E-Commerce Guide for Pinterest

These days, it’s easy to get swept up in every shiny new marketing trend. Will the next big push be towards advertising on wearable tech, or should we devote resources towards advertising on the newest social platform?

These options usually leave marketers’ heads spinning – and when we do invest in the newest fad, more often than not we get burned. That being said, we wholeheartedly believe “marketing fad” and “Pinterest” do not belong in the same sentence. Pinterest is an incredible vehicle for driving traffic to your site and, more importantly, conversions through your checkout.

A 2014 study by Javelin Strategy & Research found “Pinterest users’ average order value is $123.50, which is about 126% more than Facebook users’ $54.64 average order value.”
And it’s not just Etsy shop owners and recipe bloggers finding success on Pinterest. Brands like Nordstrom and Free People are well-known pinning all-stars.
At this point, you should know that Pinterest is important. So how can you optimize your website and marketing strategy to get the most out of this particular social network?

Get the Integration Right

There are four key components for integrating Pinterest on your website:

• The Pin It button needs to be prominent and easy to use. Depending on how important Pinterest is to your brand, you may want to consider giving it more visibility over other social media icons.
• Your site should automatically pull a well-optimized image when the user clicks on “Pin It.”
• Your site should automatically pull a well-written and concise description, which features a few relevant hashtags and key product data.
• Sharing from your site should automatically link each pin to the appropriate landing page (and append tracking info if desired). If you’d like to see referral traffic and ultimately sales from Pinterest, linking to the product is paramount. Surprisingly, this is the biggest area where marketers drop the ball.

Get the Content Right

You can optimize your site and marketing strategies by putting the right technical pieces of the puzzle together, but it’s equally important to ask yourself, “Is this the right content to post?”
Following are some tips for optimizing your Pinterest content.

Price
Pins should include price whenever possible, but the best implementation is not in the description. In fact, Pinterest has cracked down on using price and URLs in the description and won’t allow them in Promoted Pins.

Lighter Images
Darker, heavily shadowed images don’t do well. If you’re going to choose an image on the page, go for the lighter, clearer image.
Call-To-Action
This is some good old-fashioned advertising at work here. Include a call to action for engagement increases.

Good Description Length
There’s a balance between verbose and not descriptive enough. Keep descriptions between 200 to 300 characters, as a general rule of thumb.

Timing
According to Piqora, 70% of a pin’s engagement occurs in the first 2 days. For this reason, we’ve noted that Nordstrom frequently pins on Saturdays and Sundays – when people have more time to browse.
Boards That Last- Use boards to group pins based on a specific interest or theme. Boards themselves get followers, and this group becomes a subscriber list to that specific content.

Get the Promotion Right

Here are a few tips to increase Pinterest engagement among your followers:

• Use a post-purchase email to push Pinterest engagement.
• Cross-promote on your social profiles. You can post any image on Facebook or Twitter and provide a (shortened) link to pin it with one click. Emphasize your Pin It button on your site. For many online retailers, Pinterest isn’t just another social network; it’s the social network.
• Promoted Pins are here, but have very limited targeting capabilities – at least for now. ”A smart alternative is to use Facebook and Twitter’s custom audiences to create an ad with a call-to-action urging members to pin a particular item.
• Pinterest allows you to message other users directly. This can be a form of outreach to bloggers.