Here’s the skinny on selling on Pinterest:
1. Create a business account.
2. Optimize your profile.
3. Create boards for your products.
4. Add “Buy” buttons to your pins.
5. Offer high-quality visually stunning pins that appeal to your target audience.
6. Use Pinterest Ads to reach a wider market.
7. Collaborate with influencers and other businesses.
Read on and learn more. I’ve put together the ultimate guide to help you make money by using Pinterest as your online marketing platform.
Benefits of Selling on Pinterest
Pinterest is a great social platform for an e-commerce business like yours to create product catalogs and reach shoppers who are actually interested in what you offer. When you know how to optimize boards and use these to access a seemingly limitless target audience, you will thrive and succeed.
Pinterest leads in spotting emerging trends. As soon as people start sharing, a trend is naturally bound to go mainstream. You can take advantage of this in many ways.
Use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website or online store. Align with the trends like a professional marketer and you will see your brand authority increase. Likewise, with Pinterest, you have the ability to create shoppable pins that allow you to sell directly through it.
You can measure these benefits through the platform’s Analytics tool. See your conversion metadata, as well as reports on your Pinterest ads and promoted pins.
The key really is for you to start harnessing all these possibilities so you can truly make the most from Pinterest.
Maximizing Reach and Engagement on Pinterest
Pinterest has more than 440 million monthly active users. This is your potential customer base, as long as your pins are personalized and optimized according to what they are looking for.
1. Reach your market organically by using keywords in your pin descriptions.
When you have visually appealing content, you want to draw people to it. Keywords in the description are means for people to search and find you. Matched with stunning visuals that work as calls-to-action, you can get them to click. If you have your pins linked to your sales website, great! Your target audience is now just a few clicks away from buying.
2. Use Product Pins, such as Catalogs and Rich Pins, through your Pinterest business account.
Creating a business account in Pinterest is a step up, in this respect. Through a business account, you have the option to use Product Pins, namely Catalogs and Rich Pins.
Rich Pins are features included in a Pinterest business account. It lets you display detailed information about the product featured in your pin, information that is synched to your shopping website. This means you don’t have to update your pins in case your price, description or stock availability change.
Catalogs, on the other hand, are ways for you to scale up your product showcase and promote them on Pinterest as shopping ads. For instance, you can integrate you Pinterest catalogs with your Shopify, WooCommerce, Lengow and a handful more shopping cart platforms.
3. Use Pinterest’s Promoted Pins.
In case you opt to not have Rich Pins, you can still promote your standard pins through Pinterest’s Promoted Pins. These are advertised pins (image or video) that show up in the user’s home feed. Unlike organic pins that show the pin details when clicked, Promoted Pins can be linked directly to your shopping site. You can set up any of these Pinterest ads through your Automated Ads Manager tool.
Your Ad Manager will also keep track of your ads impressions, performance, and conversions. This will
4. Leverage influencers.
Another option in optimizing your reach and engagement on Pinterest is to partner with the so-called social media influencers. These are people and accounts with a sizable following on Pinterest. Just make sure that the follower base of your influencers match the demographics of your target market.
5. Engage with other users on the platform.
Of course, good ol’ personal engagement with other users in the platform would work too. Comment on and repin other people’s pin. Follow and build relationships with other like-minded users.
Once done, you can use analytics tools, like Pinterest Analytics and Tailwind, to track how well your engagement on Pinterest is doing.
Analyzing Pinterest Performance and Results
With your business account, you get access to Pinterest Analytics, which gives you data on your overall presence on the platform. This includes your impressions, clicks, and conversions of both your promoted and organic published content.
You can also use third-party analytics services, such as Tailwind, to keep track of your pins’ performance.
Whatever you use, take advantage of the insights that you get. Check the data and use it to make better decisions about your pins, the definitions you use, the schedule of your posts, and even the audience you target. See what works and double down on that.
Track analytics and take note of the performance of your ad campaigns. Adjust accordingly the next time you put together a campaign.
Optimizing Strategies for Success
Follow our guide to maximizing your reach and engagement in the Pinterest marketplace. Create content strategies that work on your target audience and give them what they’re looking for while on the platform.
Users are on the platform to discover new ideas, brands and products. They are there to buy. How you position your pins and Pinterest Ads should respond to this user intention. Knowing your market and how you can reach them on the platform is your formula for success.
1. Create an attractive profile page with a clear description of your business and products.
2. Use high-quality images to showcase your products.
3. Choose the best keywords to make sure that your pins are discoverable by potential customers.
4. Engage with other users on the platform through comments, repins, follow and the like. Build relationships with others like you. real honest-to-goodness engagement can lead to an increase in your followers.
