How to Market on Pinterest for Businesses and Blogs

Tom McNaughton

Pinterest is the most fun, easiest social network to use. But that isn’t why I’m writing about it. Pinterest is also the most powerful social network for driving actual sales. Surprisingly, few see the true potential of Pinterest marketing for businesses.

Pinterest can be used to find and connect with your potential audience – no matter who they are or what you sell.

I just published a post on Social Implications with detailed Pinterest Case Studies showing how two specific businesses use Pinterest to find and market to their target audiences. I encourage you to go read the full details.

Before you start, you need a Pinterest account. They’re easy to create, but you do need to be aware that if you’re a business you should be sure to use this link to create a Pinterest business account – not a regular account.

Using Pinterest Marketing for Businesses to Generate Sales

This post will focus on how to drive traffic that will convert into sales from Pinterest.

Think about who your potential buyers are and what interests them.
Search for pins related to their interests to like and repin.
Add a call to action and your url to what you repin.
Follow the people who originally pinned what you reshare.

I recommend creating the board you’re going to work with first, but you can create them on the fly. Specifically what type of boards to create; the importance of what you name them; how to write descriptions; and what to put on them is covered in How to Create Pinterest Marketing Boards That Sell to Your Target Audience.

Pinterest Marketing Ideas

I want to take you through ideas for one business to give you a better idea how this works. For this example I’ll use TicketStub.com because it is very easy to see how they can reach their potential buyers using Pinterest.

Let’s start with music. The easiest people to sell tickets to are fans of a particular musician or band. They love anything about the band – especially photos new and old. Take these steps:

Set up a board for that musician or band.
Search pinterest and like and pin the best of what others have already shared.
Be sure to follow the person who pinned the content originally – they are your target audience.
Search for new content and add it to the board.

Case Study: Pinterest Board for a Band

What to do: Repin plenty of photos of the band over time. Include pins about upcoming concerts. Pin new content such as this Black Sabbath Returns blog post. This post hit Google News and ranks for Black Sabbath Returns. Pinning it will drive more traffic to it, encourage links, and potentially generate sales.

Case Study: Pinterest Board for a Sports Team

Most sports fans who would buy tickets have either a particular sport or team they follow. This makes them easy to target. There are always plenty of photos, memorabilia, news media stories, sports blogs, and related products to pin. You can see a board built specifically to attract fans with photos of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team here.

Note the call to actions in some of the pins on these two example boards. They specifically offer tickets and provide a link directly to the page where tickets for Black Sabbath and Blackhawks are sold. Landing the links on the correct page will increase conversions because many do not know how to find what they want even when they are already on the appropriate site.

This strategy will work for many other kinds of businesses – not just a ticket seller. You could be selling t-shirts, photographs, memorabilia – anything related to that band or team. Speaking of related products, you can use these same techniques and even these specific boards to generate your own income even if you have no products to sell.

Using Pinterest to Sell Affiliate Products

Just as we added a call to action and link to what we pinned and repinned for TicketStub, you can add affiliate links and call to action wording for related products. While this can be done manually, you may want to check into one of the solutions for managing Pinterest.

I only recently came across these, so I have not tested them yet. There are four mentioned in this Quora thread about tools to manage multiple Pinterest accounts (in the same way Hootsuite manages multiple Twitter accounts).

This YouTube video describes PinRanker. In the video, Mark Dulesse states:

I totally agree – and that is why Pinterest has such huge potential. If you’re into affiliate marketing – or ever thought you wanted to be – definitely watch the video to see what is possible. (But remember, I don’t know anyone who has actually used it that I am aware of, so I can’t endorse it. It could be a very powerful way to ramp up followers and sales on Pinterest – provided it works.)

Don’t put off opening an account on Pinterest and pinning whatever is most relevant in your niche. Even if you don’t actively use it there will be some growth just because it exists. The more you use it, the faster it grows.