Pinterest started out as a place where people could post pictures of things they had made. It’s different from Instagram because it’s more about what you’ve made than photos of yourself. Many people think that it is only for happy moments or that it is best for people who make their own crafts.
A lot of people also say that Pins and Saves don’t matter that much. This is where a lot of Shopify users make a mistake. They aren’t taking advantage of Pinterest’s valuable market. We’ll show you how to use Pinterest as a way to market your Shopify store while it’s still not too late.
Check out the information below to get an idea of how big Pinterest is:
- Has 200 million active users each month.
- More than two billion searches are made each month.
- 87% of people who have pinned on Pinterest have bought something there.
- 93% of these Pinterest users plan to buy something.
- 17% of the traffic to online shops comes from Pinterest
With these numbers, it’s clear that Pinterest brings in visitors, which can help your conversion rate.
What should you do with Pinterest to make Shopify sales go up?
You can add Pinterest to your Shopify store.
You need to add Pinterest to your Shopify store as your first step. Since Shopify doesn’t have a Pinterest app, you’ll have to use other apps that can help you connect the two or code it yourself. The Pinterest help center says that there is a Shopify app, but there isn’t one.
If you use an app, you will probably use feeds from Pinterest. This means that this app will get your Pins from Pinterest and show them in a part of your Shopify store. You can also use apps that work like widgets to make it easy for people to follow your Pinterest account when they visit your Shopify store.
Here are some reasons why you might want to use a Pinterest app on Shopify:
- Add widgets, follow buttons, and a board showcase to your site to make it work with Pinterest.
- Add the pins or boards of other users
- You can change the widget so it looks like your brand.
- Show your account name, the number of people who follow you on Pinterest, and how many boards you follow.
- Change the size of the widget’s width and height.
- Pins or boards on your Shopify site can be seen or hidden.
- Change things about the pins, like who made it, who shared it, or the Pinterest icon.
- Show boards as units or put all of the pins on one grid.
- When someone clicks on a picture in your Shopify store, they will be taken to Pinterest.
- Will adjust on mobile
If you choose to do things by hand, you will need to know how to code. How to add a Pinterest button to your store is explained in detail on Shopify.
What does this button do, then? It lets people follow you or pin your content to their own boards on Pinterest. It’s like advertising for free. If someone who visits your store pins a photo or page about a product on Pinterest, his friends and followers will be able to see it.
If someone clicks on that image after seeing that pin, he will be taken to your website. If the person chooses to buy, you made a sale.
Make buyable pins or product pins on Pinterest.
A Pinterest image post with a Buy button is called a “Buyable Pin.” If a customer clicks this, he will be taken to your Shopify store, where he can finish the purchase. Right now, you can only add the buyable pin to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, and Shopify.
The first thing you need to do is set up a Pinterest business account. You must switch from a Personal account to a Business account if you already have one. It doesn’t cost anything to upgrade.
After applying for a business account, you have to wait about five business days for Pinterest to approve it. Once you are approved, you can use the Buy button to make pins. If a customer clicks on this, he will be taken to your website.
The Product Pin is the other version of this. This is an image with buttons that say “Save” and “Follow.” But clicking on the image will take the customer to the store’s website to finish the checkout. There is also a feature where a user can hold down on the pin icon and see a list of options.
This is what you can do:
- Exit
- Pin
- Save
- Buy
The US is now using the new Product Pin format. This will be used all over the world on Pinterest, and it will likely replace the Buyable Pin.
Create Pinterest Ads
You need a Business account to be able to make ads on Pinterest. You can make an ad that will be shown randomly to people who fit your target market, just like on other social media sites. You can boost a post on Facebook. You can make Promoted Pins, which are also called Pinterest Ads, on Pinterest.
A Promoted Pin is a picture you’ve pinned that you want to be shown to more people. Because they look like regular posts, they don’t look like ads. Pinterest says that promoted pins can get up to 20% more clicks.
Only a few countries, like the US, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada, and Ireland, can use this feature. The people in charge of Pinterest are probably thinking about making this advertising platform available all over the world.
There are three main types of ads you can make on Pinterest, and this has something to do with what you want to achieve. You can choose from Awareness, Engagement, or Traffic.
