📌 How To Use Pinterest to Market & Drive Traffic To Your Business

Hey Business Owners,

With over 463 million monthly active users and a 13 year proven track record, chances are you’ve heard of Pinterest.

I’ve had Pinterest accounts now for over a decade and while it started out as a “pin all the things” strategy with recipes I wanted to make, outfits that inspired me, or places I wanted to travel; it dawned on me over the years that many friends and business owners think of Pinterest purely as casual social media.

Truth is, Pinterest can be so much more; it’s a powerful and effective visual search engine as well as a marketing and brand-building tool for businesses that connect you directly with online shoppers.

In this newsletter, I’ll share 16 optimization techniques I’ve learned that use Pinterest SEO to improve your business’ visibility and encourage customers to visit your website.

In 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

✅ why to use Pinterest for marketing

✅ 16 techniques to maximize your business Pinterest profile

✅ pros and cons of Pinterest ads

Why Use Pinterest? 💻️ 

One way I describe Pinterest is SEO for inspiration. Your content can show people who you are, what your business does, and what solutions/products you offer. It also can easily inspire your active, ready to buy online audience what’s possible and remind them that you already have the products and services they want.

Reasons to use Pinterest:

• It’s one of the best platforms for organic lead generation

• It has a long history of converting browsers into buyers

• It has high user engagement, Pinterest users love engaging with the UI

• It’s been minimally impacted by recent privacy web laws

• 83% of weekly Pinterest users buy from their saved pins*
  ^{(Source: Pinterest)}

• Nearly half of the US population with an annual household income of over $100,000 is on Pinterest*
  ^{(Source: Pinterest)}

• Around half of the global audience is women*

  ^{(Source: Pinterest)}

16 Techniques to Maximize Your Business Pinterest Profile 📸 

1. Use the same profile photo across all of your social media accounts. If your business isn’t focused on one person, use your logo. Otherwise, use a friendly photo of your face.
   

2. Add keywords to your Pinterest display name (in addition to your username) that explains what you do.
   
   Example Display Name: FullBookedVA System | Virtual Assistant | Gina Horkey
   

3. Craft a strong bio that shows how your business uniquely adds value. This is what new visitors will see when visiting your profile. You don’t need to come up with a never been done before bio, just something that includes your unique edge.
   
   Example: 💫 I help wedding pros design & grow their dream business, on the road to full-time and beyond. 💻️ Grab ALL my freebies, tips, and tricks at [website URL]
   

4. Rearrange the boards on your profile. Put the most relevant, actively posted to boards first. This makes it easy to find your best pins right after users read your bio.
    

5. If you have a board with less than 30 pins, make it a secret board until you have at least 30, then make it public. It’s better to have a branded board cover and the content inside look full than not.
   

6. Create a board for different categories of your business. If you have a blog or a website, re-arrange that board to be first. This will entice new visitors to check out your website by giving them a taste of your content.
   
   Example: Lewis Howes’ Pinterest has his podcast/website board first, then a trait he is most known for (inspiration), followed by a board promoting his new book.
   

7. Add branded board covers that are in-line with your website, product, services, and business branding. Most importantly match your color palette, tone, and imagery so it feels like your business. See resource links below for more info on how to make branded board covers. I’m a big fan of Canva. Inspirational Examples from KJ + Co!

8. Verify your business account. Verifying your account gives you access to Pinterest’s business analytics which are helpful for learning who’s visiting your profile, which pins are engaging users, and what’s driving traffic to your site.
   

9. Set up Rich Pins. Rich pins offer more details than the average Pinterest pins which make them even more useful to users and for you as a business owner. If you’re an e-commerce business, you can include product information/pricing/availability/direct links to buy. They’re also great for helping your pins visually stand out in a sea of other pins.
   
   Pro-tip: There are a few kinds of rich pins. In addition to product, there’s also place pins (add a map, address, phone number), article pins (include a headline, author, story description), recipe pins (ingredients, cooking times, serving info), and movie pins (add cast members, reviews, ratings)
   

10. Add 2-8 relevant hashtags to the content at the end of each created pin. Don’t do 20 hashtags, your content will look like spam. Hashtags are useful for new pins because Pinterest displays results for all hashtags in chronological order starting from most recent.
    

11. Link pins to relevant landing pages on your business website. For example: If you’ve pinned a blog post you wrote, make sure it links to the original blog post page.
    

12. Use relevant keyword in your pin descriptions, your board descriptions, and your board titles. Doing so will further improve your SEO by reiterating that your business account talks about X topics.
    

13. Pro-tip: If you’ve been pinning for a while and/or changed you business branding, go back through your old created pins and update the board covers to look cohesive with the rest of your profile. This will help drive traffic to older posts while also making your profile appear more cohesive.
    

14. Find your pinning sweet spot. You want to be consistently adding a blend of new pins you created and a few pins others have created to keep your profile active and always be providing value.
    

15. Create informational pins that help users understand what products and services you offer. These can be success stories or testimonials from your website recreated as pins, blog posts, etc.
    

16. If you sell physical products online and already are using Shopify or WooCommerce, set up a Pinterest shop. You can easily connect your existing storefront to your business profile and they’ll automatically add your entire product catalogue. You can also join their verified merchant program and use ads to scale your reach.

Pros + Cons of Pinterest Ads 📈 

After you’ve set up shop, optimized your boards and your profile, it’s worth taking a look at Pinterest’s ad offerings and deciding if it’s a good fit for your business. Below, I’ve listed into a few pros and cons of using Pinterest for ads. Take them with a grain of salt. What works for one business, may not work for another.

Pros

• Easy to drive traffic from Pinterest to external sites

• Full-Funnel ad options (Brand Awareness, Consideration → Driving to Websites, Conversions → make sales)

• Audience manager can help you find new audiences, build your own audience, or use existing audience segments

• Range of ad types (Video Ads, Idea Ads, Visual Ads)

• Full control of how much you spend on ads

• You get lots of valuable analytics

Cons

• Traffic on Pinterest is attractive to a highly specific audience (Primarily Millennial Women)

• Images you use must meet platform specs and be of a certain resolution quality. You may not be able to use the same image from your website on Pinterest if it’s not up to their standards

• Not the cheapest ads but has valuable audiences (~$2-5 per 1k impressions for brand awareness, $0.10→$1.50/engagement for driving web traffic and conversion.)

• Pinterest ads can be time consuming to set up and monitor

TRENDS 📈 , INSIGHTS 🧠 , & NEWS 📰 

• How to use Pinterest for your small business - Jenna Kutcher + Melyssa Griffin

• Pinterest Demographics: How to Find Your Audience

• Setting up a Pinterest Shop

• How to add Pinterest board covers

• 12 Brands with Awesome Pinterest Marketing Strategies

ABOUT VERSA STRATEGY

Chandler Kirkman is the driving force behind Versa Strategy. She’s on a mission to elevate businesses’ marketing and empower Creative Strategists to think big picture about the business landscape.

In the past decade, Chandler has consulted with over a hundred businesses of various specialities from Fortune 100 companies to local small businesses. By infusing branding, advertising, and marketing efforts with her signature blend of creativity, strategic thinking, and enthusiasm, she cultivates a dynamic and empathetic approach that helps business owners better connect with their customers.

LET’S CHAT! [email protected]

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Disclaimer: Today’s newsletter was not sponsored by Pinterest, I’m just a fan.