40 Pinterest for Business Marketing Tips 2023

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Updated:

12/26/2022

pinterest marketing tips for ecommerce

Pinterest Marketing Tips & Best Practice For Business For 2022

The Pinterest For Business Marketing Tips in this Best Practice Guide are intended to help you make the most of Pinterest.   Whether you are on Pinterest or not, understand this, Pinterest is continually growing and still the #1 driver of referral traffic for Ecommerce!  

Pinterest now has more worldwide users than Amazon.  Posts on Pinterest have the longest, most effective life-span, and 84% of users have stated that they go there to plan out purchases.  What is not to like about that?   

Pinterest is known for making changes and releasing new features.  This post will be kept updated but represents the best practices for 2022

Pinterest is a powerful source of traffic and sales for a substantial portion of its users. No one ever says Pinterest works OK. It either works well for you or doesn't because you are not maximizing the easy-to-use features it presents for you. This post lists out many of those features and how to use them.

1

Create A Business Account, Claim Your Website And Social Profiles

The first thing anyone should do on Pinterest is to open a business account. Having a business account includes certain perks such as the ability to use Rich Pins, run ads, and you get analytics as well.   

You also need to claim your website, which is a relatively simple process. If you don't have a site, Pinterest allows you to claim a YouTube account, Instagram, or Etsy. Doing this is easy but essential.

It qualifies you to be seen by Pinterest as a content creator, which gives you more clout with your ability to get your Pins classified correctly.

2

Think Like Your End-User

With Pinterest, you must think as your end-user does. Format your profile around the things they are interested in and keep them on your profile longer. A great way to understand how your user thinks is to visit the media profiles of the different significant magazine insights where they get their information.

These large corporations pay much money for demographic and interest information for your audience. Study the boards they have on their profile to understand your audience's interests. Specifically, you are looking for high engagement topics in articles.

This is the kind of information and boards you want on your site as long as it's relevant.

3

Include Kw Phrase In Your Profile Name

It is perfectly normal and a default option to name your profile after your business. My profile is ecommerceoptimizer. I should have named my profile one on one coaching, e-commerce coaching, Amazon listing optimization, or something along those lines.

It is advantageous to give your profile name as one of your more vital keyword phrases. In the same sense, it is beneficial to have SEO-friendly URLs for your product pages and images on my website URL.

Every image that you upload, anywhere on the internet, should be renamed before uploading it to your keyword phrases relevant to that page. You should have an ALT tag on every image well. Alt tags are for screen readers for disabled people, but they also help your SEO quite a bit

4

Use A Face For Your Profile Image

Remember, Pinterest shows your pins to the people interested in your topic but do not follow you or know who you are. You want to use your Pinterest account to introduce yourself, your company to new people & new businesses.

Pinners look at profile images as a sign of trust. You will make them feel more comfortable if you put a face in your Pinterest profile image instead of just your logo. It builds trust with new buyers & new clients and is proven to increase click-through.

5

Plan With The End In Mind

When you plan a board or pin, you need to think about where you are sending the user. You should plan with the end in mind. What is the result that you are seeking from the pin? Is it to get them to visit some content, is it to get an email opt-in, or is it to get a purchase?

That should directly affect your pin description and title. Just throwing things up to throw them up with no real purpose accomplishes little.

6

Keep Your Profile And Boards On Point

It will help if you keep your boards and your profile along the same lines, including the description on point with your main topics and subject.

People like to fill their bio with what they like to do.   It is to your advantage to skip it and focus on establishing your keywords and your account's purpose.

Only keep boards in your business account that pertain to your business.  If you have boards in there that are not very relevant now, don't delete them, just make them secret boards.

New beginning in December 2020, Pinterest has further enabled sellers to showcase their items for sale with the new Shop Tab and more of a storefront view of the business profile

New Pinterest Storefront

New Pinterest Storefront Photo courtesy of SEJ

pinterest-shop-tag

When users search for product related searches they will now see the Shop tab at the top of their results as shown above. Clicking on it will show in-stock products arranged by category, featured product groups and dynamically-created recommendations.  

Another new feature currently in testing is the improved tagging tool.  Sellers will now be able to tag their images with the exact products shown making it easier for buyers to buy the exact item.

As a planning tool, the actual purchase on Pinterest is not always immediate, With these new tools, hopefully, it will shorten the buyers journey or at least cement the buyers' product decision better bringing them into your audience.

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7

Connect Your E-Commerce Catalog Directly To Pinterest

pinterest-catalog-pins

Suppose you have an eCommerce store on Shopify or Woocommerce, or many other places. In that case, you can import your product feed directly into Pinterest and create buyable pins.

This is a massive advantage over the person that cannot create buyable pins on Pinterest. Information from your product page like review information, price, description, and stuff carry over automatically.

