Pinterest has become a powerful marketing tool for many individuals and businesses. However, some may be wondering how exactly marketing on Pinterest can help you increase your company or brand’s visibility and promote your products or services?

If that sounds like you, then continue reading! We will show you how to do marketing on Pinterest and provide you with tips to build a larger audience who engages with your content. Understanding how Pinterest works for your business can even help you increase attention and achieve higher click rates by building a strong brand presence. Taking advantage of this visual search engine can put your products in focus and increase your sales figures. 

In the following sections, we tell you the benefits of Pinterest for businesses, how to set up your business account, and the best practices for creating a winning strategy. 

Why Use Pinterest as a Cornerstone for your Business Marketing Strategy

So why should you use Pinterest for your business? In reality, having a Pinterest account can bestow numerous benefits for a business. For one thing, there are currently well over 400 million users. The very fact that there are so many users searching for inspiration, motivation, or ideas for various projects or interests makes it fertile marketing ground for companies who have products to advertise.

However, Pinterest is more than a social network with millions of users – it is a visual search engine. As with so much related to social media today, brands and companies want to show their products in the best light to the right audiences. For this reason, with the right strategy, Pinterest can become a powerful marketing tool for your company. 

Setting Up your Account

Now we know what Pinterest is used for in a business’ overall marketing plan. But you may be asking how to start Pinterest marketing for your business? Don’t worry. We have you covered. Below, we break that down for you into two easy steps: creating your business account and then claiming your website and social media profiles.

Step 1: Create a Business Account

The Pinterest sign up process for businesses is fairly easy, although you need to be aware of a few quirks to it. 

It is important to realize that signing up on Pinterest will create a personal account by default. The account must then be converted into a business account. However, this is relatively simple.

In the settings, you will find the section “Account settings.” Here, you can change your personal account to a business account by selecting the “Account changes” option. Then, you can simply click on “Convert account.” Once this is done, you will have access to a business account. 

Step 2: Claim your Website

The second important step in setting up your Pinterest business account is to verify your company’s website. Verification gives you access to Pinterest analytics and other tools to evaluate the behavior of your users and the performance of your content.

The menu item “Claim” can be found in the settings. Here, you can verify your website which you can link it to your business profile. This way, your name and profile picture will be displayed next to pins which helps with the recognition of brand or company.

Creating your Pinterest Marketing Strategy

Now that we explained why businesses should use Pinterest and how to set up an account, we should also discuss how to actually do Pinterest marketing. This means setting up a comprehensive Pinterest strategy for your business and making sure you have the resources you need to implement it. 

It is clear that when you are using Pinterest for business purposes, many of the most important best practices revolve around making sure your content is seen by, and resonates with, your target audience. The best Pinterest marketing strategies will involve accurately identifying your target groups while posting engaging content and photos. However, there are a number of other Pinterest marketing tips we have related to pinning, posting frequency, and using influencers that can improve your overall performance and visibility. 

Below are important tips you should take in developing a Pinterest marketing plan for your business.

Identify Your Target Group

In determining how to use Pinterest for business marketing, you first have to do is identity who you are marketing your products or services to. This means clearly defining your target group. Before starting to post, you should ask yourself who are the users you want to impress with your content so you can win followers? You should always make sure that your content has a clear added value for your target group and that it is a source of inspiration or that you are showing them something that will address their problems. In reality, the problem-solving aspect is an important factor for successful pins on Pinterest.

Identifying buyer personas can help you understand your audience’s behavior and align your social media marketing strategy to attract target customers. Therefore, we recommend that you create your buyer personas and determine their problems and needs. What are the demographic characteristics? What challenges and goals are they facing? What is the user behavior? These are questions that you can use to get a better picture of your potential customers. If you find out what is important to your target group and why they follow other profiles, you can convince them to follow you.

Optimize your Pins

On the top of our nearly every list of tips for Pinterest marketing is to use your Pins effectively. Pinterest feeds are full of colorful content. But how does your pin stand out and get the attention of the users? Pinterest is, as its core, a source of inspiration for many users. With this in mind, try to focus on the needs of the users while presenting your products. Tell an interesting story about your product and use storytelling to attract the interest of your target group. 

For example, as of August 2023, IKEA USA has approximately 726 thousand followers on Pinterest. They know how to stage their products by telling a story. The products are always shown in an environment that conveys a feeling of home and promise the user to make it look that way. The indirect promise triggers a need and creates an emotional bond between product and target group. IKEA encourages users to add pins to their own pin boards, creates an extended attention, and ultimately encourages them to buy the product.

How to pin appropriately on Pinterest for your business is important to get maximum attention. For this reason, you should always keep on eye on how you adjust your images. On a visual platform such as Pinterest, the size and quality of your images is crucial. Always crop your photos vertically and use the correct aspect ratio. Pins are displayed in the feed with a width of 238 pixels, in the enlarged single view with 600 pixels. The height can be adjusted as desired. Pinterest therefore recommends that you create your pins with an aspect ratio of 2:3. It is recommended to create your pins with 1000 x 1500 pixels. This way, you can make your content stand out from the crowd just by its size and attract attention.

Pin Frequently

In determining how to best use Pinterest for your business, you should always look at your pinning strategy. Being a visual search engine, consistency is an important factor for good performance on Pinterest. Try to publish content on Pinterest 20 to 30 times a day. While this may sound like a lot, don’t worry, not every post has to be new, self-produced content. You should also remember pins from other profiles on your pin boards to keep your daily pin count constant.  

