Pinterest has a fairly specific audience appeal, but the data is clear - active Pinners buy products based on their on-platform experience. That specific audience, according Pew Research, is suburban females aged 50 or lower and in higher income brackets.
And if that's your target market, you really should be considering the platform within your social media marketing strategy. According to a study conducted by research firm Millward Brown last year, 93% of active Pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases, while 87% have made a purchase after seeing a product they liked on the platform.
That high level of purchase intent is what the platform is hoping will elevate it to become a multi-billion dollar online shopping hub, and a new study conducted by Oracle Data Cloud has once again underlined the potential of the platform in driving purchase behavior - but this time focused on in-store sales.
As part of a new partnership arrangement with Pinterest, Oracle utilized their DataLogix technology - which connects offline purchasing data to digital media interaction - to measure the return on investment for 26 consumer packaged-goods (CPG) campaigns that ran on Pinterest between the third quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2015.
And the results?
According to Oracle's data, Promoted Pins drove 5x more incremental in-store sales per impression in comparison to ads on other platforms. In addition, the study found that compared to the national average, CPG brands are 3x more likely to reach their existing customers on Pinterest - and those customers spend 16% more.
Those are some impressive stats - Oracle also found that people who engage with Promoted Pins are 12% more likely to be buyers of that brand.
While it's not an essential platform for every business - and really, no platform is - the data underlines the strength of Pinterest for reaching specific market segments.
Pinterest has incorporated the results of the Oracle study into a new infographic.