Amazon does not participate in this program now, although they may in the future, you never know. Shopify now has an integrated app that automates the integration with Pinterest. With the other platforms, it is a simple spreadsheet upload or the use of a plugin like Yoast for Wordpress users.

When your catalog is connected, and you create a new item on your website, it automatically creates the Pin for you.   Another new feature is the ability to create collections with your catalog and the integration of collections with Pinterest ads.   You can now create a collections ad with a feature image or video and then add a product group containing multiple images to the ad.  


8

Get Approved For Rich Pins

Rich Pins provide more context about an idea, products, articles, and recipes. Using Rich Pins enables each Pin from your site to provide accurate site information. It remains the same even if someone enters their information in the description box. Existing Pins that link back to pages with rich meta tags will also start appearing as Rich Pins.

Pinterest used to offer five variations of rich pins; now, they offer only 3. You can utilize rich pins for products, articles, and recipes.  

You only need to validate 1 URL to apply for Rich Pins on your entire domain. Create your Pin and validate it with the Rich Pin Debugging Tool.

pinterest marketing tips with rich pins

9

Include Images, Sharing Buttons & A Pinterest Save Button On Your Site

Anybody can have a site, post on social media, put stuff up, put up product pages; it does not mean anything if nobody goes to it. You can have a large following on your social media, but if everybody is asleep and nobody is engaging, really, what good is it.

Engagement is key! One method to encourage engagement and increase awareness is to ensure that all posts on your website include images easily saved as Pinterest pins. 

Also include sharing buttons and a Pinterest save button.   Make it so a user can right-click an image on your webpage and pin it directly to Pinterest.

You can set default titles and descriptions. They can change it unless you are using Rich Pins, but we both know people are lazy, and generally, they will not. Make it easy for people to follow you and to share your content.

Sharing buttons

 A Tailwind sharing button, PinIt, and social sharing buttons

10

Pinterest Pins And Boards Rank Very Well On Google

Maybe you have noticed that Pinterest ranks very well on Google. That is to your advantage if you do it right. Search results domination on Google is about occupying real estate. How many references can you have on the first page of the search results for your keyword phrase?

You can have your webpage, Amazon page, Facebook profile, YouTube videos, off-site reviews, references to resellers, pins, and more. My goal is always to have six or seven of the ten spots on the first page. It is hard not to click on somebody who has that many spots, even if they are not in the first position.

How do you optimize for Google on Pinterest? Through proper planning of keyword phrases, descriptions, titles, and hashtags. Boards rank the best on Google.  Look at this example of a Google search.   In the search results is this listing that leads right to her group board.

pin-results-google

Have you ever noticed a top-ranking page on Google with spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes?  Use Grammarly to check spelling and grammar for everything you post anywhere, if for no other reason then not to embarrass yourself.

If you find value in this post, please share it with your favorite social channel and tag someone you think could benefit from this article.

11

Treat Pinterest Like A Search Engine

Pinterest is a visual planning search engine for e-commerce. People use it to plan future events, purchases, and life in general. The images that you use are the first impression.  Pinterest is a site made up of many topic feeds.  These topics that a user has followed populate their screen when they log in and use Pinterest.  

If you want many people to see your pins in the search results and their topic feeds, you need to optimize your boards and pins to topics and search phrases. Naming a board Bright Lights will likely be seen by no one. Instead, name it Bright Lights for Home Décor or DIY Bright Lights for Home Remodeling. Both of those are targeted at specific popular topics.

Focus On What Works

DIY and recipes are the two most popular topics on Pinterest.  Don't think that you cannot use it because you sell pillows that are not DIY.  Create pins targeted at DIY home Remodeling or DIY Bedroom Makeovers.   Correct use of hashtags on and social posts will directly affect and increase the chances of appearing in the search results.

Understand that users respond to visual stimulation, so you will want to get your point across within the pin itself as much as possible.   Rename your image to the most appropriate keyword phrase before uploading it.  Any time you can add alt tags for an uploaded image, make sure that you do.

pinterest-search-benefits

Look at the image above.  It contains multiple points worth noting that are covered in different places in this article.

  • Keyword use - The red arrows show that Pinterest keywords it reads from the pin image itself, titles, and descriptions to provide the best possible query results.
  • Additional keywords revealed - In the blue box, Pinterest tells you additional keyword phrases in search volume order. When optimizing your Pins and boards for keywords and long-tail keywords, Pinterest is telling you which ones to use.
  • Video is very effective - The pin in the green box is a video.  Very few pinners are using video, so you should.  It immediately pulls your eyes toward it when it comes into view and stands out as different. 
  • Pinterest Ads- There are two promoted pins in the image above.  How did they come up ion those search results?  A very powerful feature of Pinterest Ads is keyword targeting.  Pinterest provides a very powerful keyword tool in the ad creation area that provides keyword volume also.  Again Pinterest is telling you what keywords to choose to maximize the effectiveness of your ad.

