How And Why Beauty Brands Are Utilizing Pinterest To Reach Consumers

With Apple’s iOS 14 update impacting the effectiveness of digital advertising, beauty brands are rethinking their strategies for connecting with consumers. Many are testing Pinterest to avoid the pitfalls of other platforms. To find out more about brands’ experiences with the discovery engine, for our ongoing series posing questions relevant to the indie beauty business, we asked 23 founders, marketing experts and executives at beauty companies: What are you doing on Pinterest, and what results are you seeing from it?

Oded Harth Co-founder and CEO, MDhair and MDacne

Since we provide treatment for adult acne, Pinterest was always a key platform for us because women in their late 20s to mid-30s are of their core demographics. We've discovered that reusing our video content on Pinterest can be highly effective and can provide long-sustaining organic traffic. Unlike other platforms that provide the majority of the traffic in the first 24 hours, Pinterest posts can bring traffic for months after posting.

Amy Carr Co-Founder, PYT Beauty

Pinterest is a powerful social media tool that we believe will help to grow and scale our brand. On the organic side, Pinterest sets us up with the chance of reaching hundreds of millions of users with our creative content. By humanizing our brand with inspiring content and curated boards—essentially using it in the same way a customer would—we can connect with them on a more personal level, which is very important for customer acquisition today.

Additionally, they offer a suite of resources for brands to optimize their ad campaigns and increase website traffic. From highlighting new trends for creative inspiration to sharing best practice recommendations for optimal ad performance, Pinterest’s business suite can be the roadmap to success if used to its full potential.

Lastly, Pinterest has always been a shop-focused platform, even in its early days when it was an invite-only tool. If we are going to test out any unique shopping tools such as live shopping, Pinterest is the best platform to do so since its audience already uses the platform for that exact purpose.

We have three content types—studio creative, user-generated content and general interests—and they all have their purpose and benefits. We’ve noticed that our studio creative has driven more website clicks, our user-generated content has driven more profile impressions, and our general interest content has driven more saves.

We have only just launched our first ad campaign on the platform, but we saw a 45% increase in website traffic and impressions from Pinterest within the first few days of launching our first campaign. We are working closely with our account manager to optimize our ads and align on how we can further scale our content.

Daisy Jing Founder, Banish

Pinterest is a great discovery platform. We post and repost videos from our website and social media, which are usually how-tos. Although it's not our main social media strategy currently, we use it in conjunction with other social media platforms and our content strategy.

Brittany Lo Founder, Beia

As a new brand, organic discovery of Beia is key. Pinterest is a wonderful platform for users to discover new tips, trends and products and, therefore, we wanted to make sure we were a part of this community. Currently, we’re linking back to our site and posting photos of the product and influencers using it.

Ryan Sullivan Co-Founder, The Beauty Spy

We were drawn to Pinterest as a way to expand our reach to new customers. The goal is to bring people to our site to experience what The Beauty Spy has to offer. We do this by linking pins to educational content. We want to provide value to new visitors so they want to learn more. We also leverage our video content on the platform because we find that video always performs great for our brand.

Erica Sobecki E-commerce Content Manager, Shen Beauty

We are using Pinterest as a platform because of its visual focuses and audience. In our research, people use Pinterest as a place to learn, be inspired and create, so we use our content to reflect this by being very informative about our products and educational with the proper uses and order of skincare products. Also, because Pinterest is such a visually forward platform, we like to lead with our high-quality assets here that are exciting and interesting to look at but also offer information. We’ve seen 115%-plus increase in impressions and 270%-plus increase in our pin clicks over the last 30 days of just a little bit more increased activity preparing for the holiday season.

Ann McFerran Co-founder and CEO, Glamnetic

Pinterest is a great platform for shopping and to convert browsers into buyers. We are able to drive so much traffic on Pinterest because it’s a huge visual search engine, and it has really helped us grow our presence in the beauty industry. Browsers are constantly looking on Pinterest for beauty inspiration and what better way is there to increase our awareness than through Pinterest itself?

Glamnetic posts a variety of content on Pinterest such as user-generated content, campaign images, blog posts, videos, tutorials and more. The possibilities on Pinterest are endless, and we do not want to limit ourselves to any specific type of content. We hope that our content inspires and educates browsers about our products and brand.

Because Pinterest is such a visual platform, this has really worked to our advantage and we have seen amazing results from this platform. We have seen outstanding results through our idea pins and ads. We’re able to reach a wider audience and raise brand awareness.

Joanna Vargas Founder, Joanna Vargas

Pinterest is an important place of discovery, especially for beauty. Before we created our official account, we noticed that fans of the brand were already talking about our products on the platform. It was important that we connect with our community directly. Our content strategy is always to go beyond just a pretty image and to share practical skincare advice. Our philosophy is that everyone can achieve beautiful, glowing skin.

