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If you run a small business, you could be forgiven for assuming Pinterest is yet another social platform to showcase your brand/products to prospective customers. There’s no doubt that using the platform this way has merit, with Pinterest currently used by more than 400 million people every month to find inspiration for new projects or prospective purchases. However, the visual nature of Pinterest is often used to create unique opportunities for business users.
Pinterest users are self-confessed shoppaholics with75% of users saying that they’re ‘always’ shopping.
Many use Pinterest to inform their purchases, creating a great opportunity for SMEs in DTC sectors like fashion and interior design.
UK users are particularly enamoured with Pinterest, with twice as many users visiting the platform several times a day compared with their US counterparts. If it’s not already part of your social media strategy, you should consider it.
If you’re going to start using Pinterest, make sure you use the platform to its full potential. Here are some ways UK-based SMEs like yours can use Pinterest to drive revenue.
Make sure you’ve set up a business account
Like most social platforms, Pinterest offers different functionalities to business and individual users. A business account offers a number of features that are beneficial for SMEs. These include:
- An analytics suite that enables you to track the performance of your Pins
- The ability to include a verified website
- A header that you can fill with your own branded Pins
- Rich Pins that provide users with more information that is synced from your landing or product page without leaving the platform
Start advertising
If you’re already running ads on Google, Facebook or Twitter, it’s worth considering adding Pinterest to your list of advertising platforms. Whether you want to promote a new product, drive sales or increase brand awareness, Pinterest can be a useful place to advertise if your customers use the platform.
Pinterest is essentially a visual discovery engine, so it’s adept at ascertaining what users are searching for, enabling brands to make educated guesses about users’ motivations.
Brands can run ads in much the same way as on other platforms, usually at a much more budget-friendly price. Pricing is flexible, depending on your campaign goal. Users can pay per engagement, per click, or per 1,000 impressions.
While prices will always fluctuate, here is a rough guide to pricing:
- Brand Awareness campaigns range from £1.51 to £3.77 per 1,000 impressions delivered
- Ad engagement costs range from £0.075 to £1.13 for every engagement delivered
- Traffic-building campaigns have an average cost of around £0.075 and £1.13 per click
All ads can be tracked via Pinterest’s analytics tools.
Brands can also use promoted Pins that can reach a much broader audience and get faster engagement. These look indistinguishable from normal Pins and may be a less intrusive way to reach audiences than conventional ads.
Go from showcasing to selling
The visual nature of Pinterest makes it a great place to show off your new products. But as of 2018, brands can transform Pins into links to their URL that allow prospective customers to “Shop The Look”. For fashion and homeware retailers, this is a great opportunity to capitalise on the visual impression your goods make. If a viewer is sufficiently impressed, they can click on your Pin and be taken straight to the product page on your website.
The process is straightforward:
- Add a new Pin
- Click the tag icon
- Click a product in the Pin
- Enter the product URL from your website or ecommerce store
- Pin the Pin
Apply your SEO strategy to your Pins
Pinterest’s crawlers work on the same principles as any search engine. In other words, brands that want to get the most out of the platform should apply an SEO strategy. This will vary depending on your operational goals, but SEO tips for Pinterest include:
- Consider the SEO-friendliness of your username as this will be part of your profile’s URL
- Ensure that your profile page is optimised, with a relevant About You section and high-res images of your logo
- Make sure your website is verified
- Create at least one board. Approach it from the point of view of your prospective customers’ needs and pain points and how your brand / products can address them
- Add the Pinterest tag to help you track Pins
- Add the “save button”– a widget that enables users to save images from your website to their boards
- Image-optimise your Pins. The perfect size is 1,000 x 1,500 pixels
- Use guided search and test promoted Pins to carry out keyword research
Keep an eye on your competitors
Pinterest is a place to seek inspiration, and that’s as true for you as it is for your customers. If you’re unsure how to make Pinterest work harder for you, take a look at how your competitors are using it.
You can either lurk on the digital sidelines and see what other brands are doing, or reach out to them and propose partnerships and co-branding opportunities.
