Pinterest started out nearly a decade ago as a place where handicrafters, lifestyle bloggers and home chefs came together. Not any longer!

Today Pinterest is a place where people go to research, learn, compare, get inspired and purchase. 

A large portion of the marketing world hasn’t yet discovered how Pinterest has evolved to deliver leads and that is good news for you.

Pinterest has become an ideal site for ecommerce stores to increase sales and brand awareness. Fifty percent of people on Pinterest make a purchase after seeing a Promoted Pin and 67% say they’ve discovered a new brand or product from content on the network.

Pinterest is likely the answer to your marketing prayers if some of the audience for your product is on the site. Pinterest is not yet as popular as Facebook, but the social media world is changing and it is coming on strong.

First, understand who makes up Pinterest’s user base:

• 41% of all women and 16% of all men in the United States

• 84% are ages 18–64 with a balanced split among the age groups

• 31% of users are from suburban areas

In addition to that, Pinterest’s users are far-reaching and high spenders:

• Pinterest reaches most US families with 70% US moms and 33% US dads

• 55% use the network to shop

• 90% of weekly Pinners use Pinterest to make purchase decisions

It is important to remember, before diving into some Pin strategies, that Pinterest is a visual search engine and not just a social media site with a news feed of this and that. Yes, it is a large and growing community (over 250 million worldwide), but people come on to Pinterest to search, learn and purchase.

Pinterest Business Accounts & Profile Updates

You want your business to operate on Pinterest via a Business Account. It’s free and easy to create one - or even to convert over from a personal account. 

The first thing to do after signing up is to go through the steps of filling out the profile and connecting your other social accounts.

Next, make sure your bio contains relevant keywords for your business. It should have your brand’s voice but with some useful SEO keywords so Pinterest and users know what your business is all about.

Customize Your Profile

Take your business up a notch by adding a few custom touches:

Board Covers

One way to customize your profile is to add board covers. You’ll need to upload these as photos, but the custom covers bring a more cohesive look to your business. Look to create branded colors, icons and fonts.

Board Titles

Another aspect of customizing your profile is how you name your boards. You can opt for the most SEO-friendly, on-brand terms or a mix of the two. Keep the titles relatively short and use the board’s description area to add more keywords.

Get Descriptive

How will Pinners find your boards? Your business probably has done some SEO research on the best search phrases. But if you’re feeling a little lost, start typing some basic words into the search bar. Relevant and related topics will appear that can help you narrow your search down.

Optimize Your Website

Always make it very easy for your website visitors to Pin from your Shopify product pages. You have several options here. Use Pinterest’s own Save Button or customize your own share button.

Rich Pins

Depending on what your business sells or publishes, you should enable Rich Pins as soon as possible. Product Pins give pricing and other info while Article Pins are perfect for a blog.

On the mobile app, Rich Pins stand out with star reviews, recipe times and product tag icons.

Product Pins

Take your Product Pins a step further by syncing your web store to your Pinterest account. A Pinner can decide to buy a product and be directed to a checkout on your Shopify store without ever leaving Pinterest. 

Optimize Your Images

The best performing product Pins on Pinterest have lifestyle photography in them. As an image-first site, there is value in having quality photos. To the degree possible, add your images that are optimal in size.

In terms of Pin size, the standard recommendation from Pinterest is a 2:3 size ratio. The “2” is the width and the ‘3” is the height.

Pinterest has never recommended smaller than 600 x 900 though. In a recent conference they said they prefer larger, higher resolution images, and specified 1000 x 1500.

If you keep any sort of company blog, add at least one Pinterest-optimized image that clearly shows what the blog post is about.

But don’t stop at image dimensions. Your image descriptions are just as important as they’re the parts that auto-fill into your Pin.

Analyze Your Work

Lastly, analyze all of your hard work. Pinterest’s own native analytics give you insights on your most popular pins. Their guide walks you through all of the analytics available to you.

If you recently optimized your website for Pinterest, check out which pages are most popular after a month. Pinterest also provides information on which Pins performed best in search and which were uniquely Pinned from your website.

Shopify store owners have the added benefits of continuing to use Shopify’s analytics as well,  given the automated connections Pinterest and Shopify have put in place.

Spice Up Your Strategy

Once you’ve gotten the hang of the basic process on Pinterest, consider expanding your strategy and incorporating other ideas like contests.

Take your Pinterest board into the wild with Pincodes. These are codes you can generate from any board where you have with a customized image. Use these Pincodes in your store, on other social media networks or even on your printed marketing material.

You might look to incorporate videos into your Pinning strategy. If one is doing especially well, consider promoting it with Pinterest’s paid advertising program (Promoted Pins).

The Pins have a small “Promoted by” designation but they otherwise appear as a regular Pin in your feed. The best kind of Pins for advertising line up with Pinterest’s best practices guidelines.  This means they should be highly visual and useful for your audience.

You can use Pinterest marketing strategies to grow awareness and bring in timely sales for your business. The benefits grow over time as you create a combination of helpful content, SEO and consistent posting to appeal to potential shoppers in your target audience.