Pinning For Profit: Boost Sales With Pinterest Marketing

by Kerry Baker on 24-May-2023 12:00:00

From being something of a novelty in the social media field when founded in 2010, Pinterest has grown into one of the most important social research and product-sharing platforms in the UK, with almost 9 million British users in 2023.

For B2C businesses (and some B2B businesses) Pinterest is a cost-effective avenue for reaching an actively engaged and well-educated customer demographic, in January 2023, over 72% of the Pinterest UK user base was found to be female. If your business primarily serves a female audience, Pinterest is more than just a social platform – it's a golden opportunity. Consider leveraging its power to connect more closely with your target customers.

What Is Pinterest And Why Does It Matter For Businesses?

Pinterest is a visual social media platform that lets users share ideas, discover new services and products, and connect with like-minded people – through means of visual ‘pins’ or saved content. Customers mainly use the platform as a virtual discovery engine at the awareness level of the customer journey, while they are finding inspiration and seeking ideas from the content on Pinterest to inspire their own fashion, creative content, home, and more.

Users follow up this research by looking into specific brands on review sites or direct Ecommerce sites, or by reading niche-specific blogs for more information.

After establishing a personal profile, users can save videos, images, and even articles from third-party sources onto a personalised ‘board’ for convenient access, which can also be accessed by followers and friends, or even cross-posted onto other social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Using Pinterest To Promote Your Business

Businesses can create a business profile on Pinterest that allows them to add their own branded pins and website links, access rich pins for more information, gain insights about pins saved from their website by users, and run targeted adverts to reach their ideal customers.

Establishing a business presence on Pinterest is a strong way of building brand authority with your customer base and is an excellent way of driving traffic back to your website and business blog, raising awareness, and ultimately increasing sales conversions.

What Content Should You Promote On Pinterest?

Each pin can contain either an image or video, and can be used to promote a wide range of products, services, and incentives to draw in your target users, for example:

Video tutorials and DIY How-Tos
Infographics
Special promotions
Seasonal and trending content
Product images
Ideas boards and mood boards
Short-form image-led blog articles and vlogs

As with other social media activities, consistency is the key to making an impact on Pinterest, with daily activity being the best way to gain the attention of regular users. Pinterest has a very high content turnover, so for the best results, we recommend a combination of snappy trending content to grab the immediate attention of users scrolling on their mobiles, and evergreen content aligned with the identified pain points, aspirations, and purchase motivations of your persona groups.

Our Best Practices For Success With Pinterest Social Media Marketing:

Optimise your website and social media images for Pinterest feeds – To look their best, pins should be vertically aligned with a 2 to 3 ratio, (e.g. 600 x 900 pixels). This will encourage Pinterest users to ‘pin’ images from your website to their boards, exposing your brand to their followers.
Use keywords – You can incorporate target keywords into your pin descriptions and board titles so that they show up in Google search results.
Integrate Pinterest with your digital marketing strategy – Use your pins to link back to your website, Ecommerce landing pages, and business blog. You can drive more traffic to Pinterest by promoting your content on your other social platforms, or by running adverts and sponsored content on the platform itself.
Focus on awareness content – Pinterest is a platform for creating visually appealing content for the early stages of the buyer journey, so make sure that everything you post is informative and engaging, to ensure customers learn something new from your pins and are keen to find out more.
Include your logo and branding on every pin – Make your brand recognisable and prominent on all your pins. The best placement is towards either the top or the bottom of your pin so that your company identity is prominent without overwhelming the image.
Use clear explanatory text – Although Pinterest is predominantly a visual platform, it’s important to accompany all images with captions and explanatory text that can be easily accessed on desktop and mobile devices. This improves searchability for your pins and also boosts accessibility.