5 Steps to Crafting a Winning Pinterest Digital Marketing Strategy

Being successful on Pinterest can have a significant impact on your brand and your bottom line.

There are 175 million active Pinterest users, and of those, 40% make $100k+ per year.

Reaching the higher earners that make up a significant part of the Pinterest demographic is important because 87% of Pinners have purchased a product thanks to Pinterest and 72% of Pinners use Pinterest to decide what to buy offline. These stats are part of the reason that Pinterest has the highest average order conversion value ($80.54) of any social network. To give a comparison, Facebook’s average order conversion value is only $71.26.

Unlike Facebook and Instagram, there is a lower level of competition when it comes to Pinterest marketing. This means that if you know the market, Pin properly, set up your Pinterest Business account correctly, plan ahead, and take advantage of Pinterest Analytics (free marketing intelligence), your Pinterest account can turn into your number one source of website traffic referrals.

Know the (Pinterest) Market

Pinterest demographics are constantly growing and changing. That said, knowing your target marketing and knowing who the majority of users are on the social media bookmarking site will allow you to better adjust your Pinterest marketing plans to cash in on the high conversion rate.

Pinterest has always been dominated by women, with 81% of all users being female. However, there has been a recent shift in terms of demographics, which is seeing a rising interest from men. Though there has also been an increased interest in Pinterest abroad, it’s important to know that 75 million of the site’s users are based within the United States.

The last important demographic to keep in mind when designing your Pinterest marketing campaigns has to do with age. The median age of a Pinterest user is 40. However, the majority of active Pinners are below 40, and research shows that millennials use Pinterest as much as Instagram.

Pinterest users are always looking for advice, especially ahead of the holidays. This presents a huge opportunity for you to help your audience plan their purchases by creating seasonal boards two to three months before any given holiday.

Set Up Your Pinterest Business Account

Set up your Pinterest account as a Business account from the get-go or switch it over if you already have an account. This is necessary to take full advantage of analytics, Rich Pins, and the opportunity to promote posts for added exposure.

While you’re working on initial account setup, use as many (relevant) keywords as you can in your profile name to increase your searchability. Note that this means that you can’t simply put the name of your brand or company as your profile name if you want people to find it. Pinterest Keyword Tool is a great place to start your Pinterest marketing/keyword research.

The description for your Pinterest account is another area that must be keyword-rich in order to boost the chance of relevant users finding you. Write your account’s description in an engaging way, explaining what you do and who you serve. Your description should also include a call to action (CTA) to better engage Pinners in terms of your biggest business goals.

Practice Proper Pinning

Pinners love Pins that refer to instructional how-tos, roundup lists (odd numbers perform better), and those that have text overlays, which is a great reason to watermark the bottom of your Pin with your website’s URL. When creating Pins such as these, you want to ensure you describe the nature of the Pin in its description. As with your Pinterest name and account description, you also want each Pin’s description to be keyword heavy, as well as include a CTA, such as “click to read more.”

Avoid creating Pins the contain blatant, dominating brand mentions, amateur photography, and overly posed images. Additionally, you’ll want to remove borders and any distracting text—don’t just copy and paste your banner ads into Pinterest.

Though you might have plenty of content ready to Pin as soon as your account is up and running, temper yourself to roll it out slowly. Staggering your content will help to consistently drive your target audience back to your website. For batching this out, refer to the last section of this article.

It can be tempting to focus solely on promoting your brand and products through your Pinterest marketing efforts. However, a winning Pinterest Digital Marketing Strategy is usually more balanced—only about 20% of your content should be all about you. The other 80% of your Pins should demonstrate your understanding of your niche market, through the perspective of others.

The key here is to establish yourself as an authority within your niche, as well as to promote your products and brand. Even when you’re Pinning posts that don’t belong to you, get in there and edit the description so that it is in line with your brand and messaging (and include your target keywords!).

With your Pinterest Business account, you’ll also be able to create Rich Pins, which offer more detailed information—directly on the Pin. Basically, Pinterest automatically adds your website’s branding to content Pinned from your site, leading to greater visibility. There are four types of Rich Pins: product, app, article, and recipe. The ability to provide information and a call-to-action with Rich Pins are particularly helpful for branding, as well as engaging your audience.

Regardless of whether it’s a normal Pin or a Rich Pin, don’t ever delete a Pin! There are more than 50 billion Pins out there, so keep yours up and active. Pins are more effective over time, compared to posts on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook.

Creating and Curating Pinterest Boards

Boards allow you to organize your Pins around different plans, interests, and ideas. If designed correctly, they can also show users what your business is all about: from what inspires you and your brand to what products you offer.

Since your Pinterest marketing efforts are not about you and your hobbies, it’s time to carefully curate your Boards and plan ahead. Any Board that doesn’t match up with your new plan needs to either be deleted or, if that is too painful, made secret.

Your new Boards should be filled with content that showcases your brand’s lifestyle and messaging. These Boards should consist of between 25-35 Pins, each (but added to over time).

Because these Boards are focusing on your brand’s lifestyle, try to create some that expand into fashion, food, and home decor, as these are particularly hot topics on Pinterest. However, make sure that these boards do support your primary brand Board and continue to build the narrative of your being an authority in your particular niche.

Each Board you create should have a keyword-rich description that follows the same guidelines as the description of Pins in order to make it easier for your target market to find you.

Plan Ahead

If you’re overhauling your personal Pinterest profile to develop the Business version, you will need to plan on rolling out a consistent strategy over about four to six months before seeing the rewards for your efforts.

Part of the reason you need to be so forward thinking on Pinterest, opposite of the standard approach to Instagram, is because users rely so heavily on it for holiday inspiration. To take advantage of this, you need to be developing holiday Boards at least two to three months ahead of time. For example, if you’re wanting to target people preparing for activities and trips for Summer vacation, you’ll need to be rolling out those Pins in the Spring.

Using a program such as BoardBooster, to automate your Pinning, will allow you to schedule Pins and help you stay consistent with your posting. Additionally, software products such as this will also offer services that allow you to Loop Pins (reshare them), fix broken links, schedule Pins to group Boards, and clean up your Boards.

The free version of BoardBooster allows you to schedule 500 Pins each month. However, since it’s advisable to be putting up nearly 100 Pins a day, it is worth upgrading to a paid version. BoardBooster offers several packages, with the numbers breaking down to about a dollar per 100 Pins.

5 Steps to Crafting a Winning Pinterest Marketing Strategy

By creating Pins that answer your target market’s questions and solve their problems, you will be able to tap into the high order conversion rate of Pinterest. However, in addition to having quality Pins, you need to ensure that you are making the most of keywords (avoiding hashtags, which are irrelevant on this social network), using engaging descriptions, incorporating Rich Pins, and developing boards that represent your company or brand’s lifestyle. And, don’t forget to keep track of your progress and Pinners’ engagement with Pinterest Analytics.

Are there any tips not included here that are essential to your Pinterest marketing strategy? Tell us about them in the comments below!

Results Driven Marketing can help you with digital marketing strategy, website design, display advertising and so much more. Call us today at 215-393-8700 to see what marketing plan is best for you!

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