Pinterest is growing quickly and Target, a major player on the national retail scene, has joined the fray. Target created their Pinterest page a few weeks ago and we here at GetPinterested have been following the growth of the page’s fan base closely.
Target’s Pinterest page is worth watching because both the retailer and the social network cater to a similar demographic: Young women. Most of Pinterest’s users fall under this category and Target caters to this demographic heavily through their use of exclusive fashion lines from popular designers that are priced for their budget-sensitive shoppers.
Target’s Pinterest strategy
Target is one of the few major retail chains to join Pinterest. Its competitors that are already on Pinterest include Kmart and Walmart, but their strategies differ from the one that Target appears to be taking. Kmart and Walmart have separate accounts for different aspects of their business. Kmart, for instance, has Kmart, Kmart Home and Kmart Fashion. Kmart divided its content between the different accounts depending on the topic, while Target pins all of its content from the main Target account.
This difference in strategy is worth watching. When you separate your brands presence, you risk diluting your message. While it is understandable for Kmart to not want to pin images of leaf blowers next to its Sofia Vergara fashion line, there is still the risk for three separate accounts not being as powerful as one.
A person is much more likely to search for Kmart than he or she is to search for Kmart Fashion. Target is looking to capture all of its audience in one page and then let them browse throughout the page to find what they want. In a way, their Pinterest board models their stores.
Target passed 375 followers and has pinned over fifty images across four boards. So far, it appears to have adopted a strategy that tends to turn off pinners – Target is exclusively pinning pictures from their own website. All of Target’s pins thus far have been pinned from either abullseyeview.com, a website that’s touted as “a behind the scenes” look at Target, Targetstyle.tumblr.com or Target.com. All internal websites.
Pinners often get frustrated with this sort of branding effort on Pinterest, as Pinterest is traditionally a place with lots of people pinning new things and new ideas. Not just advertising their own products.
Whether it changes its strategy or not Target could still succeed. Target’s number of users is not exactly overwhelming, but the love that many Pinterest users have for Target and its products could give it the edge to make Target one of the biggest brick-and-mortar brands on Pinterest.
Target is certainly worth watching and we’ll check back in on them in the coming months.
