Social platforms have become strategic marketing avenues for organizations of all shapes and sizes to engage customers and establish a brand. For digital coupons there may be no more perfect platform than Pinterest—particularly in the coveted demographic of decision-making moms.
According to comScore, unique visits to social networking sites have increased by 6% year-over-year, and Pinterest remains the fastest-growing social network as of Q1 2012—the fourth largest traffic driver worldwide, according to Shareholic.
A side-by-side comparison shows how Pinterest provides a more streamlined effort to sharing digital coupons.
On Facebook, in order for a coupon to go viral and become a driver for company growth, individuals have to continuously interact with the coupon by “liking” it, leaving a comment, or sharing it to gain external traction. There is not a way for someone to get an updated list of the latest digital coupons shared on Facebook by searching the site, and Twitter faces some of the same navigation issues. A tweet may have a promo code and a link, but it’s also relying on retweets, hashtag uses and searches to be found.
For the tech savvy, Pinterest may not seem more streamlined than Facebook or Twitter, but the platform’s one-click sharing is certainly more instinctive and intuitive for the casual user, and its clean layout and nonintrusive graphics give it great aesthetic appeal.
At Grocery Coupon Network, our internal tracking of social media activity produced some surprising results: Our Pinterest followers represent 0.01% of our Facebook audience, however, in one 30 day period, Pinterest followers accounted for 42.15% of our social shares.
That means our Pinterest followers are 81 times more active than our Facebook audience.
We’re not alone in this trend. While Facebook’s sheer volume averages about six times the referral traffic on Pinterest—Twitter and Pinterest average about .85% of each month’s referral traffic across the Web. The difference: Twitter has 140 million users, nearly 12 times the Pinterest audience, making Pinterest’s conversion rate overwhelmingly high.
Fifteen percent of Pinterest users surveyed by Compete in June said that they do not use any other social media sites, and a breakdown of Pinterest’s demographics as of August shows that:
- 80% of Pinterest’s American users are women;
- about 70% of Pinterest’s users are between the ages of 25-54; and
- of that group, the largest segment comes from those ages 35-44.
When usability and aesthetics are factored in, it’s clear why Pinterest has made such a dent in a demographic known for sharing tips and savings: Moms. With an economy causing a cultural shift towards frugality, that opens the door for Pinterest to drive digital coupon conversion.
It’s difficult to say whether Pinterest’s surge in the social media marketplace will continue. New competitors are always coming to the forefront, though only a few have managed to sustain their viability over the long-term. In the meantime, new Pinterest integration possibilities and content management systems allow marketers to harness the strong conversion and word-of-mouth factor of the platform, and Pinterest’s conversion statistics and demographics create an extremely strong case for business focus when it comes to digital distribution.
Jeff Hudson is the cofounder of Grocery Coupon Network. Find GCN on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
