Selling on Pinterest

Want to See Your Following Grow at Whirlwind Speed?

Visual content has become increasingly popular in the 21st century. Selling on Pinterest has grown into one of the most widely used skills for promoting your business.

Researchers have found that visual images are processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than text. Additionally, site visitors retain as much as 80% of visual content and only 20% of what we read.

For example, when you include a gigantic increase in the use of mobile technology and a decrease in the average human attention span and it’s no rocket science as to why visual ads rule in today’s online market.

Table of Contents

• • What is Pinterest?
  • Setting Up a Pinterest Business Account
  • Business Account Features
  • Pinterest Boards
  • Pinterest Pins
  • Advertising Guidelines
  • Creating High-Quality Images
  • Launching a Campaign
  • Defining Your Target Audience
  • Creating Ads & Ad Groups
  • Measure Your Results (Analytics)
  • Final Thoughts

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  What is Pinterest?

  Pinterest is a kaleidoscope of images that represent ideas, brands, and products that are displayed graphically and are as varied as its members. The company was founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. During their first decade of operation, the company has grown into a popular platform that is grown to over 335 million subscribers – collectively referred to as “Pinners.”

  Key advantages to using Pinterest include:

  • • • It’s a great source of referrals when Pinners save or re-pin your ads.
      • An effective way to establish, monitor, and maintain your brand.
      • A large exposure with the ability to reach a high volume of people looking for your product or service.
      • Access to inbound (deep) links that link to specific posts on your website.
      • An effective way to sample the market by monitoring indicators (comments, likes and re-pins) that show how your ads are received by other Pinners.
      • Building your brand and authority in your special niche.
      • A tool for developing your own following over time.
      • Increased traffic to your website. Link your Pins to any of your posts.
      • Staying current on product and service trends.

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  Setting Up a Pinterest Business Account

  If you have a personal account on Pinterest, you can either create a new Pinterest business account or convert your personal account into a business account.

• Will I lose my existing boards/pins? No worries. All your boards and pins will be moved to your new business account.
  

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  Business Account Features

  A business account offers the following marketing features in addition to a personal account:

  • Ads allow you to place advertisements that drive traffic to your website.
  • Analytics. provide statistics and charts that show you what is going on with your boards and pins. Which are your best-sellers, and which of them need some more attention.
  • Hashtags are used as wide search phrases and can be used in the description of your boards and pins. They also need to be relevant to your pin. A pin that advertises weight control menus would have an appropriate hashtag of #weightcontrolmealplan. Pinterest suggests a limit of 20 hashtags per pin.
  • Keywords are used to get your pins into Pinners’ search results. Like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, Pinterest has its own search engine. Use keywords in your profile, Pins, and Board descriptions to drive more relevant traffic to your ads. For example, if your niche is pasta salad recipes, type “Pasta Salad Recipes” into the search bar at the top of Pinterest. You’ll see other variations of the keywords that are being used by other Pinners. The competition for those keywords is usually pretty high. You can either use any one of these keywords in the dropdown box, or you can brainstorm and come up with another keyword with less competition.

  

  Pinterest offers suggestions along with your search results at the top of the search screen. You can use any one or a combination of these to create your own keyword. In the example below, you may want to build the keyword “Easy Tuna Pasta Salad” or “Best Chicken Pasta Salad” as an original and less competitive keyword.

  

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  Selling on Pinterest – Boards

  A Pinterest board is a collection of Pins that are either added by you or other Pinners who are authorized to share your board with others in the Pinterest community. Pinterest boards are a smart way to organize products, brands, or ideas. For example, you might create boards to organize ideas like health products, clothing, and recipes.

  A single account can have up to 2,000 boards, which include the boards that you create, secret boards, and group boards created by other Pinners who have added you as a user.

  Pins can be organized within boards by creating a board section. For example, add a “Vegan” or “High Protein” section to your Pasta Recipes board to place those and similar recipes in the same area of your board.

  Create as many boards as you need to display your products and set who can add pins to your board: specific users or just you.

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  Selling on Pinterest – Pins

  Pinterest offers an assortment of pin types that provide different ways to share your products and ideas. Each member can have up to 200,000 Pins, including “Secret Pins” and Pins you have saved on group boards.

  

  Pinterest offers several types of pins that can display a variety of products. A few of them are listed below:

  Product Pins

  Product Pins allow Pinners to locate and purchase products by clicking on your Pin. Showing in the same space with promoted pins, product (buyable) pins have white dots that can be clicked or tapped to allow the Pinner to view the item information. These pins are also referred to as “Shop the Look” or “Buyable” pins.

  Promoted Pins

  Promoted App Pins use links to specific downloads on either iTunes or Google Play app store. An install button accompanies these Pins, but you should also make sure your copy, image, or video conveys attributes about your app. Promoted App Pins look similar to a Promoted Pin or Promoted Video Pin except they link to an app.

  Promoted Carousels allow from two to five images and are identified by a dot at the bottom of each card that Pinners can swipe through to view the item. Cards in a Promoted Carousel ad can have their own image, title, description, and landing page. Promoted Carousels are a great pin type if you have several products or topics to as you each card can advertise to different Pinners.

  Note: Promoted Carousels are available for use in Brand Awareness Campaigns only.

  Promoted Pins are displayed in the home feed and search results just like a regular Pin except that they’re boosted and targeted to deliver way more reach. Other than the “Promoted” label on the Pin, they look and behave the way other Pins do. Users can Pin them to boards, share them, and comment on them.