12

Keep An Eye On Your Results And Scale What Works

Ensure that you install the Pinterest tag on your website and have your Facebook pixel on your website with an analytics program. The more data about behavior that you can collect, the better.

Pinterest provides information, but it still is not anything like Facebook or Google Analytics in terms of depth of knowledge. To understand your audience, you will want to collect as much data as possible.

Pay attention to what pins are being clicked on and repeat what works. When you save other people's pins, focusing on pins with many shares and saves almost guarantees more eyes on your other pins as well. Pinterest no longer reveals saves and pins on other people's pins as it has in the past. 

How can you see this information? A Chrome extension called PIN On Top allows you to sort multiple pins pages by the number of saves. I use this all the time and generally only save other people's pins if they already have a high number of saves.

13

Pinterest Search Is Very Revealing And Powerful

Pinterest search is your friend. The method by which Pinterest was created makes it, so a search reveals the best keywords to target, the best people to follow, the best pins, the best boards, and more.

If you want to know what phrases your users are searching for on Pinterest to find your competitors or like products, start typing your keyword phrase into the search bar.  You will see that it drops and will show you the most searched phrases relevant to your typing.

The dropdown on the right side of the search bar gives you options to gain more information. You can filter for product pins, video pins, competitors, influencers, and more.

Pinterest-People-search

When you hit enter to complete the search, Pinterest will put a line of boxes across the screen under the search bar most of the time.

Those are the same phrases and more in volume order of how they were searched. Pinterest is telling you what search terms to use and what people are searching for the most.

Pinterest Search

14

Pinterest Reads And Interprets Your Images

The Pinterest search engine is smart AI. It can read the contents of your image itself, not only the text but the picture too. Suppose you post a picture of a rose with no text. In that case, Pinterest will return additional pictures of roses that match the one you uploaded.

Pinterest is fine-tuned explicitly for fashion and home décor. If you upload a picture of a style of Home Décor, Pinterest will return additional pins that match it. It is essential to know that and pay attention to what is in your images.  

Suppose you upload the image of Kendall Jenner. In that case, Pinterest should return images of similar dresses. Still, it may not because it also reads all the brand names and may get confused. Additionally, she will now be linked to each of those brands.

pinterest-best-prasctice-guide

Just as important is the text. If you are selling a fashionable jacket, you might have a woman modeling the jacket with a building in the background and a sign that says Bill's Tavern. Pinterest will read the sign and then become confused as to your Pin's true meaning and possibly dilute the effectiveness of your pin.

15

Review The Search Results For Your Kw's

We often see Sellers and Pinners post things that they think will work or post products and listings that they think will work. They do this without looking at what is currently working and what their competition is doing.

It is not that you want to steal what they are doing. You want to know what is working, and you want to know what you need to do to stand out and be different. 

How well do you know your buyers?

Do you know what motivates your audience to buy your product or service?  
What influencers does your audience worship and follow?

The answers to those questions can be the difference between being out of business soon, and having a long term sustainable business. Right now, you probably target buyers one PPC ad at a time.

What would you think if I told you that you could take the PPC expense and target 10x the amount of people by knowing whom your audience worships? This is just one of the benefits of fully understanding your buyer personas and avatars.

buyer persona
Buyer Persona Creation is just one of the many Workshops we offer here at Ecommerce Optimizer.  We also offer a Content Creation/Management Workshop, Hashtag Marketing, Google Ads, and others.  With membership starting at only $39.95 a month, you get access to all workshops and more.  


Separately, we have our Pinterest Launch Package.   We also provide the best coaching available from Joe Reichsfeld who has been selling and coaching for over 20 years across multiple platforms and categories.  All the workshops are available for prices starting at 39.95 a month with a 7-day trial.  Coaching is separate but is affordable, and you get access to 20 years worth of marketing resources.

16

Do Something To Stand Out

That is important on Pinterest. When you look at Pinterest, many things look the same. It is to your advantage that if everybody is putting up green pins, you do not.  Use a different color.

If everybody is putting up pins that feature a little kid doing something specific, feature that kid doing that specific item differently if this is what you are selling.

17

Always Use 3 To 5 Hashtags

Hashtags are topic aggregators. It is an excellent way to target groups and gets your information, pins, and content in front of more people. You should be using hashtags on all of your social channels and everything that you send out.

Be aware of the different social channels requirements, in any case.  For example, Instagram allows up to 

30 hashtags. Facebook will slow down your distribution once you get over 4. On Pinterest, you want to use 3-5 hashtags.

Establish a branded hashtag that represents your brand. That should be on every single thing that you send out and post. 

On Pinterest, you would want your branded hashtag, plus you should have hashtags that are your keywords for that specific post.  

Hashtags

You should always use a relevant trending hashtag also from a site like all-hashtags.com.