Alison Alhamed VP of Social Media and Community, R+Co

Pinterest is an incredible space for users to find visual inspiration, whether that’s remodeling your kitchen, planning your wedding or, most importantly for R+Co, reimagining your look. We recently met with the Pinterest team, and they shared that 16.6 million people engage in hair pins each month.

Of all social media platforms, Pinterest is the most SEO-friendly, meaning a user may be browsing Pinterest pins just by doing a simple Google image search. It’s also incredibly easy to link and direct our followers to where we want them to go next like to a step-by-step or to randco.com without sending them on a link-in-bio scavenger hunt.

The bulk of our pins are hair inspo and mini tutorials, but our top-performing board is our ‘Words’ board, very vibey, aesthetic quotes and phrases in various handwriting, neon letters, billboards, even candy hearts.

Pinterest allows R+Co to maximize the content we’re creating on every platform—from our blogs to our podcasts, product launches and even Instagram posts—in a very high-reward platform that helps us connect people to the world of R+Co, and the world of R+Co to its people.

Dafina Smith Founder and CEO, Covet & Mane

The client journey for new hair trends or styles is really taking place on Pinterest. We realized that, from speaking with our Concierge team, we were helping our Covet Collective match colors to photos pinned on Pinterest. We know that consumers often look to Pinterest for ideas and inspiration, so we joined the platform to help provide guidance, innovation and excitement around Covet & Mane hair and the hair extension industry as a whole.

Covet & Mane aims to create lifestyle content that inspires consumers. Although a majority of our content is hair-related, we often like to show off our brand’s personality on Pinterest as well. We love creating moodboards for our NYC office and studio space, our top fashion picks, our favorite seasonal hair trends, salon inspiration, holiday looks and more.

We see that consumers are saving the looks that we’re sharing and bringing them to their stylists to help recreate these styles. Although our pins give some insight into our brand, we link all of our pins to our Instagram and website, driving traffic to pages where consumers can learn more about Covet & Mane.

Our goal is to be the go-to resource for all things hair-related. We strive to be active on all social platforms as often as possible to be easily accessible to consumers wherever they are seeking inspiration. Covet & Mane remains active on Pinterest to not only build our brand awareness, but also as a way to show people the looks that can be created using our extensions.

Erica Wohlwend VP of Marketing, Vegamour

Pinterest users are mostly women, which is our target demographic and hair-related topics are the top searched terms. It is primarily utilized to draw inspiration, share and educate on key interests and discover new ideas. It was important for us to join the platform, and create boards and pins that align with our brand mission and capitalize on trending topics to create content to empower, inspire and educate women.

Vegamour curates content that speaks to our 360, comprehensive approach to hair wellness, from creating engaging content to saving relevant content that resonates with our customers. We leverage our influencers and experts to create compelling content including tips and tricks, how-to-use product videos and educational blog posts. We also create specific boards that truly represent the many facets of our brand, from "Hair Tips & Ideas" and "Vegamour Results" to "Healthy Living" and "Vegan Recipes" to "Self Care" and "Quotes," including a nod to our hometown "LA, We Love You.”

Vegamour has over 10 million monthly page views and 7,700 followers. We utilize Pinterest ideas to develop video content and have seen the largest video views of all our platforms on Pinterest for our "5 Tips to Grow Out Your Hair" video which reached 854,000 impressions.

Colette Laxton Co-Founder and CEO, The Inkey List

Our mission as a brand is to spread the beauty of knowledge, and we aim to share information in a way that is meaningful to our consumers on the channel or platform they are using at the time. Our digital community continually asks us skincare questions through our #askINKEY service, which has inspired our presence on Pinterest. As a platform, we know users love it as a way to save valuable information. We take our most commonly asked questions, skin and haircare concerns, and turn them into easily digestible cheat sheets. Our Pinterest page functions as a quick reference guide, offering up information on ingredients, how to layer products in your routine and suggested recipes for common skin or hair types in a simple to understand, yet visually appealing way.

Rooshy Roy Co-Founder and CEO, Aavrani

Pinterest is all about inspiration and education so it's a perfect place to showcase Aavrani. From our iconic hyper blue packaging to the Ayurvedic-inspired illustrations, we have a strong visual aesthetic. We believe through Pinterest we can inspire a more holistic skincare experience while educating about our Ayurvedic ingredients that are rooted in ancient beauty rituals.

We focus on strong, visually compelling images that tell a story. The images range from ancient beauty rituals, ingredients, products or user experience.

