Pinterest Marketing: How to 5X Your Organic Reach

There is one platform that’s often overlooked by marketers, can you guess which one it is? It’s Pinterest! (obviously, you cheated, you saw the title of the post)

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the go-to social media platforms for businesses looking to build brand awareness and promote their products and Pinterest remains in the background.

What businesses don’t know is that Pinterest users have the highest purchase intent of all the social platforms, which means, more people use Pinterest to find products to buy than on any other social media. It’s also a really powerful visual search engine, with a lot of cool features for advertisers and for eCommerce brands.

In this post, we’ll show you everything you need to know about Pinterest — why you should use it for your marketing, how to create a Pinterest strategy, what tools you need to achieve your goals and the specific tactics you should use.

Excited?

Let’s dive in.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social media platform that allows users to discover, share, and save images, videos, and links (called “Pins”) to different boards that can be viewed later. In Q1 2022, it had 433 million monthly active users. So far, those users have saved over 200 billion Pins on the platform.

Pinterest emphasizes discovering and curating other people’s visual content. At its core, Pinterest is a visual search engine where people can do all sorts of things — get style inspiration, find delicious recipes, follow and shop their favorite brand, and more.

Users can manually upload different types of Pins (mainly images, videos, or links) to the platform, find Pins using the search feature or stumble upon interesting Pins in their feed. Users (or “Pinners”) are encouraged to organize their Pins into different Boards.

[Add Banner Here]

How to use Pinterest for marketing

There are many reasons why B2B companies and eCommerce brands should use Pinterest. Some of the most important include:

• More engagement: Companies on Pinterest can engage with potential and current customers on the platform and help build brand awareness.
• Staying competitive: While not all marketers are on Pinterest, many companies and people are still on it. Why potentially lose an opportunity to reach new audiences?
• Evergreen content: Unlike posts on other social platforms, Pins are always there. People can find and repin them years later. Basically, Pins on Pinterest have a longer shelf life.
• More organic reach: You can now enjoy more organic reach from the platform than on many others. That may change as algorithms change, but currently, Pinterest provides an amazing branding opportunity.

Now that you know what Pinterest is and why you should use it, here are some great practical tips to follow to succeed on Pinterest.

Tell a visual story

Research shows that people make purchase decisions based on emotion and one of the best ways to elicit emotion is to tell a good story. In fact, 92% of customers prefer storytelling over classic ads, and Pinterest is the perfect place to tell your story visually, both organically and through ads.

Start by studying usage insights on your Pinterest Business account to understand better what appeals to your target and broader audience, and then use that to create a story for each board. Make sure you have fun and stay on brand.

For example, take a look at Annie’s Homegrown Pinterest account. They have a board called #MixInMonday Mac & Cheese, which combines product images and lifestyle shots that engage its target audience and provide them with fantastic recipe ideas.

Feature your blog posts

To boost the traffic to your blog, you can start featuring some or all of your blog posts on your Pinterest Business profile. To do that, you can Pin an interesting photo or a video and include a link to the blog post related to the visual you’ve pinned.

Posting video or photo Pins and links to blog posts both promote your blog to Pinterest users and drive website traffic.

For example, Leanne Wong uses Pinterest to promote the content they publish on their blog. They do it by repurposing the blog content into infographics and other types of visuals that the Pinterest audience can use to educate themselves. This tactic has brought their blog over 500K impressions.

Drive traffic to your site

You can also use Pinterest to drive traffic to other pages on your website, not just your blog posts. Many eCommerce agencies and brands use this feature to showcase product images and bring users directly to their product pages.

For example, Herman Miller uses Pinterest to showcase images of its iconic products and links to the said products.

This method works for other types of companies, such as B2B ones, that can use the same method to promote their digital products or services.

For example, this Article Pin from Buffer features a direct link to their website, an image, a headline, a short description, and the profile’s name — providing Pinterest users with multiple ways to interact with it and drive traffic to Buffer’s website.

In addition to Article Pins, there are four other types of Rich Pins: Product Pins, Recipe Pins, Movie Pins, and Place Pins. Overall, Rich Pins are great for eCommerce marketing as linking Pins directly to your online shop and combining them with the right keywords can generate more meaningful traffic.

Pro tip: you can also build a Pinterest website widget, which gives people more ways to interact with a part of your Pinterest account — a pin, a board, or your profile — right from your website.

Use unique images and videos

Pinterest is a visual platform and you will need to use high-quality images and videos to stand out. Here are some great tips to help you create captivating content:

• Create 30-90 second-long branded videos or video ads promoting your company and your products. The number of video views on Pinterest has grown by more than 6x since 2018. So use those branded Video Pins.
• Publish user-generated content showing your customers using your products.
• Create influencer videos showing different influencers using your products
• Create infographics with interesting and unique data that your company collected. Organize them in specific boards for your current followers to use as a business resource.

Build a community

You can use any social media platform to build a community and Pinterest is no exception. An online community built around your brand can be a helpful hub for your business. Members of your community on Pinterest can interact with and consume your content and eventually convert on your site.

Start by adding your Pinterest profile to all of your emails and including your pins on your site content. Then, interact with your followers and start conversations.

Another method to growing your audience is to work with social media influencers on Pinterest to promote your pins. You can use Pinterest influencers to collaborate on giveaways together and create UGC for your Pinterest ads.

