Pinterest For Marketing In Japan: The Hidden Gem?

Pinterest is growing FAST, increasing in 100 million global users since April of 2019.

The platform is quickly becoming a crucial tool for marketers and businesses around the world, with its clever and user-friendly interface appealing to a wide audience. However, is it also effective for the Japanese market? Would companies see any benefits in using the service, adding to their already huge media sharing portfolio? Let’s find out!

What is Pinterest?

Contrast to what many consider it as a social media platform, Pinterest is actually a search engine, just like Google, where it shows different pins depending on the keywords that are being searched. The big difference between Google and Pinterest, is that the latter service focuses on rich content, such as images and videos. Hence, it is a very important tool to succeed in visual marketing.

Who uses Pinterest?

The largest component of the user base consists of women, accounting for 80% of the total pie (for Japan). In addition, half of the total users are in the ages between 35 -54, signifying a higher income/purchasing power than in many other platforms (such as Twitter). Many mainly use the service to find inspiration for products, learn new ideas and knowledge, and purchase goods and services.

Why is Pinterest Essential and Useful for Marketing in Japan

Why Pinterest Is Essential and Useful For Marketing in Japan

The substantial growth in Japanese users, going from 4 million in 2018 to more than 5 million a year later (Uniad). This number is expected to grow even faster in the coming years. Globally, it grew 26% in users last year!
Much easier to gain exposure and appeal for newer accounts and pins. A 2019 survey showed that three quarters of users expressed high interest towards new products and content. (Hootsuite)
Extremely high motive to purchase -> 48% of total users have shopping as their top priority when using the service (compared to other platforms: Instagram: 10%, Facebook: 14%) (Hootsuite)
Power of visual content speaks much stronger compared to a simple text search result.
Great executive board with its future properly planned out, proven by their exciting move to hire the former head of Google’s image search as their lead engineer. (VentureBeat)
A rare gem for the Japanese market, yet to be uncovered by many, allowing for an easier journey to become a leader in your respective market within the service.

Should You Implement Pinterest for YOUR Marketing Strategy?

My answer would be that all businesses should include Pinterest in their marketing strategy, using it as a form of visual marketing tool. There exists more than 175 billion pins on the platform today, going over contents from a diverse set of industries and categories. This means that it accepts everything and everyone, as long as you have something of value to offer to the public.

As mentioned, albeit it growing its presence rapidly in Japan, it’s still an area where not many have challenged, which again signifies a great opportunity for you and your business to achieve a high ranking and authority for your selected keywords.

I will have to mention that businesses that offer e-commerce, as well as blogs that share valuable information tend to do better on the service than others. There’s many workarounds you could do, for example if you’re a professional agency in a specific industry, write blogs that focuses on your expert, and share it on Pinterest. You’ll be able to reach many new leads coming from your content (a merge of visual and content marketing).

How To Be Successful On Pinterest?

You’re convinced to begin taking the first step into Pinterest, but you have no idea how to start. Don’t worry, I was like that too. As I’ll be writing one full article on this, I won’t go into too much details, but here’s some of the key points you’ll have to keep in mind:

Being active on the platform is a necessity – Create/repin at least 10 pins per day (saving other users’ pins count too).
Use appropriate keywords – It’s a search engine just like Google, so find keywords that people may search to look for your content.
Join group boards related to your topic, and post in it (only join ones with more followers than you)
Create great appealing designs and copywriting for your pins that would attract your target’s attention

How Can We Easily Make an Attractive Pin (in 3 minutes)?

I use Canva, a website that allows you to easily create designs for all kinds of media from Pinterest, channel arts, Facebook images, thumbnails, and many more. They have many templates and copyright free images that would help you in creating your perfect pin in a matter of minutes!
Click here to begin using it now.
{Note: The above links are affiliate links, hence if you choose to join a Canva Pro membership, I would receive a small percentage of the purchase!}

email marketing Pinterest pin — A pin I made for Pinterest using Canva.

To Conclude

Visual marketing has always been a method that allows for a deeper message to be conveyed, leading to a higher conversion rate compared to text relying media. Pinterest is a visual discovery search engine that could be considered as an even better alternative compared to Google in terms of rich media. With the rapid growth it is experiencing in Japan and the world, together with its intuitive design and dynamics, it is a platform that all businesses in Japan should be focusing on in their future marketing campaigns.

Liked the article? Check out the Pinterest account of Markevell here.