Starting a business can be overwhelming, but leveraging the power of Pinterest to market your products or services doesn’t have to be.
Whether you’re just getting started on the platform or looking for advanced tactics and strategies to enhance your current Pinterest marketing strategy, this guide has you covered.
You’ll learn how to create compelling visuals that stand out in the feed and advance techniques like influencer collaboration, facilitating customers through board organization, audience segmentation, and more!
By implementing our proven Pinterest marketing tips, you’ll set yourself up for long-term sustainable growth to take advantage of everything this powerful visual-oriented social media platform offers.
Keep reading below if you want to increase your reach and sales while driving meaningful engagement with potential clients!
What Is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a visual-based social media platform that allows users to “pin” images, videos, and other content related to their interests.
With over 440 million active monthly users, it has become a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.
Pinterest users can create boards to organize their pins into specific topics. They can also follow other users to keep up with their content and engage with them by liking, commenting, or repinning interesting posts.
Why Do You Need A Pinterest Marketing Strategy For Your Business?
Pinterest is an excellent growth tool for businesses, and they need to focus on dedicated Pinterest marketing strategies for two major reasons.
First, Pinterest gets a lot of traffic that’s looking to buy. According to Pinterest’s research data, its users are “90% more likely to say they’re always shopping.”
This means if you have a product or service to offer, Pinterest could be an excellent source of qualified leads for your business.
Second, unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest is a long-term investment. People come to the platform to find inspiration for their projects and ideas.
This allows you to build meaningful relationships with potential customers, raising brand awareness and driving sales over time. That’s why smart brands include Pinterest in their social media marketing campaigns.
Now that you understand what Pinterest is and why it’s important for your business, let’s understand what goes into creating an effective Pinterest marketing strategy.
Top Ingredients Of Winning Pinterest Marketing Strategies
Let’s dive into three essential components that make up a successful Pinterest marketing strategy.
#1: Distributing High-Quality Content
Creating high-quality content is the foundation of a successful Pinterest marketing strategy. When crafting visuals for your pins, you’ll want to make sure they stand out and capture your audience’s attention in the feed.
Similarly, you need to ensure the content is distributed correctly. For instance, you must leverage the right type of pins to promote your online store, blog, recipes, or DIY projects and ensure you’re targeting the right audience.
#2: Promotion & Optimization
Once you have your content created, it’s time to promote it and optimize your campaigns. You want to ensure you’re using the right keywords so that people can easily find your content.
You can also use influencer collaborations, A/B testing, and analytics tools to measure the performance of your pins and ensure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns.
#3: Community Engagement
Finally, fostering meaningful relationships with your audience is key to building a successful Pinterest presence. You want to engage with your followers by responding to comments, liking pins, and repinning content from other users in your niche.
This will help you build brand loyalty and trust, essential for driving long-term growth on the platform.
By following these steps, you can create a successful Pinterest marketing strategy that will help you reach and engage with potential customers while driving sales in the long run.
Now that you know how Pinterest marketing strategies are created, let’s dive deep into tricks of the trade and learn Pinterest best practices.
9 Tips To Create An Effective Pinterest Marketing Strategy
Here are 9 Pinterest marketing tips that will drive growth.
#1: Get a Pinterest Business Account
When signing up for Pinterest, you can choose between a personal or business account on Pinterest. While they are both free and allow you to post pins, the latter provides some advanced features that give it an edge over a personal account.
How?
With a business Pinterest account, you can extend your reach by unlocking tools such as Pinterest Analytics, Pinterest Business Hub, rich pins, and all other types of pins. This gives you more control over the type of content you post and allows you to track your performance.
Sounds amazing, right? Our step-by-step guide will teach you how to set up your business Pinterest account.
Also, it doesn’t matter if you have already created a personal Pinterest account. The platform allows you to create a linked Pinterest business account with every personal profile.
So, if you wish to use Pinterest as a marketing tool, sign up for a business account.
#2: Create A Professional, Attractive, & Optimized Pinterest Profile
Your Pinterest profile is an extension of your brand, so you want to make sure it looks professional and optimized. You can customize your profile by:
- adding a profile picture with a logo
- writing an engaging, keyword-rich bio
- using a unique, keyword-rich user handle or profile name
- uploading a banner image that relates to or describes your business
- adding the link to your website and social profiles
This will not only make your profile look more attractive, but it will also help you increase the visibility of your pins to other Pinterest users.
Remember, the quality of your profile plays a key role in determining the success of your Pinterest marketing efforts.
#3: Learn Pinterest SEO and Perform Keyword Research
Just like Bing or Google, Pinterest is a search engine. The only difference is that it is a visual search engine.
Still, search engine optimization rules (SEO) apply to Pinterest as well. This means there is an algorithm behind pins appearing in the Pinterest feed, and you need to optimize your content for relevant keywords to compete with other pins.
That’s why keyword research is so important. But how do you find keywords that your target audience is searching for?
The easiest way to find relevant keywords is by leveraging Pinterest’s “search bar autocomplete” feature. Simply type in the root keyword related to your business, and the search engine will provide you with a list of related keywords.
Or, you can go to https://trends.pinterest.com/ and use Pinterest Trends to find trending topics people are interested in. Browse those topics and categories to find keywords related to your business.
When your keyword research is complete, use them in your profile bio, pin titles, pin descriptions, board titles, and board descriptions to optimize them for the Pinterest search engine.
Besides keywords, Pinterest looks at the following ranking factors to decide which pins will show up in the results:
- Topic relevance
- Quality of your pin
- Your engagement rate
- Quality of your profile (Pinner Quality)
- Domain quality of your business website
#4: Create & Organize Your Pinterest Boards
When setting up your Pinterest board, it is important to focus on both the aesthetics and organization of your boards.