At this time, the following types of ads are allowed:
- Pins were pushed
- Videos
- One-tap pins
- Cinematic pins
One-tap pins are images that take the user to the retailer’s website, while cinematic pins are actually videos that look like still images. As the user scrolls through the browser or Pinterest app, the video will play.
As of right now, Pinterest also has a search bar that you can use to find ads. Advertisers can now use keywords on Pinterest. If a user types a phrase into the search bar, Pinterest will show your pin if the keywords in your pin match the user’s keywords.
Make boards that relate to your business.
If you have a Shopify store where you sell clothes, it makes sense to make a Pinterest board that shows off your clothes instead of pins about life quotes.
Your board needs to show what your target audience wants and what your brand is selling. If you are selling maxi dresses, make a board where all the pins are maxi dresses. Once you’ve made this board, you can add pins, which are pictures of your products. Each product pin needs a link to the product page on your Shopify store.
The 80/20 rule is a way to look at this. Since Pinterest is a place for people to share things, you shouldn’t put your own products on your boards. You need to collect or save pins from other people as well.
You have to save four pins from other people for every product pin you post. This will give you a lot more credibility as a user than someone who only posts about their own products.
Here are some tips for making Pinterest boards:
- Use the right name for your board. If it’s about summer dresses, call it “Summer Dresses That Will Never Go Out of Style.”
- Make different boards for different types of products.
- Color the pins and put pictures of your products on them.
- Make the posts the same; for example, if the post is about dresses, make sure that all of them are worn by models or have the same shot angles.
- Make long descriptions for your pins, and make sure they match what’s on the picture.
- Use the right keywords; properly search for keywords and use them in the title and description of your pin.
- Get people to do something.
- Mention people whose pins you are saving to your board.
Your board on Pinterest will hold all of the products you want to buy. Your product page will be made up of the posts on that board. Try to keep your post to less than 300 characters as much as possible. Pinterest is not a sales page, so be careful about the words you use.
How do you market your Shopify products well on Pinterest?
Now that you have a Pinterest button, do the right things to get more traffic from Pinterest. Once you get more traffic on Pinterest, people are more likely to click on your photos, which will take them to your Shopify website where they can finish the purchase.
Set up an account for a business
We can’t say enough about how important it is for you to have a Business account on Pinterest. It’s kind of like having a separate Facebook page from your personal page. The name of your brand or business will be on the Pinterest Business account.
You can’t pin products on Pinterest with a personal account, so making Pin Boards with a personal account is a waste of time. Keep in mind that a Product Pin is a picture that links to your Shopify store.
This is an example of a PIN for a business account, as you can see in the screenshot below. The web address is written on the picture itself. If you click on the picture, you will be taken to the website page for the real product.
Here are some tips about the Pinterest Business account you need to know:
- You don’t have to change a Personal account into a Business account; you can use the same email address for both.
- You will get extra features that don’t come with a Personal account.
- You can make ads and pay to have them shown at random.
- Rich Pins, Promoted Pins, and Buyable Pins can all be made.
- You will have access to social media suites and business analytics.
Pinterest Analytics is a powerful tool that shows you how well your business is doing on Pinterest. There are three main parts to the analytics: your profile, your reach, and the things you do in your Shopify store.
Here’s a quick rundown of each group:
- Profile – tells you how well your pins did, including how many people saw them, clicked on them, and shared them (by re-pinning or saving them).
- Reach: is the number of people or traffic that your pins bring in. You can also see the gender, country, and other demographic information about your visitors.
- Website Activity: is a feature that tells you which of your Shopify product pages is getting the most views on Pinterest.
If you know these numbers, you can make business decisions that are based on facts. For example, Product A might have the most clicks and shares on Pinterest, but it doesn’t sell. You must now decide if the price is too high. Or, the people who click it might be in a country where you don’t ship, which means they can’t buy.
If you know this is true, shouldn’t you think about shipping to that country? If most of the people who click on that product are women, it makes sense to make a Promoted Pin for that product that only targets women. This will increase the number of people who buy the product.
Rich Pins should be used.
Describe a Rich Pin. It looks like a pin and gives you more room to write more. It’s like SEO Rich Snippets.
Google’s search results show a small amount of text about what the page is about. We call this a Rich Snippet. The search results on Pinterest will be the same. If you look at the search results below from Pinterest, you will see that not all of the photos have labels, but some do.