What this does is this allows you to get your information in front of a wider group of people. Just do not pick too popular of a hashtag because then it will not stay in the feed long enough.  Hashtags affect new pins, so do not go back and add them to old pins or put them in your profile.

18

Always Target Pinterest Topics & Categories

Pinterest is a giant RSS feed. When you sign up for Pinterest, you follow different topics. Each one of those topics is an RSS feed, which is an information feed.

When you log into Pinterest every time, just like Instagram, your screen fills up with your interests. Those are different topics and categories that you have followed.

Your goal if you want many eyes on your pins is to get into those feeds. So you should always target categories or topics that are followable in your titles and your board descriptions. The number of categories tends to change. There used to be 32. Now there are only 16. Use this link to see the current categories

Finding topics that have a following is a little more difficult these days. It used to be as simple as a Google search. They have recently changed their URL structure. I will update this as I learn more, but topic URLs are now formed like this -  https://pinterest.com/ideas/enter-your-topic-here.

19

Pin To The Most Relevant Boards

Your entire profile must stay relevant to your topic. Pinterest counts on you as a content creator, which is what you are, to help it understand what your content is about.

To achieve that, you must keep your business profile about your business.   If you sell kayaks, but your favorite sport is football, put your football boards in your personal account, not your business account. 

You want to make sure that you pin to relevant boards and any group boards that you join are relevant to your topics

At Ecommerce Optimizer, we have been in Ecommerce and assisting other sellers since 1999.  Our experience covers a lot of different marketplaces around the world.  We have a reputation for building brands and communities from a foundation of value and content.  We help you capitalize on the trust and authority without blowing your margins on paid advertising.  

Amazon sellers rely on our ability to be successful without manipulated reviews, rebates or excessive PPC.  For additional Amazon tips and strategy, check out our Dominate Amazon Products Series.  

Amazon isn't the only marketplace that we have experience with.  We have as much knowledge with traditional websites and marketplaces too.  Check out our Sell On Walmart article, our list of Niche Marketplaces To Sell On as well as our article about expanding to Sell On Amazon Europe.

We focus on helping sellers grow their businesses and diversify reducing your dependence on any 1 platform while exponentially growing the available audience.  In addition, we also have our FREE Pinterest Traffic Domination Workshop, a Pinterest Launching Service1 on 1 Coaching and several other workshops as well.  Let us help you make this your best years ever!

20

Optimize Pinterest For Mobile

pinterest-best-prasctice-guide

This is 2021. If you are not optimizing for mobile already, you are missing the boat. Over 80% of Amazon users and 85% of Pinterest users browse on their mobile phones. If you are not optimizing for mobile and your competitor is, they appreciate that.  

Optimizing for mobile means making sure your images are rectangular and occupy the entire screen of a phone. You don't want another pin appearing on the screen when yours does or with yours because it's distracting and could cost you conversion.

21

Create Fresh Pins Often

Pinterest has made it extremely clear this year they will reward fresh content. Fresh content on Pinterest is not necessarily new product pages or new articles. It is as simple as new pins for existing content and product.

To them, new content is a new PIN. So create new pins often. Change the image, and target it with a different title and a different description. (Updated May 2022)

Change the image enough so it is visually different from the others. In some cases, it can be as easy as moving the different layers around in photoshop.  In some cases, like the Pin for this article, I have changed the background several times and have reposted it with only 10 tips visible tips listed and the pin itself says click to see the rest of the hot tips.

At the very least, move the logo around, move text around, etc. that's fresh content to Pinterest, and they will reward you.

22

Use Carousel Pins And Idea Pins

Idea Pins(formerly Story Pins) are a newer feature and a focus of Pinterest itself. New in the Spring of 2022, Pinterest also offers Idea Ads.  They are great for 'how-to pins' and to share ideas featuring up to 20 pages of images, video, text, and can include audio also. While Instagram stories are about you and your story, Pinterest Stories can share any content. The goal is to tell a story. It doesn't necessarily need you as the center of it.

Carousel Pins are great for Products because you can create a flippable pin for your product with all of your product images in it. It is still important that your images be relevant to the title and description, so if you are targeting something specific, make the initial image relevant to the title and description

23

Use Video Pins 6 To 15 Seconds Long

When you look at Pinterest, just like when you look at Instagram, you see a wall of images. Instagram is a little less crowded than Pinterest, but still, that is what you see. There are not very many people using video on Pinterest yet.

I suggest that you use videos for your pins often. When you look at your profile, as soon as a video pops up, it immediately pulls your eyes towards it. Optimally the video should be 6 to 15 seconds. They automatically play with the volume off, so do not rely on the audio to get your point across.

This pin is many times more effective as a video than it is as a still image.  Make the user able to picture themselves using your product.  If you have no access to video equipment, use a tool like the free Headliner App to make a video using your still images and animated text.

