How to boost your brand with Pinterest

If you're looking for a marketing tool to boost the growth of your brand, one platform that's ripe with opportunities is Pinterest.

Pinterest is designed to help users discover new products and ideas. The latest shopping features enable Pinners to browse brand's inventories and checkout through organic pins and ads, in fact last year weekly conversions on Pinterest grew by 300%!

Almost 9 out of 10 people use Pinterest for purchase inspiration, and spend 2x more per month than users of other platforms, meaning brands essentially have a direct line to an audience that consider shopping a lifestyle.

Pinterest offers businesses a unique platform to help grow their company and place their products in front of an audience that is there to engage and convert. If you haven't started using it yet, now maybe just the time - especially given it has  460 million people using the platform each month and is growing fast with  37% increase in active users.

Let us walk you through how the platform works and how brands can make the most of this opportunity to be discovered by potential customers.

What Is Pinterest?

Pinterest is not just another social media channel. It's more of a search engine, a curated one that uses visuals to fuel its results; so much, in fact, Pinterest has become the go-to tool for people when they are planning their next vacation or meal prepping ahead of time.

Brands need to think about how best to curate visual content on this platform because it will feed into what gets found there by users looking for information such as designing the home of their dreams or improving their skincare routine.

How Do Pins Work?

Pins are essentially visual bookmarks that Pinners use to save content that they like. Users can find and save Pins that interest them and then click on them to find out more via an outbound link. A business account allows you to create Pins that link back to your website so you can share your products and ideas.

What Makes Pinterest Unique?

Longer Content Lifespan

Pinterest stands out from all other social platforms in terms of longevity at four months. You can typically expect your Facebook content to last six hours and 48 hours on Instagram. It's worth noting that high-quality pins can continue to attract repins for months or years, making this a clear pick for social engagement in the long run.

More Potential For Growing Organically

Whether you have a million followers on Pinterest or only 10, the chances of your content being shown and ranked are just as high. Unlike Instagram, where it takes 10K followers to share website links with other users, Pinterest encourages outside app usage right away! (Contrary to Facebook, which wants you to stay on their platform)

Higher Purchase Intent

Pinterest is a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration. However, users come to Pinterest with purchase intent. 97% of all searches are unbranded meaning that consumers have an idea of the type of item or idea they are looking for but have not got a specific solution in mind. Brands have the opportunity to place their products in front of people that are actively searching for a solution to their problem.

How To Market Your Brand on Pinterest

For brands, marketing on Pinterest is much like other social media platforms. When you register for a business account, you can advertise directly to your target audience. In addition, with the free version, you can access Pinterest Analytics and other helpful marketing tools.

There are two ways you can market on Pinterest, one through organic strategies and the other through paid ads.

Organic Marketing

One of the most powerful ways to drive engagement, traffic, and conversion is to have a Pinterest presence that you create organically. So here are some fundamentals in marketing organically:

Embrace unique images and video

Creating high-quality videos and images that stand out will help you market your brand and products more effectively. Original content is favoured by the algorithm so you'll need to be churning out a variety of fresh visuals for your brand to stay visible.

Take advantage of keywords

Use keywords throughout your profile, posts, Pins, and boards to get noticed by users looking for what you have.

Pinterest search is all about niche-specific words. Including these phrases in the following locations will increase your chances of ranking organically through user searches: Bio and Profile, Pin Descriptions, Board Titles, Board Descriptions, and Image-Alt-Text.

Hashtags are welcome

Hashtags are a great way to make your posts more searchable on Pinterest. When you add hashtags to any of your Pins or boards, the center will show up in searches for anything related to that hashtag!

Get social

The most exciting thing about using Pinterest is following other people's accounts with similar interests to communicate through them.

Following these profiles doesn't just give someone else something cool from yourself - it can actually create a network between customers who feel loyal towards your brand because of how much time and effort was invested into getting quality inspiration out there.

Become a fan too, re-pin, like, and comment on your followers' content. You can make your followers feel heard by responding to their messages on your content to personalize their experience. Make engaging posts that show your expertise in your niche and teach your followers something new!

Pinterest Paid Ads

Pinterest offers different ad types. This means there are plenty of ways to capture a user's attention, with descriptions up to 500 characters long and Ad titles up to 100 characters.

Promoted Pins

Promoted pins will be identified by the "Promoted" label. The "Promoted" label disappears once someone shares it, and any re-pins afterward are considered earned media - in other words, organic exposure to the content is free!

