9 Clever Tips For Using Pinterest For Business Marketing

In the cutthroat world of social media, Pinterest offers a unique user experience, something completely different from the basic concept of almost every social platform.

Pinterest is not about how we interact with other people but how we visualize our likes and dislikes in the forms of pictures, gifs, and short videos and share them with the rest of the world. While messaging and following others is possible, this platform is not about making friends. 

Two major reasons as to why you should use Pinterest for your organization are the facts that it is not very widely used yet by most businesses and hence, is an untapped platform with immense future growth prospects and also about 40 percent of Pinterest users belong to the $100k+ income group and thereby, have a large purchasing capacity.

Another major reason is that most people use Pinterest for research purposes before making a big decision – be it a birthday party, a wedding, or a new office space.

As of the second quarter of 2019, by August, Pinterest reported a record high of 300 million active monthly users. More than 8 million people who saved (or pinned) the pictures, were engaging actively with automatically running content on Pinterest.

More than 83 percent of monthly pinners even visited the reference websites to purchase the saved content from Pinterest. 

While the approach may be slightly different, Pinterest is a great platform for building your business and growing it exponentially. Listed below are nine tips for using Pinterest for your business. 

1. Optimizing your profile

The first step to having an effective Pinterest account is by creating a Business account. A business account offers several tools and features that cannot be used otherwise in case of a personal account. You can use these tools and features to build a stronger profile and widen your reach to facilitate your growth. 

Switching to a business profile is very easy. You can do it by logging into your profile and clicking the ‘three dots’ on the right-hand top corner. Once the dropbox appears, choose the ‘Upgrade your account’ option. 

2. Claim other social media handles

It is important for people to have access to your other social media profiles, be it your Facebook or Instagram handles. There is a feature within your Pinterest business profile that lets you link your other accounts and your website with it.

This can help you post and update simultaneously in all the platforms. It is also especially helpful to people who gain interest in your brand as they can easily access it from Pinterest.

It is highly unlikely for a prospective customer to run a google search to find out about your brand unless they are extremely interested in your products.

3. Add Pinterest save buttons to your site

Pinterest gives you the option to save pictures, videos, and gifs directly from your website to the reader’s Pinterest board. This is a great way for people to come back to your posts and products later in case they are short of time.

You can also link your website to your Pinterest account directly and people may navigate to it while going through your page. This is a great way to engage people in your content as it gives them a variety of options, posts, and areas to go through.

By the end of all the navigation, most people may actually be convinced by your brand and what you have to offer.

This helps in building engagement and compelling your audience to interact actively with your website and other accounts. 

4. Optimize the captions on your uploads

The Pinterest search option is extremely pertinent to the application because most people use it wisely to search what they exactly want since results that come up usually contain a huge variety of options.

When you search a particular keyword in the search bar in Pinterest, other accounts do not show up, but instead, pictures and gifs/videos show up from other profiles, meaning the search results are pretty content-oriented. This is why strategically placing keywords is important. 

Hence, to make sure that the pictures of your brand and organization show up when someone types something into the search box, always use search-friendly captions for your uploads. Also make sure that the language you use in your uploads, to describe them, is not difficult for the average audience to understand. 

5. Organize your profile well

Pinterest can be confusing for users initially and hence organizing your profile and your boards will help people find exactly what they’re looking for.

It is important to constantly engage with the application and pin at least one picture daily. This will ensure that you show up in the feeds of your followers constantly as well. 

Regarding your own uploads, make separate boards and name them strategically. While the names should be catchy, it should also be search-friendly and easy to categorize (as mentioned earlier).

Also, keep a constant track on what is trending in Pinterest so that you can develop your next product around it, or pin useful posts for the reference of your followers. 

6. Run advertisements in Pinterest

Running advertisements on Pinterest is fairly easy. It is also extremely detail-oriented, which means that your ads will reach the exact audience you target.

All you need to do is create a business account and install Pinterest Tag. Once you do so, you must choose a campaign goal, budget, and target customers.

Lastly, you need to select an ad placement that is usually chosen by default based on your budget. Advertisements on Pinterest are like regular pins except that more people see your uploads since now, you’re paying for it. 

It is usually said that Pinterest advertisements can be a good value for money since some people will re-pin your uploads after seeing an ad and that will give it more exposure as now these pins will also be shown to their followers, and if pinned further, the reach constantly expands. It is clearly a great investment. 

Based on Pinterest Analytics, you can also optimize your advertising strategies and target specific audiences. We will come to that in the next section. 

7. Understand Pinterest analytics and draw useful insights

The Analytics tool in Pinterest business accounts is the most useful tool that, if used properly, will help you target specific audiences and understand who interacts with your page regularly.

This feature is extremely important as it will give you information regarding the average daily viewers and impressions, average monthly viewers, and their engagement with your posts. 

The Analytics section will also give you information about the demographics of your audience, their age, gender, location, etc. You can use this knowledge effectively to target specific groups of users for your advertisements.

You can also make significant additions and changes to your products based on the needs of your audience and their demographic characters. 

8. Create group boards with other people

Once you find out who your biggest fan is on Pinterest, you can use the platform’s instant messaging feature to reach out to them and understand their perspectives towards your brand.

This will not only help you personalize their experience with your organization but will also help build trust with your loyal followers. You can then use this interaction to build and create public joint pinboards with them.

This will not only help you reach out to their followers and eventually a larger audience but will automatically influence other followers to trust your brand more and will probably effortlessly convert into loyal customers. 

You can also collect feedback from these people and customize your products to make the buyer happy. 

9. Enable rich pins for a better experience

Pinterest allows four types of rich pins that make a user’s experience more wholesome and seamless.  The rich pins offer several additional features compared to simple pins like more information beyond the image, a description of the original pinner and a click-thru link for easier access.

This facilitates the entire process of navigation by making it direct and straightforward. The four types of Rich Pins that Pinterest allows as of now include:

• Article Pins: These pins help the reader see the article’s title and author description. 

• App Pins: These pins are extremely useful and help a user share and download apps directly within Pinterest. You can use it effectively to make people download your app easily if any. 

• Recipe Pins: A recipe pin helps users see the ingredients, serving sizes, and cooking times for a dish along with the additional information offered by regular pins. 

• Product pins: Product pins are also features of extreme importance as they make the shopping experience in Pinterest easier. When product pins are enabled, with one click a user can view the product details, the website where it can be purchased, real-time prices, and a direct link to the product page of immediate and easy purchase. 

Though a lot of businesses haven’t started using Pinterest in full swing, the platform is projected to grow manifolds in the near future.

Another pro tip for using Pinterest is ensuring that your posts and updates are female-friendly. If your products cater largely to the female population, you are in for an added bonus as approximately 66 percent of Pinterest users are females.

Regardless, if used wisely, this can become the biggest turning point in the expansion of your business.