We all know Pinterest is a great place to find ideas for your next holiday, clothes to buy, or decorating style for your home, but it is also a great (if often over-looked) platform for your business. If you’re not active on Pinterest you might be missing a way of reaching potential customers.
Pinterest is often thought of as a platform that offers a little bit of every type of product and idea. The users (‘pinners’) may not buy while scrolling, but they will likely invest in products or services they have saved as pins making Pinterest a fantastic platform to kickstart your small business. Using this platform, you can buy more attention from the audience for your business. This ultimately leads to sales conversion and long-lasting customer relationships.
Read through this guide to start your business’ marketing strategy on Pinterest.
Getting Started With Pinterest as a Small Business Owner
Are you ready to ace your business? Here’s how to go about creating your Pinterest Business Account.
1. Creating a Pinterest Account
You can move on to step 2, which discusses how to convert your personal profile to a business one, if you have an existing Pinterest account.
To create a new Pinterest account, go to Pinterest.com from the browser. Select “Business” next to “About” at the top right corner of the screen. It will prompt you to a new window. Type in your details, including email address, password and age. Lastly, select “create account”.
2. Turning Personal Pinterest Account Into Business Account
Already have a personal Pinterest account? You can easily change it into a business account through account settings. On your Pinterest homepage, click on three horizontal dots. Choose ‘upgrade your account’. Fill in the relevant details for your business and account manager. Once you have entered all the required details, select ‘Done’. Now you will be able to see Pinterest analytics and Ads.
9 Tips on Using Pinterest to Promote Small Businesses
If you spend most of your time using Pinterest, then you know how compelling it is. The journey on Pinterest can start with pinning your favourite villa in Tuscany and end with lots of outfit ideas and eating-out guides.
For Pinterest to truly benefit your business and engage users with your captivating content, you must follow some remarkable tips discussed below.
1. Boost Your Pinterest Business Account to Get More Reach
Pinterest is a visual search engine that can also be utilised as a social media platform. However, it is mainly used for visual exploration.
Pinterest, like Google, uses algorithms to choose what to display on the feed of users. For this reason, it is essential to optimise your Pinterest account using relevant keywords to let people come across your products and account just by searching. This will ultimately result in more people reaching your account and purchasing your products.
To optimise your content, you will need to fill up your pin descriptions, profile bio and board descriptions with keywords to make users see your account. Furthermore, you can initiate this process by searching the most applicable keywords your audience searches.
To get a list of keywords, you may use Pinterest search recommendations. As an example, if you run a jewellery business, you can type ‘jewellery’ in the search box, and you will see phrases like ‘jewellery aesthetics’, ‘jewellery showroom’, and ‘jewellery storage’. These phrases can fit in your pin descriptions, board descriptions and profile bio.
Apart from the search box, you can use the ‘Pinterest keyword research tool’ to acquire the most searched keywords. The tool is present in Pinterest’s ad manager. Furthermore, you can use this tool without setting up an ad or paying any fee. Just enter a word, and it will come up with a list of keywords and their search volume.
2. Make Your Pinterest Business Account Savable
Setting up a ‘Save’ button on your Pinterest business account is one of the best ways to let users find your products/page.
If a user is exploring Pinterest for a particular product and likes your pin, they will hit ‘save’ to store the pin on their account for later use. This implies that they might end up purchasing your product in the future.
Before 2017, the ‘save’ button was named the ‘pin it’ button with the same functionality as save. The save button can be seen on the page and the pin, so whenever a customer visits your pins or account, they can click ‘save’ without leaving the page.
3. Allow Rich Pins on Your Pinterest Business Account
Rich pins or product pins give more details to your products. By using rich pins, you can convert your reach into sales. You can choose from these rich pins on Pinterest: articles, apps, products and recipes.
Rich pins or product pins can automatically fetch product descriptions, prices and other details from your website on Pinterest. On the other hand, recipe pins work best if your business lies in the cooking sector. Rich pins for recipes will display the recipe’s ingredients, cooking duration and serving size in one post.
Article pins work magic for online publishers and bloggers. These pins help users save their favourite articles and blog posts on Pinterest. Each rich pin will mention the article headline, author’s name, story description and a ‘Read it’ link below the pin image.
Therefore, app pins can be of great use if your business involves an app for users. These pins can attract new customers to your business on Pinterest. App pins show the ‘Install’ button for your business app to get users to install the app without closing Pinterest. However, app pins are only applicable to iOS apps.
4. Create Pinterest Catalogue for Your Business
Once you get done with creating rich pins for your business, you will need to put up Pinterest catalogues. The catalogue will let the users browse through available products easily. After creating a product catalogue, add it to the ‘shop’ section on your Pinterest page. The shop tab with the catalogue will serve as an attractive shopfront for visitors who can easily explore and shop for your products.