Through our organic efforts on the platform, we see new potential customers engaging in our content and driving new incremental traffic to our website. Over 70% of Aavrani shoppers use mobile to browse, so having a great mobile experience is important to our brand. Over 85% of pinners use the mobile app, and it’s a great platform for users to find new ideas and discover a new brand like Aavrani.

Boris Oak CEO and Founder, Evolvh

We use Pinterest for top and middle funnel in our marketing. It’s a great platform for educational content, whether it’s around ingredients to reinforce our clean positioning or how-to content. A unique feature of Pinterest compared to other platforms is organic content can be evergreen and drive traffic for many months. We also use it for sharing customer success stories, which we call EVOLVher Life, and tagging the products in the post, as this is the kind of content that is great for discovery and can deliver value over an extended period of time. This allows users to see all the products used, the prices, and link straight to our website to buy. We love to inspire people to achieve their healthiest, and happiest hair by sharing how others are achieving these results with our products.

Carolyna Sosa Social Media Coordinator, Alamar Cosmetics

Pinterest is a one-of-a-kind platform that is constantly evolving. This platform is all about inspiration and aesthetics and, in the pinning world of beauty, avid pinners want to see what can be done with the products they plan to buy while simultaneously learning about the brand's voice and overall vibe. Because Pinterest is so unique in its functionality, it's a great place to generate traffic and sales to our website or wherever else we want to link our pins to.

Right now, we are focusing on repurposing our most popular video content and creating infographics. With the use of the Idea Pin feature, which functions similarly to Instagram Stories, we are producing high-quality infographics to further educate our current and potential consumers while video content allows us to showcase our products in motion, leading them to either another one of our social media platforms or our website for more information.

Currently, on the organic side, we have seen a healthy conversion rate based on consistency in refreshing our boards with new content weekly, producing captivating copy to target the correct audiences, all while sharing everything that makes up Alamar Cosmetics. It's like giving a little more personality to the brand voice that you wouldn't otherwise see on our website and/or other social media platforms.

Lynette Lovelace Founder, Lifetherapy

Pinterest is pure inspiration. Unlike social media, which can be a mix of friends, work and family, Pinterest is a place our customer goes to find herself. So, we really try to create a haven of escape within the space: We want everything we pin to reflect our belief that self-care is essential to filling your cup and coming back into your "real" life as your best self. That's why we want to really make sure that what we produce serves her first, sales second. We want every pin our customers see to be that spa-like second where she can truly feel like she's slipping into a bubble bath and taking a well-deserved break. We focus on how we want our customers to feel, which is relaxed, supported and seen, which all carries back to our brand's ethos. In my mind, Pinterest is a sensory view into how we want Lifetherapy to make customers feel.

Anna Brightman Co-founder, UpCircle Beauty

We like to think of Pinterest as the dreamer’s Instagram and Tumblr. It's a great place to slow down, visualize your manifestations and curate your own natural skincare routine. We always take a mindful, considered approach at UpCircle, which makes Pinterest the ideal platform for us.

As a byproduct beauty brand that uses leftover natural ingredients, there is so much content we can create from just one product. When it comes to content creation, we have edifying guides, lifestyle imagery, texture shots and even memes for that feel good sensation. Ultimately, we strive to create content that inspires and energizes our Pinterest audience or UpCircle dreamers as we like to call them.

Our mission is to bring a fresh perspective and change the skincare industry for the better. Pinterest has helped us on this mission by spreading the UpCircle message far and wide. The platform has helped us expand the UpCircler community with literally one click...or should we say pin? Not only has Pinterest helped us to grow our community, but it's also a huge source of inspiration for our future content plans.

Karen Minsky VP of Sales and Operations, Dionis

For us, having a presence on Pinterest makes complete sense. As a small but growing brand, it’s so important to take advantage of all the social channels out there so that we can continue to grow our reach and awareness. With the visual-driven nature of Pinterest, it’s a great platform for us to showcase our products as well as inspiring and informative content that connects to it.

From goat milk benefits to self-care tips, our boards feature a mix of beautiful Dionis product shots, informative product information and relevant pins from other sources.

With 70,000 monthly views, Pinterest is a channel we are continuing to focus on. We have explored Promoted Pins and ads with success, and will continue to explore this as a strategy to increase engagement and followers.

Niye Aniekan-Attang Founder, Ace Beauté

Pinterest has always been a major source of gathering inspiration for us, and we know this to be true for others as well so it was important to us to use the platform to show case our products to serve as a source of inspiration. In addition to pinning product images, we also create short videos and gift guides for Pinterest.

Product category awareness is what we are seeing. People who don't know the brand offers certain product categories like our newly launched magnetic lashes become introduced to it.

