How to use Pinterest to sell digital products

In addition to being a social network for inspiration, Pinterest has positioned itself as a platform for generation of organic traffic both for your blog or sales page as well as for YouTube and Instagram. This allows Pinterest to be used to sell digital products. But what would be the best strategy to get started?

Is your customer on Pinterest?

Before you start selling on Pinterest, you need to understand if your persona is on this social network. To do so, let’s check some data published by Omnicore Agency about the audience currently present on Pinterest:

• 70% of Pinterest users are women, with new users being 40% men and 60% women.
• In the United States, 34% of the users are between 18 and 29 years old. 
• The average age of users is 40 years old, although those who pin most content are under the age of 40.
• The Generation Y, also known as Millennials, are on Pinterest as well as on Instagram. It’s worth remembering that this generation was born between the 1980s and 1990s.
• 50% of users are outside the United States.

In addition, you need to think about which niches are present on the platform. When creating folders, there’s a suggestion of categories in which they can be inserted. This can give you an idea of more than 30, which can be posted on the social network.

Among the suggested categories, we have the following: Animals and Pets, Outdoors, DIY & Crafts, Hair & Beauty, Cars & Motorcycles, Weddings, Education, Entertainment, Gardening, Women’s Fashion, Kids & Parenting, Products, Health & Fitness, Technology and Travel.

Do you need help to decide?

If you are still not sure, I’ve listed three tips to help you find out if this is the right social network in which to invest:

1. Perform searches using the keywords of the digital product you want to sell and understand if there’s content about it on Pinterest.
2. If you already create content on other social media or already have an audience, ask them if they use Pinterest and for what purpose. Thus, you’ll find out if it’s worth investing in content for the network.
3. If you notice that no content is being posted on Pinterest regarding your niche, you have to ask yourself if it’s worthwhile to start creating content about it and testing it, or if you should just forget about it and move on. Evaluate what the best strategy for your business is.

Time to understand the platform

Now that you’ve found out if your audience is on Pinterest, it’s time to know how people use it and especially, how searches are made. This will help you understand how often you need to produce content and what your sales strategy will be.

The first step to getting an idea on how your content is performing on the social network is to change your profile to Pinterest for business. This way, you’ll have access to Analytics, where you can understand how your pins are performing, which ones are being clicked on the most, and which ones are viewed the most, for example.

What is posted on Pinterest?

By analyzing the content posted on this social network, it’s possible to understand two points. The first point is that Pinterest is a social network that cares a lot about photo quality. This is because its focus is truly on the sharing of images. Parallel to this, there has been a tendency to post native videos on the network.

And the second point is the your content’s format, especially if the goal is to generate organic traffic, since the pins posted need a phrase or title that draws attention so that your customer is directed to the website. So, photos might be cool but infographics and images with titles convert more.

With this covered, first of all we need to understand that the production of content for Pinterest is primarily vertical. The idea is to value the feed scrolling and keep people in contact longer with your content. Therefore, value vertical posts more.

How to organize your content on Pinterest

When thinking about selling on Pinterest, we must think about how to make our content easier to be found on the social network and thus, attract traffic that is more organic. To do so, we need to keep three important points in mind: keywords, descriptions and pin organization.

Keywords

Keywords can be easily found through Pinterest’s autofill suggestions. This means that you can enter a head tail or long tail keyword and have a better understanding of what is being searched on the platform from the complement that appears in the search. This way you can create content that is being searched on the platform. 

This process follows the same rule and thought process behind SEO for blogs, for example. So, if you also want to search for keywords on Google AdWords or Google Trends, you can.

Descriptions

The second point is the description. By creating a pin on the platform, 500 characters can be used as the image’s description.

It’s worth remembering that only the first 50 characters in the description appear in the feeds, so you have to enter the keyword further down the description and consider using mental triggers.

The same goes for the title, since it can have up to 100 characters and only 30 of them appear on the user’s feed. 

Pin organization

Finally, the organization of the pins is worth keeping in mind. Pinterest has increasingly improved the organization in the folders, with a multitude of important complementing information, such as: 

• Folder name: A good idea is to use the keywords in the name, especially those that have more to do with the solution that the product delivers. You should also think about your persona’s pain and main questions.
• Description: Remember to make a clear description that addresses the content that will be displayed in the folder. This will also be important so Pinterest can understand which content is being placed there and deliver it to those searching for it. Inserting a few hashtags is also worth it.
• Category: Select one of the categories listed (we talked about them earlier in this post). Pinterest must make an association with the choices that each user makes when they enter the social network, and also with the content interactions. Thus, it can send similar content to users. Take advantage of each of these segmentations!
• Cover: An interesting idea is to standardize the covers of your Pinterest folders to make everything more organized. This may have a connection with the future changes to folder display, and you should keep an eye on updates.
• View: Is used to understand if the folder will be secret or public. When it comes to increasing traffic, it is essential that your folder be set as public. Now, if you wish to create an inspiration folder for you, something personal that has no connection with what you’re selling, you can leave it set as secret. 
• Personalization: This is an interesting process for you to understand which pins you want to appear on your Pinterest page. These are the pins behind your photo, okay? Select only the folders that are strategic for your business.
• Collaborators: You can create folders to pin in collaboration with other users. Here you will join up with content creators who have the same taste as yours and create together. It is designed to organize team projects, since you can insert reactions, comments and view recent activities. You can even create a community through the pins and allow everyone to insert inspirations there!

