Along with the spurt in food industry growth, which is expected to grow annually at a CAGR of 3.6% between 2020 and 2025, there has been an increase in recipe-related platforms too. As more social media platforms continue evolving, an increasing number of people have taken to these channels to share their favourite recipes with others. Therefore, it’s no wonder that recipe apps are themselves on their way to becoming an industry.

However, everyone from amateurs to well-established recipe brands is trying to benefit from the current digital setup, which makes it incredibly challenging for brands to acquire new audiences and hold on to their existing subscribers.

But there is no dearth of success stories of recipe brands that used channels like Pinterest to draw more audience and successfully retained them. So, here are three recipe platforms that leveraged Pinterest and made the most of its food-crazy audience to bring their brand to the centre stage.

1. MasakTV

The Indonesian cooking tutorial producing company sought to inspire young Indonesian people and give them clear video instructions that could help them create different delectable dishes for themselves.

Their Objectives

As Ramadan was coming up, MasakTV wanted to offer inspirational cooking ideas for Suhoor, Iftar, and Eid Al-Fitr.

Approach & Solution

As Pinterest is one of the sought out platforms for recipe inspiration and food-related ideas, it was an obvious decision on MasakTV’s part to collaborate with the platform.

Ramadan is that time of the year in the Islamic faith when people share meals with their friends, family, and colleagues. They look for food ideas for their meals like Suhoor, Iftar, and Eid Al-Fitr by searching for different keywords like Kue Lebaran or Menu Sahur Simple.

MasakTV wanted to make the most of this demand for which it created simple and healthy recipes. Since they wanted their target audience to notice these recipes and be drawn toward them, they published them throughout the Ramadan period.

They used organic video Pins to boost impressions and reach a younger audience. Also, they created Ramadan-themed boards so that Pinners could find recipes with different categories like Takjil Buka Puasa, Sahur Praktis, and Menu Buka Puasa.

The Result

The Pinterest campaign turned out to be a successful one for MasakTV. The use of organic Video Pins helped the brand widen its appeal and enhance its audience by 39% from the 18-24-year-old age group. The total impressions also increased by 4X.

2. Tastemade Indonesia

Entertainment company Tastemade Indonesia wanted to create simple Indonesian recipe ideas that could be used by people across the globe.

Their Objectives

The company sought to expand its reach and gain a wider audience for Indonesian cuisine across the world.

Approach & Solution

Since Pinterest is home to people looking for meal-planning ideas and food inspiration, from all around the world, Tastemade Indonesia decided to join hands with them.

Tastemade Indonesia’s Pinterest campaign revolved closely around the use of Rich Pins, which provided the Pinners with extra details directly on the Pin. This way, Pinners didn’t need to leave the Pinterest site for recipe details and found everything on the Pin itself.

They created themed boards, which helped the Pinners search for various home-cooked Indonesian food ranging from local drinks to healthy vegetable and chicken recipes. Also, they created short and simple videos showing the ingredients and cooking method clearly. This helped anyone looking for Indonesian food recipes relate to their video content.

The Result

The Pinterest campaign helped Tastemade Indonesia reach its target audience demographic of people between the age of 18 and 24. Almost 35% of their audience came from this age group. The campaign also helped them boost their impressions by 13X.

3. Kiwilimón

Recipe site Kiwilimón was looking to boost its online community of digital-savvy amateur cooks in Mexico and augment its presence across Latin America.

Their Objectives

Kiwilimón’s primary goal was to bring traffic from sites offering food insights to their platform.

Approach & Solution

Mexicans save 5.9 million food ideas on Pinterest every month. Therefore, teaming up with the platform was an obvious decision.

As Kiwilimón already had tons of content on their site, they used two different tools to ramp up their process of Pin creation. Firstly, they added the Save button to all the recipes on their platform, which encouraged people to save them on Pinterest.

Secondly, they used the Pinterest API, which turns all the content on the advertiser’s site into a Pin, to automate the Pin publishing process. They created Recipe Pins, which is a type of Rich Pin including title, ingredients, ratings, and serving information.

They also added text on top of their Pins to make them stand out in feeds. Also, they used vertically-formatted Pins, which provided the space to display multiple how-to steps for the same recipe. Also, they grouped Pins into different boards according to the ingredient, occasion, and cooking method.

The Result

Between July 2016 and July 2018, Kiwilimón’s Pinterest campaign delivered a 2.6X increase in impressions. Also, there was a 4.7X increase in the click-through rate. Pinterest now accounts for about 25% of Kiwilimón’s referral traffic. They had also attracted 8 million unique visitors from Pinterest in these two years.

Their most popular board, ‘Cocina Mexicana Tradicional’, has 586 Pins and more than 205,000 followers and gets the most impressions in the days leading up to the September Mexican Independence holidays.

Wrapping Up

Video Pins can be a great way for brands to get their tutorials across to Pinners. Also, short-form videos and max-width videos can be a great way of boosting click-through rates on Pinterest. However, keeping it simple and comprehensive is the key- a trick that brands often tend to miss.