Pinterest has just released research that proves pinners use the platform to plan and make purchases. The research also shows it’s used for planning and gathering info particularly around key life events ! Use those two pieces of information together and your Pinterest Business account can be converting traffic and sales to your website like gangbusters.

2000 Pinterest users were surveyed by the marketing consultancy firm Millward Brown and the results back up what serious Pinterest marketers have known for years – there is huge sales potential power in what and how people pin.

93% of active pinners have used Pinterest as a planning tool for things to buy

Think about how you use Pinterest yourself, I’m sure you have a board where you pin things you want to buy or want to give as gifts and then when you are ready to buy that’s the first place you go back to.

Compare that to Facebook, when you ‘like’ something you probably don’t buy it there and then and do you ever go back to it ? Probably not, you just like it in that moment and would you even know how to go back to it and find it again after anyway?

Think about instagram – same thing you like the pic but how often do you then even go to the users profile to click through to the product or their site? It’s highly unlikely you ever go back and buy something you like on Instagram after the fact either.

But Pinterest – well that’s a whole different story. Look at the figure – a whopping 93% pin with the express intention of buying! They are planning their purchases, keeping that idea safe to come back to and buy it! Consider the power of that…. not only is your pin grabbing attention at the time you pin it by being seen and adding exposure to your products and brand. BUT it’s also got an indefinite lifespan and infinite potential.

87% of Pinners have purchased something because of Pinterest

Think of people’s boards as their brains or memory, they are storing those little ideas and intentions away to retrieve and act upon. That board titled ‘My Style’ is really an intention to plan an outfit for a specific occasion and come back and buy it, wear it and enjoy it – in their mind it’s real already. The board is a holding bay of their intentions, get your business in there.

A post on Facebook has a lifespan of being seen on a feed or on a promoted post until it disappears. On instagram you have to grab their attention to such a degree they go to the effort of finding your profile and/or remembering and typing in a link from a post. Twitter is the Mission Impossible lifespan of posts that self destructs into obscurity after an estimated 24 mintues.

Pins on the other hand, have staying power. Not only is there a swift path for the pinner to get straight to what they want to buy – your product or service by clicking the pin. But they also can keep it ordered and safe to come back to if they are not quite ready in that moment. It multiplies each pin’s potential and means that if your product is pinned there’s every chance that pinner will come back to it and act on it. Double whammy exposure – they pin it and expose it to all their followers AND they propel the odds of a future sale too.

96% of active pinners have used Pinterest as a way to plan key life events

Add to that amazingness the news that in addition to those 93% of buyers primed to engage with you there is a whopping 96% of pinners who state they use Pinterest to plan key life events and as Pinterest is filled with mainly women and millennials. The study showed they are also 47% more likely to be going through a major life event in the next 6 months.

What does that mean for you ? Well key life events usually include huge purchases if not THE biggest purchase of someone’s life. So if someone is setting up a board start a business, plan the trip of a lifetime or a wedding think of the potential to get your products on that board. When they are planning they will be pinning all the things they need or want and then when the time is right going back and BUYING those items.

If you are not using Pinterest for your business yet think about rectifying that right NOW and get some of that 96/93/87% goodness!

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