Pinterest for business: A 2022 guide
Do you remember making mood boards?
You’d grab a big chunk of corkboard, print off some of your favorite images, cut up your favorite magazines, and then pin up those engaging pictures to make a nice little collage.
So, you’d basically be pinning your interests.
You would pin interests.
You’d pintere…..ohhhh — we see what they did there!
Aside from a pleasing portmanteau, Pinterest is a hive of social activity. Based around the ability to create digital mood boards, since its full launch in 2010, Pinterest has built a huge audience — with around 433 million monthly active users, it is the 15th most active social media platform in the world.
You can think of Pinterest as the dreamer’s social media.
It’s where people go to find inspiration, discover new things, learn new recipes, share beautiful moments, plan their kitchen remodel, or just find everlasting peace by collecting a bunch of pictures of puppies.
But it’s also where people go to buy things.
Pinterest has also become a strong marketing tool for businesses all over the world. With ample opportunities to showcase their products, Pinterest is prime real estate for companies of any size looking to increase sales or engagement or grow their brand recognition.
In fact, 90% of weekly Pinterest users have made a purchase based on content that they found on the platform, and 98% of Pinners say that they try new things that they find on Pinterest — now that’s Pinteresting (sorry).
So how can you strut your stuff on this image-sharing social media service?
We’ve put together a comprehensive guide to Pinterest marketing, including everything you’ll need to know to get set up and start promoting your business.
But first, let’s walk before we run, and get stuck into the basics.
Table of contents
- The basics of Pinterest Marketing
- The 5 steps to grow your business on Pinterest
- Should you use Pinterest to market your small business?
The basics of Pinterest Marketing
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social media platform that people can use to find, share, and store various visual content.
It works by users “pinning” content to various boards — each with its own theme — in order to create mood boards that can be shared with other users.
You can have either a personal or business account on Pinterest. A personal account will allow you to upload various forms of content to your boards and browse through everything the website has to offer.
Having a business account allows you to promote your business, and make use of the wide range of marketing tools that are available. And with 75% of Pinterest users saying that they’re constantly in buying mode, you can start to see why there are so many small-business Pinterest users.
How to get started with Pinterest Marketing
Okay, now that we understand what Pinterest is and we’re fully aware of how powerful a tool it is for businesses, let’s get started with creating your own Pinterest business account.
Like most social media platforms, it’s relatively straightforward to get up and running.
To create an account, all you’ll need to do is have an existing email address, then follow the instructions via this link.
Once you’ve entered your email address and created a password, you’ll be asked to start building your profile. This starts off with putting in the basic information of your business such as its name, a link to your external website, and your location details.
The next step is where it starts to get important.
Pinterest’s algorithm tries to match you with recommendations that will work best for you and your business based on the details you provide. So in this step, you can put in what the focus of your brand is — whether that’s design, fashion, travel, or essentially whatever industry your business operates in.
You can then pick up to three “goals” that you’d like to achieve through Pinterest. They give you options such as selling more products, growing your brand awareness, or driving traffic to your site.
Once you’ve entered all of this information, then you’re ready to go!
You can include details on your page such as your contact information and the address of a retail location if you have one. Just remember to put some time and consideration into these three main parts of your profile:
1. Your profile picture
Your profile picture is the first thing that your potential customers see — meaning it’s the first taste they’ll get of your brand image. The most common profile picture to use is your brand’s logo, as this is the image that will help to create and build your brand recognition.
2. Your cover photo
If your profile picture is the first image your audience will see, your cover photo is a very close second. Running across your page, your cover photo is the perfect way to supplement your profile with an eye-catching photo that reflects your business and the style of your brand.
3. About you
Pinterest gives you 500 characters to tell the story of your business. This could be how you started, why you exist, or just some of the values that you stand for. Either way, it’s important to write something that resonates with your intended audience, makes them want to know more, and starts to build that initial level of trust.
Pinterest Business Support
Pinterest has a fantastic support system for businesses that choose to market on their platform. There are three main ways in which they offer support:
- Business resources: Pinterest offers a range of educational marketing materials that take you through the best ways to utilize everything the platform has to offer. So you can make sure you’re being as effective as possible at marketing your business.
- Business community: The best advice you can get is from someone who has been there, and done that. Pinterest hosts a community where content creators and business owners can connect, share tips, and help to support each other.
- Pinterest blog: Finally, Pinterest hosts a blog that is regularly updated with new tips and tricks and other valuable insights. With blogs ranging from how best to build your audience to a guideline on making your first Idea Pin, there’s enough content here to keep you fully in the know.