What strategy should be used to sell on Pinterest

Now that you know how to organize your content on Pinterest, you need to think about your content strategy. To do so, we need to understand sales funnels.

Based on this, you’ll be able to identify your persona’s pain at each stage of the funnel (attraction, conversion, sale and enchantment). 

Thus, you’ll be able to create folders to solve each pain or create folders for each stage, it will all depend on what you feel is the best strategy.

This is because you need to think of Pinterest as a social network to generate organic traffic, nurture customers and thus, attract sales. This way, the funnel becomes a key part of your entire strategy.

But, to where should I direct the user at each stage?

Since we are thinking of Pinterest as an organic traffic strategy, it is essential that you insert links in each of your pins. They can be directed to the content on your blog, social media posts (such as Instagram and YouTube), and also to your sales page.

It’s extremely important to add a tracking code on your advertising hotlink, since this will be how you’ll identify if your efforts on Pinterest are paying off. To do so, insert the following code at the end of your hotlink:

&src=Pinterest

When you go to your sales report by source, you’ll be able to identify if the sale came from Pinterest.

Now, if your goal is to lead users to your blog, do the same thing. This way, you can identify who found the content on your blog through Pinterest and start to understand which content works better there.

How to create content for Pinterest

Two formats are essential for your sales strategy on Pinterest: vertical content (title with image) and infographics. 

This content will draw the attention of your future customers and make them click on the image to learn more. By clicking on the image, your customers will be nurtured by your content and go through the funnel until they finally buy your content. Or, they can go directly to your sales page and make the purchase.

Therefore, the best strategy is to use Pinterest as complementary content to your other social media channels, especially if you have a blog. For example, reuse content from your blog and add valuable information to it. This way you can use it to  create vertical formats (photo + title) and even infographics for Pinterest.

With frequent use, you’ll notice the growth of your other social networks due to Pinterest, since you can direct users to your profile on Instagram, YouTube and especially, to additional resources that can lead you to acquire users’ email and nurture them more closely.

Remember that you need to name your website in your profile settings and also connect to social media, such as Instagram and YouTube. This way, when your content on these networks is pinned, Pinterest will understand that it’s yours and will give you the credit.

How to create content that draws attention

However, in order for your pin to draw your users’ attention, you need to think of copywriting that calls their attention. When thinking about this, it is essential that you use mental triggers to influence the click, such as those that create curiosity and new features, for example.

In addition, as we mentioned earlier in this article, images need to have an interesting design, since the social network has this appeal for beauty. In order to help you with this, you can use Pinterest’s editing platform itself or Canva.

To help you understand the size of content on Pinterest, use the following:

• Infographic: 800 x 2,000
• Vertical: 700 x 1,102

Therefore, think about design formats that make the content title scannable, easy to read on mobile devices and especially, that draw attention. It’s also worth adding the link to your website or the name of your product or brand in the image. 

Creating a standard format can be a good idea to get you started. However, you need to change it constantly so that your audience doesn’t feel that it’s looking at the same content repeatedly.

My content has been pinned, now what?

When a Pinterest user pins your content, you receive a notification and with it, you can understand in which folders your pin ended up. It’s important to analyze this so you can understand how your future customers are using the content that you have pinned and even how their pages are named. 

Analyzing your customers is extremely important, and since Pinterest provides us with this information easily, it’s worth taking advantage of and using it strategically. Take the opportunity and get to know your persona better.

How often should you post on Pinterest?

Frequency and social media go hand in hand, and it’s no different with Pinterest. You need to create a posting routine on the platform so that Pinterest can start giving you more relevance on the network.

In addition to making your own pins, you need to pin those of other people. These two actions are very important on this network: pinning your content as well as the content of others.

Remember that Pinterest has a tool for scheduling pins. Start by scheduling two a day and then expand your strategy. Take notes about what is working and measure the results through Pinterest Analytics.

Ideally, you should observe your monthly planning and take the time to create the pins for the month. Then, set aside a day to schedule the best days to upload them on Pinterest.

You should analyze which routine works best for you. It might be interesting to post a pin about a given content whenever you create a new post and upload everything together. But remember to add past content to this strategy also.

You can also insert your blog’s RSS, so that Pinterest can send the new content to the network. Use this to your advantage also. But remember to create strategic images for Pinterest and adapt yourself to the platform.

Conclusion

Pinterest is a social network that works great for searches, and therefore, can be used to generate organic traffic. It is essential that the Producer or Affiliate that starts using sales strategies on this social network, to pay attention to the persona and check if they actually use Pinterest.

With this in mind, the next step will be to think about a content creation strategy that is linked to the product’s sales funnel and has the goal of leading future customers to the sales page, blog or social media. It is also necessary to identify Pinterest as an audience nurturing and sales attraction network.

Finally, it is essential to plan the frequency of posting on the network, according to your availability and strategy, besides scheduling pins on Pinterest itself in order to facilitate the process.

Let me know in your comments if your audience is on Pinterest and you’re thoughts on what you’ll produce on the platform. Let’s turn these comments into an idea machine so we can sell increasingly more!