How to sell on Pinterest – case study Castorama

As every year and without surprise, IAB did not disappoint us in terms of delivering interesting cases of marketing activity and everything connected with it. This year’s Casebook is full of interesting campaigns, and Castorama has decided to join the trend we discussed recently, which is very beneficial.

As we wrote in one of our previous articles, social media have become a key marketing channel as never before. Gartner research showed that social media spend last year was the lowest ever, compared to revenue generated, resulting in over 51.4 percent of. marketers said they would increase their paid ad budgets for them. Hootsuite pointed out that it would be more profitable to diversify social media channels, in opposition to the trust placed in Meta platforms (Fb/Ig) or LinkedIn. The effectiveness of TikTok increased sevenfold y/y, Snapchat twelvefold y/y, and Pinterest over 140%. on an annual comparative scale.

Castorama.pl – IAB MIXX AWARDS 2021 recognition

Castorama’s project submitted by Mindshare Polska and GroupM received an award in the biggest marketing event in Poland. Every year, exceptional digital marketing campaigns that combine creativity and effectiveness are awarded in this category. For 14 years they have been setting standards for interactive campaigns in Poland. IAB MIXXX Awards is what Złote Spinacze (Golden Paperclips) are to marketing executives, and Mobile Trends Awards are to developers. The team consisting of: Anna Kozlowska, Mariusz Halbina, Anna Dolecka, Aleksandra Narwojsz-Śliwińska, Marta Błaszkiewicz, Anna Bieńkowska, Rafał Czemierys, Karolina Bilbin, Marcin Jabłoński, Michał Radziszewski, Aleksander Klasa was awarded in the category Commerce.

The right inference

The award-winning project was based on the conviction that it is possible to think about social media in a less conventional way. When we talk about social media, we usually think of Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. – we read in the Casebook. Team working on Castorama campaign proved that it is possible to sell products even on Pinterest, at the same time becoming a leader in DIY category.

Marketing campaign

The campaign was aimed at diversifying sales channels! The main aim of the campaign was to re-announce our presence on the portal by reactivating Castorama’s profile on Pinterest. This was mainly to sell products offered in the Castorama store.pl, although we can be tempted to add here an additional pillar, which is building brand awareness among the audience of another messenger.

Initially, the team faced a huge challenge of choosing the right medium. Moreover in terms of DIY stores Castorama has a huge competition in the form of BRW, Leroy Merlin or well known Ikea, whose marketing messages are very difficult to beat. It’s also no secret that Facebook and Instagram, where every major entity advertises, are the biggest moneymakers in promotional terms, and there’s also the rise of small and large businesses that have invested in social media as a result of the growing pandemic situation. On the other hand, there is a huge competition on these platforms.

Pinterest, or success

The creators of the campaign did not want to act in a standard way and compete on huge platforms where they would have to spend much more money to catch up with the competitors. They chose a platform more than five times smaller than Facebook, which by the way involved extending communication with additional fields. Pinterest is a medium where image is king. This is the perfect place to get inspired and get an insight into the potential of human imagination. It is also a place where you can find works of renowned artists and graphic designers, and fitness influencers, in addition to a beautiful body, inspire you to action with a set of diets and exercises presented through infographics. It turns out that it is a great platform not only for inspiration and creating an image with visuals. Pinterest can also be a great sales tool.

Pinterest, as proven by the members involved in the project, also brings together those users who are looking for inspiration for their home interior. The light at the tunnel turned green when Castorama started to showcase its products, while sharing an artistic and practical vision for their placement.

User value equals profit

Composition of interiors is not a discovery in the world of marketers, and probably most of us can associate the bound catalogs with furniture browsed by our mothers, wives or friends, who dreamily imagined how they stand in the ideal configuration depicted in the photographs. Castorama digitised this phenomenon and it worked phenomenally. It did not focus on simple advertising, but gave the value sought by users of the portal, which ultimately resulted in increased interest in the assortment of castorama.en.

From test to monetization

First, the agencies updated the brand’s profile on the portal by refreshing its appearance, and then they offered users several creations in the form of posts. When these were met with a positive response, the team gradually engaged the audience, thereby strengthening awareness of the brand and its products. Ultimately, this resulted in an increase in profile followers, which was another green light. Sales support was then started with the help of the portal. Traffic coming to castorama website. pl turned out to be very qualitative. This was checked by adding to the indicators Pinterest Tag and checked keywords.

The analysis showed that traffic related to the platform with the twenty-second letter of the Polish alphabet on a red background in the logo was much more optimal in terms of sales than other channels. The sales indicators clearly showed that it was worth continuing and the test activities were transformed into a regular campaign. This of course involved increasing the budget on Pinterest, but it helped sustain the effectiveness of the activities on it.

It’s not that simple!

Experts point out that Pinterest is indeed a platform for forward-thinking people who are curious about the world and hungry for inspiration and excitement, but these same characteristics are also responsible for postponing purchases. To conclude, just showing product images and prices would not increase sales.

– We focus on space arrangement and inspiring potential clients. We built and implemented a product catalog and combined it with interior design photos. – Casebook informs us.

The realtors argue that this is how they reached users who appreciated the input to show them potential arrangements. Pinterest Tag implementation on Castorama.pl along with appropriately configured events was key to measuring the effectiveness of ongoing operations, and it also enabled the segmentation of non-standard audiences. All this gave rise to the creation of precise messages.

DIY leader

In three trimesters Castorama became a leader in its category on the portal. Numerically, it reached 1.2 thousand. The website has a large number of followers and over 4 million page views per month. Comparing this to the statistics of Leroy Merlin (965 obs., 3.3 million page views), OBI (234 obs., 4.2 million page views), or IKEA (0 obs., 0 page views) that did not even have its own account during the campaign, Castorama, colloquially speaking, came out on top. The sales campaigns generated very good results: ROAS of actions based on product feed and Pinterest Tag was 102. Campaigns focused on maximizing conversions achieved an ROAS of 128. The campaign had three times better conversion rates than a similar effort on Facebook.

Applications

As a crowning achievement, the team added that it is possible to reach a niche group with a very positive effect with much better results than in the case of acting in channels with an increased rate of competition. It turns out that it is possible to create an effective strategy, precisely tailored to a niche social media platform and generating very good sales results. It’s also an indication that Hootsuite’s research wasn’t wrong in its reporting conclusions, and that Snapchat, Pinterest and TikTok could skyrocket as other entities realize the opportunities they offer.

This campaign is not just a Castorama success story

It is also a case study of the fact that you can reach users, not with expensive, but with effective communication, especially in niche communities by offering them content that is valuable to them, through which they will better understand the brand. If, by the way, the brand is able to offer its products, it can surprise itself very positively with its KPIs.