The rapid evolution of social networks has caught many retailers off guard and left them unsure about how much to invest in what many believe is a direct sales channel to consumers and a vital component in corporate branding.
Whereas a decade ago, retailers worried about how to improve their corporate websites, their branding focus is now increasingly on social media.
A recent RichRelevance study found a marked rise in social media users buying via e-commerce websites.
The e-commerce consultancy tracked 700 million shopping sessions and determined that the biggest spenders clicked through upstart social media site Pinterest: US$170 per shopping session.
That per-session shopping amount far outstrips users of Facebook (US$95) and Twitter (US$70).
“Pinterest represents the movement toward visual communication,” said Intersection Consulting principal Mark Smiciklas.
The Vancouver-based digital strategy consultant said Pinterest users click images to “pin” them to their personal “board.” Those images are frequently products such as clothing, home décor and lifestyle accessories.
“Retailers in particular have a great opportunity to get sales, because, with so many of their products, it’s a natural connection to represent them with a photograph.”
Smiciklas said the sales bump from this virtual window shopping can be especially strong if the target market is women.
An AppData report last year estimated that 97% of Pinterest users are women, although Smiciklas believes that has since shrunk to about 70%.
The high female demographic is likely why yogawear retailer Lululemon Athletica Inc. has more than 1.8 million Pinterest followers.
Fast-growing retailer Fluevog Shoes also believes Pinterest is an essential part of a social media strategy to increase e-commerce sales.
Fluevog has added five stores in the past two years and plans to add a second Toronto store in May. Still, more than 10% of its revenue is from e-commerce sales, and Fluevog director of marketing and communications Stephen Bailey said that share is increasing several percent each year.
“You don’t even have to build a profile on Pinterest in order to benefit from it,” Bailey explained. “If Rockport [Shoes] doesn’t have a profile but [it makes] things easy to pin from [its] site, then that’s benefiting the company.”
A drop-down menu on Fluevog’s website allows web surfers to view photos of all of the company’s shoes. When visitors click a shoe photo, a link displays a larger photo and small photos of the shoe from different angles.
Under those photos are buttons that allow visitors to pin the photo to their Pinterest board or include it in their Twitter, Facebook and Google+ profiles.
Companies can use free analytics software such as Google Analytics to track click-throughs to company e-commerce sites. They can then link to a free analytics application made by Oklahoma-based PinLeague to help them determine the return on investment of improving their social media presence.
PinLeague CEO Daniel Maloney told BIV that he uses the free analytics offering to sell some of his other services, including:
- handling all aspects of a Pinterest campaign (US$398 per month);
- software to help a business find its target audience on Pinterest (US$19 per month); and
- an application that enables businesses to find email contacts and Twitter followers on Pinterest (various rates).
Maloney’s statistics show that, for some of his clients, $1 spent on Pinterest returns $10 in sales.