By following these guidelines, you'll be able to create a Promoted Pin advertisement in no time:

• File format: PNG or JPEG
• Aspect Ratio: 2:3 and vertically oriented
• Max file size: 10 MB.
• Description: up to 500 characters.

Promoted Carousels

Users can swipe through up to five images in a promoted carousel. Then, within one Pin, Carousels help tells the deeper story of the brand.

Pins with dots under them will signal additional content, just like other Pins. However, the images can be different, and each carousel is linked to a separate landing page with a different title, description, and link.

Promoted Video Pins

Video Pins are a great way to get your brand noticed because they automatically start playing on desktop when people are halfway scrolling through the screen. In a sea of stills—and most pins are—videos stand out instantly!

Brands can easily share so much more information to potential customers through video—from authentic storytelling to product demos. As a result of the added value of each Video Pin, users are much more likely to pin their favorite videos you make to one of their boards.

Video content should be creative, engaging, and especially eye-catching. There are a few things to keep in mind when uploading videos:

• File format: MP4 or MOV
• Maximum video size: 2 GB
• Video Length: 4 seconds - 30 minutes
• Aspect Ratio: 1:91:1 or 1:2

Don't depend too much time on audio (people may scroll through without sound while watching!)

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Selling Directly On Pinterest

Pinterest has made an exciting feature: a Shop tab! This tab is for shopping and browsing in-stock products from retailers.

Now users can find shoppable inspiration on Pinterest more accessible and drive more traffic to brands' ecommerce websites too! With this awesome update, people can search and browse items they like directly through their pins - making buying things much more convenient than ever before.

How To Create Shareable Pins That Sell

Brands can use Pins to increase their reach and engage with new customers, but it's worth making all of your pins shareable for them to be genuinely viral.

Creating a shareable Pinterest post is easier than you think. It's about understanding what resonates with your audience and then delivering it most helpfully and beautifully possible.

Use High-Quality Images

Taking your own beautiful images allows your brand to rank into Pinterest's algorithm, which favors new content and fresh photos. Original images are always the best. Coming up with authentic content adds more meaning to your brand story and relevance to your audience.

Overlay Text in a Readable Font

Help people understand what a pin is all about with text overlays. When creating a pin, keep the amount of text to an absolute minimum. If you use your call to action or a variation with different keywords, users scrolling through their feed will be motivated to click on and save your post.

Create Lifestyle-focused Pins

Boost your business by tapping into the intent of shoppers with a lifestyle-focused content strategy.

For example, if you have a personal care item and want to promote your product in the winter, share self-care ideas during this season. Use lifestyle images that will engage customers and help visualize your products in use.

Establish a Consistent Visual Style

When creating pins to be shared on Pinterest, one essential step is ensuring that your brand logo is visible and branding consistent. This allows the viewer to know who created the pin they liked, so it can help create a more cohesive experience and make you stand out from other brands in their feed.

Make It Mobile Friendly

With the overwhelming amount of people that use mobile devices, it is vital to make sure your image and text are clear. In addition, make sure you include high-contrast backgrounds so users can read what they're looking at from any size screen.

Optimize For Pinterest SEO

Get your product in front of more people searching on Pinterest using relevant keywords in title, description, and images. Hashtags work well, too, in helping to get your brand discovered.

Optimize your boards since they are the first thing people will see when they land on your profile, so you'll want to make them as clear and attractive as possible.

This is an excellent opportunity to let Pinterest's search engine know-how classify your products and/or organize your content, which helps increase your visibility.

Make Pinterest Part Of Your Marketing Strategy

Now is the best time to create a marketing strategy on Pinterest. A Pinterest user is a devoted shopper who utilizes the platform to receive inspiration and discover products to purchase.

Unlike other social platforms that don't reveal how their algorithms work, Pinterest have been more transparent about how theirs operates. This gives brands and marketers a huge opportunity to have a more impactful presence on the platform.

Your digital marketing strategy is only as strong as the content you share. This statement carries extra weight with a discovery platform like Pinterest where photo and video content needs to stand out in a visual search result.

Standing out requires brands to create content that connects with consumers in a personal way, reflecting their individual lifestyles and culture—and lots of it! The platform favours consistent pinning and although building momentum, and an audience, can be a slow burn to begin with top pins have an incredible longevity online.

Whether it's organic or paid advertising on this platform that drives your sales, we can help you create compelling visuals to captivate and convert new customers. Our team can take care of the imagery work for you and help turn your pins into powerful drivers for increased sales.

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