Pinterest for Business - How to Grow Your Audience and Generate Sales

Pinterest for Business: How to Grow Your Audience and Generate Sales

If you’ve never thought of using compelling images and weblinks as a way to grow your business, it might be time to take a fresh look at Pinterest.

Pinterest is a social media site where people create and share visual boards on different topics of interest, from recipes to new products and trends. It’s a great place to engage with customers, meet new ones and even generate new sales. Best of all, it’s free to open your business account on Pinterest.

If you’re ready to get started, here are some ways you can use this social media platform as well as best-practice tips to get you started.

How does Pinterest Work?

Before getting started with a Pinterest account, it’s best to understand how the platform works. Fortunately, the idea behind Pinterest is pretty straight forward. Simply create compelling images, often with headlines, and post them to a board.

Each image is called a pin. Users of the platform select pins that pique their interest and stick them to various boards they have created. Boards are a place where users organize pins of related types.

For example, a bride-to-be may have several boards to support research for her upcoming wedding. She may have one for flowers, another for table settings, and yet another for bridesmaid dresses or anything else she needs to create the wedding of her dreams.

As she explores Pinterest, she’ll see many notable ideas and will pin these to the appropriate boards for later reference. This is where Pinterest becomes valuable for businesses as each pin is associated with a piece of content or product on the web.

As the bride-to-be reviews her pins, she will click through to get more information, providing the associated companies with the opportunity to engage and even promote products for sale.

As of December of 2020, Pinterest was attracting 459 million active users to its platform. For businesses, that could spell an attractive opportunity to get in front of existing and potentially new audiences. However, despite its advantages, Pinterest isn’t right for every organization.

For one thing, nearly 72 percent of Pinterest users are female. When it comes to age, users are fairly evenly distributed between 18 to 64 years, with individuals in the 50-64 year demographic holding a slight lead over younger users. However, according to various sources, Gen Z usage was up 40 percent in the last year as was the number of male users.

What this means for your business is pretty clear. Unless you are targeting women under 65, Pinterest may not provide the best use of your marketing efforts at present. However, if you do want to get in front of the current user base, or beat the competition to the increasing numbers of younger or male users, here are some tips to get you started and to help your business realize the best outcomes.

Pinterest Best-Practice Tips

Choose the Right Picture - As users engage with the Pinterest platform, they are served pins according to their stated interests and past browsing activity. As such, using a compelling picture or graphic is one of the best ways to stand out on a Pinterest feed.

As users click on pins, they are served an up-close view of the image as well as a description of what they will find by clicking through to the source. Since the idea when using Pinterest is to get users to visit your web page or content, this description is the second most important piece of your pin and should be crafted carefully.

Image Size Matters –  According to recent surveys, 85 percent of Pinterest users engage with the platform via a mobile device. That’s one of the reasons that Pinterest recommends creating pins using a 2:3 aspect ratio. Sites such as Canva make it simple to design pins and even provide free templates to ensure you’re meeting the right ratio requirements.

Organize Your Pinterest Boards Wisely – Another thing to consider when setting up your Pinterest account is how you will organize your boards. An organized board structure will help others to more easily find information they are seeking, so an integrated strategy is important.

For example, at FNBO, we reviewed our existing blog content and created boards such as saving, budgeting, credit, and family finances to support those efforts. Organizing our boards around these topics makes it easy for users to find the information they want when viewing our account.

Quality over Quantity – Last, consider how often you will share content to your Pinterest boards. While Pinterest recommends that business users pin something new each day, we have found that quality of pins far outweighs quantity and have realized positive results by pinning once or twice a week.

Monitor Your Performance with Pinterest Analytics

 To determine your best strategy, be sure to monitor your Pinterest analytics. Here, you’ll see which pins are receiving engagement, giving you ideas for creating future pins and better targeting your efforts. Analytics will also provide you with valuable insight on promoting pins, allowing you to turn your images into advertisements that will reach a broader range of users across your intended audience.

With the right tools and a little know-how, Pinterest can be an effective way to promote your business. The more you engage with potential customers on this platform, the greater your opportunity to grow relationships that lead to sales. 

So, why not get started using Pinterest today? Your business will thank you.