Pinterest marketing tips video

24

Always Be The First To Pin Your Page, Product, Or Service

Pinterest counts on you as the content creator to help it catalog and categorize your content and images. You must post a new page, article, or a new service to Pinterest first before anybody else does.

When you are posting a new page product or service, you should pin immediately. It is your opportunity to define to Pinterest precisely what your content is about and who should see it.   That initial image, title, and description are essential for helping Pinterest understand who the target of that pain is.

Post the pin to the most relevant board first and then wait 3 days before posting it to a different board.  Always wait several days before posting pins from the same URL.  

25

Create Multiple Pins For Each Post

Create multiple pins for each post. This enables you to have fresh content, and it enables you to drill down and target specific topics and people. For example, if you sell a dog bed theoretically, you can make a pin for every dog breed and have it going to the same piece of content.

Would I use the same image for every dog breed? No, not at all. It would help to have images that target that specific dog breed, although that can be quite a bit. You want your pins and boards to Target specific keyword phrases.

Drill your pins down to target specific phrases. Do not dilute the purpose of a pin by trying to be too broad. If you sold a moisturizing shampoo that appealed to people with sensitive scalps and people with curly hair, you would have a pin for sensitive scalps and a separate pin targeting shampoo for curly hair.

26

Image Ratio 2:3, Fill The Mobile Screen With Your Pin

People often ask what the best size is for a pin. It is not size like inches are pixels; it is the ratio. You want to fill up the phone screen. The best way to do that is to make your pins 2:3. If your pin is 1000 pixels wide, it is going to be 1500 pixels tall.

I generally stay with that pixel dimension to be sure the image is of high quality. Sometimes you will find that you just have too much information for a pin, and it needs to be longer than the phone screen. You want to avoid that as much as possible, but occasionally it might be necessary.

In that case, though, the user will not see the entire pin, so be strategic about where you place the text—for example, this post itself. If I make a pin about this post, the number of items on this post will make that pin too long.

Do I want to do it that way?  The answer is to test and see how your audience responds the best.

full screen pin

27

Add saturation to make your colors stand out

Add Saturation To Make Your Colors Pop

Part of standing out on Pinterest is getting the attention of the user. When most people are on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, you see them standing there with their fingers going a mile a minute because they are scrolling.

Your priority is to get them to stop and pay attention to your pin. A great way to make sure that happens is to add saturation to your images. Saturation will make your color pop out and be more noticeable.

A general rule of thumb is a 30% increase for images that do have people in it and a 50 percent increase in images that don't have people in it. The reason for the difference is too much saturation on a person turns them into an orange.

Think of that wall of images that people see.  How will you differentiate your pins and stand out?

28

Small Text And Drab Colors Fail

I often see pins and websites then have drab, gray colors & do not work well at getting somebody to stop and pay attention. They do not work well on Pinterest because they do not get good conversions.

You want to stick with bright springtime type colors. In the same context, remember that people are using their phones. Small text that washes out into the background and does not stand out is worthless, and you are better off not even using it.

You need to make sure that you have text large enough to read on a screen and that there's enough of a contrast in the colors to stand out to be read.  How is someone supposed to read the text that I highlighted in the red boxes?   The brand name is a completer washout.

Pinterest marketing tips

29

Use The Kw Targeting Tool For Search Volume

Here is a little keyword trick for you. If you go to the ads Area in your business profile and choose 'Create An Ad', choose 'Next' to go to the next screen, you will find the Pinterest keyword tool. The keyword tool is for targeting ads at specific keyword phrases. 

It also gives you search volume. You don't need to run an ad to use it, but you have to act like you will start the process to get to it.

You will see a figure for the total audience possible with your keyword phrases in the upper right corner of the screen. That number is not accurate.

It does not account for the overlap of the audiences. The phrases themselves are rounded because they're round numbers, but it's excellent information either way.

Start by typing in your seed keyword first and press enter. Related keyword phrases and the search volume for each will populate the results for you.

search volume

Leverage For Your Other Channels

I would be using Pinterest keyword research as part of the keyword research for my products.  The Amazon audience overlaps with Pinterest. It only makes sense that many keywords would apply.

30

Use A Scheduling Tool

Chances are you have read somewhere that you should pin 30 times a day. Sure, it would be nice if we all had time to pin 30 times a day. Doing nothing but creating content, but the truth of the matter is, it does not work that way.

What you should do and what Pinterest wants you to do is to be consistent. Suppose you are going to pin 30 times a day, pin 30 times every day. If you are going to pin twice a day, pin twice a day every day and be consistent. Do not always use a scheduling tool.

Go into Pinterest sometimes and manually put up some pins. Pinterest wants to see engagement from you occasionally. Do not kill yourself. Use a scheduling tool. Whether it's Tailwind, ViralwootHootSuite, Buffer, Meet Edgar, or Sendible, use a scheduling tool.

