Think of Pinterest as a modern-day cross between a cork vision board and the old-style women’s fashion, home, and special interest magazines your mom used to read. The difference is, as with a vision board, users can create their own “magazines” filled with inspiration, ideas, and styles they like.

All you have to do is find a way to entice users to add your product to their personal “magazine.”

 

Users want to buy

If you haven’t thought of taking advantage of this popular website to market your products, you’re missing out on a valuable channel for sales. Not only do half of Pinterest’s 320 million monthly active Pinners log on to the site to shop, but Pinterest is the highest of all social media sites in per-order sales (with an average of $50 per order).

In addition, Pinterest is the only social media site that attracts users whose main reason for coming there is to find things to purchase. Ninety percent of Pinterest weekly users say they look to Pinterest to help them make their shopping decisions, and 30 percent report they have bought something after seeing it on Pinterest.

Given all this, you can’t really afford to ignore the platform.

 

Easier than ever

If you haven’t been on the Pinterest platform in a while, you may not realize that users can now purchase directly on the site, instead of the old way of having to click through to the online store and buy the item there.

These are called Buyable Pins, and they are a great marketing companion to the site’s Rich Pins, which provide product details, such as size, weight, price, availability, and so on.

By the way, be sure you have a business account with Pinterest, not just a personal profile. This will provide you with all the business-related features Pinterest offers, including analytics, promoted pins, ads, and news from Pinterest.

For SEO purposes, Google considers each pin a website in itself. Therefore, adding a product description to your pin will get you ranked higher in searches.

 

Engage, engage, engage

We can’t say it often enough: Social media has its purpose right in its name—social. This is precisely why it’s so popular. Unlike with static radio, TV, newspaper, and magazine ads and such, users can interact with the people they’re buying from, and find out they’re real people, not just a faceless company.

This means you have to engage with them as often and as much as possible. If they pin your content, thank them. Follow them. Comment on your followers’ boards, like their pins, and pin other people’s content. Respond promptly to any messages. Share user-generated content.

Check out the “Trending” and “Explore” pages when looking for content to repin. Also, be sure to leave an occasional comment on “Popular” pins. Just don’t comment so often that you’re tagged as spam by Pinterest.

 

Sell the vision

Remember, Pinners are buying the feeling, the ambiance, and—in the end—a dream of a better lifestyle than the one they have now.

So don’t just pin your products; create boards that tell evocative stories to go along with them:

“What’s a summer’s day without the beach? The sharp cry of the gulls, the soft summons of the waves, and you—glowing—in our on-trend swimwear, perfectly styled to enhance every figure.”

—or,

“There’s a nip in the air and a snap to the breeze, a sure sign that autumn isn’t far off. When it arrives, you’ll be ready, wrapped snugly in one of our hand-knitted Irish fisherman’s sweaters.”

And because Pinterest is all about the photos, make sure your visual images are high quality, professional-looking, and grounded in the context of how buyers can use the items you sell. For example, showcase your lamps on tables with a few books, or fill your vases with artfully arranged flowers.

Remember the “magazine” analogy, and design your graphics and photos as if you were submitting them for publication in Vogue or House Beautiful.

 

A few last tips

  • Connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts with your Pinterest account, and be sure to include the Pinterest “follow” button on your website. Remember to add your website URL in your profile, along with your business name.

 

  • To make it easy for fans to find and follow you, be sure to include keywords in your descriptions when you pin. And be sure they’re long-tail keywords; that is, not just a generic description such as “dog treats,” but the more specific “organic dog treats.”

 

  • Finally, since 85 percent of Pinterest users access the site from their mobile phones, double-check to be sure your content is optimized for mobile devices.

 

If you’d like more information on how to make the most of your Pinterest pins, our social media management experts can guide you through the process and help you maximize your sales.