Is Pinterest a viable option for video marketing?

One of the most commonly asked question by video marketers is whether Pinterest is worth considering for their video marketing campaign. It has no doubt worked great so far for B2C promotional efforts, but B2B video for improving sales is a whole different ball game. Before looking at whether or not Pinterest is a viable option for the aforementioned sales efforts, it is important to first look at the facts.

There is no denying that one of the biggest traffic drivers online is Pinterest. This accounts for more traffic to websites than more seemingly popular sites such as LinkedIn and YouTube. This has translated into plenty of sales especially for business to clients’ marketers. This is largely because they can easily share videos, pictures and descriptions of their products. What the customers then simply have to do is to look at what is on offer and decide whether or not they would like to purchase it. It is however not as straightforward where business to business video marketing is concerned.

What This Means for  Companies

Because of the complexity of products as well as extended buying cycle, the fundamentals of promoting products or services are inherently different from those of B2C marketing. In truth, this is a much more complicated affair.

A report put out by the Content Marketing Institute noted that as of now, only twenty-six percent of business to business sales teams integrated Pinterest with their existing social media marketing strategies. There are two ways in which this percentage may be interpreted.

First, it can be argued that this is a pretty high percentage especially because Pinterest is a relatively new entrant in the social media world. On the flip side, it might also be argued that this is a low number, and many companies do not see the need to include Pinterest in their overall online social media marketing strategies.

Still on the Content Marketing Institute report, it is clear that older methods of marketing such as StumbleUpon, SlideShare and Vimeo see a much lower percentage in use by these companies.

The edge that such a company can gain from video marketing on Pinterest mainly comes from referral traffic. As earlier stated, Pinterest is at the top when it comes to referrals for websites on social media. This can translate to much needed traffic to the main website, where followers can be changed into consumers.

What is unique about Pinterest for marketing is that social media users cannot play video content directly on the Pinterest website as we see on other popular social media sites. They are instead redirected to your website. This translates to great referral traffic to your website.

It is also important to keep track of the conversions or number of buys that have resulted directly from the online video marketing strategies. This ultimately helps to streamline the existing strategies for sales teams as well as formulate newer and more innovative strategies for future campaigns.

The bottom line is that Pinterest is a great option for your any kind of business targeted marketing efforts. There is massive potential to gain new clients especially through referral traffic. The social media site should however not be used on its own, but rather as part of a wider social media promotional strategy.