How to Sell on Pinterest: A Step-by-Step Guide in 2023

According to a recent survey, Pinterest's marketing efficacy has improved by 140% in 2022 over its impact in 2021. Up to eight out of ten users have discovered a new business or product via the site.

In 2015, Pinterest introduced social commerce. With the help of the Pinterest Buy button and other features, it is now easy to go from aspirational to actual purchase.

What does it mean for your online store? A how-to for selling on Pinterest is provided here.

Why sell products on Pinterest?

Due to a few important factors, Pinterest is a great platform for online product sales.

• The audience is ready to buy. Many Pinterest users desire to learn about new brands and products, and many of them are more prepared to make purchases than users of Facebook or TikTok. When compared to other social media platforms, “Weekly Pinners are seven times more likely to say Pinterest is the most influential platform in their purchase journey,” says Pinterest.
• You know who you’re targeting. Women with good incomes earn up the majority of Pinterest users. They often use Pinterest to sell ideas and inspiration for tasks, making it the perfect platform to market products for “projects” like cooking, crafts, and home renovation.
• You can amp up your efforts with paid ads. You may focus your efforts even more precisely on Pinterest ads. If Pinterest marketing is a crucial part of your social media marketing strategy, this is helpful. Additionally, brands who use Pinterest for advertising see a twofold increase in their return on investment and have a lower cost per conversion rate than on other social media platforms.
• It provides insights about your specific audience. With Pinterest Analytics, which lets you see what content performs well, who is interested in your brand, and what other interests those people have, Pinterest gives you specific information about your audience.
• Pinterest has online shopping features and tools. A tool on Pinterest called Catalogs allows brands to publish their products. In comparison to brands that don't offer their products, merchants that do this earn five times more impressions. Another function is Pinterest Try On, which makes use of augmented reality (AR) to let customers try on virtual versions of products or see how they might appear in their own homes.
• Pinterest seamlessly integrates with your Shopify store. To post pins, sync product catalogs and inventory data, run advertisements, and monitor performance, connect your Shopify shop to Pinterest. Installing the free and simple Pinterest Shopify app is simple.

How to set up Pinterest

Create a business account by going to the Pinterest website. If you currently have a personal Pinterest account, you should use your business email to set up a new account. Enter the name of your business or brand, a picture (you may use your logo), the website, the country, and the language.

Enter more details about your business after that. This comprises your business specialization and professional objectives.

Then tell Pinterest you’re an “Online Retail or Marketplace.”

Then, make a note of the sales channels you use to sell your products, such as Shopify for your own online store and any other marketplaces, such as Etsy.

If you want to use Pinterest's paid advertising tools as a last resort, you can let them know. If you're not sure at this time, that's okay.

Set up your Pinterest business account

A business Pinterest account may also be created by converting your personal account. If you currently have followers on Pinterest and want to leverage that audience for your business, doing this will keep both your postings and your followers.

Search for the “Account management” choices in your settings. When you see “Convert to a business account” under “Account adjustments,” click “Convert account.” Similar to the stages outlined above, you'll enter information about your business throughout this process. If you decide to convert it back to a personal account and open a new business account, you may reverse this later.

Link to your Shopify or another eCommerce store

Linking your Shopify store and Pinterest account will allow you to use the social media network to advertise the products on your website. You may manually add the Pinterest tag to Shopify or use the Pinterest Shopify app.

The Shopify app for Pinterest makes it easier to link your online store's inventory with the social media channel. You can rapidly post Product Pins, increase organic reach, run advertisements with free credit, and measure success with the Pinterest tag when you combine the two with the Pinterest Shopify app. Additionally, your daily automated product catalog updates.

Simply search for the Pinterest Shopify app in the Shopify App Store. To configure it, choose “Add app” and then follow the on-screen instructions. It will just need a few clicks. To complete this procedure manually, you may alternatively follow the instructions listed here.

Top tips for selling on Pinterest

You are now prepared to complete your first Pinterest purchase! However, setting up an account and displaying your products are only the beginning of what you can do to promote your business. To increase your sales, you need also to have certain goals for your Pinterest marketing approach.

Focus on high-quality visuals

Pinterest is a platform with pictures. For this reason, high-quality product photography and images are crucial for this channel in particular in digital marketing.

The aesthetic appeal of the brand Pretty Presets contributed to its popularity. Up to 10% of the retailer's sales now originate from Pinterest, making it one of its top traffic sources.

Even if your products aren't very aesthetically attractive, Pinterest still needs a unique and enticing approach. When compared to the captivating designs and images of other brands, dull, subpar photographs and graphics will swiftly drop to the bottom of people's newsfeeds.

Catalogs

Only business accounts with a claimed website and business procedures that comply with Pinterest's rules for shipping policy, refund policy, and contact availability are eligible for the service known as Pinterest Catalogs. A data source for your products is also necessary; if you're a Shopify merchant, that data source would be your Shopify store.