There is nothing worse than struggling to figure out what you will put together to post for tomorrow morning. Instead, have your social media person sit down once a week or twice a week and create all the posts & the pins for that week and then scheduling them.

They are spending their time during the week engaging your customers, helping your business move forward. They are not stuck in a rut of trying to figure out what they are going to do for tomorrow's post.

31

Use An Opt-In Landing Page To Build Trust First, With Content

As a visual planning search engine, the strength of Pinterest is that it puts your pins in front of people who have already expressed interest in your topic. They are not cold leads, but they are not quite warm yet either.

The word planning infers I am not ready to buy today. For that reason, you must use a landing page with an opt-in to send people to. Suppose all you do is put Amazon URLs on your pins. In that case, you cost yourself traffic & business because not everybody is ready to buy.

You need to warm them up to your business. They are already interested in the topic.  What works best is sending them to a landing page, squeeze page, or opt-in page where you provide value with content in exchange for their email address.  Get them into your email sequence and lead them to realize that they have an issue that you can solve as their best option.

This is an advanced issue and something that a small guide isn't in-depth enough to cover in detail.  Bookmark this page
(Control +D) for an upcoming article on The Pinterest Marketing Funnel

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32

Pinterest Is A 3-Week Funnel, Lead Them To The Decision

Pinterest is a three-week funnel. That is the main reason why we use an email sequence and walk them to the decision.

You can also have pins that you do go straight to the product page, but we know from experience that you get better results when you have a mix of both.

33

No Discounts/Rebates, Users Spend More Than Any Other Referral

Pinterest's users spend 40% more than any other social referral. Pinterest's users average household incomes over $50,000. A large percentage of a Pinterest user's household income is over $110,000 a year.

Pinterest's users are not seeking discounts and rebates regardless of what your fake guru tells you. You actually might repulse a Pinterest user by offering them a discount or rebate by making them think that you are trying to sell them crap.

Remember, Pinterest does not put your pin in front of them unless they have already indicated that they are interested in your topic. You already know that they are interested in your topic. Do not waste your margins, giving away your margins.

34

Run A Contest To Your Audience Or To Grow Your Following

Contests are a promotion that won't break your bank account. But they can also get you a lot of worthless followers. It is important that you target the right audience with your contest to get the best possible followers.

Listed below are the Pinterest contest rules:

  • Don't require people to save a specific image. Give people the ability to choose Pins based on their tastes and preferences, even if it's from a selection or a given website.
  • Don't allow more than one entry per person.
  • Don't suggest that Pinterest sponsors or endorses you or the promotion.
  • Do review our brand guidelines for general rules about using the Pinterest brand.
  • Lastly, be sure to follow all relevant laws and regulations.

Get Creative With Your Contest

Get creative with your contests but stay within the rules.   The best contests encourage engagement, and it is even better if it includes user generated content.  The benefits are many, including social proof, and saves as well as increasing awareness.  

You could create a Pin to Win contest asking users to choose from a specific board of pins.  Ask them to choose a pin from the group of pins and to save it with a specific hashtag.  

You can do this contest across all of your social channels at once. Then just post the same group of images for them to choose from on each channel. Set up a Talkwalker alert to alert you via email of every share.

If you sell something that can be photographed of the user wearing it or using it, run a contest. They can enter by posting an image of themselves using it or wearing it and your hashtag. Then create your board where you share their pins also—more solid social proof.

pinterest contests

A feedback contest is great as well because it encourages engagement and feedback. To enter, users can choose pins from a specific board and save it to their profile with a comment about what they like best with the item and your hashtag.

Then create a board of all the entries. You have a testimonial board, plus you get valuable opinions about your pins.

The items below are a simple button with an icon, and the colors changed. The first one is an example of how you can use your Pinterest save contest to drive traffic to your profile from off of Pinterest.

Don't just run your Pinterest contest on Pinterest itself.  The goal is followers, so promote it off of Pinterest.  On your blog, other social channels, etc..  That is the single biggest missed opportunity that I see.  Very few people promote their accounts on other platforms.  You can even run a very low-cost ad for your contest

35

Pin To Relevant Group Boards

Group boards were once trendy on Pinterest, then they went away, and now they are back. Group boards are centered on a topic and are made up of many people that contribute to it.

A good group board is well worth the effort to belong. If you start group boards, expect to spend all of your time administering the group board, kicking people off, and policing it.

We do not recommend that you have any group boards of your own. Instead, we recommend that you find good ones to join. Pingroupie is an excellent tool to use to find group boards.

You are looking for boards that do not have many collaborators but have a fair number of followers, pins and are active.

pingroupie

36

Cross-Promote Your Social Profiles

When you first post a pin to Pinterest, the first thing Pinterest does is show it to your followers. Their engagement signals Pinterest to your pin's quality. It affects how and where Pinterest shows your pin to people who have indicated that they are interested in your topic but do not yet follow you.

