The masters of the moodboard have brought a whole host of new features to their platform, digital marketing executive at Visualsoft, Olivia, takes a look at what the new additions mean for online retailers. 

First up, what is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social media platform used for visual discovery engines and for finding ideas or inspiration.  You can save, share and shop pins.  With over half a billion users coming to Pinterest each month and 10 billion boards curated on the platform globally, Pinterest is the go-to hub for inspiration.  You can directly search or discover ideas based on topics Pinterest believes you would be interested in. 

Pinterest is different to other social channels because the intention is different and less focused on demographics. Customers are looking for inspiration with the intent to buy. 96% of Pinterest searches are unbranded, with brands able to tap into this by targeting consumers with specific search terms. Using this, brands can try to catch the customer's attention and then purchase the product.

What’s new to the platform?

Shoppable pins: 

You can now create shoppable pins on Pinterest, connecting your website products to the catalogue on Pinterest. You can now create your product groups to run specific campaigns. 

Quiz ads: Businesses can now create personalised shoppable products within quiz ads, this is based on answers a customer selects within the ad.

Shoppable videos: This feature allows you to tag products directly by clicking from the video.

Performance plus: 

Pinterest Performance+ can help boost your campaign performance and optimise every ad impression with automation and AI. You can use Performance+ features as a bundle at the campaign level to help maximise performance gains or add them independently to campaigns to help provide targeted enhancements. 

Performance+ campaign bundle:

Unlock a simplified creation flow with 50% fewer inputs and improved campaign performance. Most advertisers saw at least 10% CPC/CPA improvement. Using this feature can benefit our clients as it will automatically optimise the paid campaigns and target the correct audience. 

Performance+ creative:

Performance+ Creative automatically creates Shopping, Collections & Carousel ads from your catalogue, with the option to take them from drab to fab by replacing their blank backgrounds with engaging, human-reviewed scenes. We’ll optimise to show the right ad to the right user to drive action. Using this feature can benefit clients who lack a dynamic feed with lifestyle imagery, making it more engaging to consumers. 

IG connect to pinterest: 

You can now connect your business Instagram to post directly onto Pinterest. With this feature, you can get the most out of the content that you’re creating, no more manual uploads to two platforms is needed. You can optimise your Instagram content for Pinterest once it has been uploaded, by changing the keywords to be focused towards the users on this platform. Clients who upload regularly to Instagram can benefit from this having content more regularly than they may have posted on Pinterest. 

Sharing boards:

Pinterest is working on improving its ability to share boards onto other apps, mainly sharing them on formats like Stories. Using and optimising this feature can help save time and budget on platform-specific content. Additionally, this reaches a new audience, and increases reach across different platforms.

Premier spotlight:

Premier Spotlight allows businesses to advertise by using max-width video showcasing their latest product launches or seasonal moments, using exclusive placements on the home feed and search page for the whole day. Clients can use this for a new launch of a product, to advertise it more prominently on the first few days. 

Travel catalogue: 

A travel catalogue uses catalogue technology allowing brands to upload their products to the platform, this automatically turns the catalogue into a shoppable product pin with relevant travel information. 

Conversion Insight:

Conversion Insight is a reporting page that lets you measure the total impact of both your organic and paid performance on Pinterest on a single dashboard. This can benefit from combining organic and paid together so you can use insights to inform the other strategies, including which pins work well. 

Pinterest predicts: 

Pinterest Predicts is Pinterest's annual trend forecasting tool, which brands should use to create their pins around. It’s the guide to what people are likely to shop, try and buy within the next year.  You can also view your personal Pinterest Predicts on your home feed which automatically saves, however, it is only available for a certain time of the year.

Unleash the full potential of Pinterest marketing, or see how you can grow with a multi-channel social approach, and speak to one of our social media marketing specialists today. 

Olivia Osborne is Digital Marketing Executive at Visualsoft