The Ultimate Guide To Pinterest Marketing & Pinterest Ads

The Ulti­mate Guide To Pin­ter­est Marketing

 

Face­book, Twit­ter, Insta­gram — they’re all the go-to social media plat­forms for drop­ship­pers and ecom­merce entre­pre­neurs look­ing pro­mote their brand. But are you miss­ing a trick by ignor­ing the often over­looked Pin­ter­est? Def­i­nite­ly and we’re here to equip you will all the infor­ma­tion you need, in order to cre­ate and exe­cute a killer Pin­ter­est Mar­ket­ing and Pin­ter­est Ads strategy.

 

The Basics

Born back in 2010, Pin­ter­est is the free social media plat­form that cen­ters around:

• Images;
• Shar­ing; and
• Buy­ing.

 

It has over 200 mil­lion month­ly glob­al users and boasts over 100 bil­lion Pins. And it gets bet­ter. Research by ecom­merce plat­form Shopi­fy found that it was the #2 source of all refer­ral traf­fic to the site, that 93% of users were using it to plan their pur­chas­es and that the aver­age result­ing order val­ue was $50 (high­er than any oth­er social media source). Impres­sive stats for a corkboard. 

 

Put sim­ply, it is a huge mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for ecom­merce stores so let’s go:

 

What Is Pinterest?

Pin­ter­est is that cork­board you used to have, with a trop­i­cal beach post­card, paint col­or chart, a recipe from a mag­a­zine that looked nice but you’ll prob­a­bly nev­er cook and a pho­to of Leonar­do Dicaprio (or was that just us?) pinned to it; gone digital. 

 

Cork­board, mood­board, inspi­ra­tion board…it is the dig­i­tal plan­ning plat­form (avail­able on the web and as an app) for peo­ple to dis­cov­er, share and orga­nize cre­ative ideas from around the world wide web. 

 

Why Use Pinterest?

Aside from the impres­sive facts men­tioned ear­li­er, there are tons of great rea­sons that your ecom­merce busi­ness should have a Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing and Pin­ter­est ad strat­e­gy and here are our favorites:

 

1. Two-thirds of all Pins are from a busi­ness web­site. Big brands use it, small brands use it, your com­peti­tors use it and, most impor­tant­ly, your poten­tial cus­tomers use it; you need to use it. 

 

1. It has huge refer­ral pow­er. Pins make you and your prod­ucts dis­cov­er­able and since every Pin links direct­ly back to the orig­i­nal source, the poten­tial for dri­ving traf­fic, and then sales, is huge. 

 

1. It pro­vides you with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with poten­tial and cur­rent cus­tomers and to gain invalu­able insights into their lives, likes and loves. 

 

1. SEO. We all know how impor­tant SEO is for dri­ving you up the Google rank­ings to make you dis­cov­er­able and Pin­ter­est is here to help that. 

 

1. It builds and rein­forces your brand image. From reg­u­lar­ly appear­ing on your fol­low­ers’ home­pages, to cre­at­ing Boards that reflect your brand iden­ti­ty; it is the per­fect plat­form to tell cus­tomers who you are and what you’re about, visually. 

 

1. It lasts longer. Face­book posts and tweets come and go; Pins sticks by you for life. They’re searched for, found and repinned over time. Pin­ter­est con­tent doesn’t fade like it does on oth­er social media platforms. 

 

How To Use Pinterest

It is incred­i­bly sim­ple to use. Users:

 

Cre­ate Boards

Boards are used to orga­nize and cat­e­go­rize Pins (don’t wor­ry, we’ll get to these next). From Boards about the new bath­room and next vaca­tion loca­tion to wed­ding plan­ning and ulti­mate wish-lists (just say the word and we’ll link you to ours!) Boards enable users to gath­er their Pins into a log­i­cal and beau­ti­ful fash­ion. Plus, new for 2018, Boards can be divid­ed up into sec­tions, to make them even more organized.

 

Save Pins

Pins are ideas, images, prod­ucts, recipes…anything that users find on the web and save onto their beau­ti­ful­ly cat­e­go­rized Boards. Users can cre­ate their own Pins, or repin oth­er user’s Pins, and put them on the Board of their choos­ing and (also new for 2018) in the order of their choosing. 