It is vital that you cross-promote your social media profiles on your other social media profiles. The result is that your most fanatical followers will follow you on multiple profiles. Those people will also engage with everything that you post. There is much value in having those people as followers.

Suppose you have a million followers on Pinterest who do not engage. I have ten followers, and are all engaging with my pins. In that case, my followers are worth more than your followers are. On Pinterest, it's about quality over quantity

37

Pins With People But Not Faces Convert Better

Another best practice concerns images. Pins that have people in them but do not show the face convert better than images you see. It sounds weird, I know. Don't ask me why, but it is a metric that Pinterest themselves put out

38

Pins With A Call-To-Action Convert Better

Another best practice for Pinterest is to include a call to action in the description or on the pin itself.  It also converts better. What do I mean by a call to action?  Listed below are excellent examples of CTA's for your pin description.

  • Download this content
  • Click to read more
  • Click for more information
  • Explore the beautiful homes that we have for sale
  • Learn more
  • Buy now
  • Order now
  • Before it's too late

You can even put it in your pin as long as it is subtle. If you get a spam complaint about pushing the hard sell, Pinterest will say bye-bye and kick you off.

When you include a direct to product pin, add the price to the description if it is not on the pin itself.   The point is do not mislead anyone.

Pinterest video with a CTA

39

Pins With The Brand Name In The Description Convert Better

Another best practice on Pinterest is to put your brand name in the description. Pins that have the brand name in the description convert better. 

40

Do Not Post Anonymously, Brand Everything

You should never post anything, an article, images, products that are not in some way, shape, or form relevant to your Pinterest topics. 

You're going to be doing many brand promotions, making people aware of who you are. They're not necessarily interested in the offer yet. The bio on a guest post might be the only place where you can do this.  

Make them aware of who you are, what makes you able to be the authority and talk on the subject, or that your brand sponsored a post.  It might be your logo on an image, or it could be an endorsement from a podcaster before the podcast, all sorts of things like that.  

41

Every Pin Should Be Linked To A URL

I see pins all the time that are not linked to anything. That is a wasted pin. Every pin should link out to something, content, a service, product, a landing page, something.

Without a URL, it isn't beneficial and does nothing to help the person achieve the pin's goals.  Whatever URL that you send them to, it needs to be consistent with the pin.  If your pin offers an article and instead goes straight to a product page, you baited them and accomplished nothing.

42

Pin Seasonal Items Early To Rank Up

For seasonal pins, you want to get them up 4 to 6 weeks before they are needed to be live on that date. You want to give Pinterest sometime to get the pin posted and some engagement.

Some people will have seen it, and it will help with ranking the pin too. If you wait till the last minute to put it up, don't even put it up, it won't do you any good

43

Use The Pinterest Trending Tool

Finally, yet significantly, the new Pinterest Trend tool. The Pinterest Trends tool is available in the analytics section of your Pinterest account. Use this to look at your keyword phrases. It is a tool to develop keyword phrases based on trends.

It is straightforward to take a phrase and your assorted phrases and put it into the trends tool, and you will see what is getting traffic or trending up on Pinterest. If you use this tool correctly, it will influence the keyword phrases that you choose.

It is a perfect place to find trends, fads, and things that are just popping up. This tool did not have much information behind it for a while. It has been up now for a bit and typically returns good results.

Pinterest Trends

Take Action With These Pinterest Marketing Tips

OK, now you have all of these incredible Pinterest marketing tips and best-practice ideas.  You know what the next statement is, I'm sure.  Now, you need to take action to put all of these great ideas into play, so you can benefit from them.    Does this seem intimidating to you?  Don't let it affect you like that because the rewards far outweigh the effort.  Over 65% of the 350 million users are women.  

The older demographic is on Pinterest, but the majority of the action comes from millennials.  Pinterest's users make more than the typical Social platform demographic.  As a result, they spend 40% more on avg., over any other social platform.  

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, content plus product pins work best.  It also exponentially increases the size of your audience potential. Not having a website is not a good enough excuse anymore either.  There are and always have been other options.  

Set up a quiz or a survey with Google forms, gather their email at the end, and tell them you will email them the results.  I prefer using a site like Interact or Typeform for quizzes because it includes a lot more options in terms of scoring, segmenting  and analyzing the results based on user response, but Google Forms works fine also.  

Pitch your product in the email.  Mailchimp has hosted landing pages now.  You can use ClickFunnels to grab the opt-in and then pitch your product.  Meanwhile, if they bounce, you have their email address and can follow up.  Conversions on retargeting are always better.

Conclusion: You Should Be Using Pinterest For Business In 2022

If this hasn't convinced you of all the different ways to use Pinterest for business or how it can benefit you then there is nothing else I can say.  Overlooking the value of Pinterest for Ecommerce and driving traffic is simply overlooking potential sales and opportunity.  It is not rocket science, but often sellers have a hard time because they focus on the hard sell which will not work.  There are plenty of business people out there whose entire marketing plan revolves around Pinterest and are doing well.

