Are you a product-based business wondering if e-commerce sellers succeed on Pinterest? Today’s post will serve as a case study of the most successful e-commerce clients I have helped in my agency and why they are successful. I will show you some past, and current client accounts results with actual screenshots of their ads manager.

This post will help you reconcile whether you should get started on Pinterest for your product-based business. I will talk about digital and physical product-based businesses. If you are one or the other, I will lay out the stipulations of why I think these businesses are successful, and you can judge if you fit into those categories. Let’s jump right on in.

If you are new to my blog, I’m Heather Farris, and I run a Pinterest marketing agency, a YouTube channel, and a monthly membership academy where I help people DIY their own Pinterest. I do everything from doing it for clients to assisting students to do it for themselves. I have been doing Pinterest marketing for the past six years, so I’ve been around the block, and I have seen some things. 

What makes my e-commerce sellers succeed on Pinterest

#1 – They understand why customers need their product

They understand why their product is wanted and needed by the customer. This is important, and this is one thing that I think many people miss out on. So these clients that come to me already have their entire customer journey and buyer journey mapped out. 

They understand why someone would buy their product from start to finish, and then we use that in the marketing to make it successful. 

RELATED:  Pinterest SEO: What Are Your Customers Searching For on Pinterest?

#2 – They create awareness content

All of these clients create some sort of awareness or consideration content. They are not just marketing the products only on Pinterest. They’re also marketing why people want these products, and they are answering questions.

So they know why people want their product, and they use those reasons to create content. I made a YouTube video all about creating content for e-commerce shops. If you’re interested in that, I will link it here, and you can go and check that out.

#3 – They are better than their competitors

My customers do business better and sell their products better than their competitors. They may even be one of the only ones in their space. So there are very few types of products in the niche that they’re in.

This is highly relevant to the animal product example and its results, which I will show you later. In this case, there are very few actual competitors in that space. So they are very competitive on pricing and overall product quality. 

#4 – They do cross-channel marketing

They are not solely relying on one platform to bring customers or even brand awareness to their company. They are marketing across multiple platforms. All of our clients are marketing on Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram Ads, Pinterest (which is where I come in), and TikTok.

Now, that doesn’t mean they’re actually advertising on those platforms. It just means that they have a presence on those platforms. In most of these cases, these clients are running some sort of cross-channel marketing for advertising. However, none of them have a huge budget for their platforms.

RELATED:  The Ultimate Pinterest Traffic Strategy for Bloggers & E-Commerce Shops

#5 – They hired out Pinterest marketing

This one is a selfish ad for me. My customers hired out Pinterest Marketing, which is why it’s successful. They are not trying to micro-manage it and not trying to do it themselves. They understand where they need to be in their business and their zone of genius. And they brought in an expert to set up the foundations to run the ads and to do the organic part of it for their company. 

Eventually, some of these clients actually took it back in-house and are doing quite well even after I have left. That is more of a selfish ad on my part, but that will always stand true for most of my most successful clients. 

Results

Let’s talk about results now. I have five examples which include several physical products, a digital product, and a bonus fifth example of a webinar funnel, which could be considered a digital product if it’s a digital course. 

Example #1 

The first example is an everyday jewelry brand. This client went viral on TikTok sometime in 2020-2021. They hired me in 2021 to establish a foundation. Eventually, by the end of the year, we had the Pinterest Tag actually to a point where we could run ads. 

Now, for this client, we only started dynamic retargeting ads. This is the only client where we only have bottom-of-funnel advertising set up. But the results show that we have an average of 3.09 ROAS (return on ad spend) for a six-month time frame.

So, since this is the only client I’m showing you results for where we’re only running one type of campaign (bottom of funnel only), I wanted to give you a wider example of results. 

RELATED:  Is Pinterest Marketing Right for My Business?

Example #2

This jewelry client has been with me for about seven months. We started ads for her, right along with her organic marketing, immediately. So as soon as she signed on, we started doing organic and advertising.

Here are the results for April 2022. We had a blended ROAS of 4.04. We are running both top and bottom-of-funnel advertising in this client’s case. So it’s what you could consider a full-funnel. 

Example #3

Let’s move into a former client. This client is an animal seller; they are in the animal niche. This client is no longer on my roster. However, they left on excellent terms. 

They took their advertising and organic marketing back in-house, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the results we had while working with them and the results that I believe they are still getting today. 

We were running full-funnel ads. We were running: 

• conversion
• consideration 
• catalog prospecting
• catalog dynamic retargeting

So we were running advertising to all areas of the funnel and the buyer journey. 

The average ROAS for this client is month over month 4X. So anywhere from 4 to 10 X, depending on the month. However, the results that I’m going to show you here are 6.26 X ROAS, meaning we made 6.26 times more than we spent. These were set from September of 2021, one of their busiest months of the year.

We were limited, and the amount of money we could spend on their ads every month was less than $3000 a month. We always came in around $ 2,500.

RELATED:  Create a Pinterest Marketing Plan in 5 Easy Steps

Example #4

I want to show you a digital product seller. They sell printables that you can print out and use on your own. Now, I’m not going to give you the niche because that might give away the client. However, we are doing both organic and paid advertising for this client. They are still on my client roster. 

In her busiest month, January 2022, we had an 8.36 ROAS. So here are the results for that digital product seller. We also run a complete full-funnel strategy for her.

One thread that you will see across all of the results is that they are almost always full funnel. This is where the content I was telling you about earlier and why those clients succeed is so important. We can take that awareness content and plug it into top-of-funnel ads to get people interested in your products.

