Are you an e-commerce shop owner looking to get more sales from your Pinterest traffic in 2023? Are you an e-commerce shop owner looking at Pinterest for the first time? 

If that’s you, then this post is for you. I will walk you through some of the tactics that we see work the best for our clients when implementing a Pinterest strategy.

How my agency does Pinterest for e-commerce

Right out of the gate, I want to preface this post by saying that the e-commerce shop owners in my agency who have had the greatest success with this platform are not drop-shippers. I’m not saying that you cannot be successful on Pinterest with drop shipping. I’m just saying that is my experience at best.

My clients that have had the most success have created their products. They are the founder of their company and invented the product and made it in their backyard or had someone make it. 

They eventually grew into having a warehouse, and maybe they are drop shipping now, but when they created the product, they also built a brand. These clients understand why people want the product and how it will transform the lives of the customers who will buy it. 

They are married to the product. Most especially, they have done the market research, and they understand why this product needs to be in the world from start to finish. These e-commerce shop owners see the most success within my agency on Pinterest. 

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The pinning tactics for product sellers that we use

I am going to give you some tactics that we are using for our e-commerce shops in 2023. We have several e-commerce shop owners, both in the digital and physical space. We use the same tactic or pinning flow for all of them. 

Here’s what I’m doing in 2023 with my e-commerce strategy for clients:

• Focusing on 1-2 product pins per day
• One blog post pin per day (Read about How to Start Blogging for E-Commerce if you don’t have one)
• Showcase video and imagery with video pins

We will go over Pinterest marketing strategy later but let us talk about blog post content first. Just because you are an e-commerce shop owner does not mean that you cannot benefit from blog content. 

It also does not mean that you have to write about your grandma’s lasagna recipe to sell your store product. You are not going to blog AS a business, you are blogging FOR your business. 

When you are creating anywhere from two to three video pins per week, your queue might vary from 14 to 21 pins per week that lead to your store. Also creating two to three video pins per week that adds value, these video pins show people how to use your product and how it can transform their lives.

How you have to create your video pins is not cut and dry. So I will tell you more about creating a content strategy for your business. 

Here’s a great example of an video pin showcasing the product while giving value.

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How to get more eyeballs on your content

Now that we have learned about the tactics we use or the pinning schedule we use in our e-commerce shop strategy, let’s discuss getting more eyeballs on your content or products. 

Many people come to Pinterest as e-commerce shop sellers and only focus on the people who are buying their products. They only focus on selling the product. You are missing a huge opportunity to get more people on the top of that funnel to move more people off the bottom. 

You can’t go straight for the jugular every single time. People are not ready to buy as soon as they see your product. So, we need to do a little bit of dating; we need to do some schmoozing, but not in a schemey way. But we do need to entice them.

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Create content that provides value

We have to give people something before we can take something. You cannot introduce your product and immediately take their money. It doesn’t work that way. So we are going to talk about awareness content or creating content that provides value. 

You want to create a long-term business—a business that doesn’t require you to constantly run ads to get sales. A business that still generates money when you sleep or go on vacation, or are on the toilet, doing laundry, or picking up your kids. 

You need to be thinking about awareness content. This is where many e-commerce sellers, especially drop shippers, completely miss the boat. You don’t ever think about creating value for your customer. 

• Why do people want to use your product?
• Why do people need your product?
• When they first think they have a problem and your product could be the solution, what are they searching for?

 That’s what I want you to get into the mindset of today after reading this post.

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Think about the conversion rate for your industry

I did a little bit of research because I want to make a case for creating awareness content. Hubspot has conversion rate details for 24 different industries.

For fashion, clothing, and accessories, the average industry conversion rate (meaning the number of people that purchased after seeing your products) was 1.01% to 1.41%. That’s low, right? Only 1% of people who see your product will ultimately end up buying.

Now some industry averages came out higher than that. It depends on the niche, the time of the year, the location, and the country.  All of these different factors come into play when determining your conversion rate. 

But if we go by those standards, let’s say you had 10,000 people visit your website and 500 people bought. That would be a 5% conversion rate. But if we’re going by these industry averages, only 101 people would have purchased out of those 10,000. 

How many sales do you need to get? How many groups of 10,000 people do you need to get on your website to convert to create income and a long-term sustainable business for you? Think about that and do a little math.

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Creating awareness content

Now let’s talk about creating awareness content because that’s where many people will come from. The more people you can get into the top of the funnel, the more people should come out at the bottom of the funnel. So this is where awareness content comes into play. 