So, choose a theme for each board based on the content you plan to post, and group similar boards together.
Why?
This will help Pinterest users quickly find the content they are looking for.
For example, if you have an online store, you can create boards for different product categories like clothing, accessories, shoes, etc.
Similarly, if you have a blog, organize your boards according to the topics you write about, such as fashion, beauty, lifestyle, etc.
Also, add board covers to your Pinterest boards to make them more visually appealing to visitors.
Finally, remember to link each board to your website or social media profiles whenever possible. This will help your blog or e-commerce store more website traffic.
#5: Create Compelling & High-Quality Pins
Pins are the lifeblood of Pinterest. After all, this is where your content will be discovered and shared by other users.
So, you must ensure your pins are high-quality and visually appealing.
To create high-quality pins, you should use images or videos that are relevant to the topic and have clear, eye-catching text, if any.
Also, use bright colors, simple designs, and interesting visual elements to make your pins stand out from the crowd.
In addition, always remember to create pins with the right aspect ratio. Pinterest recommends using a 2:3 aspect ratio or 1000 px by 1500 px images for best results.
Incorrect pin sizes can have your images cropped automatically by Pinterest, thus reducing the visual impact of your pins on both desktop and Pinterest app views.
But it’s nothing to worry about, as plenty of free online tools can help you quickly resize images or create pins from scratch.
Canva and Adobe Spark, for example, are some of the most popular free tools you can use to create attractive pins.
#6: Write Enticing, Keyword Rich Descriptions
While creating attractive visual content and enhancing the visual appeal of your Pinterest profile, remember to include keywords in your Pinterest pins’ and board descriptions.
Using keywords in your descriptions will help you gain more visibility and engagement on Pinterest. This means these descriptions will work well for both Pinterest SEO and users. The platform will understand that you want to rank for a particular term, while users will see what your content is about.
However, you need to be careful while writing board and pin descriptions. Why?
Because you get up to 500 characters to write a pin description.
It doesn’t mean that all of the 500 characters will appear in search results. Only the first 30 to 60 characters will most likely appear in the Pinterest feed.
Keeping this information in mind, here is what you should do:
- Include relevant keywords in the first 3 to 5 terms.
- Try to have your brand name in the first line.
- Place keywords naturally and don’t stuff them too much.
- Include a call-to-action to drive traffic to your store or blog posts.
- Finally, make your descriptions enticing and engaging.
#7: Understand And Leverage All Types Of Pins
The best thing about using a free business account is the freedom it gives you to create different types of pins.
While a personal account can only post idea pins and static pins to share ideas, a business account lets you post the following:
- Image pins
- Video pins
- Story pins
- Rich pins
Rich pins are the most interesting and useful of them all. They help you gain more visibility on Pinterest because they’re interactive in nature and facilitate users. How?
They fetch and display information from your website when a user clicks on them.
For example, product pins can include prices, availability information, and links to product pages. Recipe pins can show ingredients, cooking times, and nutritional information.
Similarly, article rich pins include the headline, author, and a brief blog post description.
So, no matter the type of rich, each one of them offers additional information about your products, leading to more engagement and better chances of conversions.
Important: When you link product pins back to your website, it helps improve your domain quality, ultimately strengthening your Pinterest SEO strategy.
#8: Use Your Pinterest Business Account Tools
Besides the option to post all types of pins, Pinterest business accounts come with some powerful features that can help you analyze, optimize, and promote your content for better performance.
For starters, Pinterest Analytics offers insights into your pins, boards, and overall profile performance.
You can track data like impressions, clicks, saves, and follows in order to understand user preferences and optimize your content accordingly.
Then, there is Pinterest advertising, which lets you use the Promoted Pins (or Pinterest Ads) feature to showcase your best pins in front of more people.
You can even target relevant audiences and measure the success of your campaigns using Pinterest Ads Manager.
How does it work?
At the highest level (campaign level):
- Set a budget for your campaign
- Choose one of the following campaign goals: awareness, engagement, and traffic.
At mid-level (ad group-level):
- Choose your target audience.
- Select your ad dates.
At the bottom level (ad-level):
- Select your pins to promote
You can choose any of the following ad formats:
- Collections ad
- Video ads
- Carousel
- Idea ads
That’s it — run ads, analyze performance, and adjust your Pinterest strategy accordingly.
However, the results of your campaigns depend heavily on your goals.
While awareness and engagement campaigns can increase brand awareness, traffic campaigns can get you more website visitors.
So, choose your goals wisely.
#9: Engage With Your Target Audience
Engagement is the key to success on Pinterest.
That’s why it’s important for you to actively engage with both your followers and target audience.
You can do this by leaving comments on pins, repinning content from other users, and responding to questions and messages. This helps build trust and credibility, which can lead to more engagement on your pins and website.
You can even join group boards and collaborate with other creators in your niche.
This allows you to reach a wider audience and get more exposure for your content.
Plus, it’s a great way to network with influencers and get additional promotion for your brand.
So, start engaging with other users on Pinterest today and reap the rewards of success!
AND that’s a wrap!
Buckle Up For Pinterest Success
By now, we’re sure you know that Pinterest should definitely be a part of your social media marketing strategy.
As with any other platform, success on Pinterest takes time and effort. But with the right strategy, you can leverage Pinterest to create a powerful presence for your brand on this highly engaging social network.
However, if it seems overwhelming or overly technical, consider completing this: Social Media Marketing Certificate.
Or follow our 2023 step-by-step guide to set up your Pinterest business account and create an effective Pinterest strategy to generate leads and drive sales.