 

Fol­low

Much like oth­er social media plat­forms, users can fol­low peo­ple and busi­ness­es to see what they pin, what Boards they’re cre­at­ing and what they’re lik­ing so that they can like it too. Copycat.

 

Dis­cov­er

The home­page and feed is the place to dis­cov­er what fol­low­ers are doing and what the plat­form thinks users will be inter­est­ed in, based on their own Pins and Boards. Here, users can also search key­words to seek inspi­ra­tion, repin and dis­cov­er users that they might want to fol­low, i.e. you. 

 

Click

Users click on Pins to be trans­port­ed to direct­ly to the blogs, prod­uct pages and web­sites behind the pin itself. Direct links to your website.

 

Get­ting Started

So we’ve sold you on the basics and you’re keen to cre­ate a Pin­ter­est Mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy and learn more about Pin­ter­est Ads but first, you need to pin the tail on the don­key and get start­ed with a profile. 

 

Sign­ing Up

Set­ting up a new pro­file is super sim­ple. Head here and enter your email address, pass­word, busi­ness name, web­site and busi­ness category. 

 

Chang­ing an exist­ing account into a busi­ness account is also super sim­ple. Click the Con­vert your exist­ing account but­ton and then com­plete the steps as above. 

 

Cre­at­ing A Profile

Next up, you need to cre­ate your pro­file, under set­tings. Upload a pro­file pho­to (165 x 165), fill in the about you sec­tion, add your busi­ness loca­tion, turn on your noti­fi­ca­tions and con­nect to your oth­er social networks. 

 

*Impor­tant* Make sure that this switch:

 

is to the left (to the left).

 

Claim Your Website

This is a very impor­tant step. Con­firm­ing your web­site will allow you to see what oth­er users are pin­ning from your web­site, it adds your logo to your Pins (main­tain­ing brand iden­ti­ty) and it boosts the rank­ing of your Pins in the search results. 

 

Shopi­fy users — this is real­ly sim­ple to do. Select the Add HTML tag option, copy the full meta tag, head over to your Shopi­fy admin > online store > themes, on the appro­pri­ate theme click actions > edit code, click on the lay­out sec­tion, click theme.liquid and then paste the full meta tag onto a blank line direct­ly under the open­ing <head> tag. And then save. (More detailed instruc­tions here),

 

Cre­ate Boards

You’re now ready to start cre­at­ing Boards and get pin­ning: giv­ing users oppor­tu­ni­ty to find and a rea­son to fol­low you. But hold that thought. Like any social media plat­form, it requires well thought out, strate­gic actions, in order to suc­cess­ful­ly increase reach, fol­low­ers and, ulti­mate­ly, sales; it requires a Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing strategy. 

 

Pin it like it’s hot — Cre­at­ing a Pin­ter­est Mar­ket­ing Strategy

What’s the plan, Stan? Key to your Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy should be the following:

 

1. SMART goals

Spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able, achiev­able, rel­e­vant and time-lim­it­ed. What do want to achieve and when do you want to achieve it by. Do you want to increase your fol­low­ers to 100 by the end of the quar­ter; or do you want a Pin­ter­est ad to gen­er­ate at least five bath­room tile sales by the end of the month? Being spe­cif­ic gives you a goal to aim for, it focus­es your Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing efforts and it helps you to mon­i­tor (and learn from) your successes. 

 

2. Regularity

Pin too lit­tle and peo­ple will lose inter­est in you; pin too much and you risk being unfol­lowed. Pin­ter­est sug­gests 10–12 Pins per day, in order to appear more often in your follower’s feed and search results. Of course, this also depends upon the time of day you are pin­ning. Peak times are evenings and week­ends, 2–4pm and 8–11pm . These are great num­bers and times to start with and to lat­er tweak accord­ing to the ana­lyt­i­cal insights into your Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing efforts (dis­cussed later). 

 

3. Planning

Ran­dom Boards full of every­thing might be great for the unini­ti­at­ed user but you’re bet­ter than that. Your Boards and Pins need to be rel­e­vant and inspir­ing. Take a look at Sew Over It’s account to see how they have arranged their Boards not just by prod­uct line but by col­lec­tions of Pins that will attract and moti­vate their customers: 

 

Also, keep ahead of key sea­son­al dates and cel­e­bra­tions by start­ing to pin­ning occa­sion-relat­ed Pins at least 45 days ear­ly and then con­tin­ue adding right up until the event. 