Courtney Sheahan President, Cuvée Beauty

Pinterest continues to be a way for consumers to discover and interact with new brands, and we couldn’t wait to engage with their audience. Unlike other social media platforms, the highly engaging aspect of pinning and community building has been exciting and an unexpected driver to our site.

It is really important for us to maintain our brand voice and aesthetic across all our social channels, and Pinterest has been no different. Our organic pins represent our low maintenance luxury branding that has been at the forefront to our success. For Pinterest, we really focus on how-to videos and UGC content to give our customers the tools to use our products and create these low maintenance looks at home.

We have a very active following on Pinterest and continue to create content that engages with our audience time and time again. Our Shop Tab link has proved enormously successful, and Pinterest continues to be one of the highest traffic drivers to our site.

Ali Newpol and Amanda Zweig Co-owners, Trust Fund Beauty

The great thing about Pinterest is that it allows us to create evergreen content that continues to circulate for years after it was originally created. Whereas content on Instagram has a shorter lifespan, Pins have continued engagement which means traffic is being driven to our website at all times.

Because Pinterest is all about visual content, it reduces the number of steps it takes between discovery and conversion of products. Users who are interested in beauty see a picture that catches their eye and are then only a click away from being on the brand’s website. Pinterest also allows us to reach and target a niche group of people who are already interested in beauty and searching for inspo.

As a beauty brand, we are obsessed with visual storytelling to share our brand aesthetic and vibe. Pinterest allows us to focus on more inspirational and trending content that may not drive the same engagement on other social platforms. For example, seasonal makeup looks, more texture-focused photos and videos or inspirational content about our brand’s values.

Pinterest is also a way for us to repurpose existing content like our product catalogs and user-generated content that would have only been seen on our online store or the specific platform the original post was posted on.

In the past, our brand’s presence on Pinterest was through unpaid posts. We are now working on paid advertising to help build up our presence and awareness on the platform. The goal is the acquire new customers who have never heard of the brand. We have definitely noticed an increase in website traffic and conversions since implementing Pinterest ads and will continue to work to grow our reach on the platform.

The biggest reason we stay active on Pinterest is for the lifespan of the content and the potential reach. There’s no other platform that keeps content circulating for years. Pinterest users use their pins to get inspired for their future plans, which means they keep coming back to their old pins, even if they are years old.

We also love the fact that Pinterest ads feel seamless, nonintrusive and are native to what the consumer’s interests are. They actually add value back to the consumer because they are done contextually instead of focusing on the audience and in-market segments. We love that we can run an ad, but also add value to the consumer experience because they can save a pin for inspiration. The platform is also relatively early in its ad capabilities, which means they are constantly working on new betas and technology that we get to test out.

Emily Bowman Founder, Lovesong Beauty

I've worked with brands in the past that have an established presence on Pinterest and was able to learn valuable insights in advance as to how this social site increases awareness and impressions and helps funnel new traffic to our website and beyond. For this reason, we set up Lovesong Beauty on Pinterest early in our launch process.

Facing typical startup challenges like allotment of time, energy and resources, we have seen great impression results with relatively little investment: 70,000 impressions in just the last 90 days. One of our goals is to enhance our presence on Pinterest in the coming days and weeks, creating content that is relevant and specific to the community we are building. We would also like to work more collaboratively with the Pinterest team to help refine our advertising strategy and build our audience.

With recent changes to Facebook advertising as a result of the iOS 14 update, it seems like the perfect time to revamp our Pinterest strategy, introduce our indie beauty brand to new people interested in clean/natural hair care on Pinterest and, hopefully, this focused effort will lead to new conversions which are critical to our future success!

Andrea Lisbona Founder and CEO, Touchland

Pinterest is such a visual platform, so ad options and formats allow us to emphasize images and video while looking similar to organic content. Especially for Touchland, such an aesthetically pleasing brand and with products where design is key, Pinterest offers the possibility to display content both organic and ads in a very unique way and has allowed the brand to grow.

Product photography seems to do really well with our audience, so we also created boards from some content we've taken over the years.

To support our community, we've created a board specifically for repurposing their content. Since we're unable to repost everyone on other platforms, this gives us an opportunity to highlight all the micro-creators we work with. The pins link back to their posts, which allows them to get more traffic to their Touchland content and, thus, extra exposure. It also gives us constant content to keep the board fresh and exciting. So, it's truly a win-win situation.

The pages are doing well, and we get lots of comments about the colorful packaging and sleek design of our iconic power mist bottle. Since the community board is strictly organic posts the results have been great, so far [we've had] almost 25,000 impressions in just the last 30 days, and the board was set up recently.

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