On Pin­ter­est, con­sumers are plan­ning their lives and look­ing toward the future, which makes for a com­pelling mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. Pin­ter­est offers brands sev­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach peo­ple at dif­fer­ent stages of the pur­chase jour­ney, whether it’s dis­cov­er­ing your prod­uct or answer­ing ques­tions for peo­ple who are con­sid­er­ing a pur­chase. Here’s a look at the role Pin­ter­est plays in the con­sumer jour­ney and five Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing tips for brands.

Pin­ter­est isn’t like oth­er social net­works. Kevin Knight, head of agency and brand strat­e­gy at Pin­ter­est, speak­ing at Adobe Sum­mit 2015, said Pin­ter­est isn’t a social net­work at all. Nor is it a pho­to-shar­ing site.

Instead, Knight describes Pin­ter­est as a visu­al book­mark­ing tool, which means it dif­fers from oth­er plat­forms in sev­er­al key ways.

Why Pinterest Is Different

Help Consumers Discover You

Likes are less com­mon on Pin­ter­est than net­works like Face­book and Insta­gram because users are more inter­est­ed in pin­ning con­tent than in lik­ing it, he said.

What’s more, Knight said, “fol­low­ers don’t mat­ter that much on Pin­ter­est.”

That’s because Pin­ter­est users explore con­tent for them­selves. In oth­er words, Pin­ter­est is all about self-dis­cov­ery – not self-pro­mo­tion.

“It’s much less of a lean-back-and-see-what-the-Inter­net-is-bring­ing-to-me [plat­form] and more of a ‘Huh, this is what I’m inter­est­ed in today and [I’m going to] start explor­ing it’-[platform],” Knight said.

This is pre­cise­ly where mar­keters want to be, Knight said.

Make Consumers’ Dreams A Reality

On plat­forms like Face­book and Twit­ter, con­sumers are post­ing pic­tures of events that have already hap­pened.

“Christ­mas trends on Pin­ter­est in Octo­ber,” Knight said. “It won’t trend on Twit­ter until Decem­ber 23.”

These Pin­ter­est users who are mak­ing Christ­mas trend in Octo­ber want to dis­cov­er con­tent they didn’t know exist­ed before. It’s this “hey-maybe-I-could-do-that” stage that is the per­fect time for mar­keters to reach them, Knight says.

Pin­ter­est users con­sti­tute a siz­able audi­ence at this point: Pin­ter­est has more than 72 mil­lion month­ly users, includ­ing 40 per­cent of U.S. women and one-third of U.S. mil­len­ni­als. In addi­tion, the aver­age active pin­ner has 24 boards.

Plus, these users are already pin­ning con­tent from brands on their boards. In fact, a full two-thirds of pinned con­tent comes from busi­ness­es, Knight said.

“Peo­ple on Pin­ter­est need busi­ness­es to make their dreams a real­i­ty,” Knight said.

Identify And Shape Trends

Pin­ter­est also gives mar­keters a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to see how con­sumers think about their brands as cus­tomers may be pin­ning prod­ucts and con­tent in ways or con­texts that even the brands them­selves hadn’t thought of before, Knight said.

“You can learn a lot about where the oppor­tu­ni­ty is and how to be an addi­tive part of the user expe­ri­ence,” Knight said.

Knight uses the exam­ple of Jawbone’s activ­i­ty track­er Up, which appears on fit­ness, fash­ion, goal and tech­nol­o­gy boards, among oth­ers, which he notes are “dif­fer­ent use cas­es.”

That means brands like Jaw­bone can use Pin­ter­est as “the world’s largest, most action­able focus group and look at how [users] are already bak­ing your brand into their lives and you may see new trends emerge,” Knight said.

From there, brands may actu­al­ly be able to shape trends they see com­ing and even be per­ceived as lead­ers for shap­ing those trends.

5 Pinterest Marketing Tips For Brands

Here is Knight’s best advice for brands to get the most out of Pin­ter­est.

Tip 1: Details, Details, Details

Infor­ma­tion is the one char­ac­ter­is­tic that dri­ves the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of pins’ suc­cess­es.

“If there’s one thing you take away, it’s that pins should be help­ful. They should offer tips, advice or instruc­tions in addi­tion to show­cas­ing the prod­uct,” Knight said.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, Pin­ter­est helps con­sumers do what­ev­er it is they want to do. It helps answer ques­tions, includ­ing those that don’t have defined answers, which “rep­re­sents an oppor­tu­ni­ty much big­ger than search,” Knight said.

When Pin­ter­est users are explor­ing con­tent, it’s the detailed descrip­tions includ­ed in the pins that helps them tran­si­tion from dis­cov­er­ing con­tent to poten­tial­ly inter­act­ing with a brand or prod­ucts in the phys­i­cal world.

“If your pins are beau­ti­ful and unhelp­ful, they will fail, but if they are ugly and help­ful, they will suc­ceed,” Knight said.

Fur­ther, Knight notes, “Pin­ter­est in and of itself is a big search engine.” That means the infor­ma­tion brands pro­vide in pin descrip­tions will pop up in search. That also helps brands con­nect the dots from their pins to con­sumer inter­ests and cap­ture search inter­est.

Brands should also make sure to include plen­ty of key­words in their descrip­tions and not wor­ry about includ­ing too much text as Pin­ter­est trun­cates descrip­tions to about 80 char­ac­ters, so users will only see the full descrip­tion if they tap on it because they are inter­est­ed.

“Err on the side of over-instruct­ing them,” Knight said.

Tip 2: Overlay Text

In addi­tion, Knight rec­om­mends using text over­lays on pins to imme­di­ate­ly con­vey a pin’s main point to con­sumers (i.e., a pic­ture may be worth a thou­sand words, but that does­n’t mean rel­e­van­cy is always clear).

Brands can then pro­vide addi­tion­al details in the descrip­tions. Head­lines can also com­mu­ni­cate why giv­en a pin is rel­e­vant to a user, he said.

Tip 3: Say Yes To Logos, But No To Banner Ads

Brands should incor­po­rate taste­ful brand­ing, or at least make sure their pins don’t look like ads, Knight said. Avoid bor­ders and blocks of logos or dis­tract­ing text.

“When we dug into the data, we found that if con­sumers thought the pin looked like an ad, it had a sig­nif­i­cant decrease on engage­ment of up to 30 per­cent,” Knight said.

Inclu­sion of a logo, how­ev­er, actu­al­ly encour­ages engage­ment because con­sumers can see where a pin comes from and that it has some cred­i­bil­i­ty, he said.

“It also tells you whether it’s right for you,” Knight said.

Tip 4: Color Is Subjective

Knight says there is no right answer for brands about col­or schemes on Pin­ter­est – only that they use con­sis­tent col­ors that con­vey their brand (i.e., Coke and Home Depot would­n’t want to use the col­or blue, liken­ing them­selves to Pep­si and Lowe’s).

“Just do what’s right for your brand and con­veys your brand,” he said.

In addi­tion, Knight rec­om­mend­ed ver­ti­cal pins and avoid­ing ama­teur and/or user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent.

Tip 5: Forget Hashtags

Brands should also steer clear of hash­tags on Pin­ter­est.

“They’re great for com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools, but Pin­ter­est is not a com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool and there aren’t any con­ver­sa­tions going on,” Knight said. “There’s noth­ing to pull togeth­er.”