Women owned companies do very well on Pinterest in general and even better when they network with the other powerful women-owner groups that dominate the platform.   Either way though Pinterest is the future.  It will rival Facebook's size within just a few years.  It really is to your advantage to get yourself situated and comfortable on it now.

If you use the platform for no other reason besides research, the keyword volume feature within the ad's area plus Pinterest's Trend Tool should be a part of your research methods for your website and products.

Pinterest-marketing-tips-pin

About the author 

Joe Reichsfeld

Joe Reichsfeld is an E-commerce Coach and Consultant who has been helping entrepreneurs succeed online since 1999. Before E-commerce, Joe spent almost 20 years managing and consulting in the food and beverage industry. His background, plus years of experience working with thousands of sellers, gives him a unique perspective and approach that has helped many clients.

Joe currently works with solopreneurs, small and medium-sized businesses, and Fortune 500 companies. He helps his clients create strong brands—using organic and paid methods—that have proven to deliver sustainable sales, traffic, and long-term growth. His strategies help clients dominate their niches and reach a larger target audience while diversifying across markets and borders. Book a 1 on 1 coaching call with Joe today and find out how he can help your business grow!

WORKSHOPS

The workshops below are designed to help you level up your game in each of the areas of interest presented. Many include the full systems and processes used to help a client stand apart from their competitors and take control of their business. As a member, you can access all of these workshops for as little as $39.95 per month after a 7-day free trial. The Pinterest Traffic Domination Workshop is available for FREE to all users.

Sellers who want personalized, guided coaching and a detailed game plan covering the best methods to increase sales in their niche and product categories should sign up for 1 On 1 Ecommerce Coaching with Joe. It's only $299.95 per month. Availability is limited, so get in while you can at this low price.

14 lessons

Intermediate

The half-life of a tweet is 24 minutes, a Facebook post is 90 minutes, and a Pinterest pin is 3.5 months . Pinterest is the number 1 source of FREE Ecommerce traffic since 2018 and users spend over 35% more than any other Social Media referral. As an effective visual, planning, search engine, how will you use to benefit your business?

Content Marketing is a strategy centered on producing and circulating high-value, relevant, content to a specific audience. Follow the process we have used to create communities resulting in 7 and 8 figure sales using organic traffic from evergreen content.

5 lessons

Intermediate

A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on research and data about real people.
Understanding your audience and their motivations is key to your success. Simplify your efforts when you understand your personas. Go through our workshop to nail this down quick!

7 lessons

Intermediate

Amazon states that 72% of shoppers search on Amazon before making a purchase. This creates a significant misunderstanding. Shoppers research their issues on Google, Social Media and Forums first to understand the problem and find solutions. Get in front of potential buyers long befote they get to Amazon with Google Ads.

8 lessons

Intermediate

Imagine creating a product, the effort, and expenses occurring only in the beginning. All future sales occurring with minimal effort, and zero inventory utilizing a Print on Demand format. Using KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, to produce books and content can create ongoing passive income like this

3 lessons

Easy

Hashtags are a FREE, simple way to get your message and content in front of your audience and potential followers who are interested in your specific topics. They work extremely well for targeting influencers audiences, competitors, and borrowing the efforts of other creators to help distribute your message.

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"Today's world is filled with people who have a lot of 

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advice, but what they don't have is the ability to help you reach your goals. I can help you. Are you ready to let my experience work for you? Let's talk."

Would you like to know if coaching is right for you and get started on taking control of your future? Book a free strategy call with Joe to find out! There's limited availability, so book now before this offer ends.

“Using Joe’s techniques, I was able to engage my target audience in a way like never before to create social proof for my product, gain reviews, and build traction in my niche. With Joe’s methods, I was truly able to add value to my product like no other seller in the market.”

Adam L. (Amazon 3rd Part Seller)

“Ecommerce Optimizer was a huge benefit to my business. Leveraging tested methods and fundamentals I was able to tune my existing marketing and add new forms to reach potential customers without wasting tons of money. My weekly sales baseline increase 3 fold over 6 months and I was able to keep my marketing budget the same. Solid business fundamental a must if you're looking to grow your business.”

Dave H. (Amazon 3rd Party Seller)

“We have seen substantial growth in our online sales while also expanding into markets and onto platforms we wouldn't have with ease and success.   Joes' insight has enabled us to avoid making costly mistakes while optimizing our existing listings and increasing sales on them as well.   His knowledge of how the marketplaces function saved us quite a bit, almost 100k a year in fees on Amazon alone.   This has been a very positive experience for us and we look forward to continue working together. ”

Chris D. (Amazon Vendor, Multi-Channel Worldwide Brand)

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