You’ve probably heard more and more about Pinterest marketing lately and you might have started to think that this channel isn’t just for DIY, wedding and recipes. And I’m here to tell you that your intuition is correct.

Pinterest is a marketing channel that can drive results for a multitude of businesses, both services and product-based alike.

The benefits I am going to go through in this article are also the essential 5 objectives businesses have in online marketing. These are the building blocks of online success and fortunately, adding Pinterest in your marketing mix can help you achieve your targets without spending an arm and a leg in advertising budgets.

The first 3 objectives (and benefits) are generating website traffic, converting that traffic in leads and sales.

The other 2 objectives are brand awareness and a higher search rank.

A little bit of context

The primary need of a new business is to become as visible as it’s possible in a very short time. But SEO takes time, Facebook delivers temporary results, Instagram isn’t that great at generating website traffic and oh well, you can’t have things like a big email list, PR opportunities, paid guest appearances, etc when you’ve just popped up in the online world. Plus, these marketing channels are connected to being visible online, having a reputation, and where possible, advertising budgets.

Small business, start-ups, solopreneurs are often invested in so many things at the same time, it’s hard to figure out a sound strategy from the beginning. It’s also hard to find the resources to invest in advertising campaigns that will help them take off. Many such businesses struggle to keep up with Facebook, Instagram and Google algorithms. They post often on Facebook, they look for the right keywords on Instagram, and yet, the needle isn’t really moving. Plus, every time they sort of get it right, they have to start from zero the next day, since content on social media has a very short lifespan.

In helping such businesses start their journey, I often recommend they focus on building a brand, building a reputation, build a community. In short, tell their stories to showcase what makes them different in an online world where there is no lack of competition. I suggest they start by building a primary content marketing channel and then syndicate it constantly.

Content marketing includes channels like blogging, podcasts, vlogs or videos, white papers, ebooks, webinars, email, social media etc. Oftentimes, a website and a blog are where most businesses start. And once they have their very first articles up and running, I introduce them to Pinterest marketing.

Content (blog, YouTube, Instagram or podcast) plus Pinterest marketing = LOVE

In my experience as a digital marketing manager I have worn many different hats, tested multiple marketing channels, and I’ve always had to get results while on a very tight budget. Out of all the marketing channels I’ve tested, I found this combo to be the one that can deliver the 5 benefits mentioned before, without investing in ads, without struggling to become viral, and without investing in SEO agencies for their websites before they even get a chance to figure out what is that they’re doing.

5 Benefits You Could Get for Your Business through Pinterest Marketing

1. Website traffic

This is the bred in the bone of an online business. Without website traffic, there are no leads, no sales, and obviously no revenue. For a website that just launched, getting qualified website traffic can be a pain because it’s too soon for search engines to have indexed your content, the only social media traffic coming in is from your friends and family, and even that, it’s just barely moving the needle.

The good news is that Pinterest marketing can help you get a jumpstart, even when you’re completely new to blogging and to building your online following. The needle starts moving within the first weeks, and as you are constant in the number of your pins, and have researched the right keywords, you are set for success. And it can come sooner than expected.

My website and blog content are fairly new. Pinterest is already the second social source of traffic to my website, but it is the one I am spending the least of time on it. The Facebook traffic I’m generating is not even that big compared to what Pinterest brings in, but I work my ass off generating it, developing and publishing multiple posts per day in various Facebook communities, my page, and now even in my own Facebook group. Pinterest = 1 hour for results that multiply over time by themselves vs. Facebook = I’m afraid to even count the hours, but it’s about 2 to 3 hours per day.

Here’s an example, from my own blog:

2. Lead generation

After securing website traffic, generating leads is the second step of the funnel for most businesses. This is easier if you’ve done the work and made sure that the visitors you’re getting on your website are qualified. This means that the audience you’re getting is actually interested in what you’re selling, creating, talking about. It’s a step that helps your conversion rate, and reduces bounce rates.

There are various strategies for generating leads through Pinterest marketing and you should definitely spend the time to tailor them for your own business. There are two types of leads you can generate through Pinterest, and these vary according to where Pinterest is in your funnel. This gets a little bit advanced, but trust me, it’s easy.

• Type #1 of lead: Direct – you can obtain this lead when a Pinner clicks a pin that goes to your landing pages

• Type #1 of lead: Indirect – you can obtain this lead when a Pinner clicks a pin that goes to a blog post that contains a call to action or redirect to a landing page, optin or subscribe to my newsletter form.

Here are three strategies you can use Pinterest for lead generation:

• You can host contests

• You can pin your freebies, and redirect Pinners to your optin pages

• You can run an advertising campaign

There are multiple ways to improve lead generation rates through Pinterest and I’ll go on about it in a different post. But the basics remain true. If you want a Pinner to go to your website, make sure you have content that they actually want to see, which they have discovered through their own keywords (so make sure the pin description is optimized). On your website, make sure that the freebie you are promising or the call to action to get on your list is clear, enticing, and of interest to your target audience.

3. Revenue

Pinterest can drive revenue. And this can come in two forms. One is through affiliate marketing. By generating website traffic, it can bring more visibility to your affiliate content, and thus, increasing the potential for more revenue.

It can also help you increase the overall value of your brand, and this is especially true for bloggers and influencers. The more website traffic you have, the more value your website pages have when dealing with clients and advertisers interested in working with you to promote their products.

The other way Pinterest drives revenue is through ecommerce. Actual sales. Over 250 million people all over the world are using Pinterest to discover ideas, projects, products, and services.