  Promoted Video Pins contain videos that auto-play when they are 50% or more in view on the desktop or mobile screen. Promoted Video Pins appear with home feed, search results, and the “More Like This” section at the bottom of a Pin close-up display. Sizes offered: max with and standard.

  Rich Pins

  Rich Pins interface directly with the vendor’s database to provide real-time pricing, availability, product information, and where to purchase the product.

  There are three types of Rich Pins: Product Rich Pins, Article, and Recipe Rich Pins. Product Rich Pins that show the most current price, availability, and product information right on your Pin. Article Rich and Recipe Rich Pins will update to reflect any edits you may make on the target website.

  Rich Pins require a few preliminary setup steps followed by an application to Pinterest to get Rich Pins underway.

  Story Pins allow you to create as many as 20 pages that consist of text, images, and links. These pins appear in your home feeds with a cover image, title, and display a story icon at the top-left of the image. Clicking on a Story Pin displays all of the pages that make up the pin.

  Story pins are useful in several applications like covering the history of a topic or a product. Like any other pin, story pins can be saved to your boards and commented, liked, or re-pinned to other boards.

  Note: Story pins are a new feature in Pinterest. Therefore, no analytic data are available on how they affect your brand.

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  Selling on Pinterest – Advertising Guidelines

  Like most every online marketing source, Pinterest advertising guidelines are in place to ensure that all posts are legitimate. Therefore, all posts are required to be transparent in their honesty and integrity.

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  Creating High-Quality Images

  As of 2020, Pinterest has reported a cumulative and growing total of 200 billion Pins in use. Therefore, the use of high-quality images that stand out in Pinners’ home feeds is important. Images with a vertical measure of 2:3 aspect ratio (e.g. 1,000 x 1,500 pixels) are recommended for the best view and performance.

  Canva offers a large selection of images with the ability to create your own images. A wide selection of pre-made images that are sized specifically to meet Pinterest and other social media requirements. Create your own custom logos that best represent your brand and add to your Pin graphics. Sign up for a free account with the option to upgrade to Pro or Enterprise platforms.

  One of the many benefits of being a premium member of Wealthy Affiliate is abundant training. Weekly live webinars are presented by Jay Neill (Magistudios) and include weekly interactive training sessions for affiliate marketers. A recent live session was Hello: Canva where Jay covers the basics of how to use Canva with some live demonstrations.

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  Selling on Pinterest – Launching a Campaign

  Now that we have the basic components of Pinterest Boards and Pins covered, we are ready to launch a campaign. An ad campaign consists of three layers: campaign, ad or ad group, and the pins that you are promoting.

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  Defining Your Target Audience When Selling on Pinterest

  Pinterest allows you to create your own audience as narrow or as wide as necessary. Creating a target audience helps you reach a specific group of people by combining information about your customers with information about how people use Pinterest. Audiences can be created from four sources:

  1. Customer lists that you upload to Pinterest in a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file.
  2. Visitors who have already visited your website.
  3. Site visitors who have “engaged” with your Pins.
  4. Shoppers with similar tastes and shopping preferences to an existing audience list.

  For example, in the image below, Pinterest displays the “Potential audience size” on the right side of your screen. This will give you a ballpark figure on the scope of your audience.

  

  You can combine targeting criteria to create an audience as narrow or as broad as you like. Below is a list of targeting options that you can use to reach your audience.

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  Creating Ads & Ad Groups When Selling on Pinterest

  Pinterest ads are defined at two levels:  Ad groups and ads (pins).

  Each ad group created on Pinterest can reach people who are interested in your products and ideas using the following criteria:

  • Where your ads will show on Pinterest
  • Budget
  • Automatic or custom bids
  • The date range that your ad group will run.
  • The target audience for all ads (pins) that are included within the ad group.

  Ad groups let you address the different regions, product lines, and target audiences that may be a part of a single campaign. They also allow you to test the performance of various targeting and objective strategies without creating multiple campaigns.

  Ads are the individual Pins that are displayed in Pinners’ home feeds. Multiple ads can be included in a single ad group to test which variations work best with your targeted audience.

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  Measure Your Results (Analytics)

  The results of any campaign will vary depending on many factors that can change throughout time (source: StudiousGuy).

  • Economy
  • Social (demographics)
  • Federal, state, and local regulations
  • Competition
  • Campaign objective
  • Target Audience
  • The specific product or service
  • Time of year

  Pinterest offers a wide range of parameters in which to measure your campaign results. Gaining access to Pinterest Analytics has two requirements:

  1. A Pinterest business account
  2. Verify your website on Pinterest

  Pinterest Analytics helps you understand your overall presence on Pinterest. It shows you what content, both paid and organic is received best by Pinners. Several markers are available to gauge how your pins are doing.

  Additionally, Pinterest has several markers that can be used to gauge your ad performance.

  

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  Selling on Pinterest – Final Thoughts

  Based on the continued growth in the number of diverse Pinners in the past decade, it’s easy to see that making use of Pinterest is an effective way to connect with others and to build your business. Most importantly, Pinterest features several tools that help marketers increase engagement.

  A Pinterest Marketing Board presents the latest tips, best practices, and marketing trends.

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  Thank you for browsing my website. Feel free to share your own ideas or questions about how to sell on Pinterest below and I will respond to all of them.