As stay-at-home measures ease and people begin to resume to more normalcy, small businesses will need to ensure their marketing efforts shift forward to align with the new consumer mindset that has emerged. Pinterest believes that taking a best-practice approach to marketing and ensuring the right media mix, businesses of all sizes can more easily tap into the needs of their future-looking audiences.
Through our guide How to Inspire Through Uncertainty we’re offering businesses a four-phase framework to help them meet the evolving needs of their categories as they navigate the current consumer climate.
Small businesses thrive on Pinterest. Because 97 per cent of the top searches on the platform are unbranded, a range of businesses can be discovered by a highly engaged audience. Since mid-March, Pinterest has seen record levels of engagement globally including impressions, searches, saves, board creation and visitation, which was primarily driven by users staying home as well as recent product innovations on the platform. The number of global monthly active users grew 26 per cent year on year to 367 million in Q1 as it grew users to new highs around the world.
We urge marketers to pay careful attention to the following four stages in consumer sentiment as they’re planning – or re-planning – their advertising investment:
- Triage and Information
- Empathy and Relevance
- Escapism and Optimism
- Recovery and Rebound.
In the early weeks of the pandemic most consumers fell into Phases One and Two, as they felt overwhelmingly disoriented and worried about current events. However, Pinterest searches are now about the future. This shift indicates consumers are squarely in Phases Three and Four as they have grown increasingly restless and are wanting their lives to return to a state of normalcy.
We also anticipates some industries will see permanent changes in consumer behaviour after months of isolation. For local restaurants this could mean more customers are opting for home delivery even after they resume normal operations, and for bricks-and-mortar stories this could mean new expectations around cleanliness standards.
While there’s no silver bullet to recovery from the pandemic, businesses can evolve to new habits by effectively identifying and tapping into the needs of their customers.
1. Four phases in consumer sentiment to consider for your marketing
2. Recent searches on Pinterest are coming back to the future
3. Planning the right media mix and message for your industry
4. Lasting changes for key industries
Carin Lee-Skelton, Country Manager – Australia and New Zealand, Pinterest