A Rich Pin is what you call the extra text. It lets someone who uses Pinterest add more text that is easy to read. This makes you stand out. If you click on a Rich Pin image, you can find out how much the item costs and if it is still available.
The good thing about this is that anyone who saves your Rich Pin will be told if the price of your product changes on Pinterest. The person who saved your PIN will get an email about it, and they don’t even have to sign up for your email list.
So, here’s a quick rundown of what happens when you use a Rich Pin:
- You post a picture of a product on Pinterest.
- You put the product’s link on your Shopify store.
- You add more text and details, such as the price and whether the item is in stock or not.
- A person who saves it or re-pins it is a possible customer.
- If you change anything about it, he will know.
You can try a lot of different things to see how this can help you. As was already said, you need to do something if a product pin is getting clicks and saves but not sales. Try lowering the price to see if that leads to more sales.
Set up contests
When it comes to running contests, Pinterest is not as strict as Facebook. You can hold contests to give things away on Pinterest. Most of the time, you’ll ask people to “re-pin” your posts, and then you’ll pick a winner.
Here is an example of a contest that Country Living Magazine ran on Pinterest. The need is easy to understand. A user has to make a board and call it “My Country Living Bedroom.” He has to post at least ten pins, and five of them have to be saved or re-pinned from Country Living Magazine’s own Pinterest account.
After he makes the board, he has to leave a comment on the contest pin with a link to his board.
This is a great way to sell something. And here are some good things about the contest:
- Every board made by a different user will have five re-pins from Country Living Magazine. This is like getting free advertising from the participants.
- There is a good chance that Country Living Magazine’s Pinterest account will go viral because hundreds or thousands of people are talking about it.
- Since the links to the boards are in the comment, more people will check out these boards and more people will see the five re-pins from the event organizer.
Now, as more and more people repost the pin, the event organizer can also expect to get more visitors. If all of these repins are for products, then people who click on these pictures will be taken to Country Living Magazine’s website.
Just look at the numbers on the board: five of the ten pins are from Country Living. If 1,000 people made a board, that means that images from Country Living’s Pinterest account were re-pinned 5,000 times. This event will bring in a lot of people, and it cost almost nothing, except for the $500 prize.
Come to Group Boards
This board is different from the boards you have for yourself and your business. There are groups that share a board, and to pin a post, you need to be invited.
The goal of these boards is to bring together people who are interested in the same things. So if your Pinterest page is about skateboards, and there is a board for skateboards, you might get an invite to it. This is a great way to get more people to see your product pins.
In a group board, these things happen:
- You join
- Pins are added to the board.
- It will be seen by the group board.
- If they like your pins, they can share them again.
- What you write will be seen by everyone on the board.
If that board has 100,000 followers or contributors, then every post you pin about your products will be seen by 100,000 people. That’s 100,000 free visitors, and you didn’t even have to pay a dime for them. One of these people will definitely buy something from your Shopify store.
Use the correct pictures.
Instagram is a lot about photos, and so is Pinterest. This means that the photos you upload must be able to be cropped on a phone. You should also use photos that are the right size so that they can be put up on the boards correctly.
Here are some suggestions for putting pictures on Pinterest:
- Keep the ratio of width to height at 2:3 or 1:3.5.
- At least 600 x 900 pixels must be on each picture.
- Always add a logo to your pictures.
- Photos that show real-life scenes or models do so much better.
- Text overlays also get people’s attention because they say what they want to say right away.
- Keep your brand’s colors the same.
- Use vertical photos because that’s how Pinterest sorts them; wide photos will be cut off.
- Use the same fonts for all the text on your overlay.
Like Instagram, Pinterest is all about photos, and its users live and breathe them. Your pictures need to show what people want or what moves them. Make sure the pictures will make people feel something and make them want to share it.
Summary
Even though Facebook is the most popular social media site, it is not the only one that can help you. In fact, a lot of people are leaving Facebook, and a lot of other people don’t want to use it.
Not all social media sites are the same, and if you don’t use Pinterest, you could be missing out on millions of potential customers for your business.
Just remember that if you want to use Pinterest to its fullest, the first thing you need to do is set up a business account. If you don’t have one, you won’t be able to use the marketing strategies we talked about here.
