How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Small Business

In our previous blog posts, we’ve already concluded that when it comes to social media, ROI is the only metric that really counts. Up until now, we talked about Facebook as the dominant source of social traffic and sales. Namely, almost two-thirds of all social media visits to Shopify stores come from Facebook, making it the social network with the highest conversion rate. Even though this digit is pretty impressive, you need to know that Facebook is far from being the only platform through which you can market your products or services.

The digital landscape is constantly evolving, providing online marketers with a plethora of amazing online advertising opportunities. So, apart from Facebook, the impressive number of orders from social media comes from Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, Snapchat and Instagram. Today, we’ll focus on Pinterest in particular, and all the benefits it can bring to your small business.

Upon its first launch, Promoted Pins, Pinterest’s paid advertising service, was available to large companies only. Recently, the developers also released a new option that allows small businesses to promote their products in order to achieve three main goals: driving more traffic to their website, boosting their reach and, of course, enhancing the number of click-throughs. Called DIY Promoted Pins, this service enables companies of all sizes to connect with Pinterest users through pins that appear in search and category feeds on this platform. As you’ve probably guessed, this entire process is based on the cost-per-click principle we are all familiar with.

Do your Customers use Pinterest?

For many, Pinterest is a major source of information and plays an immense role in influencing their behaviour. Here are three most significant reasons why Pinners love this social network:

• 96% use Pinterest to find particular information
• 93% use Pinterest to organize their purchases
• 87% were inspired by Pinterest to make a purchase

Given the abovementioned facts, it’s obvious that Pinterest can benefit your business in numerous ways. However, this can happen only if it is used by your target customers. Therefore, before you start building your presence here, you need to determine what your average customer looks like (their age, gender, profession, location, interests etc.). You will also have to assess what the most effective ways to approach your customers are.

For example, a recent study suggests that Pinterest is largely used by women, especially by Millennial moms. So, if your business caters to the group of women between the ages 15-29, Pinterest is definitely the right choice for you.  On the other hand, if your target audience is primarily male, you should probably redirect your marketing efforts to some other sources of online marketing.

Do you Have an Attitude of a Content Marketer?

Did you know that more than 59% of active Pinterest users click on pins that lead them to surveys, blog posts and photos of their interest? Moreover, half of these users are interested in pins that lead to a certain brand or a shopping website.

Obviously, what users seek on Pinterest is fresh, engaging and thought-provoking content. Keeping this fact in mind, it probably comes as no surprise that the most popular topics on this platform are the highly visual ones, usually including food, fashion, crafts, beauty and décor.

Of course, not all businesses on Pinterest offer products or services related to such popular topics. What about companies that sell agricultural machinery or offer insurance or financial services? Well, they need to find an interesting way to make their content highly visual to win clicks and attract more customers to their website.

For example, if you find yourself in such a situation, you could create a myriad of boards containing relevant infographics, images from blog entries or even photos of staff members (this works quite well, actually :)). Just take an example of TD Bank. Even though one would probably think that such an institution has nothing to do with Pinterest, they managed to prove the opposite. Namely, one of the bank’s most creative boards is called “Our littlest bankers”and it consistsof the photos of children that would like to become bankers one day.

Are your Boards Well-Organized?

When you start building your presence on online channels, you need to always keep in mind that each of them operates in a different manner. While your Facebook page will be filled with posts that are organized in a chronological order, your boards on Pinterest need to be categorized in a logical manner, based on their importance or topic. By providing you with the opportunity to create multiple boards, one for each category of your products or services, Pinterest wants to keep your followers engaged not only in your general content, but in the content that is specific to their preferences as well.

For example, more than half of Pinterest users enter the app from their mobile devices to guide them while shopping. All you need to do here is to make this entire process of researching and information gathering easier for them. Seems that a little bit of OCD might come in handy here!

How often do you Post on Pinterest?

Put simply, even though pinning excessively may annoy your audience, not pinning enough will cause your followers to forget that you even exist. This is something of a golden rule, not only on Pinterest, but in the world of online marketing in general. Adding new stuff to your board on regular basis is probably the only effective way to succeed. So, you need to create some kind of a posting schedule and evaluate your visitors’ reactions to it before you decide to increase or reduce the frequency of your pins.

To sum it up, Pinterest seems to be able to bring more traffic to your website, help you get discovered more easily on Google, increase the longevity of your content and, finally, boost the reach of your products.The best thing about this platform is its subtlety. While other social networks tend to have quite pushy methods of advertising (which often drives customers away), Pinterest simply presents them with an entire category of items and trends they may or may not find interesting.

Hope this helps, let us know how Pinterest has worked for your small business!