E-commerce: How to grow your online sales with Pinterest

E-commerce: How to grow your online sales with Pinterest - Social commerce is emerging as a major e-commerce behaviour. A recent report by eMarketer highlights Pinterest as a top player for social commerce: “Facebook drives the majority of social referral to ecommerce sites, but Instagram and Pinterest are the most contextually relevant platforms for social commerce.”*  Millions of consumers visit Pinterest daily to explore, discover, and plan what they want to do in the future. Here’s how to grow your online sales with Pinterest.

According to a recent survey conducted by Bizrate Insights, more than one-third of US consumers said they had purchased products through social media.**

Let that sink in a moment.

Instead of going directly to an online or offline store, over 30% of people are inspired to buy whilst browsing a social media app.

Discovering a product or service to purchase via social media is quite different from “stepping” straight into your favourite online shop to buy something. Typically, you go to Amazon because you know the specific item or type of product you’re looking for (i.e. book, device,…). You don’t go to Pinterest for this.

You go to Pinterest for ideas and inspiration.

“According to a February 2019 survey by Cowen and Company, 47% of social media users saw Pinterest as the platform for discovering and shopping for products—more than three times higher than those who cited Facebook or Instagram.” *

Let me illustrate this with a personal example:

Recently, I was looking for a particular type of mosquito net. A search on Pinterest (what else!) helped me hone in on the type of model I was looking for. I then ordered it directly from the supplier’s website. It was a brand I had not heard of before and whose products I may not have come across if I had searched on Google or Amazon. Out of curiosity, I did a search on Google after purchasing the net. The first results that came up on Google were (surprise, surprise!) Amazon offers. The company that I ordered the net from was nowhere to be found on Google, even though I used exactly the same search terms that I used on Pinterest.

Now, that's extremely interesting! Especially, if you sell products online.

My shopping example clearly shows that Pinterest is a much more level playing field for any size of business.

So, how can you grow your online sales with Pinterest?

First of all, you need a Pinterest Business account. Not sure whether your account is a personal or business account? Do you have the word “Analytics” showing just to the left of the search bar at the top your profile? In that case, you have a business account. You’re good to go! If not (or if you do not yet have a Pinterest account at all), find out how to get started here.

Product Pins are a special type of Pin (Pinterest term for an image, including title and description).

Product pins have their own feed in Pinterest (see above) and include a small shopping tag icon just to left of the seller’s name.

The process to activate Product Rich Pins consists of adding a little bit of code to your product pages. On some platforms such as Etsy and EBay, anything you save to Pinterest from within those platforms will automatically appear as product pins on Pinterest. On Shopify you can create Product Pins to feature your products on Pinterest by connecting it as an online sales channel.

Optimise your display name for Pinterest SEO. The display name is the title that appears in bold at the top of your Pinterest profile. You can use up to 65 characters. Enter your business name and, if possible, include any keywords to for SEO purposes.

Create boards and post content that attract your target audience. Before creating boards or sharing content on Pinterest, you need to have a very clear idea on whom you are targeting. The key to a successful business account on Pinterest is a perfect knowledge of your ideal customer and the type of information they are looking for. Your Pinterest page should inspire and address the desires and needs of your perfect client. Your account needs to act as your second e-commerce site. 

A picture speaks a thousand words, especially on Pinterest. To attract attention, compelling images are key. To get clicks, your images need to stand out in the Pinterest feed and have a clear call-to-action. The promise of the pin image needs to match the content it will lead to when people click through. Click here to learn more about the basic principles of highly pinnable images that maximise your chances of conversion.

Even though Pinterest is mostly visual, keywords are vital if you want people to find your products. Do your keyword research. What would a typical client search for when they are looking for your product? Use these keywords in your Pinterest profile, board and pin descriptions. Most importantly, use them in the title and descriptions of your products in your online store. Pinterest will automatically pull this information from your product listing when you pin directly from your store.

Pin consistently throughout the day, every day. People shop on e-commerce sites day and night. Pinning 10 times a day will start giving you good results, more is even better. Scheduling tools such as Tailwind or Buffer can help you do this. Click here if you wish to try Tailwind for free for 1 month (affiliate link).

With a Pinterest optimised product store and the right Pinterest strategy in place, it’s much easier to compete and drive traffic to your online store with Pinterest than Google.