Every social networking website provides businesses an opportunity to get closer to their customers, boost engagement and increase sales. But specifically for e-commerce businesses and websites, Pinterest is by far the most effective social network.
If you’ve been ignoring Pinterest until now, here are a few stats to get you thinking.
- Pinterest has more than 75 million registered users.
- It ranks third, after Facebook and Twitter, in terms of generating daily referral traffic.
- Almost 80% of its users are women.
- Buyers referred from Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy your products.
- Buyers are increasingly using Pinterest to find relevant products.
In short, Pinterest can play a huge role in your social commerce strategy. Not only can it send you thousands of qualified sales leads, it can also help you build a strong brand image.
Here’s how you can use Pinterest to strengthen your e-commerce marketing strategy.
Understand the Platform First
Although it has great e-commerce potential, Pinterest is still primarily a social network. So to find success, you need to reach out to your potential customers and people who might be interested in your products. The primary benefits you can get out of Pinterest are:
- Engaging with your target audience and potential customers.
- Increase visibility of your products.
- Use the Pinterest audience to build your e-commerce business.
- Get direct feedback from customers on products.
- Improve your referral traffic.
Don’t expect direct sales though. Pinterest will work as an advocate for your products and send you referral traffic. But you cannot make direct sales on it.
Encourage Pinning on Your Website
Before promoting your products on Pinterest, create a strong case for it on your ecommerce website. This includes adding the “Pin” button on all your product pages and encouraging your website visitors to follow you on Pinterest. You can use social media sharing widgets like AddThis or DiggDigg to add the relevant social sharing buttons. You can also route members to your Pinterest page by announcing different competitions and special offers for Pinterest users on your website.
Create a Pinterest Business Page
If you’re serious about using Pinterest to market your products then instead of using a Pinterest personal profile, create a Pinterest Business page. Pinterest Business profiles are specially designed for organizations who wish to engage with their customers. To get a verified Pinterest Business page, you just need to confirm your website address. This will add further credibility to your profile and also make you eligible for additional features that individual profiles don’t have.
Enable Rich Pins Greater For Engagement
Research indicates that Pins that include a price tag attract 30% more Likes on Pinterest. There are two ways of adding a price tag to your Pins. You can either add the price in the product description or you could enable Rich Pins. Similar to Twitter cards, Rich Pins is a great feature for e-commerce websites. It automatically picks up the price and stock details from your product page and displays it with your Pinterest posts.
Attract and Engage Your Followers
To be successful on any social network, you need to attract followers and then keep them engaged. To attract followers on Pinterest, shortlist other more active Pinterest accounts that are pinning about similar products. Proactively engage with the followers of those accounts by responding to their comments and answering any questions that they have left on different images. Also, whenever someone RePins or Likes your images, send them a thank you message. These small things gradually increase your followers. You can also run special contests on Pinterest and ask your website visitors to participate.
Curate Content Intelligently
For a successful Pinterest strategy, you need to be an active content curator. Don’t just share your own product pictures. Rather, Pin images from other users with similar interests. But you need to do this intelligently. Instead of pinning images from your competitors, pin images of products or things that complement your products. For example, if you’re selling sports equipment, apparel and gear, you can pin pictures of different sports personalities, or international matches being played in different countries.
Pinning images from other users adds more variety to your Pinterest profile and also helps you create new relationships, which is crucial on any social network.
Organize Your Boards and Pins
To make it easy for your followers to explore different products, organize your images in different boards. Again, instead of focusing only on your products, create a combination of original and curated boards. Create separate boards for every product category and add pictures from your website. Then create boards containing pictures that show different usages of your products in real life. Or you can create boards that contain different statistics and facts about your products. The possibilities are endless. Just make sure your profile is well organized and easy to explore.
Use High Quality and Large Images
Pinterest is a visual social network. People click only on high quality images. Make sure all your product images and Pins are of the highest quality. Research also shows that taller and larger images get much more engagement as compared to smaller images. In general, images that are 738 pixels wide and 1128 pixels high appear the best.
Add Clear Calls To Action
Research shows that Pins that have clear calls to action in their description or image content, drive almost 80% more engagement. Since your primary objective with Pinterest is to drive traffic to your e-commerce website, you should always include clear calls to action in the image description. A call to action is a sign or statement asking the user to take a specific action. For example, “Click Here”, Download Now”, “Register Now” etc. To make it more compelling, use questions or statements that require a response from the user. Combine this with different calls to action to get the most out of your Pins.
Use Pinterest for SEO
Over time, Pinterest has proved to be a great source of referral traffic for websites because of its SEO strength. To get the maximum benefit from it, use descriptive names for your images and add descriptions with every Pin, along with the product URLs. Use the keywords that best describe your products. But avoid keyword stuffing. Using too many keywords can put people off, and reduce the engagement on your Pins. Create natural descriptions and image names with keywords where necessary.
Monitor Performance With Analytics
To monitor your progress on Pinterest and see which posts are getting the highest exposure, you can use the built-in Pinterest analytics. These statistics are only available to Pinterest Business users, so you’ll need to sign up for a business page. Analytics will show you the Pins with the highest reach, exposure, comments and likes. Plus, you’ll also get details about the demographic and geographic details of your followers.
Conclusion
Pinterest is more effective in boosting e-commerce sales because it’s based primarily on visuals. By creating a strong Pinterest presence, you can brand your business very effectively and route thousands of visitors from Pinterest to your e-commerce store. If used the right way, it can be an effective social commerce tool.
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