When it comes to strategic marketing, most businesses are aware of and likely using the titans of social media; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You may be using one or all of these social media platforms to bring traffic to your business website, but if you haven’t considered using a Pinterest Business account as well, you should. While Pinterest is known to be used for things like DIY projects, fashion, or personal development, it can be wielded as a powerful strategic marketing tool for your business.
With the percentage of social media users declining from 2017-2018 on major platforms (Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram), what shouldn’t go unnoticed is the rise of Pinterest users. Co-founder of Pinterest, Evan Sharp, shares that there are now 250 million people that use Pinterest each month. While Pinterest is still considered a social media platform, what it really should be thought of is a “visual search engine”. Pinterest allows users to curate and save content to specific boards (categories) based on the user’s interests, wants, or needs.
So, how can your business leverage Pinterest in your marketing strategies? Whether your business provides a product or a service, Pinterest can be used in a variety of influential ways to expand your marketing reach and engage more effectively with your target audience. Let’s look at six different ways that a Pinterest Business account could elevate your marketing strategy.
#1. Promoted Pins
Once you have a Pinterest Business account, you will have the ability to create Pinterest ads, or Promoted Pins. (It should be mentioned that these are paid ads.) These ads appear as regular Pins in the users feed and the goal is not to interrupt or distract from their regular content. In fact, 73% of Pinterest users have stated that content from Promoted Pins makes Pinterest more useful. What does this mean? It means that when you are using Promoted Pins, you are already reaching a receptive audience. Pinterest also found that 61% of users, or “Pinners”, made purchases after viewing promoted business content in their feed. Basically, Pinterest users want to see your promoted content on their feeds!
#2. Peak Times to Pin
If you’re already posting on other social media platforms then your marketing strategies likely include knowing optimal times to post or share. If you plan to utilize Pinterest you should consider when users are most likely to be active so that you can get your content in front of a live audience. Overall, the best times to Pin on any given day, are between 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. – 11 p.m., especially Saturdays. Essentially, you would not be doing yourself any good by Pinning during normal business hours. Hubspot has even broken down what content Pinterest users are searching for on what days of the week, so if your product or service falls into a niche category, you can be even more targeted with your strategic marking approach.
#3. Rich Pins
There’s a reason these are called “Rich Pins”. These are hefty traffic-generating Pins that most businesses can (and should be) leveraging in their strategic marketing. First off, there are four types of Rich Pins: app, product, recipe, or article. The app category includes an “Install” button within your Pin, allowing the user to download your business’s app without even leaving Pinterest. For now, this is only compatible with iOS, but hopefully, that will be changing soon to include Android.
The product category provides real-time pricing, stock, and where-to-buy information within the Pin. This is a huge advantage for businesses that are offering a product!
The article category allows users to not only save stories that matter to them, but this Rich Pin will include the author, title, and a brief description of the article. If your business has an active blog, your marketing senses should be tingling right now. Article Pins include a call-to-action at the bottom which allows you to link to your blog or website. Can you say “traffic generator”?
Lastly, the recipe category, while more of a niche category, is still incredibly useful if your business operates in the food industry in any way. This Rich Pin allows you to put the ingredients, cook time, and serving sizes in the body of the Pin.
#4. Pinterest Widget Builder
Pinterest has created a fairly straight-forward way (even for the tech-challenged) to add Pinterest widgets to your business’s website called the Pinterest Widget Builder. This is another invaluable tool to engage with your audience and to keep them engaged with your content. You can use one, two, or all of the widgets offered, but if you have any images on your website you should at least consider the Save Button. (Remember, when someone Pins something it will then show up in the feed of that user’s followers. Think passive referrals, more visibility, etc.) You can decide what widgets would elevate your strategic marketing needs most, but here is a list of each to choose from:
- Save Button: Allows viewers on your website to save (Pin) your content, which boosts your impressions and visibility
- Follow Button: Invite people to follow you on Pinterest
- Pin Widget: Embed one of your Pins on your website
- Profile Widget: Display up to 30 Pins on your website (this can show that you are active on Pinterest and have valuable content for viewing)
- Board Widget: Feature your most relevant Board with up to 30 Pins
If your business already has a Newsletter, you are positioned to let your subscriber base know that you are active on Pinterest! This will give you some ease if you decide to implement Pinterest into your strategic marketing efforts, especially if you already have a large subscriber base to your Newsletter.
#6. Pinterest Analytics
One of the most important things to have in your strategic marketing arsenal is being able to analyze what’s working and what isn’t. Pinterest Analytics allows you to do just that. Determine where your efforts are paying off with the following data:
- Profile data: Learn what your followers like most about your overall Pinterest profile
- Website data: Learn how people are interacting with widgets on your site
- Platform data: Learn what platform people are interacting with your content from
- Pin data: Know exactly which Pins are your top performers
There’s So Much More…
While a short novel could be written about all of the ways you could leverage Pinterest in your business’s strategic marketing approach, hopefully, these top six will give you a solid foundation. Keep up to date on all of Pinterest’s features by subscribing to their newsletter if this is something you plan on pursuing.
Be sure to comment below about what marketing strategies you are implementing in your business!
