Marketers are weighing the relative merits of Pinterest and Instagram in an effort to determine which will be more fruitful for driving online sales, given the current popularity of social media e-commerce.
Native shopping connections into sites like Instagram and Pinterest have greatly increased the allure of promoting your ecommerce company on social media.
The leading social media platforms, Instagram and Pinterest, have evolved into powerful marketplaces that provide useful in-app capabilities for advertising and selling to companies.
Audience Comparison between Pinterest and Instagram
Those that use it frequently:
The 1 billion active users per month on Instagram speak volumes about its success and provide a massive new audience for advertisers.
Instagram’s active user base is around four times larger than Pinterest’s, giving it a significant advantage in this regard.
Possible Targets:
Instagram’s ability to narrowly focus your feed is another plus.
Ecommerce marketers will find Instagram’s precise and effective targeting to be particularly useful because it is built on the same advertising infrastructure as Facebook.
A Look at Pinterest and Instagram’s Shopping Functionality
Instagram and Pinterest have just implemented new shoppable features that allow users to shop while leaving the applications. This is in response to the rising popularity of online shopping.
Instagram Now Has a Shopping Section
In order to enable businesses seamlessly integrate selling on Instagram without disrupting the user experience, Instagram offers three primary shoppable features.
Identifying Marks on Products
Using the “shoppable” symbol in the corner of a post, Instagram users may quickly see the product’s pricing and go to checkout.
Publish on Instagram with the ability to purchase the item
Sites like Squarespace, eWorldTrade, and Shopify, which are all major e-commerce platforms, have integrated with Instagram in a natural fashion, allowing users to link their online e-commerce inventory directly with their Instagram profile.
Setting up product tags is simple and just takes a few clicks if you have a Facebook company account with an item in your store. Check all the details.
Stories Categories
It’s not only photos on Instagram that may have items tagged within them; story posts can do the same for marketers.
Since Instagram stories get a lot of views and comments, this is great for businesses. Third of those most popular stories are published by companies.
Sticker for Instagram purchases
There is a massive opportunity for firms to increase sales on Instagram by taking advantage of the platform’s rising popularity thanks to the Stories feature and an accompanying product tag.
Moreover, early feedback from customers has been quite encouraging. Since the introduction of Instagram shoppable stories, over 90 million user accounts have participated each month.
Thirdly, a Buy Now!
Instagram’s “shop” button is the third feature they’ve introduced to facilitate e-commerce within the app.
Using this feature, your Instagram posts tagged with a product ID will be collected and shown here.
Commercial Instagram Button
To view just shoppable posts on Kirkland’s Instagram, users need merely press the shopping bag symbol located in the retailer’s bio.
The true value of this function is that it gives your followers access to your items in a more conventional shopping layout, complete with the same fantastic “Instagram-worthy” images that bring your things to life.
Pinterest vs. Instagram: What Kind of Products Sell Best
Brands selling expensive home goods, such furniture, art, kitchen appliances, etc., on the e-commerce platform may find better success with product tags on Pinterest than on Instagram due to the site’s older, more affluent user base.
The demand is there; just check out the most popular boards on Pinterest.
Instagram, on the other hand, has a far more solid foothold among men and young people. Therefore, businesses providing affordable products to millennials and Gen Z are finding great success on Instagram.
This is especially true for the fashion industry, which was given access to Instagram’s product tags early on and has seen its online sales rise as a result.
Since then, most ecommerce firms that offer tangible things like home décor, makeup, and jewelry have access to Instagram’s shopping feature.
Comparison of Pinterest and Instagram Shoppers
It’s undeniable that Pinterest is leading the way in innovative search and discovery tools with its new Visual Search and Product Lens tools.
CEO and co-founder Ben Silberman made the claim that Pinterest is “not a social network” in 2016, saying instead that “Pinterest is really about planning and getting ideas for your own personal life.”
Thus, Pinterest attracts shoppers who are just starting to consider their options for a big-ticket, one-time buy.
If you’re looking to make regular or impulsive purchases, though, Instagram is your best bet.
Users spend most of their time on Pinterest browsing their personalized Explore feed in search of visual content to pin to boards of their own design.
On Pinterest, consumers are more likely to follow a board or category than a specific brand.
Now think about the consumer-brand interactions that occur on Instagram. Eighty percent of Instagram users follow at least one business account, and 75 percent of those people took action after viewing a post from a brand.
When someone joins your brand’s Instagram community by following your brand’s account, you may promote to them again through their Instagram feed and stories.