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How to Sell on the Pinterest platform?

Sell on Pinterest

Pinterest, launched in 2010, is a free website and probably the most product-focused social media platform. So, you should sell on Pinterest! It is based on image sharing and saving. Pinterest helps you to save and discover information on the internet using images (but also animated GIFs and videos) in the form of pinboards. More specifically it is a source of ideas and inspiration regarding, but not limited to, recipes, home, design and style.

Pinterest has over 450 million users (more than Snapchat and close to Tik Tok), 60% of them are women, and its largest group is 30-49 years old. Although the platform has recently seen a spike in usage among people younger than 25 years old. You need to keep in mind those data if you want to sell on Pinterest and/or you need to target a specific audience. It is an underestimated network but there are huge ad opportunities due to the audience’s purpose in using the platform and its age range.

What are the Pins on Pinterest?

How does Pinterest work? And what are the Pins on Pinterest? The Pins are simply bookmarks that people can use to save the ideas and inspirations that they found on Pinterest.
People can search for Pins, click on a Pin to learn more about and save the Pins they like.
If you have a business, you can create Pins to highlight your products and ideas. And you can also strategically link them back to your website to get sales.

What are the benefits to sell on Pinterest?

  • 89% of its users are on Pinterest for purchase inspiration and more than 25% of the time spent on Pinterest is for shopping.
  • 98% of users have tried something they have previously seen on Pinterest therefore and 50% of users are outside the US.
  • Being a source of inspiration, Pinterest is well known to be a place of positivity.  If you create beautiful and convincing Pins then the conversion potential is massive.
  • If your goal is to drive traffic and conversions to your website, Pinterest is a solid opportunity for advertising as its users are 3 times more likely to click over to a brand’s website on Pinterest than other social media platforms.
  • Pinterest ads are 2.3 times cheaper per conversion rather than other social media ads
  • The number of users shopping on Pinterest grew 50% in the first half of 2020 therefore businesses can find a large audience that is on Pinterest to buy products.

Things you need before starting the enrollment process

  • Establish your target audience to be sure Pinterest is for your business
  • Check the competition so you know how to fill up the boards
  • Be ready to use high-quality photos and have UGC ready to use
  • Think Mobile! Pinterest is much more used on mobile phones
  • Plan your content strategy

Things to consider when you sell on Pinterest

As most of Pinterest’s users are female you need to sell products that women (rather than men) tend to purchase.
People are happy to buy on Pinterest, therefore, do not forget the following selling strategies:

  • Stunning creative, As Pinterest is very visual you need to use high-quality photography
  • SEO, as Pinterest is a visual network that people use to have the inspiration you will need to optimize carefully your contents to get the most out of them.
  • Rich Pins, Use the Rich Pins as they are a type of organic Pin that automatically synchronizes and enriches the information from your website to your Pins.
  • Promote Pins, You can use promoted Pins to push sales directly from the Pin to your website.
  • Catalog, You can organize your Pins by catalog using a data source and it is a fantastic way to promote your products.
  • Tags, You can tag multiple products in a single Pin with Shop the Look Pins to cross-sell and increase the conversions.
  • UGC, If an influencer uses your products reuse their contents because they work better and your audience will most likely buy your goods.
  • Contests, they are an exciting way to generate tons of repins, likes and shares in order to increase the awareness of your brand and the conversion’s opportunities.
  • Cross-promote, helps to increase the awareness and conversion rate of your website.
  • Coupons, People love words like free, discounts, deals. Offer promotion to them.

What can I sell on Pinterest?

As most of Pinterest’s users are women and it is a great place to get inspiration about recipes, home, design and style, your products should have a connection to the above fields and among the interests of that audience.

How can I sell on Pinterest?

As Pinterest’s users have the buyer-intent when they visit its inspirational platform, you can easily increase your chances to convert using the dedicated platform that Pinterest created.

Pinterest Shopping Ads launched in 2018 and it is its own platform to create a catalog for Shopping Ads. Pinterest is a different platform than the others, so it does not use keywords, interests, etc like most of the other networks. Instead, Pinterest prefers the use of your own product data to find out the best possible buyers for your brand and products.

So if you would like to sell on Pinterest with the ads you need to take the following steps:

  1. Create a Pinterest Business Account
  2. Verify your website on Pinterest
  3. Add a Data Source
  4. Create the Pins

In this way, retailers can have a new channel to promote their products in a very simple way. Pinterest constantly checks the catalogs keeping them updated and it can process up to 20 million products.

Cost of the ads on Pinterest

Are the ads convenient on Pinterest? It depends.
You need to test to understand how Pinterest Ads work. And the targeting possibilities are different than Facebook Ads.
However, the cost of ads is still low compared to other platforms (like Facebook) and sometimes Pinterest offers a 100$ starting free credit.

Therefore, after an initial period of testing, you can get very qualified traffic with a high percentage of conversion. You need to remember that the data source comes directly from your website so the targeting will be very specific.

Moreover, the audience does not feel the Pinterest Ads are annoying (because they discreetly show they are ads). And most of the users are women with a high tendency to buy.

Why is Pinterest ad targeting important?

Firstly, Pinterest is a kind of unique platform.
Social networks are usually not so inspirational about products as Pinterest is. People might think it is just a place to collect pins and ideas but it also leads to purchases because of its genuineness.

Furthermore, the audience is female therefore it makes Pinterest special for a certain niche.

Also, Pinterest helps you to find the right audience using your own data source instead of using the interests, hence, you have more chances to convert.

Why selling on Pinterest with Koongo is beneficial?

Here is the moment Koongo can help you with selling products on the Pinterest marketplace.
Koongo uses a simple CSV product feed to be connected with your Pinterest shopping.
In this way, Koongo is able to upload merchant products from your store to your Pinterest catalog and update the stock information on a regular basis. Therefore in this way you do not risk being out of stock and the information is always updated with an unbeatable update frequency.

As you may know, Koongo is offering full support for more than 500 marketplaces and selling channels worldwide, including Pinterest. You won’t regret giving Koongo a chance. It fully supports any existing platform from Shopify, Magento, Prestashop, CCV Shop to any 3rd party Custom Platform. You just need to sign up to check how Koongo is capable to boost your sales. There’s no risk associated, 30 days Free Trial period is available.

For more details, you may check the Pinterest integration manual or contact us at support@koongo.com. We will be happy to help you with your Pinterest integration.

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