It’s understandable that you may not be as familiar with Pinterest as a platform. Although Pinterest has fewer users than some of the other big social media platforms, Pinterest is where shoppers come to discover new brands and decide what to buy next. As a result, if you’re looking to impact people’s buying choices, then you need to be advertising on Pinterest. Despite relatively “low” user numbers, over 360 million people worldwide visit Pinterest each month to help them plan and visualize their next purchases. But what does this actually look like in practice?

Pinterest describes itself as a “visual discovery engine” that allows you to search for “Pins” spanning a variety of different areas, for example home decor, crafting, cooking recipes, fashion, and more. You can then save these Pins to Boards that you create, name, and organize based on the categories you choose. For example, say you’re looking to redesign your living room. You can search for “living room decor” with your chosen style such as modern, minimalist, classic, mid-century modern, etc. From there, you can scroll through the different Pins as inspiration and save them to your Board for easy access.

While that’s one aspect of Pinterest, shoppable Pins are a newer aspect of this burgeoning platform. This feature allows you to effectively post your products as Pins that can then take potential customers directly to your website to purchase. This feature is extremely effective on Pinterest as shopping is a top priority for 48% of Pinterest users. Furthermore, Pinterest has seen more than 2.5 times more shoppable Pins in 2020 compared to 2019. Most convincingly, 83% of weekly Pinterest users have made a purchase based on their app activity with 50% making a purchase after seeing a promoted Pin that aligned with their interests.

These numbers alone set Pinterest apart from other social media platforms where users aren’t necessarily looking to make a purchase. Instead, they are looking to keep up and communicate with friends and family.