Pinterest for Commercial Theme Customer Showcase?

As commercial theme providers continue to innovate and experiment with their business models and find solutions that meet their demanding customer needs I like to canvas and call-out implementations that are both creative and clever.

For instance, many commercial theme providers have a customer showcase where they share some of their “best” customers who have developed or designed off the base theme into a stunning beauty and wonder. Or, they will share some marquee clients and customers who are either big name individuals or companies that are using their product.

All of this is with the intent of not only showing the capability of their theme and product line but also to incentivize and market the product itself – it’s a strategy that works and I don’t necessarily see it functionally going away any time soon.

But what iThemes has done with their implementation for a customer showcase is really quite clever:

iThemes has created a showcase via the free service Pinterest for their Builder product line.

This is smart for a few reasons:

1. The Service is Free – There’s no cost for this implementation.
2. The Service is Contextually Relevant – People know about Pinterest and know how to “use” it as well. It won’t be a surprise when they see it. In fact, they might be pleasantly surprised to see it.
3. Native Sharing / Viral Opportunity – Pinterest has native sharing built-in and the possibility of viral sharing is a few clicks away. People can also follow the pins and repin them to their own accounts.
4. Easy to Manage – The ease of “updating” their showcase via Pinterest is literally a few button clicks. No more managing the images or uploading them to a WordPress-powered showcase with featured images, links, and copy!
5. Clean and Polished – The site just looks good. No design necessary.

WIth the time-savings that is created with this type of creative implementation I believe that iThemes has really found a winner. Good on you guys, bravo!

Is this something that you’d consider doing for your theme shop or business?