HOW TO LEVERAGE PINTEREST FOR YOUR BRAND

Plus Pro Tips to Help You Drive Traffic, Convert Leads and Improve Brand Awareness

When we think Pinterest, we think: DIY crafts, mood boards, recipes, weddings, color - so much color! If you’ve been on the platform, you know how visual it is - and how easy it is for time to slip by as you scroll over one eye-catching post after another. But do you know how beneficial it can be for your business?

The top 10 niche categories on Pinterest in 2021 are Home Décor, Art, Travel, Photography, DIY and Crafts, Design, Technology, Quotes, Food and Drink, and Humor. If one of these categories describes your business - Pinterest is a powerful marketing tool worth learning about.

Another thing to note: Pinterest holds a proud tag of being the most female-skewed social platform in the world and 80% of U.S. moms are on Pinterest. That's a huge percentage so if you are in the business of helping moms, Pinterest is the platform for you. 

Major Benefits of Pinterest for Business + Pro Tips

There are 444 million monthly active users worldwide on Pinterest and about 70% of Pinteresters aren’t just visiting the site, they are actively engaged in taking actions – saving images and/or clicking-through. High user engagement makes Pinterest one of the more impactful marketing tools for businesses that are looking to convert more leads, drive traffic to their websites, and increase brand awareness.

Benefit #1: Boost Website Traffic Through ‘Click-Through’ Feature

Pinterest has a leg up over the other major visual platform, Instagram, because it allows you to link your visual content directly to another website — namely, your website. When Pinterest users click on your post (a.k.a. your Pin) and are directed to the link you attached, that is called clicking-through.

This is really the name of the game for small businesses: increase traffic to your website to generate leads and conversions. You can share URLs in your profile as well as on your Pins and boards. For example, you can post content with a link to your email sign up page, “About Us” page, blog post, or a product on your website.

Pro Tip - Tell a visual story to generate interest and make the user click. Through pictures and videos, you’re able to show — rather than tell — your audience what you’re about as a company, the things you value, what and who you support, and the types of products and services you sell.

Here’s a great example of a visual story Pin from Zola:

Benefit #2: Inspire Purchase

Pinterest is all about inspiring and sharing ideas for various interests. Users are constantly saving Pinterest posts into categories of their choosing (called Pinterest boards) for future use: trying a recipe, buying a loved one a gift, restyling a sweater, or planning an event.

According to Pinterest research, 93 percent of the site’s users use the site to help them plan their purchases. 

For example, a user may be planning an event, like a wedding, and they will create a Pinterest board where they save posts that provide a visual idea of what they want the wedding to look like. From color palettes, to table settings, to outfits, to food, to lighting and locations. That board is compiled of images that inspire and all of those images can be linked to a product for purchase that is featured in the photo. When the user is ready to make purchases for the event, they will reference the pinned content on that board and make their decisions. 

Pro Tip - Create really beautiful and chic lifestyle photos that feature your product. The goal is to create the dream scenario of your product in use and put that in front of your audience. To nail this you need to have a pulse on who your audience is: their style, buying behavior, other interests, demographics, location, etc. If you don’t know, we can help you! Set up a brand style session with us so you can get closer to your audience. 

Benefit #3: Build Brand Awareness

Pinterest is a great way for your small business to display your work and showcase your expertise in your industry. Examples include Pins with images and videos of your work, infographics, data visualizations, and blog posts. This is important to your brand because your business will grow faster if you are recognized as a brand that provides helpful and applicable content for audience members.

Pro Tip - Educate customers through tutorials, infographics, how-tos, blog posts and links to additional educational content. While creating and sharing content for your Pinterest profile, keep your audience in mind. What do they want to learn about? What gives them confidence in a brand?

How to Set Up Your Pinterest

1. We suggest watching this 8-minute tutorial first. It gives you a sense of what the process is like and what you’ll need to have ready to create your Pinterest account and profile.

• Note that you’ll need to have brand basics like a company name, logo and colors to start up any social platform. We are masters of brand style over here so if you are unsure of your brand identity (your logo, typography, color palette, imagery inspirations, tone, mission statement), let us know! We love creating style guides and messaging for passionate brand owners like yourself. Having a guide in hand before you start your Pinterest page makes life way easier for you and ensures cohesion across your platforms, which builds your brand credibility. 

1. Sign up for your business account here. This free account provides you with access to Pinterest Analytics and other handy marketing features such as a profile that clearly states you’re a business, Pinterest widgets, and Pinterest tag. 

   • If you already have a Pinterest account and want to convert it into a Pinterest business account, you can also do that without losing any of your content or work.

   • With a business account you’ll also have the option to run Pinterest ads.

Pro Tips on Basic Pinterest Marketing

Conduct Market Research

As a small business, you might still be figuring out what content your audience expects and wants. Pinterest makes it easy for you to review and find inspiration in what your competitors are doing and what brands you admire are doing. You can pick up useful tactics by looking at their content, their audience's content, and what kind of profiles they are interacting with on the platform. 

Leverage Keywords

Using specific keywords and phrases in your profile, posts, Pins, and boards, will increase the likelihood that your posts will organically appear in users’ feeds and searches. You want to choose words and phrases that are significant and unique to what you are offering. 

When considering what these keywords/phrases should be, ask yourself:

1. What are your customer’s pain points? 

2. What solution are you providing?

3. What makes your solution stand out from your competition?

For example, if you sell plastic-free toothpaste, you might use keywords and phrases like “sustainable” or “living plastic-free” throughout your profile and Pins. This way, when a user searches one of those terms, your profile and images will likely appear on their feeds in the search results.

Here are some locations in which you should insert keywords on Pinterest to improve your chances of organically ranking through search:

• Bio and profile

• Pin descriptions

• Board titles

• Board descriptions

Take the Time to Create Polished Images and Videos

The images and videos you are posting are what attract followers and engagement on your profile so it is worth it to put time and energy into creating eye-catching, beautiful, and creative images and videos.

Three beginner-friendly tools that we would recommend are:

1. Pinterest image design and creation tools. Design, edit, create, and publish professional-looking photos and images for the platform.

2. Canva.com is great for people who are creating a brand on their own and don’t have a background in graphic design or art. Canva has over 1 million images, graphics, templates, and icons available to help you create top notch content for your Pinterest.

3. JSQ Creative Agency! We are 3 creative women who spend most of our time creating, strategizing and immersing ourselves in the digital creative space. We’d love to guide you through your first 30 days on Pinterest so you can hit the ground running with your best foot forward and your boss suit on. A few services we offer that can help are:

   1. Brand Guides

   2. Content Planning and Strategy

   3. Content Creation (social post imagery and copy, blog posts)

Alright, you understand Pinterest (or maybe not quite), What now?

If you want to pick our brain to prepare to start your Pinterest yourself, or feel overwhelmed and want to have a conversation about what you just read, or ask further questions, book a marketing therapy session with us. 

You have great ideas, you know what your skills are but maybe you need help organizing and narrowing your focus to take the best next steps. We can be your sounding board, your business partner for an hour, to really flush out ideas to reach clarity and confidence in your next steps. 

This is our invitation for you to dump your questions on us! Whether you’re on the DIY route or want to hire us as part of the team - we want to support you in any capacity that we can because we love seeing small businesses succeed. 

Congratulations on taking this next step in growing your brand to meet your business objectives. We are cheering you on from the blogosphere and here in person when you need us :)

Let's have a no-obligation chat for 15 minutes and discover how we can elevate your brand. Limited slots available.