Once your Catalog is set up, a “Shop” page with a curated feed of shoppable pins showing your things for sale will be available on your Pinterest profile. Additionally, these products and Pins will surface in non-branded, general searches made by users. Additionally, you can create dynamic promoted pins using those products (more on that in a moment), which makes it simpler to launch targeted paid advertising. Five times as many customers interact with merchants that post products to their catalog as those who don't.

Your product catalog syncs automatically every day with the Pinterest Shopify app, ensuring that you're constantly representing yourself at your best on social media.

AreYouGame.com, a Shopify merchant, uses Pinterest in addition to its online store as a sales channel. It revamped its strategy on Pinterest to concentrate on more product-focused content after relaunching its Shopify website. The whole range of its products may be seen on the “Shop” page. The brand increased from having no impressions to around 700,000 in only four months.

Boards

Your collection of produced and selected pins may be organized into folders or categories using Pinterest boards. Organize your boards to make it simple for users to explore and interact with the stuff you've pinned. Boards may help you become more visible in search results and draw in certain types of followers. People may choose to follow certain boards rather than the whole account, for instance.

You may create boards around topics or hobbies that match your brand, are interesting to your target market, or are related to certain product categories. SLVR New York, a jewelry brand, has boards specially selected for its most popular products, including rings, necklaces, and new arrivals.

Another excellent technique to sell on Pinterest is via group boards. Along with your other boards, group boards appear, but they vary in that other users and brands may contribute pins to that Board. Before joining, thoroughly research group boards; you don't want to unwittingly associate your brand with questionable profiles or material.

To create a collective board of Christmas gift suggestions, The Little Market collaborated with other regional brands.

Rich pins

Rich pins present website data for users by instantly syncing with it.

There are three types of rich pins:

• Article pins: Article pins provide the title, author, and description of the article or blog post.
• Product pins: Pricing, availability, and product details are shown on product pins.
• Recipe pins: The title, serving size, cooking time, ratings, diet choice, and ingredient list are all included on recipe pins.

For ecommerce brands, rich pins are particularly beneficial since they don't need manual updating. If you change the information on your website, your rich pins will also be updated instantly.

Open the Pinterest rich pin validator and the product page on your Shopify website to add a product-rich pin to or from your Shopify store. Add “.oembed” at the end of the product URL after pasting it into the pin validator. You will be shown the extensive pin data related to that product. “Validate” after selecting Shopify as the markup choice. After seeing the preview, choose “Apply.” The products on your website will all be updated as a result.

Promoted pins

The advertising tools on Pinterest are promoted pins. Their cost and budget depend on the audience you are targeting, and they operate similarly to Google Ads with an auction-style bidding mechanism. Promoted pins look similar to organic pins in user feeds and search results, but they are marked with the word “Promoted.”

When creating sponsored pins and ads, Pinterest gives brands the option of selecting from a number of goals. These goals include catalog sales, brand recognition, video views, consideration and traffic, and conversions.

Once you have your ad creative, you can design your campaign by choosing a start and finish date, a daily and overall budget, where you want your ads to display (feed, search, or both), and your desired placements. Choose a lifetime budget if you want to spread out your advertising expenditure equally over a longer period of time. Make a daily budget to decide how much you pay each day. The budgets will need to be adjusted automatically based on how long you want your advertisement to run.

Customers may be targeted based on email list audiences, demographics, and geography. Consider adding interests and keywords to your campaigns to make them even more focused and powerful.

Track and analyze pins

Pinterest Analytics offers insightful data on the effectiveness of your account, pins, and ads. Additionally, you may check certain analytics for your product pins.

You should use this ecommerce analytics data to guide your future strategy so you can decide which content types to prioritize and which to deprioritize.

For instance, you can check your Pinterest marketing analytics to see which pins generate the most clicks to your website and impressions. Following that, you can make related pins for upcoming posts and campaigns and think about using that content on other channels.

Pinterest SEO

Your page and website's visibility and traffic will increase if you invest in Pinterest SEO. More people will view your content, interact with your pins, and learn about your products the higher you rank.

Since Pinterest primarily serves as a search engine, keywords are an essential part of its SEO strategy. There is a native keyword tool available on Pinterest. By selecting “Traffic” as your business goal when creating a promoted pin, you can get access to it. You'll see a section for keywords where you can enter keywords and get data-based suggestions, such as search volume.

You can also use other paid and free SEO tools like Keyword Tool, Keysearch, and Pin Inspector.

Utilize the Pinterest search box to find words and phrases associated with your products and pinned pins. Based on its own past search data, Pinterest will automatically recommend search terms.

For instance, if you type “laundry detergent” into the search box below, you'll get several possibilities. Roux Maison, a Shopify merchant, has refined their Pinterest approach to be among the top recommended results, just below the well-known brand Tide. Dispensers, containers, bottles, and storage are possible additional keywords to consider using when writing content.

How are you using Pinterest to sell products?

When it comes to selling on Pinterest, there are two important things to keep in mind: it's visual and works more like a search engine than a social networking site. Your Pinterest content has to be of a high standard, aesthetically appealing, and audience-specific. It is simple to sync your product catalog and generate product Pins and ads when you use the Pinterest Shopify app to integrate it with your online store.