On Pinterest, the social platform built on beautiful, shareable imagery, opportunities for shopping come cleverly disguised as outfit inspiration, smoothie recipes and DIY centrepieces. For consumers, it’s a place to hunt and gather. For brands, it’s a goldmine. Consider this: we analyzed data from over 529, 000 Shopify store orders to find that Pinterest was the second largest social source for traffic, and resulting visits had the third highest average order value. Also, according to research done by piqora, sales and traffic from Pins can occur long after the item is pinned. In fact, 50 percent of visits happen after 3 and a half months, which respectively, is more bang for your buck than twitter or facebook. The reasons for using pinterest for your business are impossible to ignore. In this video, we’ll show you seven concrete methods, that you can use to drive sales and traffic with Pinterest. One, Use Rich Pins – Rich Pins are enhanced Pins that make your images even more shoppable because they contain additional information right inside the Pin.
There are five types of Rich Pins – Movie, Place, Recipe, Article and Product. And Online retailers can benefit from Product Pins because they include real-time pricing and stock availability. Rich Pins can also improve click through rate and discoverability of Pins, by making them eligible for Pinterest’s own curated feeds. Another advantage of Rich Pins is price notifications. If you reduce the price of your product, customers who Repinned that product image will receive an email from Pinterest notifying them of the price drop and prompting them to buy. Also, if you’re using Shopify, we have partnered with Pinterest to automatically enable Rich Pins for our merchants. That means any images Pinned from your product pages will now be published as Rich Pins. To enjoy the benefits of Rich Pins, be sure that you sign up for a Pinterest business account. Two, Pin Smarter – Knowing what types of images work best on Pinterest is extremely important. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the importance and impact of great product photography and pinterest is yet another place where it can really pay off. Shopify store Sycamore Street Press, for example does product photo shoots and creates blog posts specifically to create highly pinnable images that will draw people to their sites from pinterest.
Most months, Sycamore Street Press gets most of its referral traffic from Pinterest over any other source. Another great example is Designer Moorea Seal, who has built an audience of over 900,000 on her beautifully-curated Pinterest account, which is responsible for 50% of her store’s sales. Her approach is to provide “Clear, clean product images on a white or light grey background plus an editorial view of products either in a natural environment or on a person to give customers two styles of photography options for pinning to their boards.” When shooting and choosing photos for your product pages, strive to make them highly Repinnable.
So, What makes an image Pinterest-worthy? Well, let’s dig into the data: Keep it Anonymous – Images without faces receive 23% more Repins than those with faces. Use Color Wisely – Pins with multiple dominant colors are Repinned times more than those dominated by a single color, and red images fare better than blue. Image Size – Images on your product pages should ideally be at least 600 px wide with the optimal Pin width being 736 pixels wide, which is the maximum display size.
Taller images are more likely to be Repinned. Listen – Pay attention to your analytics, either through your Pinterest business tools or via other apps like Piqora, Tailwind, or Curalate. While summer salad recipes and DIY treehouses may have high virality potential overall, be relevant – find out what resonates with your audience specifically. Timing is Everything – Pin and engage when your customers are doing the same. The time periods 2-4pm and 8-11pm are roughly the best times to Pin, but it can depend on where and who your customers are.
We’ve also linked to some Pinterest research which suggests that certain categories perform better on specific days of the week. You Need a Blog – A blog is the perfect place to create beautiful content for your pinterest boards. We’ve linked to a great article in the description of this video that will help get you started creating a blog that pinterest users will love. Three – Sell the Lifestyle. Create boards around lifestyle themes that include your products, rather than just product boards. Great brands understand their customers and the kind of content that they crave. Inspire your audience, don’t just sell to them. “A Great Outdoors” board for example will be much more compelling than a board that simply highlights the outerwear your brand carries. Holly Castro for example, of Charm & Gumption fills her “For the Home” Board with curated pins that complement her own products, which are peppered throughout.
Nordstrom takes a similar approach with their “Pick Pink” Board, which is entirely dedicated to the rosy hue. It’s filled with hyper-feminine picks from around the web – with subtle inclusions from Nordstrom’s own offerings. After all, 92% of all pins are made by women. Four – Piggyback on Popular Content. While you should use caution when pinning content simply based on viral potential, you shouldn’t ignore opportunities to tap into the most popular pin types and search terms if they’re actually relevant to your audience. Here’s a great example. Sony Electronics, has a product category that doesn’t rank high on the list of popular categories. So, they’ve cleverly jumped on the virality of cute animals and humor to create their board “I Can Haz Gadgets”. Consider your audience. Are your customers predominantly men? Well, your slice of the Pinterest pie is smaller, so maximize your efforts. Create boards and pin content in the categories of photography, art, design, and home decor.
Do you sell food or beverages? Develop easy recipes containing your products. Are your products related to fitness, health, or beauty? Pin aspirational and inspirational content with quotes. Is your ecommerce store a source for tools, craft supplies, or fabric? Use them to create DIYs and tutorials. Remember, a pin can contain your products and a link to a step-by-step tutorial on your blog. Five – Run Pinterest Contests. Contests are a great way to increase engagement on Pinterest. When done well, and within the platform’s parameters, Pinterest contests can drive sales and traffic for your ecommerce site. Travel website, Jetsetter for example, used contests to effectively increase site traffic by 150%. We’ve linked to that case study in the description of this video. Brands, however, should pay attention to Pinterest’s contest guidelines. Certain types of contests are not permitted, nor is spammy behaviour.
Contest these tips: Make it Worth it – Forever 21 asks followers to create an entire board, but puts a $1000 gift card on the table as incentive. Get Inspired – Look to other brands for contest ideas that might work for you. Use an App – Apps like Gleam.io, Wishpond or Woobox can help organize your contest and host it on your site or Facebook. We’ve linked to a few of these in the description of this video.
Six – Leverage the Power of Influencers. Partner up with Pinterest influencers and bloggers to give your product some clout on the social network. Many brands get access to new audiences by inviting Guest Pinners to create boards on their accounts. Often, influencers will charge a fee for this service, but social media love in exchange for your product may be possible, too. Choose to work with Pinterest users whose audiences resemble your desired customers. Martha Stewart Living for example strategically partnered with the mommy bloggers behind Cool Mom Picks. Seven – Engage Your Community. Involve your community to help increase engagement. Group Boards can be comprised of many contributors – customers, staff, a select group of influencers – or can even be open to anyone to join. The contributors to your group boards become brand ambassadors, creating content on your behalf. You can also encourage your customers to share images of themselves with your product. This is an especially useful tactic for fashion brands to gather alternate, accessible images of products worn by real people. Fashion brand – The Whitepepper collects customer photos via email and features them on their “Who’s Wearing The Whitepepper” board. All pins link back to the brand’s ecommerce store where Pinners can shop the looks.
There you have it – 7 methods that you can put into practice with your business. Be sure to keep us posted on your progress and if we missed any tips or techniques that you’re using to reach your customers on Pinterest, please share them with us in the comment section. If you’re looking for more tips and tutorials on starting or running your business, be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel. Thanks for watching..