Standing out in the Social Crowd

Pinterest for marketing ..

Its no surprise to people anymore that Pinterest has grown to be a big viral channel known to get more traffic than google+, youtube and linkedin combined (http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/pinterest-traffic-study/). But the key question lies in the fact as to how can brands and companies effectively use Pinterest for Marketing and more importantly be able to measure success. The top three that come to mind are:

1. Building awareness about your brand and brand offerings via pinterest boards

2. Generate awareness and engagement with customers

3. Provide offers and/or promotions to users for pinning your content ( similar to how you might be using facebook like)

Following are a few examples of ways brands have successfully used Pinterest

Building brand awareness by creating your boards

A great way to use Pinterest boards is to create awareness about your brands which a lot of fashion and retail brands have successfully exploited. One great example is that of Nordstrom : http://pinterest.com/nordstrom/. It has proved to be a great avenue for them to promote trends in clothing as well as other products and accessories by creating different boards for them. Pinterest users follow nordstrom as well as repin some of their pins on to their boards which creates a great viral awareness channel for Nordstrom. 

Using Pinterest to generate awareness and engagement with customers:

Here’s a pinterest contest that was held by a UK based insurance company to steer people away from driving in pumps and heels. While there are no direct $ related ROI’s associated with this,  the company hopes to engage with the 40% of women who drive in heels with the Pinterest contest. The goal is to prevent needless tragedies on the road.

Using Pinterest to give offers and thus engage with users ( via mashable)

1. British Midland International (BMI) launched a “Pinterest Lottery.” The airline has posted a series of boards on its Pinterest page, featuring numbered and logo-clad photos from five destinations: Beirut, Dublin, Marrakech, Moscow and Nice. Users are asked to repin up to six images. At the end of each week, the company will choose a number at random; the users who had repinned the image with that number will be qualified for a chance to win a pair of free return flights to any BMI destination.
2. In December, Lands’ End Canvas launched a promotion called “Lands’ End Canvas Pin It to Win It.” Fans of the apparel brand were asked to pin items from landsendcanvas.com to designated Lands’ End Canvas pinboards for a chance to win one of those items.
3. Barneys New York launched a similar campaign ahead of Valentine’s Day. The Manhattan-based retailer encouraged followers of its other social channels to follow its Pinterest page and create a “Barneys New York Valentine’s Day Wish List” board in the Women’s or Men’s Apparel categories. Participants were welcome to pin anything they wanted to their boards, but at least five items needed to be sourced from barneys.com to qualify for the contest. Entries were handled by email.
4. Gilt : Called “Pin it to Unlock,” the new social commerce feature allows shoppers to unlock a special deal on a GILT Kids product by re-pinning. Here’s how it works. If a product’s image from Gilt’s site on Pinterest has been pinned 50 times, the pin will link to a hidden sale on Gilt.com where shoppers will have the opportunity to purchase the special item. More details here 

Some more examples of 5 interesting pinterest marketing campaigns - http://mashable.com/2012/03/23/pinterest-marketing-campaigns/

Here a great infographic that represent stats around pinterst: 

Happy Pinning!!!

#Pinterest