The 5 steps to grow your business on Pinterest
So now we know that Pinterest is a hotbed of social media engagement and potential sales. But while it’s obvious that the customers are there, what can you do to actually engage with them and help promote your business?
Let’s take a look at the 5 steps you can take to create a Pinterest strategy to engage your target persona, then how to promote on Pinterest.
1. Fully optimize your page
We’ve already seen how quick and easy it is to set up your business profile page on Pinterest, but like most things, it isn’t quite as easy to set up a successful page.
There are two main areas you should focus on when it comes to optimizing your page:
- Optimizing for your brand
- Optimizing for your discoverability
Let’s start with your brand.
Optimizing your Pinterest profile for your brand
Each and every aspect of your profile, from your picture down to each Pin you post, should accurately reflect your brand image. The great thing about Pinterest is that brands don’t necessarily need to shy away from the fact that they’re looking to sell their products, that’s what three-quarters of people are there for.
Most brands tend to go for a hybrid mix of product imagery paired with supplementary images that tie in with their brand. So for example, a clothing brand may post 5-10 Pins featuring some of their product catalog, whilst supplementing them with pictures of vibrant fabrics or intricate, colorful designs.
Optimizing Pinterest for your discoverability
No piece about a Pinterest Marketing strategy would be complete without mentioning SEO and keywords — and we’re not in the business of disappointing people, so here we go.
Pinterest has its own algorithm that it uses to help users find exactly what they’re looking for. When considering what to showcase on a search, the algorithm takes into account details such as each user’s profile, the individual Pins, and what content you have on your Pin boards.
This makes SEO all the more important for allowing your brand to be easily found.
Keywords are a key (get it?) part of marketing online with Pinterest. By utilizing certain phrases or singular words across your posts, Pins, and your boards, you’ll be more likely to appear in users’ organic search results.
So for example, if you’re running a boutique bakery you might want to utilize keywords and phrases such as “sweet treat” or “frosting” in your content. That means that when a user searches for one of these terms, or something similar, then your profile will be more likely to pop up to wow them with your delicious baked goods.
Keyword research is a must when it comes to SEO, and luckily Pinterest is here to help. Whenever you search for a term on the platform, not only will you find a wide range of related content, but you’ll also be provided with a list of other related terms that users are also searching for.
2. Be social about it
Pinterest isn’t about hiding away with your collection of media, desperately trying to lure people into your corner of the web and keep them there. It’s a very social platform that promotes building relationships.
That means that it’s always a good idea to follow and have interactions with other users. Whether they are users that you’ve noticed following certain topics that relate to your business and the content that you’re promoting, or they interact in the same circles that you do.
Pinterest allows you to form relationships with your audience that are built to last.
You can repin, like, or engage in conversations through the comments section on the content that you and your followers share.
People enjoy engaging with companies that have a real-life person behind the name, so make use of that and be as social as possible.
3. Start advertising
Advertising on Pinterest is a multifaceted process. One of the main draws of Pinterest for businesses is that its users have a great desire to discover new products, with 64% of users saying that it’s where they go to find a product or service that they can trust.
That makes it unique in that most people on the platform are likely to respond well to seeing adverts.
Pinterest allows you to take advantage of this by offering a mix of paid and free advertising tools. And the bonus is that they don’t charge you an arm and a leg for it either — with Pinterest having one of the lowest cost-per-click rates among social media advertising at a minimum rate of $0.10 per click.
There are 6 main types of ads that you can run on Pinterest. Let’s take a quick look at each type of advertisement you can use to promote your business on Pinterest.
1. Idea Pin ads
Idea Pins are short video-like segments that work in a similar way to Instagram stories. You can pick up to 20 graphics or images that will play one after the other in a short story. They tend to be used to showcase a range of products or set up as a “how-to” guide.
A relatively new feature to Pinterest, these ads have already been a rousing success, with Idea Pins gaining 9 times the average comment rate from users when compared with regular Pins.
Idea Pins cannot currently be sponsored, though there are plans to roll out Idea Pin ads in the future, so any traffic, for now, would have to be organic.
2. Collection ads
As per the name, collection ads are a collection of images or videos. There is one main image or video, with up to three supporting images. If someone is interested and engages with the ad, then they will be taken to a separate page where you can show up to 24 supporting images.
Collection ads are a great way to mix video and images together for a powerful punch of content. And the best part is Pinterest can automatically create them for you based on your business Pins.