• 83% of weekly Pinners say they have made a purchase based on Pins they saw from brands (GfK, US, Pinterest Path to purchase study among weekly Pinners, Nov 2018)

• 90% use Pinterest when they’re trying to decide what to buy (db5 and Colloquial Insights, Pinterest category usage study, Oct 2017)

• 66% of Pinners buy something after seeing a brand’s Pins (db5 and Colloquial Insights, Pinterest category usage study, Oct 2017)

• Pinterest drives 33% more referral traffic to shopping sites than Facebook, and 200% more than Twitter (GfK, Path to purchase study with weekly Pinners, Dec 2017)

• The average order value of sales coming from a Pinner is around $58.95, which is higher than any other social platform.

Shopify, one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the world, loves Pinterest so much it has integrated it within their sales channels, and are actively suggesting using this platform to drive sales.

Oh and the best part is that you can get results even when you’re not strategically aiming for it. One of my marketing clients decided to use Pinterest marketing to drive website traffic. We started doing that by recycling old content and putting it back on Pinterest. A couple of months later, Pinterest jumped from 70K monthly views to 1M, it had became the second source of traffic after organic search, and the most profitable source for social sales.

4. Brand awareness

I love this benefit of Pinterest marketing and I’ve seen it in work across various industries. My favorite case study is a fashion brand I worked with a couple of years ago.

They were trying to expand to new markets with the hope of adding in a new revenue stream, one that would be more consistent, at a time when demand in the local market was constant, but the offer was getting stronger and stronger. That meant competition was bigger, they were investing more in visibility and conversions, so that resulted in missed sales opportunities, lower conversion rates, and obviously lower revenue for my client. In the long term, that trend could take a negative toll on the business, and send it to the ground if new opportunities didn’t come about.

I was their marketing manager at that time, and I was honestly struggling to find a solution that would fix the issue, wouldn’t take up more resources, would be free, and would still deliver results. So I tried my luck with Pinterest, this beautiful new place for brides to be, and crafters and food bloggers.

To be honest I wasn’t expecting really big results, but this channel started generating traffic, and leads, and sales. It had accounted for 25% of their total website traffic within the 2 years I started actively focusing on it.

My initial goal with using Pinterest marketing for this brand was to appeal to a new audience, who wasn’t aware of the local reputation of the brand, but who was actively using that channel to search for ideas, inspiration and products that would have a competitive advantage in their markets (design, quality and price ratio).

My hope was that brides would save our content, take it to their local wedding dress stores and show it to the sales reps and consultants, helping with brand awareness. Basically they would prove that there was demand for this brand’s products in their market.

This brand then started to book more and more trade shows in the countries where we were being more active and visible (not only on Pinterest, but on specialty websites, and Instagram). It eventually launched an ecommerce store, and had expanded their B2B network to bridal stores in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Slovakia, UAE. Obviously there was more involved than just Pinterest marketing, but in using this channel to make their designs visible, they had achieved brand awareness.

5. Rank higher in search results

If you’ve ever performed a search in a search engine (aka looking for stuff in Google), then you know whatever comes after the first page of results, is a sort of nebula. Nobody knows what’s there because if users can’t find what they’re looking for in the first 10 search results, chances are they are going to modify that search, rather than click to see the next 10 results. And for an online business this means missing out on visibility, website traffic, leads and sales.

So, no wonder SEO has become such a big part of online marketing nowadays. Even so, search engines update their algorithms every year or so and the changes are sending us all on a frenzy.

With SEO there are two parts: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

With on-page SEO you do whatever is in your means to make your website pages friendlier to search engines. And that means the basic updating and using the right keywords, up to the more advanced strategies that include using https (SSL certificate), optimizing for mobile, ensuring a fast load time, decreasing bounce rate, and the list can go on. SEO is no easy task.

Off-page SEO includes techniques that help improve the ranking of your website with actions taken outside your website. The most popular strategy is link building. While that’s not all that off-page SEO is, for the purpose of our 5 benefits to using Pinterest marketing, I’ll stick to just that.

Link building is the practice of sending links to your website, from other websites. That’s often the case with directories, with partnerships (exchanging links), but also with social media. Basically, search engines will evaluate your websites importance based on a multitude of factors, including the number and importance of the websites that are linking back to your website.

Are you still with me, so far? Because this is where it gets juicy.

There are two ways Pinterest marketing can help you rank higher in search results.

1. Link building

   When you or someone else creates a pin or Pinterest redirecting back to your website, that pin and link are individual urls. Basically you are using the Pinterest ecosystem to create referral links coming back to your website. The more links you have, the more website traffic you’re getting, the more signals Google and other search engines receive that your content is of importance.

2. Long tail keywords in your pins and boards

   All pins and boards on Pinterest are set to public by default. If you’ve done the keyword research step accordingly, you might find yourself showing up in the top Google results for that keyword with your Pinterest boards and pins. And that means you have a competitive edge that can get you results faster than the time you’d be spending trying to rank with the same keywords on your website. Obviously there is some hard work involved, like searching for the right long tail keyword, making sure your board and pins are optimized, and getting many repins (saves).

Here we go: the 5 benefits that you could get for your business through Pinterest marketing. Please note that the secret to achieving these benefits is a mix of strategy and consistency, implemented over time. So if you’re looking for a quick fix, without investing in ads, Pinterest marketing isn’t going to send you 1000 new clients over night.

If you’re ready to commit to this marketing channel, and patiently wait for the results, you could be owning a profitable new marketing channel in 6 to 12 months. But for those who are super impatient, the results start coming in after three months.

Need help starting with Pinterest marketing?

There are so many fun ways to integrate Pinterest in your content marketing. If you need help planning your strategy for Pinterest, book a free strategy call for your Pinterest marketing below.

Hi there! My name is Monica. I am a visibility coach who works with established entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses with powerful visibility strategies and personal growth.

To learn more about using Pinterest for your brand, read below: