Is Pinterest marketing a good idea for your business? That’s the question we are diving into today, along with eight other questions that are commonly asked when people come through my door, and they are wondering if Pinterest is a good fit for their businesses.

So we’re going to be going through some of the most commonly asked things related to Pinterest marketing for various businesses.

My name is Heather Farris, and I run a Pinterest marketing agency and have done so for five years. I help e-commerce and content creators from all ends of the spectrum get traffic and sales from Pinterest.

I have probably helped someone in your niche. I pride myself on not niching down on a specific area of Pinterest for clients or students but helping people across many different niches and industries to get them success on Pinterest. That way, I have a wide array of advice and strategy that might help you.

If you want anything that is Pinterest marketing-related, this is the place to be.

1. Is Pinterest marketing right for my business?

There are 23 different categories you can advertise within on Pinterest. You can look through this list to see if yours is included here.

1. Animals
2. Architecture
3. Art
4. Beauty
5. Children’s fashion
6. Design
7. DIY and crafts
8. Education
9. Entertainment
10. Event planning
11. Electronics
12. Finance
13. Food and drinks
14. Gardening
15. Health
16. Men’s fashion
17. Parenting
18. Quotes
19. Sports
20. Travel
21. Vehicles
22. Wedding
23. Women’s fashion

The most popular category we have clients within is the home interior decor space, food, crafts, and kids’ activities. We even have clients in finance and one in the vehicle niche. We have clients in all categories.

We also have students that are covering these as well.  We have parenting creators in our client roster and some people who are in the direct sell space that are selling products through other companies.

Within these 23 main categories, there are even more subcategories that you can take a look at. If you are interested, go to your Pinterest business account and go to Analytics, and the Audience Insights. On that page, you will find all of this relevant information.

2. How much time would I need to invest per week to get started if I decide to use Pinterest?

Now, if you have confirmed that your audience is on Pinterest and you are interested in getting started, I would suggest spending a minimum of two hours per week investing in your Pinterest knowledge. In the beginning, you are going to spend longer. The more flow you get, the better you get at doing the things required of you to get a Pinterest marketing strategy, and the faster you are going to get.

You may get to a point where you are spending about an hour a week. However, in the beginning, it is within the realm of possibility that you will be spending atleast two hours a week doing keyword research, figuring out how to create images, writing pin titles and descriptions, and scheduling those pins. You will need to spend two hours a week if you are a total beginner.

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3. I’ve tried Pinterest before, and it didn’t work. What could I have done wrong?

That’s a great question. I have two follow-up questions for you.

• Were you just not consistent?
• Or were you not implementing a long-term strategy?

One of those two questions is generally why a Pinterest strategy didn’t work, especially if your audience is on the platform. Either you didn’t have a strategy or you didn’t give it enough time.

Pinterest does take about six to nine months to grow a long-term sustainable strategy. This is a Google SEO-esque platform. It is similar to Google and YouTube, where you are using keywords to rank and appear in results.  But instead of articles or videos, you’re ranking with pins.

Over time, Pinterest is going to start ranking your pins in their algorithm. Now, if you do all of those things correctly (with SEO, writing Pin titles, creating clickable images, etc.) over time you will begin to notice traffic building to your domain.

One of our clients right now has been with us for three years. For the first year of her existence on our client roster, she got no traffic for four months from Pinterest. We were building an audience from scratch; we were validating keywords, images, and audience.  Now she is upwards of 12,000 to 15,000 thousand page views per month in year three. That is a considerable growth curve for her.

On average, once you start getting growth and traffic from Pinterest, our average growth for any industry for Pinterest is 2% to 5% per month.  This depends on your audience, and the time frame of the year because we have down months, no matter the industry.

Our average growth for any industry for Pinterest is 2% to 5% per month.

All of those things should be taken into consideration. So answer those two questions for me and let me know where you land.

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4. Would you recommend a different strategy if I’m e-commerce and not a content creator?

This is a really great question, actually. Yes, I would. In all of my training, I am talking about creating pins and content for Pinterest.  If you are an e-commerce creator, your content is your product lineup. It’s also any value-based content like blogs that you add into your store to support your products.

What I would suggest for creating an e-commerce strategy for Pinterest is to start with your current product suites, create pins for those things, and mix in value-based content in the form of pins on the platform. That way, long term, you have questions that your audience is asking you. You are providing them the value for that, which will bring them around to buying your products because ultimately, the questions they are asking and the problems they are having can be solved by your products.

A really great example of this is an e-commerce beauty brand that we worked with all of 2020. They created beauty products and a complete skincare line.  They would create value-based content on other platforms, including their blog that answered questions like “How I cure eczema or fix rosacea?”

This is because people are looking for things that are very specific like eczema to the products that they sell. They use those pinpoints or the questions people ask to create that content to sell their product. That’s how our Pinterest strategy would differ for e-commerce rather than a content creator, but still be just as effective.

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5. Is Pinterest a platform that I can create content on without having to show up constantly?

To get to the bottom of this question, we need to read between the lines. This person is asking whether Pinterest is, like Instagram, where one has to show their face all of the time. Especially with the rising interest in Idea Pins showing up on videos on platforms like with Instagram stories or TikTok, many people think that’s what they needed to do on Pinterest too.

No, you don’t have to constantly show your face on Pinterest to be successful. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I love Pinterest so much, especially for our clients. They can create content in the background, preparing a meal, eating popcorn, drinking cold coffee from four hours earlier.  They don’t have to be all dolled up and ready in front of the camera to create content in real timeI

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6. Is Pinterest too competitive for me to start now?

This excellent question comes from a member of my academy. Pinterest is now 11 years old, which means that there are many people on the platform. However, when I last looked, which was the end of 2020 or mid-2021, only about 28 % of marketers worldwide were actually utilizing this platform. So, that leaves a lot of space for you.

The way that Pinterest works is 97 % of all searches are unbranded. So people don’t go to Pinterest looking for Nike or Cannon; they go to Pinterest looking for things like lightroom presets, or light and airy vibe decor, or for summer desserts. They are not going to Pinterest looking for Tiny Town candles or Under Armor shirts; they are going to Pinterest looking for candles for gym wear looks.

97% of all Pinterest searches are unbranded.

Yes Pinterest is competitive (just like any platform), but not every industry is competitive. You are going to be surprised to find a lot of industries where your competition is not there. One great example is a client on our roster. She teaches nursing students how to pass their board exams, and her competition is nowhere to be found on Pinterest.

She has pins on the platform, but we dominate in that industry for her. We make bank, and we get a lot of email subscribers and sales to her programs from Pinterest because her competition is not showing up.

So, while any platform will be competitive, that does not mean that there isn’t space for you. If you choose to consider working with my agency, I will walk you through an exercise where you will find if your audience is active on the platform, and you can do a judgment call for yourself.

7. Should the changes that happened on Pinterest keep me from using this platform?

The changes this question is referring to are the shift to idea pins and idea pin creation. In 2021 the idea pins are huge; going into 2022, they are going to be even more popular. People are now accepting that this is a tool that is here to stay and that it did not die.

No, I do not think they should keep you from showing up on Pinterest. The idea pins recently just allowed us monetization strategies in two different ways. There is a third coming soon for everybody, and there might even be a fourth.

• The number one way you can monetize idea pins is with affiliate links, including Amazon affiliate links.
• The second way is through products. So, if you’re a Shopify, WooCommerce, or Etsy store owner, then you can monetize your idea pins with your products. You can directly tag your products.
• The third way that is going to be coming out soon is sponsored idea pins. This means you can actually work with a sponsor and they can give you a link, and you can do sponsored idea pins. They will also be able to promote them for you if they agree to that.
• The fourth, upcoming way that you may be able to make money from idea pins is actually through the creator fund. That is just in build-up right now, but they are beta testing a creator fund on the platform with the hopes of opening up to everyone.

Go into your Pinterest app, go to the Creator Hub, which will be at the front end of your Pinterest profile; you will notice two tabs at the top. One is called the ‘Hub,’ and the other is called ‘Earn.’ If, for some reason, you don’t have a creator hub on your app, then close up your app, update it and then reopen it, and you should have it. Now it should be available to everyone, at least in the US.

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8. What should I look for when I want to start using Pinterest to market my business?

I want you to take a blank page and write a line down the middle. On the left side of the paper, write down all the content and the products that you create. On the right side of the paper, I want you to write all of the questions that you get from your audience about the things on the left. Then I want you to go to Pinterest and search those things.

If you want bonus points, you can also write down your known competitors and look for them on the platform. If you are finding products, pins, and content from anyone in your industry, your niche, or from other people who are creating from your industry, chances are you need to be there. Whether you commit the time to do so is up to you. That’s something you need to decide. But if your competition is already there, then don’t sleep on it. That’s my opinion.

Final thoughts

I hope that clears up any thoughts you may have been wondering about on Pinterest marketing strategy. If you are ready to start a Pinterest strategy and just don’t know how to get started, join the Pin Profit Academy. Or go watch the Pinterest Marketing strategy playlist on my YouTube channel. Cheers!

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