Optimize Your Pinterest Page In Order To Stand Out
Pinning alone won’t bring you sales overnight. Just like any other competitive field, marketing is first and foremost a battle, and before you start you have to know where the battle takes place. We take a comprehensive look at the dynamics behind Pinterest and 7 Tips on how to make your page a successful sales channel.
When you’re selling online, you must count on the fact that people are not primarily looking for your brand. When they search for a product, most of the time they don’t have a specific brand in mind. But if you want them to choose your product over others it’s your job to inspire them and introduce and display your work in an irresistible way that is appealing to them. A memorable and impressive execution makes people want to buy from you, and helps increase your brand’s visibility.
Pinterest is a perfect place to let your story begin…
Generally people browsing loads of images on Pinterest don’t do it with the intention of buying something, but sooner or later they find something that piques their interest. So don’t give up when your pins have many views but no purchases. If someone saves your pin, there’s good chance they’ll return to it, this time as a buyer (find out more about Save button in the article).
Basic Vocabulary For the Beginners
The name Pinterest is derivated from an idea of Pinning your interest on the board. This social network is worldwide board for sharing ideas and inspirations among the people.
Pin is a picture in general. It can be product photo, quote, infographic, image of your work, graphics, drawings, posters, recipes, diy tutorial, inspirations on how to design your office, home or garden. Whatever that is visually appealing and informative.
Pinners are active users adding more Pins to their own or shared Boards = categories defined by tags.
“Pinterest is not about sharing with your friends, it’s about saving inspiration for your future.” Evan Sharp — Pinterest Co-Founder
…and this is when Pinterest starts to make sense for commerce.
Interesting Facts About Pinterest
# 165 million registered users (pinners) — that contains both your customers and competitors
# 150 million monthly active users (updated January 23rd, 2017)
# 50 billion Pins in total and 2/3 of Pins represent brands and products
# 30% of users prefer browsing Pinterest over watching TV (Pinners spent an average of 14 minutes daily on average site visits)
# Pinners spend 50% more money on average compared to other social channels
# 87% Pinners have purchased a product because of Pinterest
# 72% of Pinners use Pinterest to decide what to buy offline
What’s typical Pinner like?
Build your own customer persona and match her/his interests with your products. Sell a lifestyle, and create stories they will love to follow.
General Pinners’ Characteristics
When creating your boards, keep in mind who’s decision maker when purchasing you products. It’s good to know the characteristics of your audience.
AGE
Millenials use Pinterest as much as Instagram. Median is age of 40 and still older people are adopting this social network.
GENDER
81% of Pinterest users are females
STATUS
single, living alone, family oriented
LEADING COUNTRIES
About 70 million of users comes from the US and 80 million from outside the US — Japan, UK, Germany, India
EDUCATION & INCOME
What’s the impact of these factors on Pinterest user’s behaviour?
How To Become Visible Among 75 Billion Ideas?
1. Create a successful page structure
Marketing experts from Pinterest advise adding 20–30 pins per board for the best results. Whether it’s too much or not depends on the amount of boards you have. We generally adopt this strategy: in the beginning, create at least 10 boards containing 5 pins.
Dedicate 4 boards to topics your targets love. On the other 4 boards make an effort to find products that are difficult to get a hold of and give them an easy solution. And finally, add 2 boards of products your targets can’t live without.
2. Integrate other social channels for cross promotion
You’ve probably worked a lot on your Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest profiles and pages. Why not to use them for promoting your new Pinterest page or boards? Use your current followers and fans to support your brand’s presence across the channels. Distinguish between cross-posting and cross promotion. While cross posting is re-sharing existing posts across the social media, cross promotion means creating a new post for each network, with appropriate picture sizes and text forms.
The ideal picture size for Pinterest is 600 pixels wide without any limits on height.
Share button allows you to “Send” the Pin to your friends. In case of cross promotion we recommend using unique image of appropriate size for each media.
3. Get more traffic
More important than followers are the views you gain. Viewed or saved product means someone is interested in a specific item, which gets you closer to an actual transaction. You can expose your pins to wider audience in two ways: follow influencers and use Promoted Pins. Influencers are Pinners with many followers related to your business or online store/brand. Join their boards, start discussions, or create your own board and invite them to contribute.
Promoted Pins are adverts that help you to get closer to the goal you want to reach. Do you want to increase your brand awareness, engagement or traffic? Then check out, how these metrics differ:
- awareness — cost per 1000 impressions; your promoted Pin is displayed 1000 times
- engagement — cost per engagement; you’re charged if you get a new follower
- traffic — cost per click that you pay if someone saves your Pin
4. Sell the problem you solve, not the product
Advice: Use prices, not faces
There are interesting stats about which Pins are likely to be clicked:
Pins with prices get 36% more likes than those without.
Images without faces receive 23% more re-pins.
One would say that looking at a human face would be pleasant and encourage you to react, but Pinterest is place for products and things, and these tend to be more favorable when it comes to getting a response (i.e. re-pins). It’s even possible to present and sell intangible or non-photogenic products and services. Use quotes and specify situations that your product / service can solve. Feel free to use humor as well, as this can help you seem more personable.
5. Use CTA Buttons : Save Button, Buyable Pins
Make your website Pinterest friendly by using the Save Button (earlier versions called this the “Pin It” button). You can find this browser extension easily in the Chrome store. It enables your visitors to share the content from your website directly on Pinterest. It’s crucial for carving your products into the Pinners minds. The purpose is to save the products now and purchase later.
Buyable Pins let visitors purchase the product directly from the board without leaving Pinterest. These Pins with a blue price tag inform people the product is in stock and available for purchase. Thanks to this gadget, supported by shopping platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento and IBM Commerce, Pinterest has quickly become an important sales channel for all online merchants.
Pinners may also hit the “Tried it!” button which informs about the engagement with the specific Pins.
6. Join and create Group Boards
Group boards bring together people with the same interest — which increases your chance to reach targets. Find the most popular groups related to your industry and Pin within the chosen tag.
Groups give users the freedom to follow specific topics of their interest, and not necessarily the entire brand or company. The sooner you adopt this logic, the better.
Look at Top Categories in sense of the most frequent searching that convert into shopping.
7. Use hashtags correctly
Hashtags work well on Twitter and Instagram as a search and mentioning tool, but on Pinterest hashtags are not clickable. The only way they work is in the Pin’s description. Use unique and memorable hashtags and avoid general terms. Hashtag’s are best used for contests and marketing campaigns across social media. Even if your campaign is over, Pins stay live until deleted,so your claims remains alive in years.
Find the popular #todaykidswillneverknow and you immediately get the idea of hashtags on Pinterest.
Summary
Though Pinterest is not as competitive compared to other social networks, it does serve as a serious sales channel that every online store owner should integrate into their sales strategy, especially when the brand or product is something that is visually appealing or relies on aesthetic. The more channels you adopt, the more potential sales you have coming in. Having Pinterest as another platform in our armory of marketing weaponry is something we can expect to become even more important in the future.
Whether you are a beginner or already a skilled Pinner, hopefully this has offered a clear picture of some of the advantages of being on Pinterest and its important role in online business. Now it’s your turn to contribute your own work to the world’s gallery of inspiration and ideas.