I’ve got two different industries for which we will run through some examples.  I have worked with both of these industries. 

Leather bag industry example

The first one is a leather bag brand. If you sell leather bags, you may want to create awareness content on your website and Pinterest. 

Awareness content on Pinterest is not just static pins or video pins that link to your website but also video pins. It includes creating awareness content with your video pins and then linking your products in the form of product stickers in the video pin itself. 

Let’s say you’re a leather bag brand. You manufacture and sell leather bags of different kinds like backpacks, purses, travel bags, and messenger bags. There’s a whole customer base out there looking for leather bags. 

Whether you sell vegan leather bags, genuine leather bags, alligator or cow, whatever the leather is, people want to know which one is the best. So, here are five examples of awareness types of content that you could create if you are a bag salesman:

• How to choose the right bag for you or your needs? That’s a couple of pages of content right there. Could come with a lot of comparisons, or even a quiz for the reader. 

• How to care for a particular material? It could be about how to care for cowhide backpacks or an alligator bag. What commonly ruins material and what helps it last.

• How to store a backpack when you are not using it? Should you store it away in a cloth bag and hang it in your closet. Should you fold it flat, put it in an airtight container, and put it under your bed. How to store it if you are not using it. 

• How to organize the inside of the bag? This idea is good for everyone, but it’s great if you have a female audience. We want to know how not to lose everything at the bottom of the bag.

• How to travel with a particular bag? It can include how to pack, packing lists, and how you organize it.  This the best carry-on backpack for adventurers. These are backpacks that you sell for backpackers to travel across Europe with.

People are looking for this type of content to purchase your product, ultimately. 

In this example, Portland Leather does a great job of creating content teaching people how to care for their product.

Content to support your pinning strategy

When we back up and look at just the pinning flow, it can include two product pins per day and one blog post pin per day; none of that matters. You can even pin seven blog post pins per day. What matters is the quality of the content and the value you are giving to your audience. 

Ultimately, someone might know that they want a leather backpack, but they may not know that they want your backpack. They may want to look at other brands, so you may need to do comparison content between you and your competitors. You may need to write review blog posts where you review the backpack and all its features. 

You can review the messenger bag where you show people how to use that bag versus another bag. Ultimately those are the things that are going to sell for you. 

I want you to remember that awareness content doesn’t have to be about the product you sell. It doesn’t have to be all about the bag. It can also be about the situations people are in that lead them to the product. 

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Skincare products industry example

The following example is with a skincare and beauty company. I did their Pinterest marketing for about two years, and we did a mix of different kinds of content for them. Here are some examples of awareness content that you could create in skincare and beauty: 

• How to choose skincare products depending on your geography? If you have super oily skin here in the US, what you need in the southwest, where I live, is probably different from what you need in the northeast, where my friend Katie lives. It’s probably going to be different depending on what county you live in or if you are closer to the equator or the north pole. So ‘how to choose skincare products based on geography’ is an excellent example of awareness content.

• Skincare problem vs. skincare problem. It can also be about a product versus another product for a particular skincare problem.

• How to find the best skincare product for the problem? It could be about how to find the best face lotion for eczema. 

Importance of content to support your Pinterest strategy

This whole post is making a case for creating more awareness content to get you in the frame of mind for using awareness content as a tactic in your business to get more traffic in sales. I don’t want you to be freaked out by creating awareness content or blog content for your business. That is not the purpose of this blog post. This post aims to help give you some insight into what I find to be the most successful Pinterest marketing strategies for our clients. 

The most successful Pinterest marketing strategies for our e-commerce clients are ones that include blog content. They also include creating awareness content for video pins. So no matter how many pins you put in your queue per day, it does not matter. You could do one a day, or you could do seven a day. It doesn’t matter. I care about the value you’re bringing to your customers and the inspiration that you’re getting them to lead them to purchase. 

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Final thoughts on Pinterest for E-Commerce

It’s not just about presenting them with the product and saying, “Hey, do you want it?” Nine times out of 10, they will say “No.” Chances are, they already have a brand they like that they’d instead stick to. So you have to make the case as to why your product is better than theirs. 

In a lot of instances, awareness content can help you bring people from awareness to consideration to purchase in that buyer journey. Too many people skip over the buyer journey, and I don’t want you to be one of them. 

If you’re starting on Pinterest as an e-commerce seller you can visit our work with us page to see how we can work together or if you need to do it yourself check out Pin Profit Academy.

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