5. Leverage influencers.
6. Promote through Pinterest Ads and Product Pins.
When you’ve done all this, track your efforts’ success through Pinterest Analytics and other analytics tools. Adjust and optimize as needed until you find your formula for success.
Leveraging Pinterest Ads
For business accounts, Pinterest Ads offer good options for promoting pins and leading traffic to your shopping website.
There several types of Pinterest Ads:
1. Idea Pins: This is a recently added ad option on Pinterest. You can feature a short video or an array of photos (max 20). This often works as a short demonstration or how-to.
2. Product Pins: As earlier discussed, Product Pins can be in the form of Catalogs or Rich Pins.
3. Carousel Ads: This is somewhat similar to organic pins except that you feature multiple images. When a user pins this post, they pin the entire group of images.
4. Collection Ads: This type of ad is made up of a main image and 3 supporting images. Once clicked, the user can see up to 24 images. This is perfect for retail businesses and the like, businesses that need to showcase collections.
5. Shopping Ads: These ads are from direct connections with several third-party online shopping platforms. The ad pulls a product image and the product’s details; and is linked directly to your shopping site.
6. Promoted Pins: This is the most basic ad type. It is like an organic pin, except that it is advertised and has a “Promoted by” label. It is a great way to start trying out Pinterest ads and seeing how it can help you expand your reach.
Measuring ROI and Conversion Rates
Analytics data, such as impressions, clicks and repins, is your way of tracking the success of your posts and promotional campaigns. It is the measure of how successful you are in reaching your audience and new markets.
Take advantage of Pinterest analytics tools – Pinterest Analytics and third-party tools, like Tailwind. This is your key in succeeding in Pinterest, and even other social media platforms.
Utilizing Pinterest Insights
Through Pinterest Analytics, you can get important insights on how your pins and Pinterest ads perform. It is a free feature that is accessible to everyone with a Pinterest business account:
1. Log in to your account.
2. Click on Analytics. It is on the top left corner of your control panel.
3. Select Overview to see the performance data of your pins and boards.
4. Use the drop-down menu to navigate to the other analytics information.
Take note of the following Pinterest insights. These are the more important information to consider:
1. Impressions: This measures how many times your pins were shown to users. A high impression rate means that your pins are on-trend and that these align with what many users want to see.
2. Saves: When users save your pins to their boards, it implies that your content is relevant and people are interested in them.
3. Total audience: This measures how many unique users saw your pins. If your impressions are higher than your audience, it means that several of the same users saw your pins repeatedly. Ideally, this should have converted some of them.
4. Engagements: This measures the number of clicks or saves your pins get.
5. Engaged audience: This is the number of people who interacted with your pins. Knowing your audience and what they engage with is a good way to discover your top-performing content.
6. Pin clicks: This measures the pin clicks that lead to internal (within Pinterest) and external links.
7. Pin click rate: This compares your pins’ impressions against their clicks. A high click rate implies that your audience are engaging with your pins. Your audience finds your Pins.
8. Video views: A video must be viewed up to at least 50% of its total length to count qualify as one view. Video views measure how many users did this. Pinterest videos are trending and can be a way for you to place your brand ahead of the pack.
Creating Effective Pinterest Content Strategies
For many people, Pinterest is a great platform for selling products. It allows you to reach potential customers and build brand awareness in a relatively easy and quick way. You can create boards that are tailored specifically for promoting your products and services.
According to experts, it takes a little more than that; and fortunately, your Pinterest business account comes with the most effective marketing tools to help you achieve your goals. You can make use of Pinterest ads, and then track your campaign through Pinterest Analytics. Through Pinterest insights, you can see what works and what doesn’t, and you can adjust marketing strategies accordingly.
Wherever you are in the spectrum of Pinterest users, it is important to remember that there are pros and cons to everything. Keep this in mind when you use the platform as a marketing tool. Always have an eye out for your ROI.
Pros:
• Pinterest is great for visual marketing. You can showcase your products in the best light
• It is effective in building brand awareness.
• It is easy to set up a shop on Pinterest. You don’t need to know how to code.
• You can create boards that are tailored specifically toward promoting your products and services.
• You can access analytics tools that allow you to track how well your pins are performing and make adjustments accordingly.
Cons:
• Pinterest is a great platform and your competitors know it too. It can be hard to stand out.
• You need to make an effort and put in time in order to build your following and engagement.
• Advertising on Pinterest can cost, in the long run. Make sure you get an ample return on investment (ROI).
Did you find this article helpful? Save it to your Pinterest marketing board!

I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.