Pinterest has recently launched a new shopping list feature. This will allow customers to save the pins on Pinterest and visit them anytime with frequent updates whenever prices fluctuate.
The visual search engine platform also offers shopping or exploration options in the search box. The explore tab will take users to a regular feed. However, the shop tab will display a range of products with price tags.
Pinterest is undoubtedly going above and beyond to enhance the shopping experience for users on Pinterest. Business owners with optimised profiles will take over the platform while outdoing other businesses and turning pins into sales.
5. Utilise Captivating Images and Videos for Your Product Pins
Like other social platforms, Pinterest is all about visuals, either images or video. Therefore if you want to grow your following, you need to emphasise adding gripping imagery to your account. You need to add incredible images and videos that promote your brand. Or else the customer will run to other brands that captivate them visually.
You need to use high-quality images and videos for your business to improve your reach. No one likes looking at blurry visuals of the products they want to buy. You can check out the Pinterest image guide to get the perfect dimensions of your pin images. Furthermore, place your product in the centre of the image and prevent using abstract ideas.
Moreover, you can also add videos since they are zestful and grab a lot of attention. The users are more likely to visit a brand page displaying an enticing video.
Aside from images and videos, brands can incorporate ‘idea pins’ into their business accounts. Idea pins involve video recordings, images, captions and lists edited to make an animation. Therefore, these pins can be excellent for businesses to showcase more endearing content and make customers take action.
6. Promote Your Business on Pinterest by Sharing it on Other Apps
You can share your pins on other social platforms for added reach and visibility of your business account. Your followers on other social apps must know that you are also active on Pinterest. You can do so by linking your website with your Pinterest account, adding a link to your email signature, cross-promoting your Pinterest page on your other social networks by mentioning your Pinterest handle and discussing your Pinterest account in the company newsletter.
7. Interact With Other Pinterest Accounts to Increase Visibility
Engaging with other Pinterest users can gain your brand more attention. Furthermore, you will be able to develop healthy relationships between your business and potential customers. This friendly interaction can lead to a long-lasting association. Thus, your customers will keep returning to look for ideas and inspiration or to purchase your product.
Start following the new accounts of pinners interested in your area or the type of business you do. Also, you can execute this tip by searching keywords or hashtags. Remember to re-pin, like, and comment on your followers’ posts. Furthermore, give tender responses to users interacting on your profile and posts. Share enticing Pinterest posts that reflect your prowess and involve your followers in giveaways and contests.
8. Verify Your Pinterest Business Account
The platform will likely put your pins in the dedicated shopping section when you verify your Pinterest account and become a verified seller.
For instance, if you run a soap business, Pinterest will put forward your product pins in front of potential customers looking for soap pins. Thus the verification process guarantees that your product will be visible to potential customers in the first place.
There are zero charges for getting a verification badge on your profile. As soon as you cater to Pinterest’s guidelines, your profile will show a badge specifying that your account is assessed. This is especially important as customers tend to pay more attention to or buy products from a reliable brand.
A verified account means ‘added benefits’. Your profile will be able to display the brand values and the communities you represent.
9. Transform Your Business Account Into an Appealing Space
As you know the Pinterest basics, you can try to make your account attractive. A close-knit account with a great display of the brand’s personality has more probability of attracting clients.
Whether it is colour or font size, with the correct usage of design and style, you can ensure the maximum reach of the target audience.
You must design Pinterest board covers to turn your business account into a compelling Pinterest space. These covers are the same as Instagram story templates. You can choose specific covers that fit your brand style and needs.
If you are familiar with Photoshop, you may design your own board covers using canvas (217 x 147 pixels) and incorporate your preferred images and fonts. If you lack photoshop skills, you can take help from the online software Canva.com to design your own board cover. Canva can help you create amazing board covers with a wide range of available imagery, fonts and other accessories.
If you want to change your Pinterest board cover:
- Access the board and select Edit (pencil button).
- Select ‘Change cover’ and choose the image you want to use as the board cover.
- Modify the image to fit the frame by dragging it up and down.
- Select ‘Save Changes’ to save the cover and board.
It is possible to make your account look more aesthetic by using the same design, colour, and font on different boards.
Conclusion
So, you can easily drive traffic and increase sales from your Pinterest business account. Pinterest has around 200 million users; thus, it is a great platform to promote your small business.
With Pinterest, you can display your brand, products, and business and get thousands of followers and sales. Moreover, you can ace the branding strategy on Pinterest using the tips discussed in the guide.
Start pinning today!
