What Can I Do With Pinterest ?— Part 2

Published in

Inside Revenue

11 min readNov 24, 2017

The Intermediate Guide

In Part 1 we spoke about what Pinterest is and why you should care about it. As well as started talking about how you can use Pinterest to increase your chances of hitting your company’s revenue targets. If you missed this article you can click here to read “What Can I Do With Pinterest? — Part 1 (The Beginner’s Guide)”.

In this article we will further explore how to increase you chances of hitting your company’s revenue targets by, increase active engagement with your customers, promoting your business through pins, generally increasing sales through Pinterest and using taste graphs and advanced audience targeting.

How Can Pinterest Help Me Hit My Company’s Revenue Targets?

In this article I will cover:

#1 Increasing Active Engagement With Your Customers

#2 Promoting Your Business Through Pins

#3 Increasing Sales Through Pinterest

#4 Using The Taste Graph And Advanced Audience Targeting

So lets get started…

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Webinar video taken from Pinterest for Business’ official YouTube channel

#1 Increasing Active Engagement With Your Customers

Unlike other social networks, Pinterest is much more about saving and sharing content than it is about interacting with other users. However, like any social network, Pinterest provides ways for users to connect with other people such as the repinning of content, the use of group boards, as well as the more traditional methods.

We will take you through some of these methods:

Liking
Commenting
Sending Pins
Tagging Users
Messaging

Liking
Probably the most easiest way to interact with other Pinterest users, liking a pin is the most simple method of user interaction that the platform offers. Simply hover over the pin you would like to like, and click the heart-shaped icon. As with other social media platforms, this action will notify the user of your engagement.

Commenting
Another common and familiar phrase in the social media world is commenting. Simply click on the pin you want to comment on and use the larger window pull up to type in your desired feedback in the comment box provided.

Sending Pins
If you are looking to share a pin that you’ve found interesting or useful, by hovering over pins and clicking the send button, you can easily search for other Pinterest users by username, enter the email address, or use other social networks to share your ideas with your friends.

Tagging Users
Just like with Twitter, Pinterest allows you to tag other users by using the @ symbol before the username of the person you are looking to tag. This will notify the user of the engagement and spark off in interaction to get those conversations going

Messaging
By using the messages option in the notifications tab at the top of your Pinterest page, you are able to send private messages to other Pinterest users where you can also drag and drop any pins that you’ve found interesting.

“Technology is a double edge sword. Just as sales people are moving into the future, the buyers are already ahead of us” — Koka Sexton (Social Strategies, Hootsuite) @kokasexton

#2 Promoting Your Business Through Pins

There are a number of ways to promote your business using Pinterest, which are all easily trackable with the platform’s built-in analytics.

1. Promoted Pins
Pinterest offers what the platform calls “Promoted Pins”. These are regular pins that have been paid by brands to be seen by more people. This not only is a more effective method of exposing your pins to users, but helps expand your pin’s reach to increase discoverability. First introduced in October 2016, this concept was expanded upon with the introduction of Promoted App Pins and One-Tap Promoted pins.

Promoted App Pins allow users to find and download iOS apps straight from a pin without leaving Pinterest, whereas One-Tap Promoted Pins allows users to go straight to where the content originated from, making the transition from pin to landing page or website a whole lot smoother.

Seeing a 60% increase in video usage over the past year, the Pinterest platform allows brands to use multimedia formats to create and promote easily discoverable content, which can be paired with other pins related to the subject of the video for extended reach.

Promoted Pins are currently available in multiple campaign formats to maximize on the results looking to be achieved by each objective:

Awareness Campaigns
Promoted Pins used in awareness campaigns, assist your business in getting your pins in front of people who have not heard of you before — paid per 1 000 impressions.
Engagement Campaigns
Designed to encourage pinners to interact with your content by repinning or clicking on your pins, these Promoted pins enable you to set your budget to pay per engagement action, whether a closeup, repin or click.
Traffic Driving Campaigns
Designed to send people from your Pinterest ads directly to your website or landing page, Promoted Pins used for this objective follow the traditional pay-per-click method and sees excellent results.

See Pinterest for Business’ success story of how Hunter used the platform to increase awareness, consideration and referrals by clicking here.

“By the year 2020, 85 percent of the buyer-seller interaction will happen online through social media and video.” — Josiane Feigon (President, TeleSmart Communications) @JosianeFeigon

#3 Increasing Sales Through Pinterest

There are a number of ways to increase your sales on the Pinterest platform, ranging from traditional methods used on multiple social media platforms, to Pinterest specific methods that allow you to leverage the platform’s capabilities to increase your revenue.

1. Coupons
Seemingly less effective of late, traditional coupons have over the years lost their popularity, however, with the boom of social media and the shift from traditional purchasing methods to online shopping, coupons have made a comeback. Gaining popularity on Pinterest, the words free, discount and deal have proven their effectiveness in the world of bargain hunters. Whether you are using store coupons, online coupons, or group coupons, consumers continue to love the prospect of getting a good deal. By combining these offers with the visual nature of Pinterest, coupons have become a home run for product sales on the platform.

By using third party coupon applications, such as Wishpond, your coupon making process will become headache free. By making a coupon board on your business account, and pinning images of your deals with the details of the offers linking back to the specific coupon pages on your website, you will not only drive traffic to your site, but encourage increased purchases. Not only will it get you more likes, repins and shares of your offer, people will be encouraged to talk about your brand and expand your awareness and exposure to potential clients.

Tip: Link your coupon pins directly to your website or landing page, this way your customer will always be encouraged to check your pages for fresh deals and ideas.

2. SEO
With many shoppers on Pinterest primed for product and service exposure on the platform, brands need to find ways to stand out from the crowd in order to be found by eager consumers. There are a large number of optimization tactics that you should consider incorporating in order for your pins to be more easily found by your target market.