However, you should also keep in mind that nothing attracts users more than a pin board that is regularly filled with interesting and engaging content. Constant maintenance of your content is key. Invest the time to publish daily, varied contributions. Otherwise, you will lose the attention of your followers. A good tip is to recognize current trends or seasons to help you to proceed strategically. In this way, users remain loyal to you, receive up-to-date content, and commit to you because a search for trends is no longer necessary. 

The Danish home accessories’ supplier Søstrene Grene is an example of how to handle seasonal trends and themes on Pinterest. In addition to seasonal articles on the subject, users can find product recommendations, inspiration for interior design or DIY instructions. Around 103 thousand followers, as of August 2023, are proof that the strategy is working.

Use Suitable Keywords and Hashtags

What Pinterest is primarily used for in business is to get recognized by people who may not already know your company or brand. Similar to Google, Pinterest also uses keywords to classify content and display it correctly to the user. With the keyword search, you can easily find the right keywords for your content. Simply use the search function of the platform and enter the desired word in the search bar – but don’t press enter. You will then be offered relevant keywords that are similar to the word you are searching for.

In this way, you can find relevant keywords on different topics. You can also find keywords by starting a search and pressing enter. Below the search bar, you will see a list of related terms that you can use. Unfortunately, it is not possible to analyze individual keywords in terms of search volume or competition. You should be aware that Pinterest has more general search queries than Google.

Hashtags are also relevant on Pinterest. Try to think like your target group and find out which hashtags they use. The matching keywords and hashtags on your pin board and in your profile description will increase your visibility and make your content visible outside your community. In researching hashtags, you can also consider using a specialized tool to help you with this. 

Use Rich Pins

An important part in developing a Pinterest strategy for business is to make the journey to your offers as simple as possible. Rich pins help you to increase the click-readiness of potential customers and boost your website traffic. Using this format, your pins will be supplemented with additional information, such as ingredients of recipes or prices of products, making them even more meaningful for the user. Rich pins must be activated at the beginning of your activities, then Pinterest automatically pulls the data for each additional pin from verified websites and social profiles.

Use rich pins to turn users into customers. You can enrich the pins with various information, such as links or information about the availability of products. In general, there are 3 types of rich pins:

• Article rich pins allow users to annotate editorial articles. The pins contain the title, the author, a short description of the article, and a link.
• Product rich pins facilitate the purchase process. They show real-time prices, product availability, and the website where something can be purchased.
• Recipe rich pins provide users with the most important information about each recipe. A recipe rich pin provides details on ingredients, preparation time, and serving tips.

For example, Publix shows how a recipe rich pin can look like. The supermarket chain specifies the necessary ingredients, adds a preparation tip and links the pin to their own website. Pins like this one make up the shape of their entire Pinterest account which has approximately 77 thousand followers as of August 2023. 

Story Pins

With this pin format, you can turn your posts into dynamic stories on Pinterest, such as step-by-step videos, voice covers, or image and text inserts. You can publish story pins directly on Pinterest without having a website, and they will appear to users with matching interests. 

Similar to other types of pins, story pins can be added to pin boards. This format stands out from the colorful pins and gives you a new opportunity to connect with your followers and build loyalty. You should create story pins and use the popular social media format to interact with users on Pinterest.

Pinterest Influencer Marketing

On Pinterest, influencers can help you to attract followers and product your products. It can sometimes be enough to follow relevant influencers and share their content. In this way, influencers become brand ambassadors and users become aware of you.

Your marketing strategy for Pinterest may also include closer cooperation with specific influencers, where they also can share your products and services through tagging your company. Influencers who have a significant following that matches your target audience are especially valuable in this situation. However, you should always do your research into the influencers you are considering working with. It is essential to ensure that they have reach among your target demographic and post content that is related to your business. 

Measure your Success

Your Pinterest business account lets you measure your success and keep track of your activities. This makes it easier for you to review your activities and use current data to question and further optimize your strategy. 

With analytics, you get concrete data filtered by type of content, time period, source, device, format and account. For example, you can find out which boards have the greatest reach and thus which of your contents are best received by users and what your pins should look like in the future.

In the section “Audience”, you can find out more about your target audience and their behavior. The audience insights also enable you to get a clearer picture of your buyer personas.

Social Media Tools for Pinterest

You may be wondering if there are additional measures you can take in optimizing your Pinterest account for your business that may also be relevant for your other social media profiles. When you are dealing with several different media channels that involve posting many times a day, then it is advisable to consider using a social media too. Even your Pinterest marketing activities can be enhanced with social media management tools which bring you interesting cross-channel insights.   

There are social media management software programs for your Pinterest accounts that help you optimize and automate your community management tasks, giving you a leg up on managing a growing community. This can be a helpful tool for not only managing your Pinterest community, but also for all other channels. 

If you would like to track your success, automate your posting, and manage all your social media pages over one tool, then try Fanpage Karma for free.

Conclusion

Pinterest is more than a collection of pretty pictures. Rather, it is about recognizing the problems of the users and providing them with concrete solutions with your offers. 

Now that we know what is Pinterest used for in business marketing activities, you can get going making your account work for you. Determining how to make Pinterest work for your business is lies largely with you. Your Pinterest social media marketing strategy should focus on creating inspiring content that presents your company and tells a story about your products. This way, you can create targeted attention and direct more traffic to your website.    

You don’t need to be a large corporation or business to be successful in Pinterest marketing. In fact, these Pinterest tips can be especially useful for small businesses who concentrate on doing the little things right. Whatever your use for Pinterest might be, following our tips above will help make your profile a success.