How do you pick the right tactic for your brand? You start by creating a comprehensive Pinterest marketing strategy.

Create a Pinterest marketing strategy

Like with any social media platform or marketing channel, you need to have a plan for the kind of content you create, your publishing schedule, and all the various marketing tactics you experiment with.

It’s always a good idea to build a comprehensive digital marketing plan for each channel. Here are the top tactics that work well on Pinterest.

Pin 5x daily

We all know that you should post consistently, on any social media channel. Pinterest is a little different than the other platforms. Most people are used to posting once or twice per day on Twitter and Facebook once or twice daily, but with Pinterest, the recommended amount is a minimum of five pins a day.

By being consistent and pinning at least 5x a day, you can boost your follower count and get more traffic and exposure. But don’t overdo it. The maximum amount recommended is 25 pins per day, with some experts saying you should shoot for 15-25.

Try different Pin formats

Trying different pin formats can help shake things up and make your profile more attractive to your potential and current followers. In addition to regular photos, you can also pin videos. You can also pin multiple photos or videos to create a carousel.

For example, Adidas uses multiple pins in a carousel, a video of a runner, and several images of their products, to tell a story while featuring different types of products their followers may be interested in.

You can also create inspiration boards or tutorials on Pinterest. Fun and educational content will keep your audience engaged.

Carefully plan your Boards

You have to organize your profile on Pinterest, which means displaying the right boards. You can create pinboards about a specific topic to reach new potential followers. Mix helpful, inspirational, and brand content,

Each board should be optimized for SEO with the right keywords in the title, description, and description of each pin, but more on that later. Organizing your boards correctly and optimizing each one makes your profile clearer for your audience and helps you expand your reach.

Optimize your Pins for SEO

As we mentioned before, Pinterest is a visual search engine, and 97% of top Pinterest searches are unbranded. So it provides a great opportunity to get your content in front of new audiences.

To get the most value out of it, you must work on your Pinterest SEO and ensure your pins are easy to find when users type a related query in the search bar. Ensure that you include the right keywords on your profile, pin descriptions, and board descriptions, and use the right hashtags.

Remember to never overstuff your posts with keywords. Everything should be written for the user first. Make your copy flow naturally.

Launch Pinterest ads

Another effective way to reach new audiences on Pinterest is with Pinterest ads. Between October 2021 and January 2022, Pinterest ads reached 226 million people. Combining your organic efforts with Pinterest Ads has helped some brands earn 3x more conversions.

It allows advertisers and marketers to create all sorts of Promoted Pins and fine-tune their targeting around the users’ location, age, and specific keywords. You could also launch retargeting campaigns by uploading a list of customers or users who have abandoned their carts or targeting inactive newsletter subscribers.

Track and analyze your performance

No matter what your business goals are on Pinterest, if you don’t track and analyze the performance of your organic efforts and ad campaigns, you’ll never know what content people enjoy and what content isn't so engaging.

You need to track specific metrics to correctly measure the platform's value and return on investment (ROI). They include:

• Impressions: This metric tells you how often people see your pins. The higher the impression rate, the better.
• Engagement: This metric measures the number of times someone clicked or saved your pin.
• Clicks: This metric tells you the number of clicks to a URL in your pin.
• Conversion insights: This metric measures the impact of organic and paid performance by keeping track of cost per action (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS).

Pinterest marketing tools

You could use many great tools to reach your target audience and get traffic on Pinterest. We can split them into three major groups: scheduling, image design and creation, and growth and engagement tools.

Let’s explore each group.

Social media management and scheduling

These tools help you schedule posts and organize your content before you actually post it. You can use them to streamline your marketing efforts to ensure everything you add and share on the platform goes as planned.

Some of the most popular social media management tools for Pinterest include Hootsuite, Tailwind, and Buffer. Alternatively, you can schedule Pins individually on the desktop or iOS versions of Pinterest.

Pinterest image design and creation

These tools help you create, design, edit and publish professional-looking visuals (photos or graphics) and ad creatives.

Most of the popular image design and creation tools actually don’t require a background in design or art. Pretty much anyone can use them to create great visuals. They include Canva, VistaCreate (formerly Crello), and Visme.

Community growth and engagement

Engagement tools can help promote your Pinterest profile and content to increase your engagement on the platform and grow your community.

Some of the most popular tools in this category include PinGroupie and Mentionlytics. PinGroupie is a competitor analytics tool that lets you track other Pinterest users and their metrics. Mentionlytics is a web and social media monitoring tool that lets you easily discover mentions across the web, potential marketing leads, and business opportunities.

Leverage Pinterest to increase your revenue

Pinterest can be a powerful marketing and advertising platform for eCommerce brands, B2B companies, and other types of businesses that can use the platform to increase brand awareness, build an engaged audience, and get more traffic and, ultimately, sales.

Before you launch your campaign, follow the Pinterest marketing strategies we outlined, use the best tools for each aspect of your project, and utilize the top experts for the job.

If you need help with Pinterest marketing or if you’re looking for a Pinterest marketing expert to make this social channel profitable for you, reach out to us. Here at Mayple, we have 600+ vetted marketers and agencies — with some specializing in eCommerce Pinterest marketing.

We’d love to match you with an expert experienced in working with brands from your niche. Get started today!