Pinterest marketing: a plan for product sellers

How Pinterest marketing works for product sellers

Pinterest marketing is the practice of publishing Pins that show your products and link to the page where people can buy them. People use Pinterest to search and save ideas, so a Pin for a product can be found by someone who has not heard of your shop yet.

Pinterest as a marketing tool works more like a search engine than a social feed. People type what they want, such as a room style or a gift idea, and Pinterest shows Pins that match. Pinterest uses the text on a Pin, including its description, to determine relevance for delivery.

That makes Pinterest a fit for sellers whose products are visual and planned ahead: home goods, jewelry, clothing, wedding items, craft supplies and printables. It is a weaker fit for products people buy on impulse with no searching.

Pins are saved to boards, which Pinterest describes as where you save, collect, and organize your Pins. Treat your Pins as a library that grows week by week. Pinterest does not publish how long a Pin keeps getting views, so check in analytics which older Pins still earn impressions and keep saving those to relevant boards.

Set up the account before you pin

A few setup steps decide what you can measure and how your Pins show up. Do them once, before the weekly plan starts.

Stores on a marketplace cannot always be claimed. Pinterest says claiming does not work for most social accounts and online stores hosted on marketplaces like Etsy, eBay and Amazon.

Pinterest SEO tips and keywords

Pinterest SEO means writing the words on your Pins and boards so Pinterest can match them to searches. Start with the words a buyer would type, not the name you gave the product.

Find Pinterest keywords by typing a broad term into the Pinterest search bar and reading the suggestions that appear under it. Those suggestions are searches people make. Write down the ones that describe your product.

For seasonal products, Pinterest Trends shows a historic view of up to the last two years of top searches, saves and shopping trends. Use it to see when people start searching for a holiday or season, and publish your Pins before that point.

• Title: a Pin title can be up to 100 characters, but the first 40 characters may show in people’s feeds. Put the main keyword first.
• Description: it can be up to 800 characters. Descriptions do not appear when viewing the Pin in the home feed or search feed, so write it for search matching, in plain sentences.
• Boards: name each board after a search phrase, such as the product type and style, and keep the Pins on it on that topic.
• Image: Pinterest recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio, or 1000 x 1500 pixels. Images that are too tall might get cut off in people's feeds.
• Link: point each Pin at the product page it shows. A Pin that opens your home page makes the shopper search again.

Pinterest Rich Pins for products

Pinterest Rich Pins are Pins that automatically sync information from your site. Pinterest has three types of Rich Pins: article, product and recipe. A product seller wants product Rich Pins, which show the most up-to-date pricing, availability and product information.

Rich Pins read metadata from your product pages. Pinterest's developer docs say the most common formats are Open Graph and Schema.org. Your store builder may already add this markup, so check your product page source for Open Graph or Schema.org product tags before you add anything by hand.

Once the tags are in place, Existing Pins that link back to pages with rich meta tags will show as Rich Pins too. Changes on your site can take up to 24 hours to sync. Pinterest shows product Rich Pin details only if you've met our merchant guidelines and if the product is in stock.

If you want a page left out, Pinterest's opt-out tag is <meta name="pinterest-rich-pin" content="false" />, placed in the page head.

A weekly Pinterest marketing strategy you can repeat

Example plan for a seller with one person doing the work and a few hours a week. The number of Pins is an assumption to adjust; Pinterest does not publish a required posting count.

1. Monday: pick the keywords

   Choose one product or collection for the week. Search Pinterest for it and list the suggested phrases. Pick one main phrase and two or three related ones.

2. Tuesday: make the Pins

   Make several new images for that product: a product shot, the product in use and a close detail. Pinterest's creative advice is to Make your products the star, and show people using them in realistic settings. Use aim for a vertical 2:3 aspect ratio.

3. Wednesday: write titles and descriptions

   Put the main keyword at the start of each title. Write a short description that names the product, the material and who it is for. Link each Pin to the product page, not the home page.

4. Thursday: schedule the week

   Spread the new Pins across the coming days instead of posting them all at once. A business account can schedule a Pin up to 30 days in advance, with up to 10 Pins scheduled for the future. You cannot edit the image or video content of your Pin once it is scheduled, so check the image first.

5. Saturday: save to boards

   Save each new Pin to the board whose name matches its keyword best. Save your best older Pins to a second relevant board if they fit it.

6. Sunday: check analytics

   Open Pinterest Analytics and switch the Top Pins list from impressions to outbound clicks. Pinterest's own tip for a Pin that drives traffic is to feature it in more Pins, and save it to more boards.

What to measure each week

Pinterest Analytics needs a business account. The overview shows the last 30 days by default. Three numbers matter most for a seller.

If impressions are low, work on keywords and boards. If impressions are high but outbound clicks are low, work on the image and the title.

Pinterest business marketing with ads

Organic Pins cost only time. Pinterest ads are regular Pins that you pay to be placed where people are most likely to see them, and they show in the home feed, category feeds, and relevant search results. You need a business account to create ads.

A practical order for a small business is to pin organically first, find which Pins get outbound clicks, then promote those. Pinterest says that with its ads you have complete control over how much you want to spend.

Where Nation fits

Questions about Pinterest marketing