70% of us use Pinterest to get inspiration on what to buy, making Pinterest marketing for e-commerce a crucial component for online retailers.

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In one of the Facebook Group’s that I’m a member of, there was a discussion on the topic of growing blog traffic quickly. A member suggested that Pinterest is one of the best ways to grow blog traffic.

But another commenter quickly chimed in that, in her opinion, Pinterest is “for bloggers who blog about blogging.” I started to laugh quietly to myself at this notion. Yes—there are many, many (many) bloggers who blog about blogging. Most of which, share their content on Pinterest. Myself included.

Infopreneurs, online publishers, course creators and those who sell digital products like By Regina, Mattie James and Melyssa Griffin, count on Pinterest to grow their traffic and keep their online businesses booming.

However, Pinterest is not just for bloggers. Plenty of fashion and beauty online retailers have integrated Pinterest marketing for e-commerce into their brand strategies.

Brands including Victoria’s Secret, Sephora and Warby Parker have beautiful Pinterest boards with large followings. Brick and click food and beverage brands like Wholefoods and Starbucks also find Pinterest incredibly valuable.

But Pinterest’s usefulness extends far beyond fashion and food.  From tech brands like Shopify and HubSpot to non-profits like Make-A-Wish Foundation—many brands, in various industries, verticals, categories and sectors, are using Pinterest marketing for e-commerce.

Why Use Pinterest Marketing for E-Commerce?

Pinterest is the world’s catalogue of ideas, a social network that allows users to visually share and discover new interests by saving or ‘pinning’ images or videos to their own or others’ boards, as well as browsing what other users have pinned.

With 150 million active users on Pinterest—70% of us use Pinterest to get inspiration on what to buy.

Not only are conversion rates high on Pinterest, but this network allows for greater exposure for a brand’s products. There is no limit to how many times your product image can be pinned to a board. The best pins can just keep circulating from user to user, board to board.

Start with a Pinterest business account. Then with the right content and the right strategy, you can use Pinterest to show your audience that you’ve got what they need.

Here are some tips on how you can use Pinterest commercially to promote your business from inspiration to purchase.

The Content

Pinterest users are primed and ready to buy what your small business is selling. Regardless if you consider Pinterest a social channel or a search engine, if you want to take advantage of Pinterest marketing for e-commerce for your store, it all needs to begin with beautifully curated, high-quality content.

A captivating Pinterest image will not only attract attention to your pins — but it will also encourage interaction and inspire growth!  To do this, you’ll need to create images that move them through the buying process.

Branding. Think of your Pinterest account as a branded channel. Determine what colours, fonts, graphic style and font types you will use in your marketing. Then translate that across all of your images. Your brand is far more than a marketing message. It’s the customer journey.

Visuals. Lifestyle images are often more effective than product shots, and high-resolution, high-quality images will always look best. Steer clear of images that are busy—80% of Pinners use Pinterest on mobile, so make sure your Pin’s the message is easy to digest.

Pinterest is visual, so images that stand out and say something about what you offer will give you an edge.

The ideal aspect ratio for a vertical Pin is 2:3—600px wide x 900px high. Pins that are much longer are not recommended.

Landing Pages. Make sure your landing page makes sense. When someone clicks your Pin, they’re looking for more info about it.

Make sure that the Pin’s image appears on the landing page, and the page’s content matches the Pin’s description.

One of my pet peeves on Pinterest is clicking through on a Pin only to realize that the page has nothing to do with the Pin. Don’t deter a potential buyer by posting click bait Pins that lead to no where.

Make your website, landing pages and blog posts Pinterest-friendly by adding the Save button. The Save button makes it easier and faster for people to save your content to Pinterest and can increase your saves up to 5x.

Descriptions. Keep descriptions between 200 to 300 characters, as a general rule of thumb. As part of your Pinterest marketing for e-commerce, be sure to also include hashtags and keywords in your descriptions.

People use hashtags and keywords to discover relevant content. Using both will help potential buyers to categorize your content so it can be recommended in places like search and home feed.

Call-to-Action. Would you like your Pinterest followers to repin or click-through to your product? Don’t assume your Pinterest followers know what action to take.

If you want people to take the next step, then include call-to-action in the description or add it as a banner across your image to help increase your engagement.

Price. Pins should include price whenever possible, but the best implementation is not in the description.

In fact, Pinterest has cracked down on using price and URLs in the description and won’t allow them in Promoted Pins. This is why it’s critical to get your open graph tags configured correctly so the price is displayed in the rich pin and the landing page URL is properly linked.

The Pins