Optimize Your Company Username
Pinterest business pages allow you to make your own company URL’s as long as they aren’t already taken. Brands should take advantage of this by selecting a username that is clear and reflective of your company. Limited to 15 characters, some brands will need to create shortened versions that are easy to understand and memorable to your consumers.
Optimize Your About Section
By including keywords in your about section that are reflective of your SEO strategy, you cannot only clearly explain who your company is and what you do, but it will make your brand easier to find in a search.
Optimize Your Links
Your ultimate marketing goal on Pinterest should be driving traffic back to your website in an attempt to gain customers and sales. By including links back to your website, in the about section of your business profile, as well as including them in your pins, you are able to encourage users to visit your website, as well as setup appropriate inbound links that can move users through your sales funnel through every pin you post.
Optimize Your Pinboards
By using Pinboard names that reflect your keywords, you can use the insights gained from your customer base to learn your customers’ language in order to use naming conventions that will make their searches easier.
Optimize Your Pin Descriptions
Hashtags are becoming an everyday occurrence on all social media platforms, which now is included on Pinterest. By including one to three hashtags in your pins, you are not only able to keep up with the latest trends in marketing madness, but are able to put them to good use through trendy creative tags that will be used by the masses. In addition to hash tagging in your pin descriptions, you should also be sure to include the words that you want to be found for. With an allocation of up to 500 characters, you are able to use this feature to make your pins more enticing and easier to search for.

3. Rich Pins
Pinterest is continuously adding better functionality for you and your business marketing by listening to the needs of their business users. One of these features is called the Rich Pin, which enables you to include a lot more details about your pins, which automatically gets updated with feature, pricing, availability, ingredient updates and more.

There are currently many types of rich pins that you are able to use; product pins, recipe pins, movie pins and more. With the rich pins feature, you will need to ensure that your website is coded with the require media tags that Pinterest will provide.

4. Contests
As always, contests form part of an exciting part of marketing efforts from the consumer’s part as they not only create a buzz for your brand, but encourage traffic, sales and awareness for your brand. Contests on Pinterest create amazing opportunities for your to connect with your customers while generating tons of repins, likes and shares. Like coupons, Pinterest allows you to either run contests on your website or on the platform itself. Although the platform has tightened up on it’s “Pin it to win it” contest types, there are few limitations on the types of contests you are able to run on the platform.

A few general rules of thumb for creating a great contest that will get you more participants include:

Make the Pinterest contest easy to enter
Make the contest visually appealing
Make your sweepstakes prize appealing
Make your Pinterest contest mobile friendly
Cross-promote your contest through Facebook, Twitter and your website

5. Cross Promotions
It is always good practice to cross-promote on your site, on Pinterest, there are two great ways to cross-promote your pins and page. The Pin it Button is a Pinterest business feature, that is very simple to set up. By using Pin It Buttons to put beside all of the images of your products on your site, If anyone likes your product there, the button makes it super easy to share on Pinterest. The more your product is pinned to Pinterest, the easier it is get your product seen by tons of other interested consumers. And it doesn’t cost you anything.

A Pinterest Tab can be added to your Facebook Page or your website. The Pinterest Tab enables you to show all of you Pinterest boards as they appear on your Pinterest account. This means that any pin you make can easily be shared to your Facebook Fans, and your website viewers. A Pinterest Tab encourages fans on your other sites to both view your Pinterest images, and to really get interested in following you on Pinterest too. The tabs generates tons more views on your products and gets more shares through Facebook too.

See Pinterest for Business’ success story of how 8fit used the platform to increase customer acquisitions by clicking here.

“If you can buy attention (advertising). You can beg for attention from media (PR). You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales). Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free.” — David Meerman Scott (Online Marketing Strategist) @dmscott

#4 Using The Taste Graph And Advanced Audience Targeting Options

Each month, hundreds of millions of users visit Pinterest during the research and consideration phases of the purchasing process. Whether they are looking for inspiration for a new project, researching ideas, or looking for the best products or services to suit their needs, Pinterest is a platform for all consumer demographics. Pinterest uses advanced algorithms to better the user experience on the platform by analysing searches, saves and explores to customize the delivery of pin recommendations.

The Pinterest Taste Graph helps to connect millions of people searching for fresh ideas as they move through the funnel. By using over 100 billion pins and their various interactions, Pinterest uses advanced technology to refine their understanding of consumer behavior on their site.

Through this technology, Pinterest provides interest targeting. This enables brands to be able to target audiences based on their interests, with over 5 000 to choose from. This allows brands to run Pinterest campaigns more effectively in order to refine your brand’s content to your audience’s specific tastes.

According to Pinterest, the use of interest targeting options in ad campaigns has seen advertisers receive a 50% increase in click through rates and 20% more cost effective clicks. Is this not a result that you business could benefit from? With the addition of this feature, marketers are able to create ads that are not only more relevant to their audience base, but that encourage higher interaction levels, propelling campaigns to achieve more success. This not only helps brands to deliver better ad campaigns, but assists them in gaining key audience insights into those who engage with their content, for even better optimization suggestions.

Pinterest has proven that it can help you increase your revenue and help you to hit your targets. Adore me, is an monthly subscription service for stylish lingerie. They used promoted pins on Pinterest and saw great organic growth which lead to 50% higher click-to-purchase rates as compared to other channels.

Click here to read the full story.

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Pinterest is a valuable marketing tool which can help you to grow your audience and build your brand credibility and trust.

Read our next guide, titled “What Can I Do With Pinterest?—Part 3 (The Advanced Guide)”, where we will cover what you should look out for when using Pinterest by going through the following: