover and save articles that matter to them. Content publishers will want to take note of this Rich Pin. Recipe Pins include ingredients, cooking times and serving information along with recipe search filters that allow users to narrow items down by dietary restrictions and preferences. Anyone on the food industry can benefit from this Rich Pin. Next are Movie Pins that offer users access to ratings, cast information, and reviews. Then we have Product Pins, the item most relevant to today’s discussion. Product Pins offer real-time pricing, product availability, and details on where users can buy the item (your online store, Etsy, eBay, etc…).

4. Product Pins in Action

One of the coolest parts about Rich Pin’s Product Pins is the feature that allows Pinners to receive immediate email notifications when Product Pins they’ve added drop in price. This action takes away the need for users to proactively return to a product page on their own to investigate price adjustments. They’ve already expressed interest in the product by adding it to their Pinterest collection, so when they receive the notification of a drop in price they will not see the email as being spammy, and will be more likely to make the purchase. Popular eCommerce platform Bigcommerce reported this week that just after two weeks of testing, their retailers saw an average Pinterest referral traffic increase of 38% with many others evidencing an over 50% boost. They also state that when big brand Target implemented Rich Pins their referral traffic from Pinterest increased by 70%. Rich Pins work.

5. Implementing Rich Pins

Assuming that you have set up a business page on Pinterest, have verified your website (follow the links to each if you have not), and have installed a Pin-It function on your website’s product images, you are then considered prepped to begin the Rich Pin application process. First of all, you will need to have your developer either set up an oEmbed endpoint or have Semantic Markup with Schema.org as you would if set up for Google Structured Snippets. With that technical stuff out of the way you need to simply decide if your business offering benefits from either Place, Article, Recipe, Movie, or Product Pins and then proceed to validate your Rich Pins by entering a valid URL for approval. All that you need to do then is await your approval from Pinterest while preparing to reap the benefits of Rich Pins in time for the bustling season of online shopping.

 http://www.standardmarketing.com/2014/10/use-pinterest-rich-pins-sell-product/