Despite being one of the most underrated free marketing tools available, Pinterest has the potential to drive hundreds if not thousands of new customers to your website every single month if leveraged correctly. CWB speaks to award-winning Pinterest expert and e-course creator, Victoria Jackson, to discuss the power of the Pin and how retailers can successfully integrate the platform into their digital strategy.

 

With over 250 million users worldwide, Pinterest is no doubt already in your vocabulary. We know it as a great resource to find winter recipes, home décor tips and outfit ideas. A digital scrapbook if you like. But as a business, have you considered Pinterest in your marketing plan? Perhaps not.

Although Pinterest is still seen by many as a social media tool, it is, in fact, a visual search engine much like Google or Yahoo!, developed to help people solve a problem, to plan, be educated or inspired. It is designed for the user to create boards, share Pins and re-pin content.

Since its launch in 2010, there have been a staggering 175 billion pins shared worldwide. This means if used correctly, Pinterest has the potential to drive thousands of new visitors to your website – in turn, presenting the perfect opportunity to convert visitors into customers.

As we know, there is no linear path to achieving sales anymore. Shoppers are being presented with more choices than ever before and retailers are having to work even harder to generate leads. With 93% of people on Pinterest being the decision-maker or willing to purchase there and now, it pays to be in the consumer’s eyeline before they have the chance to shop around.

“Who is using Pinterest?” you might ask.

Although women were initially the biggest audience, the number of men using the platform is increasing rapidly, counting for more than 50% of new sign-ups. According to Pinterest, 60% of Pinterest households have children five years old or younger; 66% of women between the ages of 25-54 are signed up; and 40% have household incomes of more than 100k annually. As you can see, the spending power really is there to capture.

We know how Pinterest works from a shopper’s angle, but how do you navigate it as a business owner?

In a very basic sense you upload a piece of content, whether that be a picture of a product, an image that links to a blog post or an infographic. This piece of content is then woven into Pinterest’s algorithm like it would be Google’s. Once visitors find your content they save it to their account. It is then saved by their followers, which is saved by their followers; the pin multiplies and so does your reach.

However, the beauty of Pinterest is that unlike social media accounts such as Instagram, your follower count means very little. For instance, if you share a Pin on your account which has 10 followers and it is then saved by one of your followers to their 100-strong account, you’ve increased your potential reach tenfold. All with zero marketing spend.

But as a retailer, how do you utilise this tool?

There are a number of ways to share your products on Pinterest. The first would be to create a blog post on your website itself, something educational, inspiring or helpful. This could be a ‘how-to’ post designed for your target customer. Such as, ‘How to Pack for Your First Summer Holiday with Children’. Or perhaps a list-style blog post such as ’10 Easter Gift Ideas’, all featuring products you sell.

Once you’ve created this blog post the next step is to design an eye-catching graphic to promote it on Pinterest. As Pinterest is a visual discovery tool, the idea is you upload a Pin that acts as a teaser to the blog post. This then links through to your website when people click on it. If the Pin is well designed, you’re more likely to attract people to click through and find out more. A great tool to do this on is Canva, which has free Pinterest templates available for you to use.

Another way to maximise your reach is to upload lifestyle images of your products; again linking directly back to your website.

Anthropologie and Free People are just two examples of retailers that do this incredibly well, with Pinterest revealing that lifestyle and model images perform much better than cut-out product images shot on a white background. Could you perhaps dedicate a day to shoot new season stock in-store, providing ample content for you to use across all of your marketing and social media channels?

How about uploading a Pin for ‘8 of the Best Tops to Buy this Spring’, linking directly back to your tops category? Again, this can be done easily with an online creative tool such as Canva or Adobe Photoshop.

 

 

Once you’ve uploaded your content to Pinterest, the next step is to make it easy for potential customers to find you. How? By working in a similar way to Google and implementing SEO techniques in the description box Pinterest provides for you when you upload a Pin.

Jargon like SEO can feel unfamiliar and overwhelming. All it simply means is that you are placing words in the description box that your potential customer might search for to enable the algorithm to catalogue your Pin correctly and for the right visitor to be able to find you.

For example, if you create a Pin called ‘How to Pack for Your First Summer Holiday with Children’, your description may read like this:

“If you’re travelling with a toddler you might be wondering what to expect and more importantly what to pack. With this must-read blog post we’re sharing the ultimate baby travel packing list, whether you’re travelling abroad or locally, as well as sharing what to pack in your carry-on when flying with a baby. Click through to discover more helpful hints and tips on what to pack for your first holiday with children.”

Can you see how we’ve integrated a number of SEO terms that potential readers might search for on Pinterest? A good tip here is to type your blog post idea into Pinterest and see how other posts are worded; like Google, the best-performing Pins are to the top of the page.

So now you have your graphic, you’ve written your keyword-rich description to maximise your reach, and you’ve added your destination URL when visitors click through. The final step is to Pin to the right boards on your profile.

To increase your visibility, the recommendation is that you Pin to as many boards as possible.

For example, you could create boards for Blog Content, New In-Store, Tips & Advice for Parents, Summer Holidays and Travel Ideas. The Pin mentioned above would fit perfectly in all of these.

Do this regularly with helpful content for your reader and you will soon see an increase in website traffic. All it takes is a Pin to go viral and you’ve welcomed a raft of new potential customers landing on your website – which is even better if you have some kind of mailing list prompt to capture their data as they land or go to exit.

Pinterest isn’t a quick-fix strategy. Pins often taking 3+ months to work their way into the algorithm. However, the pay off lasts much longer than other marketing tools. Stay consistent, have fun and keep up to date with the Pinterest Business page for hints, tips and developments.

Tips & Tricks to Increase Your Pinterest Audience

• Convert to a Pinterest Business account, giving you access to analytics and added promotional features. For further information click here.
• Set up Rich Pins on your Pinterest profile. This will pull through metadata from your website including sales, price of product, title and description when you Pin something directly from your site. There are a number of resources online explaining how to do this simple step.
• Make sure your Pins are vertical and measure 600 x 900px.
• Overlay text on an image for the most eye-catching Pins.
• Use Pinterest frequently and consistently, with a mixture of sharing your own Pins and re-pinning other people’s content.
• Add an SEO-rich profile description to let shoppers know what they can expect from your profile. For example, ‘Organic childrenswear and home décor shop for the eco-conscious parent’.

Victoria Jackson is a multi-award-winning Pinterest expert with 1.5 million monthly Pinterest profile views. After being shortlisted for a 2018 Pinterest Award, Victoria launched Pin to Win, an e-Book guide to help bloggers and business owners understand how to maximise the power of Pinterest.

If you want to work on driving traffic to your website and leverage the power of Pinterest, the Pin to Win e-book is now available for just £39 (RRP £79) until 1 May 2020. Click here for further information.