It’s official: Pinterest is more than a passing fad. With a highly active community of 15.6 million monthly active users, brands and retailers cannot ignore these eyeballs. At a basic level, Pinterest is a visually-oriented social bookmarking tool—a “virtual pinboard”  if you will. Users can aggregate visual content from around the web onto their boards. These boards, or collections, are public to members of the Pinterest community who can discover, like or comment on pinned images.

People use Pinterest in many ways, from collecting ideas for home decor to creating shopping wish lists. But what makes Pinterest unique is how related to physical goods it is. Once companies and brands develop a following on the site, successfully engaging their audiences by appealing to visual shoppers is ideal. For brands, Pinterest isn’t just a useful tool for cultivating relationships with customers, it also is a great platform to collaborate with retailers and drive in-store traffic.

Barneys New York

Brands and retailers should use Pinterest to first engage customers online and then convert them into shoppers. One of the most popular and favorite methods is a contest. Rather than simply entering your name into a sweepstakes, Pinterest enables consumers to share their visual inspiration as it relates to the brand. For instance, Barneys New York ran a contest for a chance to win exclusive items from its store if individuals created Valentine’s Day collections with items specifically pinned from the Barney’s website. Now Barneys New York has thousands of Pinterest users pinning actual products to their favorite collections as friends and followers do the same.

Whole Foods

Finally, Whole Foods is incredibly creative with its content to showcase the lifestyle aspects of its brand. Whole Foods pins and repins recipes, inspirational kitchens, healthy living, and of course, the delicious food that it has in stores. The brand has also created a several boards that focus on its headquarters’ town, Austin, to promote the local area and its produce. By generating engagement between brands and retail locations, consumers develop a sense of connection that has the potential to increase in-store sales. Pinterest campaigns can inspire a customer by appealing to a visual sensation, which ultimately leads to higher engagement for both brands and retailers.

What’s the big deal?

The key for these contests and promotions is not to advertise but to inspire. If people genuinely feel inspired by the visual images, they will re-pin and share this inspiration. Pinterest is not an advertising platform, but rather a place for discovery and inspiration. In fact, brands and retailers need to cater to the Pinterest audience in order to best engage with its users (you can learn more about tactical tips, tricks, and etiquette here).

In all, Pinterest is just one of the many channels for brands and retailers to collaboratively engage with their audiences. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and other mediums are great platformsfor cross-promoting Pinterest campaigns or vice-versa. But if you’re looking to visually inspire a highly engaged audience to seek out your brand through your retailers, look no further than Pinterest.

As Promoboxx is a TechStars Boston 2011 alumni, we wanted to recognize some of the exciting companies from the most recent Demo Day. From bicycles to social publishing to couponing and more, these companies developed some innovative approaches to solve big problems and improve our lives. While this is not a full list of recent TechStars Boston graduates, it includes few that caught my eye. (For Sonciary’s take, Promoboxx’s VP of Marketing and Client Services, see her recent article “A TechStars Alumnus View of Boston Demo Day” on BostInno.)

Zagster: Have you ever wanted to take a leisurely ride along the Charles River but don’t have a bike and aren’t interested in buying one? Zagster is abicycle sharing service for just such occasions. Businesses and universities can also set up their own programs for their employees , students, and communities. The sharing economy reduces waste in our lives, and Zagster will be pedaling into your community soon.

Simply Good: If you’re a brand or retailer, at some point you will most likely offer coupons to your consumers–discounts are a powerful motivator! However, existingcoupon creation programs, lack the targeting and analytics marketers need.Simply Good enables brands or retailers to target customers better, drive in-store sales, and understand their conversion.

Testive: High school students know that the only thing more painful than taking SAT is practicing for it. Testive is an adaptive SAT prep platform that adapts to a student’s abilities, assesses more accurately, and requires less time to practice and improve. This MIT team probably did well on their SATs, but they’re unleashing their knowledge to help aspiring college students get the scores they want (and perhaps follow the footsteps of the founders and get into MIT).

GymPact: So, you bought an expensive gym membership but have yet to get out of the office or off the couch to pump those guns. Laziness plagues many of us, but Gym Pact’s app motivates you to get to the gym through check-ins, monetary incentives, and of course, social media. This way you get your money’s worth and get in shape!

The journey has just begun for these companies, and we are looking forward to hear about their continued success!

The Next Generation

Independent retailers historically have relied on traditional, offline methods of marketing. Business owners utilized forms of marketing and communication that had not changed in decades – retailers who had success with direct mail, local advertising, and telemarketing had little impetus to change.