 

4. Promotion

Pro­mo­tion doesn’t stop at Pin­ter­est. Cross-pro­mote your Pins on your oth­er social media chan­nels in order to dri­ve traf­fic and increase followers. 

 

5. Tactics

Now that you’ve got the basics, have set up your account and have a goal-dri­ven Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, we’ve got ten top Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing tips to get you on your way.

 

10-Pin­ter­est Mar­ket­ing Tips

 

1. Get The Pin Button

The pin/save but­ton appears direct­ly on your website’s prod­uct pages, mak­ing it easy for browsers to pin (and share) a link to their own Boards. 5x more easy to be pre­cise. Imme­di­ate­ly you’re mak­ing it sim­ple for poten­tial cus­tomers to engage with you and with the knowl­edge of who has pinned con­tent from your web­site, it pro­vides you with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage right back.

 

You can see from Shopi­fy user Halo Cof­fee, that the save but­ton appears as an icon, direct­ly below their products. 

 

Click­ing on the icon, lets users quick­ly save the prod­uct direct­ly to an exist­ing Board, or a new one, straight from Halo’s website.

 

Details of adding this but­ton to your web­site using HTML are here, or alter­na­tive­ly, most Shopi­fy themes include this inte­gra­tion by default, mak­ing the but­ton promi­nent and easy to use. 

 

2. Add The Fol­low Button

The fol­low but­ton informs peo­ple you’re a Pin­ner and diverts them direct­ly to your pro­file, enabling them to fol­low you. Install this but­ton every­where you con­nect with peo­ple: your web­site, newslet­ters, emails, blogs, or pop-ups — like Mod­ern Cit­i­zen have:

 

Details of build­ing this but­ton your­self are here but again, most Shopi­fy themes will include this by default. 

 

3. Tell Stories

Sto­ry­telling cap­tures atten­tion, makes an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion and changes how peo­ple see you. Humans buy prod­ucts based on emo­tion > sto­ry­telling is a great way trig­ger emo­tions > sto­ries have pic­tures > Pin­ter­est was made for storytelling. 

 

Cre­ate Boards that tell a sto­ry or cre­ate a lifestyle — don’t just cre­ate prod­uct Boards. 72% say the plat­form helps them to find ideas for every­day life: Use insights (below) to under­stand what sto­ries appeal to your tar­get audi­ence and use this to fuel your Board ideas and give your fol­low­ers the inspi­ra­tion they’re after. Stay true to your brand, get cre­ative and have fun. 

 

See how Bak­ing Time Club cre­at­ed an autum­nal sto­ry of pump­kin spice, cozy fires and warm bak­ing with their Bon­fire Night Treats Board. 

 

The bak­ing sub­scrip­tion sup­pli­er didn’t just post Pins of their own prod­ucts but pinned items that would cre­ate feel­ings of warmth and wants of indul­gence, whilst also pro­vid­ing recipes to inspire bak­ing and, indi­rect­ly, pur­chase bak­ing sup­plies. It’s less in your face but a lot more effective. 

 

4. Imagery

Visu­als are what makes Pin­ter­est and what define your brand and tell your sto­ry. Your images need to com­pel peo­ple to share them to their beau­ti­ful­ly cre­at­ed Boards, mean­ing that your images need to be…beautiful and shareable. 

 

High qual­i­ty is a must, as is size. Ver­ti­cal Pins (2:30 — 600px x 900px) work well because they take up more space, mak­ing them stand out. Con­trast these with square images (600px x 600px) to make your con­tent eye-catch­ing on the dis­cov­ery feed. Be sure that your images (and web­site for that mat­ter) are mobile-friend­ly: over 85% of search­es are in the App. 

 

Pin­ter­est has pro­vid­ed us with some use­ful insights about what works with prod­uct photography:

• Lifestyle shots have 18% high­er engagement
• Fash­ion works best when some­one is wear­ing it
• Home decor pho­tos stand out when the focus is on the prod­uct (rather than the person)
• Hair and beau­ty pho­tos pop when pho­tographed against a plain background
• DIY prod­ucts work well when pho­tographed in context
• Images on their own work as well as images with text over­lay (Can­va is great for this)

 

See how Fly­Away BlueJay’s clean and clear back­ground, reflects the all-nat­ur­al sell­ing point of their beau­ty products:

 

Users are encour­aged to link mul­ti­ple Pins to the same des­ti­na­tion, so con­sid­er tak­ing dif­fer­ent pho­tos of the same item, to appeal to dif­fer­ent con­sumers and increase your reach. 