The one downside is that collection ads can only be seen on mobile devices. Although with 85% of all users engaging with Pinterest via a mobile device, you’re not missing out on much. Plus, if your target persona is a strong mobile user, you should definitely consider experimenting with this ad type.
3. Try-on product ads
Try-on product Pins make use of augmented reality tech to allow people to digitally try on clothes, makeup, or accessories.
Wild, right?
An absolute slam dunk for fashion brands, these ads allow people to use their device’s camera to “digitally wear” products to see how they look.
This feature isn’t available to every brand, and you’ll have to fill out a request form to get started.
4. Shopping ads
Shopping ads are similar to collection ads, but only allow you to showcase one image or video.
They are super easy to set up, and Pinterest can use the data in your business profile to automatically target the ad towards the audience they feel will benefit from it the most. So less work for you, and more potential customers.
That’s a win-win if we’ve ever seen one.
5. Carousel ads
Carousel ads appear on a user’s homepage and will look exactly like a standard, organic Pin. But instead of being a single image, it will contain a group of images that you can swipe through. This will be clearly shown due to the fact that there will be a number of dots at the bottom indicating multiple images.
These ads are perfect for showing either a number of different products within the same range or multiple angles of a single product.
Carousel ads will be highlighted as “Promoted” so the user will know that it is an advert instead of an organic Pin.
6. Promoted Pins
Finally, we come to the standard type of ad on Pinterest – the promoted Pin.
This is really as simple as it sounds; you’re essentially promoting a preexisting single image or video Pin that you’ve posted on your profile. The only thing that changes is it will be labeled as “Promoted” rather than an organic post.
Promoted Pins are simple yet effective. They are a really easy way to expand your audience and get more eyes on your brand.
4. It’s all about the visuals
This is going to seem like quite an obvious step seeing as the platform is based around images. But it’s still worth mentioning.
Pinterest is perfect for tempting users in with a vibrant visual story. Through the various different forms of media that you can upload and pin, you can show your audience what makes you, you.
Being able to paint a picture with images and videos instead of words helps you to get your brand’s personality across in a way that can be incredibly creative and effective. A Pinterest graphic design can show your audience what you as a company value, what you stand for, and, of course, show what you’re selling.
And not only does it help to use bright and colorful images, but it’s important to use unique images, too.
Pinterest is packed full of competitors using a huge variety of images and videos. So while you’ll want to use media that promotes your brand and helps to market your products or services, you’ll also want to make sure that you can stand out amongst the sea of competition.
Because at the end of the day, you need to make sure that you’re giving readers a real, tangible reason to follow and engage with you instead of your competitors.
If you’re feeling like Pinterest might not be the right fit for you due to a lack of design skills or limited access to design tools then VistaCreate is the place for you. Our wide range of free graphic design templates can help you make designs that are as unique as your business — plus it’s super easy to use!
5. Use analytics
Pinterest has a set of analytics tools that you can use to study the performance of your individual Pins as well as your profile as a whole.
Before we get into making use of them, we’ll take a quick look at how to check your Pinterest analytics:
- Log in to your Pinterest business account.
- In the top left-hand corner, click on Analytics. It should be the third choice on the toolbar.
- Once you’ve clicked, a menu will appear where you can choose from Overview, Audience Insights, Conversion Insights, or Trends.
You can start by taking a look at your Overview. Here you can track the overall performance of each of your Pins as well as your boards.
These analytics are packed full of valuable information and insights into not only how your business is performing on the platform, but also what is currently trending with other users. Meaning that you can keep right up-to-date with what’s hot and tailor your content accordingly.
Regularly analyzing your stats can help you to keep on top of how you’re performing, the number of engagements you’re getting, what leads have been generated, and a whole range of other useful information.
Should you use Pinterest to market your small business?
Absolutely.
While Pinterest social media may not be the most popular platform in terms of pure numbers, it is still full to the brim with potential sales and healthy engagement.
It’s also one of the rare online platforms that seem to be filled with nothing but good vibes, with 9 out of 10 users saying they’ve experienced nothing but positivity on Pinterest.
So if you’re running a business that has a strong visual presence, or even if you yourself have an eye for design, then it may just be a match made in heaven.
And if you’re not the artsy type? That’s where VistaCreate comes in.
Our range of beautiful designs and flawless templates are easy to use, adaptable, and can make your business stand out from the crowd. So be sure to check out our range today — you might just stumble across something you find Pinteresting (again, sorry).
If you’re exploring other platforms to use for your business, check out our popular guide on how to use Tumblr.