This resistance to new marketing techniques is largely generational, and it’s starting to change. First, customers are changing. Older people, typically late adopters, are becoming comfortable with new technology. The profile of disposable income is shifting as well; while the baby boom generation still has more purchasing power, Gen Y is also earning and attempting to emulate the lifestyle and leisure of their parents.

Second, the business owners themselves are changing. As owners prepare to hand over the keys of their stores to the next generation, new opportunities arise to complement existing marketing approaches with methods that reach the new generation of customers.

The Next Generation

The new generation is accustomed to the constant din of information. They’re comfortable with mobile technology and social media on various platforms. Of the more than 840 million monthly active users on Facebook, 45% are 34 and under and 69% under 44.

Small businesses have begun accessing these online populations through new marketing techniques. While still an emerging trend, this transition is already occurring. Small businesses are focusing more on inbound marketing such as social media, SEO, email, and blogs rather than direct mail, paid search, and telemarketing. 57% of small businesses currently are using Facebook , blogging, and tweeting to create a conversation with their customers and distribute content.

Forward-thinking business owners are focusing on digital content because that’s where the eyeballs are: the average user spends 15.8 minutes on Pinterest, 16.4 minutes YouTube, 12.1 minutes on Facebook, and 3.3 minutes on Twitter .

The Transition

The new generation of retailers recognize that having a physical store and pushing marketing to consumers through advertising will not be enough. They will create a dialogue with their customers through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and other emerging channels.

Consumers will demand better content, personalization, and access; and in turn stores will demand the same from their brands. Brands will need to collaboratively include retailers in the production, merchandising, and buying experience. Brands need to be malleable to new e-commerce and retail models. If brands do not support these shifts and empower their channel partners, consumers will look to other brands that are innovating.

The emerging new guard of retailers and customers creates an exciting opportunity. With customers accepting of new marketing channels – and retailers gaining comfort with using them – the market is as ready as ever for innovations in brand-to-retailer marketing.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, items were produced in a customized manner by craftsmen. Then, as companies were driven by efficiency and scale, brands became removed from customers through multiple layers in the value chain. Now consumers want the personal connection, reliability, and uniqueness that local stores and brands offer. Consumers have shifted their interests from wanting cookie-cutter products to searching for personal and local experiences. With the internet, it is now possible to bridge the gap between efficiency and personalization. Due to this shift, brands need to feel small once again.

In recent years, brands have begun a dialogue with their customers and have brought that into the customer’s context, merging the offline and online conversation, and have the mediums to humanize themselves through this dialogue. With relatively newer forms of communication such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, companies can now engage with their customers in a highly personalized manner making up for the lack of physicality with a personal touch of the shop clerk. Employees are not standing behind generic personas and overly professional tones but adding colloquialisms and personality through social media channels. Brands not only can achieve this with positive economics, but they gain new information around their customer by listening, engaging, and even collaborating. The data and conversations from brand to retailer to consumer is being unlocked and translated into value for everyone in the chain, and new collaborative, localized relationships are forming.

Local Partnerships

To bridge the gap between its national brand and its local stores, Chipotle partners with small, local suppliers to support the community and promoting these relationships. The reach and resources of Chipotle combined with the friendly face of the local supplier creates a powerful combination that creates a tangible connection with the community. Chipotle promoted this shift and evolution through a video that went viral and have continued the conversation on their site and through Twitter and Facebook campaigns.

Products Just for You

Retailers are collaborating with brands to localize products through real customer feedback and data. To give customers a true local experience, Macy’s customizes its products at the local level, with 15% of its products chosen by customers who shop at that store. It collaborates with brands to identify relevant merchandise for each location. It utilizes online channels to understand customers’ reviews, comments, and feedback about brands to tailor the customer experience.

Localization Through Facebook

Between online campaigns that create personalization through crowd-sourcing such as Vitamin Water’s campaign for a new flavor and  Ben and Jerry’s geography-specific Facebook Pages, brands can localize their online presence. In fact, digital campaigns increase offline sales by 21% according to ComScore.

Mobilizing Feet on the Street

Other companies are also taking advantage of local opportunities in a physical sense by combining it with the mobile world. Last year, Dos Equis employed the “Brave Taco Truck” to give out tacos and beer. It promoted the campaign on Facebook and Twitter and getting customers to check-in on Foursquare. It’s no longer about virtual vs. physical but omnipresence and omni-access.

While these are just a few examples of ways brands are becoming small and local, brands are reconnecting to the community across new channels. Consumers want to connect and create a dialogue and not just consume. So, now that new technology is creating avenues to efficiently personalize and engage, brands can create experiences that are reflective of its constituents in order to once create an intimate, local relationship.