How wedding suppliers can generate interest from Pinterest in 2017
Did you know that Millennials now use Pinterest as much as Instagram?
There’s something strange happening in the wedding industry where Pinterest and wedding suppliers are concerned…
Predominantly viewed purely as an online scrapbook designed to help wistful couples build a vision for their big day, the word ‘Pinterest’ seems to incite an involuntary groan from many wedding venues and suppliers who are unsure of how to make this ‘platform of unattainable dreams’ work in the real wedding world.
Despite being one of the newer social media platforms, Pinterest was the fastest independently launched site to reach 10 million unique monthly visitors according to the latest study by market research leaders, Statista. In fact, as of April 2017 Pinterest reported a whopping 150 million active users on its site.
That’s a pretty sizeable audience.
But who’s pinning what?
Did you know that Millennials now use Pinterest as much as Instagram? If we dive deeper into user demographics for the board we can see that 81% of Pinterest users are women and almost 50% of these women are aged between 18-34.
You don’t need us to tell you that this is ‘prime bride’ age.
The masterminds at Pinterest saw weddings as one of their core markets a long time ago, and they recently commissioned a study to examine all wedding-related Pins and activity to get an idea of just how significantly weddings feature as a topic on the platform.
Here’s a summary of the key results:
1.Over 40 million people “turn to Pinterest for guidance across the wedding planner journey” every year
2. Pinners save almost 900 million Pins about weddings every year
3. Pinners conduct 378 million wedding-related searches every single year
4. 27% of Pinners plan for their wedding several times a day, compared to 18% of non-Pinners
This latest research proves that weddings constitute a huge market on Pinterest and that couples pinning on the platform are more engaged and involved in the wedding planning process than those that aren’t.
Sounds to us like they’re the kind of people we want to be in front of.
And if that’s not proof enough that weddings are and always have been one of the most pinned-about topics, a survey published by the Daily Mail back in 2012 revealed that 70% of Pinterest users had wedding-themed boards before they were even engaged. Awkward, you may think. Opportunity, you must think.
This statistic indicates a level of intent by soon-to-be newly engaged couples (or at least, they hope so) whose behaviour suggests that they will use the platform as their primary planning and idea building tool.
So why do wedding suppliers feel anti-social about this platform, rather than Pinterested?
We’ve asked several partnering wedding venues and suppliers for their thoughts on Pinterest and why it doesn’t seem to take priority over other social platforms for wedding industry professionals.
We found that the three main drawbacks of the platform are as follows:
Pinterest only enhances unrealistic expectations for brides and grooms, making wedding planning more difficult for wedding suppliers
It’s a ‘dreamers’ platform rather than a conversion based revenue stream
It requires you to post high quality images to get noticed – the expense of which (financial and time) isn’t justified by the return
It appears that many wedding venues and suppliers aren’t taking Pinterest seriously because it’s not a channel designed for direct customer engagement and bottom of the funnel conversions. But the value to be had in being present in an environment where your target demographic is sharing attractive and desirable images and essentially building the vision for their big day must be realised.
Image sharing is just a hop, click and a follow away from a website lead, and we’re going to take a look at how you can get started and improve your chances of winning bookings using this pinning platform.
How wedding suppliers can generate interest from Pinterest
1.Set up a quality profile for your wedding business
Setting up a Pinterest account is simple. Make sure that you use a striking, high quality profile picture and include a concise profile description of your wedding business, using relevant keywords and including that all-important link to your website.
Once you’re set up and before you start building an image portfolio it’s important that you remember Pinterest isn’t about promoting your wedding venue or business – it’s about gathering and showcasing high quality images that relate to your specialism and inspire couples so that they want to share and pin them.
2. Create specialist Pinterest boards
Create categories of boards for couples to follow – such as ‘winter weddings’, ‘UK wedding venues’ or ‘wedding flowers’ and then begin to fill your Pinterest boards with original photographs and pinned pictures.
You don’t have to go over-board (pin pun intended) – usually between 5 and 10 boards is fine but if you really think you need more, just try not to go over 20 as it will become difficult to fill and manage them all.
Success on Pinterest is pretty much entirely dependent on the use of high quality imagery and fortunately, the wedding industry is one of the most photograph-centric of them all. You could ask couples (or go direct to the photographers) if they’d mind you using a few of their professional photographs to eliminate the expense of you having to regularly arrange for original photographs to be taken yourself.
For more information on collaborative photo sharing ideas check out this article: Wedding venues and photographers – a match made in marketing heaven.
3. Pin from your own website to generate leads
Pinterest makes it easy for you to pin images directly from your website and blog. When you pin an image, the source of that image is saved which means that when your saved images are repined by other users, your website will stay listed as the original source of that image.
Put simply, it’s likely that attractive imagery will result in visits to your website as long as you use great imagery on your website – which you should be doing anyway.
4. Optimise your images
The majority of pictures you’ll pin and share on the site will either be uploaded directly by yourself, your couples or pinned from other places.
Whilst you can’t change the documented source of photos already on Pinterest, you can ensure you optimise any new images you’re uploading.
Once you have uploaded your new images click on “edit” and you’ll be able to include a description of your new picture and a link back to your website. However where possible, you should try and Pin directly from your website as it is a more web friendly and customer ‘share friendly’ approach.
Regardless of which pinning method you prefer, you should always include a short description of the image when you pin it.
5. Try out promoted pins
Because the vast Pinterest audience constitutes your main target demographic, wedding suppliers should consider using promoted pins to ensure that your best Pins appear in the most relevant places.
Why not test three of your best performing pins on various target audiences. Use time of day, location, age and perhaps ‘stage of wedding planning process’ as unique identifiers when testing your pins on different audiences to see which types of content work best for which audience.
6. Pair up and pin with other wedding suppliers
As we always say to wedding suppliers, why wouldn’t you help yourself by offering to help others?
Offer to promote other wedding suppliers and businesses you’ve worked with.
Wedding venues could create a “beautiful wedding flowers” board or a “gorgeous wedding cakes” category and ask the relevant suppliers to provide professional pictures. Wedding planners could use Pinterest as part of their social promotional package for advertising clients and have a “beautiful wedding venues” board which could feature venues they’ve worked with or products used.
This is an easy way to keep your Pinterest board populated with high quality images and it’s a great way to help cement partnerships within the industry.
Smaller businesses will love this technique as they’re most in need of increased online visibility and discoverability by potential clients. You can offer them exposure on your Pinterest account and guarantee fresh content for yourself with little effort.
Complementary images like these can also be found through re-pinning, which will help interaction with other pinners – including brides, grooms and other wedding suppliers.
Get Pinterested in this platform today
We’re not expecting this blog post to change the minds of every wedding supplier overnight. What we do hope is that we’ve given you a few good reasons to consider including this channel in your marketing plan in 2017 and beyond.
Getting started is a piece of cake, and as long as you know what to expect from the platform – that is, exposure with the hope of website visits – then you should see great value in investing a little time in it now and again.
Join your future clients today and show a little Pinterest in image sharing, optimising and showcasing the pics that make you tick.
Check out Bridebook’s Pinterest to see the idea boards and inspiring images we’re providing for couples.
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