Creating a Moneymaker on Pinterest

What’s the most popular social media channel for shopping? Hands down, according to Ignite Visibility, it’s Pinterest! Earlier this year, the digital marketing agency reported that Pinterest drove 33% more traffic to shopping sites than Facebook, 71% more than Snapchat, and 200% more than Twitter.

Earlier articles cited the growing number of pinners, its popularity among women, and favored categories. Yet, according to data released this July by Omnicore, only 28% of marketers use Pinterest. Now’s the ideal time to jump aboard, and there’s a lot of help. Not only is the market for tools that help track performance on Pinterest large, but these tools can also help marketers craft a winning strategy on the platform.

First Step

Register first for a free business account. This allows brands to access and utilize Pinterest Analytics. With it, brands are offered a dashboard that’s broken out into three sections: the profile, audience, and website analytics. This allows marketers to sort by time period as well as by device. The latter can be valuable in discovering what a brand’s audience is using to access them.

Pinterest Analytics is a powerful tool that allows brands to track 14 metrics. These include impressions, closeups, repins, clicks to the website from the brand’s profile, top pins, top boards, all-time stats, demographics, audience affinities, impressions, saves, clicks on pins created from the website, original pins, and top pins. All data can also be exported in a CSV file.

Other Resources

There are other programs available to assist marketers further. Some include Hootsuite Impact, Viralwoot, Google analytics, and PinGroupie.

Next Steps

The brand’s website needs to be optimized for Pinterest. This means adding a “save” button so customers can save what they browse on the brand’s website to their Pinterest board. This also makes it visible and discoverable to other users.

Adding a Pinterest tag is also priceless. Doing so not only allows marketers to track website conversions, but also provides an insight into how this group of users interacts with the website.

With Pinterest, less is more. Remember that this platform’s popularity is visual, so include photos and descriptions of how the brand will be beneficial to customers. Ensure that content is helpful and actionable and include the brand’s logo for ready recognition.

Consider using and promoting buyable pins. They can help raise discoverability and increase both online and in-store sales. If doing so, be sure that the pin is buyable as some may violate Pinterest’s policy.

According to Pinterest, one of the most powerful tools a brand can use to drive sales is promoted pins or paid ads. They say it can lead to five times more sales for every 100 impressions. Elements from best-performing pins can also be used to create ads.

As in all good marketing, targeting is important. By analyzing data based on saved and engaged pins, marketers can and should tailor and target consumers with what they’re interested in. And, as a standard practice, test results regularly and adjust when necessary.

Another key component of marketing is measurement. In using Pinterest, marketers need to remember that buyer decisions often take longer. Using and analyzing Pinterest tags helps gauge the average conversion period. Pinterest’s recommendation is to allow 30 days for engagement, a minimum of 30 days for clicks, and one day for views.