What to do with Pinterest analytics

Pinterest debuted its analytics this past week, and a lot of folks said two things:

1. Cool!
2. Now what?

We agree with the first. Let’s look at the second.

Remember that media is part of a larger puzzle, a marketing circle of life as it were:

Media helps create audience. Audience is transformed into leads by marketing. Leads are transformed into customers by sales. Customers are transformed into evangelists by service, and the evangelists help you create or share media to create new audience.

The question is, what do Pinterest analytics tell us? Mostly, they tell us about how well we’re creating audience. That means that by themselves, they’re not going to tell us a whole lot about what happens to that audience. Your web analytics software measures the transition between audience and leads. Your marketing automation software measures the transition between leads and sales. Your salesforce automation software measures the creation of customers and their care in your CRM. And your PR firm helps you to measure your efforts at creating new audience.

So who should be looking at Pinterest analytics?

The people responsible for the creation of audience (PR and media) and the people who use that output, your marketing department, to see whether the audience is the right one for keeping the marketing circle of life turning. Here’s a starter question to ask once you’ve set up your Pinterest analytics: what percentage of Pinterest visitors to your digital properties take the next step and become a lead? If you can dig around your Pinterest data and your web analytics for the answer, you’ll know what value Pinterest is and how it’s helping your business.

Christopher S. Penn
Vice President, Marketing Technology

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