How do you use this virtual online scrapbook? Instead of cutting pictures out of a magazine and pinning them to a cork bulletin board, Pinterest allows users to click on beautiful and interesting things they see online and organize them easily onto various ‘bulletin boards’. Here is where it becomes very interesting from a marketing point of view: Users may also share those pictures with all of the other users who ‘follow’ them.
It is easy to see how one person sharing a picture of a beautifully painted or decorated room could ultimately reach thousands, if not millions, of other Pinterest users who in turn share the photo, and so on.

Why Use Pinterest?

As noted by Julianne Wills in Paint & Decorating Magazine’s article “There’s Gold in Them Thar Pins” (August 2013), fifteen percent of all people who use the Internet in the U.S. are using Pinterest. That translates into about 27 million users! Many of those users are women whose incomes are greater than $50,000. Eighteen percent of the women who use Pinterest on a regular basis have incomes higher than $75,000. Using Pinterest to target this highly desirable set of potential customers could pay off in a big way for small paint and decorating stores.

Rebecca Dumas, owner of Gregory’s Paint and Flooring and a PDRA board member, had this to say about Pinterest: “I had every other woman walking into my store with an iPhone or an iPad saying ‘I saw this on Pinterest.’” After launching a Pinterest page for her store, Dumas has seen her efforts pay off. Customers come in looking for paint colors they have seen on Pinterest, and she says that she can directly attribute at least one or two sales a month to the online bulletin board, resulting in several hundred dollars a month in sales.

Just Do It

Don’t let fear or apathy get in the way of using social media to promote your business. Some business owners may shy away from utilizing sites such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter because they are unfamiliar with the ins and outs of using social media. In today’s world, that could be very serious mistake. Some may not use these tools because they think the time to set up the accounts and maintain them is not worth it. Julianne Wills also notes in her article that Pinterest users spend an average of $80 per purchase when they buy something that they have seen on Pinterest. As you can see, just a little time and effort could pay off in extra exposure and sales fairly quickly.

In order to help small paint and decorating business owners learn how to use social media such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter to promote their businesses, PDRA has developed a series of Webinars that are free for all Association members to view. If you are a member, be sure to take advantage of these informative webinars! If you are not a PDRA member, click here to join now so you can begin harnessing the power of the Pinterest and other social media to promote your business.