 

5. Descriptions

Whilst it is all about the images, words also play an impor­tant part; espe­cial­ly with regards to SEO. Key­words are impor­tant for the Pin­ter­est search func­tion (mak­ing it easy for peo­ple to find you) and also, for Google rank­ings. Google sees your Board titles, your image descrip­tions, your reg­u­lar­i­ty, your pop­u­lar­i­ty and it takes note. 

 

Plan well thought out key­words (prefer­ably long-tail)  for each of your Pins (use the search bar and ana­lyt­ics to help) and be sure to:

• Include the key­words in your Board/Pin titles, descrip­tions and images
• Include the price in your descrip­tions (to be includ­ed in the gifts section)
• Have a clear and strong call to action for each Pin
• Include the URL
• Keep descrip­tions to a man­age­able length; set the scene, cap­ti­vate and entice 
• Add # to appear in the #feed

 

6. Engage With Users

If you want peo­ple to engage with you, you need to engage with them and there is a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so:

• Respond to mes­sages promptly
• Thank peo­ple for pin­ning your content
• Fol­low your fol­low­ers and like their Pins 
• Fol­low your com­peti­tors — to see what they’re up to

 

Not only does this pro­vide pos­i­tive inter­ac­tion for your cus­tomers, it pro­vides you with valu­able insight into what else they like, what they’re inter­est­ed in and what they’re using your prod­ucts for. You can use this infor­ma­tion to fur­ther fuel your Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing strategy. 

 

Anoth­er great way to engage on Pin­ter­est it to invite fol­low­ers to col­lab­o­rate on one of your Boards, allow­ing them to pin con­tent. When in your Board, click on the plus icon to invite peo­ple to contribute:

 

7. Pin­ter­est Ads

Pro­mot­ed Pins / Pin­ter­est Ads give your Pins more expo­sure and the stats are good. 61% of users have dis­cov­ered new brands or prod­ucts from Pin­ter­est Ads and one out of two have made a pur­chase after see­ing a Pro­mot­ed Pin. 

 

You can cre­ate tar­get­ed Pin­ter­est Ads that build aware­ness, dri­ve con­sid­er­a­tion and grow your sales, all through the Pin­ter­est Ads Man­ag­er. Sim­ply pick your pin, cre­ate a goal, decide your tar­get audi­ence, set your bid, pay for results, track what’s work­ing and alter your tac­tics accord­ing­ly.  There are cur­rent­ly five dif­fer­ent Pin­ter­est Ads campaigns: 

 

• Traf­fic — Send­ing peo­ple from your Pin­ter­est Ads to your web­site (pay per click)
• Aware­ness — Brin­ing your Pin­ter­est Ads in front of new peo­ple (pay per 1,0000 impressions)
• Video Aware­ness — As above but using video Pins
• Engage­ment — Encour­ag­ing users to engage with your Pin­ter­est Ads (pay per click, save or closeup)
• App — Get­ting you more app installs (pay per click or install)

 

8. Rich Pins

Rich Pins are like nor­mal Pins but with extra detail, such as real-time pric­ing, stock avail­abil­i­ty, and your logo. They make it eas­i­er for users to find you, rec­og­nize your brand and be more com­pelled to click you. 

 

Since imple­ment­ing Rich Pins and Buyable Pins, Mod­ern Cit­i­zen saw their orders from Pin­ter­est increase by 73%. 

 

They require some web­site prep but luck­i­ly, with Shopi­fy, your store is already set up to use them, you just need to enable them on Pin­ter­est. Copy and paste a spe­cif­ic prod­uct URL into Pinterest’s rich pin val­ida­tor, type .oem­bed to the end of the URL, click val­i­date and then click apply. Your prod­uct Pins will now be Rich Pins, with­in 24 hours. 

 

9. Buyable Pins

Buyable Pins are just that: Pin­ter­est Pins that allow users to click on the blue buy but­ton and buy the prod­uct with­out leav­ing the app or web­site. All prod­ucts pinned from your Shopi­fy store auto­mat­i­cal­ly become Buyable Pins. A seam­less buy­ing expe­ri­ence makes buy­ing from you easy (a lit­tle too easy) and dri­ves ecom­merce sales. 