RELATED:  How to Start Blogging for E-Commerce

Example #5

I want to go ahead and give you a little bit of a warning. The client installed the wrong event code even though we told them which one we wanted to be installed. So we were not tracking checkouts. Instead, we were tracking sign-ups. They got a bit confused when they got into the Pinterest ads manager and were choosing events. So we were tracking sign-ups for the digital course that she was selling. 

We had 21 sign-ups. If you take the ad spend of over $7,000 and divide it into the 21 core sales at $2,000 a piece, it’s around $42,000. This would give us about a 5.26 ROAS roughly.

So, depending on your budget strategy and what you currently have going on in your business, as far as your email list, we have the ability to run webinar funnels on Pinterest.

Action plan to get you moving

So now that you have seen some results and I’ve told you why clients succeed with Pinterest as a product-based business, let’s talk about an action plan to get you moving in the right direction.

1) Choose two platforms to market on

The first thing on your action plan is to choose a minimum of two platforms you will market on. I would honestly say you need three. You need Google, which is a no-brainer. If you own a website and you’re directing traffic to your website, you should be doing some sort of SEO now.

If you are product-based or doing blog content, do this fantastic Stupid Simple SEO course. Go watch this free master class. If you sign up, I will earn a commission on it. I have taken it three times in the last three years, so it’s excellent.

Aside from Google, Pinterest and TikTok would be excellent places for you to be. Don’t cut me off and say, “No, I don’t want to do TikTok.” If you’re doing Instagram reels, you can do TikTok. In fact, I think TikTok is way better than Instagram when it comes to getting reach and getting new customers.

Two of the clients that I outlined went viral on TikTok, which jump-started their entire business. So, you definitely should be there if you are considering short-form video-style content. 

Now, always pair these with an email newsletter. I’m not considering that a platform. You should just have a newsletter regardless of what kind of business you run.

RELATED:  How to Repurpose your TikToks and Reels to Idea Pins

2) Establish yourself and your foundations on Pinterest.

I have plenty of content on my YouTube channel for you to establish yourself and your foundations on Pinterest, including my entire beginner playlist. So if you are interested in getting started on Pinterest, you should establish your foundations for your profile. 

That includes: 

• getting your profile boards created
• SEO established within the board titles in the board descriptions
• getting your profile branded
• claiming your domain
• getting your verified merchant’s data set if you have one
• getting your rich pins turned on

I have content to walk you through all of these foundational steps on my YouTube channel. And if you have any questions on that, leave a comment down below, and I can always point you to the videos you specifically need.

RELATED:  Pinterest 101: How to Use Pinterest Marketing for Beginners

3) Apply for the verified merchant program

If you are a product-based business and have products that you are selling, whether digital or physical, apply for the verified merchant program. This program is limited to people in certain countries.

I have a blog post about verified merchant status and a video that goes along with it on my channel if you want to learn more about being a verified merchant and what is involved in that application process. It’s a very detailed video and includes links to apply and what to say if you get rejected. 

4) Get your Shopify or your Pinterest Tag installed

If you are an e-commerce business and running advertising on another platform, depending on your conversion tag when you set up your Pinterest account, I would like you to get your Shopify, or your Pinterest Tag installed.

This tag is the equivalent of your Facebook pixel. Get that installed on your website and your shop ASAP. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a website and you’re doing webinar funnels or if you are selling digital products and you have a store.

One of the clients I outlined in the examples sells digital products on Shopify.  She has a verified merchant status with the shop tab on Pinterest. So get your shop tab set up, and then apply for the verified merchant status. 

VIDEO:  How to Connect Your Pinterest Tag to Your Shopify Store

5) Start a dynamic retargeting campaign or a prospecting campaign

Once you have your tag installed on your site, wait about 30 days, and that’s when the next step comes in. You will start a dynamic retargeting campaign or a prospecting campaign depending on your conversion tag.

Here are the stipulations. If you have 50 to 100 event fires for Checkouts or Add to carts in three days, go ahead and start a dynamic retargeting campaign. Start it low, $10 to $15 per day. Open your window way wide. 

So, 180 days is the start, and 0 days is the end. And then use site visitors for what you’re going to retarget. You could also set up lists of people whom you could retarget. Maybe people have checked out or added to cart. However, your conversion of it will be either the Checkout or the Add to Cart; it can’t be both.

Ideally, best practice says dynamic campaigns should be a checkout event code. If you have Add to Carts, you can always optimize to those until you start getting Checkouts. Flip the campaign over to Checkouts at that point.

If you are starting fresh and you don’t have any event fires at all, or you’re just not meeting that 50 to 100 in three days, then set up a prospecting campaign. You can do this if you are a digital or physical product seller with a shop through catalogs or conversion campaigns. 

Get that going and begin to have Pinterest find out who your audience is, what they’re interacting with, and just know that in that first time period, you may not get as many sales as you would like because we are learning. It’s brand new.

RELATED:  Promoted Pins on Pinterest: How to Setup & Optimize Your Conversion Campaigns

Final thoughts on how e-commerce sellers succeed on Pinterest

Those are action items. If you have any questions or need help with this process, do let me know because we help clients with this. We have a membership academy where you can join, and you can do a lot of this yourself until you are ready to hire.

We also offer consulting where you can come, and we can work right alongside you to get the job done. So you’re not trying to figure all of this out yourself.

If you are already an e-commerce shop and considering Pinterest, now is the time to get started. Go ahead and watch the videos on my YouTube channel that I’ve put together for e-commerce shops, and I’ll see you next week. 

Pin It For Later