 

Hand­made and vin­tage piece sell­er Fly­Away Blue­Jay saw Buyable Pins dri­ve 20% of their over­all sales and 28% of their over­all traf­fic dur­ing the hol­i­day period 

 

10. Con­tent Curation

Don’t. Pin. Every­thing. Pin­ter­est is a col­lab­o­ra­tive plat­form; curate con­tent from oth­er brands and peo­ple to build your Boards. It adds vari­ety (it’s not all about you), enables you to pin more reg­u­lar­ly and it makes users look more favor­ably on you. 

 

South­ern Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny Shop­hearts is an online cloth­ing bou­tique but that doesn’t stop them cre­at­ing Boards and Pins about hair­styles and wan­der­lust. These rein­force their free-spir­it­ed lifestyle brand and encour­ages fol­low­ers to engage with them on a dif­fer­ent lev­el to just purchasing. 

 

One great way to include oth­er con­tent and users is to con­nect with blog­gers and Pin­flu­encers. Ask­ing them to cre­ate guest Boards for you pro­vides you with dif­fer­ent con­tent, as well as hav­ing some­one else dis­trib­ute your con­tent for you. This will help to grow your net­work and reach a wider audience.

 

Shopi­fy Apps

For those of you sell­ing on Shopi­fy, there are some great apps to help you with your Pin­ter­est quest. Some of our favorites here at Ober­lo are:

 

The Pin­ter­est App — This cre­ates your Buyable Pins, enabling Pin­ners to buy from you on the Pin­ter­est App. 

 

Social Media Stream — Allows you to insert a live Pin­ter­est stream feed onto your Shopi­fy web­site so peo­ple can see what you’ve been pinning. 

 

Out­fy Social Media Pro­mo­tion — Auto­mat­ed Pin­ter­est post­ing, link­ing prod­uct col­lec­tions with your Pin­ter­est Boards.

 

Social Autopi­lot — Auto­mat­i­cal­ly Pins new prod­ucts to your Boards. 

 

Track­ing Performance

All of this is great but means noth­ing unless you track it. Analysing your Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing and Pin­ter­est Ads per­for­mance is important: 

 

Pin­ter­est ana­lyt­ics pro­vides a whole host of infor­ma­tion, from Pins with the high­est clicks, impres­sions and repins, to the your high­est search rank­ing Pins and what peo­ple are pin­ning about you. It also pro­vides demo­graph­ic infor­ma­tion and more. A full user guide can be found here.

 

This infor­ma­tion can be used to under­stand what you’re doing right and to test what could be improved. Ulti­mate­ly, you need to be sure that what you’re doing on Pin­ter­est and what you’re spend­ing on Pin­ter­est Ads, is work­ing for you and your brand. If it’s not, use the tips above to alter what you’re doing. 

 

Has The Pin-ny Dropped

 

As a drop­ship­per and ecom­merce entre­pre­neur, you’re respon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing. Like all social media, Pin­ter­est and Pin­ter­est Ads require under­stand­ing, effort and time on your part but with 93% of pin­ners use Pin­ter­est to plan pur­chas­es — if the pin­ny hasn’t dropped yet, we’ll make it simple:

 

Get on Pinterest!

 

Want To Mar­ket On Pin­ter­est But Don’t Have The Right Products?

Ober­lo drop­ship­ping allows you to import prod­ucts from sup­pli­ers, direct­ly into a Shopi­fy store, and then ship direct­ly to cus­tomers with just a few clicks. 

 

Action List

▢ Cre­ate a Pin­ter­est Busi­ness account

▢ Claim your website

▢ Set Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing SMART goals

▢ Add the Pin and Fol­low but­tons to your website

▢ Plan boards based around sto­ry­telling and sea­son­al occasions

▢ Take prod­uct pho­tos des­tined for Pin­ter­est and cou­ple them with SEO-dri­ven descriptions

▢ Engage with your fol­low­ers and curate con­tent from others

▢ Devel­op Pin­ter­est Ads

▢ Make your Pins Rich and Buyable

▢ Get famil­iar with Pin­ter­est Analytics