Complete Pinterest Marketing Guide 2024

In the world of digital marketing, Pinterest is crucial for brands to engage audiences and drive results. In 2024, a strong Pinterest strategy is more important than ever, given the platform’s growth and improved tools. This guide is for both experienced and new Pinterest marketers, offering insights and tactics to boost brand visibility and meet marketing objectives. It includes key aspects like profile optimization, content creation, ads, and performance tracking. Discover more about Pinterest, learn to create an effective marketing plan, and leverage Metricool to enhance your social media strategy.

What is Pinterest Marketing

Pinterest marketing is the strategic use of the Pinterest platform to increase brand visibility, drive website traffic, and boost sales. It involves creating and sharing visually appealing content in the form of “pins” to reach potential customers and engage with an existing audience.

Pinterest is particularly useful for businesses in industries like fashion, home decor, food, and crafts. Its focus on visual content allows brands to showcase their products and ideas in an inspiring way. By optimizing pins, creating cohesive boards, and leveraging Pinterest’s tools, businesses can effectively connect with its large and engaged user base, many of whom use the platform to discover and purchase new products. Ultimately, Pinterest marketing offers a unique opportunity for brands to build awareness, drive conversions, and foster long-lasting relationships with their target audience.

Pinterest basics 

Pinterest is a dynamic visual-first platform that combines both a social network and a search engine. To navigate this space effectively, it’s important to understand its fundamental features.

The Pinterest social network revolves around two key elements:

• Pins: Pins serve as the primary content you share on the platform, encompassing images, videos, and links. These posts form the foundation of your presence on Pinterest.
• Boards: This is where you can save and categorize your pins. You can create boards to organize your own content, or to save content from other accounts that you find relevant.

On Pinterest you will find two main feeds that allow you to discover and engage with Pins:

• Home Feed: This is personalized to showcase pins based on your preferences, boards, and followed accounts, serving as a constant source of inspiration.
• Explore Feed: Similar to Instagram, this feed shows you trending and popular pins on Pinterest or search for specific keywords or ideas.

The benefits of marketing on Pinterest

Marketing on Pinterest offers a number of benefits for brands looking to enhance their online presence. These include: 

• Driving Traffic to Your Website: The visual nature of the platform makes it effective for showcasing products and driving users to your online store or content.
• Improving Brand Awareness: Pinterest allows you to create boards and pins that showcase your brand’s personality, style, and offerings. 
• Enabling Targeted Advertising: Pinterest’s advertising platform enables you to create targeted campaigns that reach specific audiences based on their interests, behaviors, and demographics.
• Increasing Sales: By showcasing your products through visually appealing pins and making it easy for users to purchase directly from your website.
• Providing Valuable Analytics: Pinterest’s analytics tools offer insights into your content performance, audience demographics, and other key metrics. 
• Positioning as an Industry Authority: Curating relevant content from both your own brand and other sources can help position your business as a trusted industry authority and resource for your target audience.

How Does Pinterest Work in 2024?

Pinterest has evolved into a discovery and shopping engine, providing personalized suggestions based on user interactions with pins. Different from traditional social media platforms, Pinterest acts more like a visual search engine, catering to users seeking inspiration and shopping ideas. 

User behavior on Pinterest is unique, with a focus on unbranded searches and a strong emphasis on visual discovery. Engagement plays a crucial role, with activities like following, repinning, and commenting fostering a dedicated and engaged audience. By organizing content into boards and sharing visually appealing pins, users create a visually immersive discovery experience on Pinterest.

7 Steps to Build a Pinterest Marketing Strategy

Crafting a comprehensive Pinterest marketing strategy is a crucial component of your brand’s overall social media approach. 

To get started, follow these seven key steps:

1. Create a Business Profile: Establish your brand’s presence on Pinterest by setting up a business profile. Connect your website to drive traffic back to your online hub and enhance your referral potential.
2. Optimize Your Profile: Ensure your profile reflects your brand’s identity with visuals and keywords that resonate with your target audience, boosting discoverability.
3. Research Your Audience: Understand your audience by analyzing demographics, interests, and behaviors. Develop detailed personas to tailor your content effectively.
4. Analyze Competitors: Study competitors to identify strategies and content that resonate with shared audiences. Use insights to differentiate and offer unique value.
5. Keyword Research: Utilize relevant keywords to enhance Pin visibility. Incorporate high-performing and niche keywords in titles, descriptions, and boards for optimal search results.
6. Develop Engaging Content: Create visually appealing pins aligned with your brand’s aesthetic. Experiment with various content types, formats, and posting schedules to keep your audience engaged.
7. Analyze and Refine: Monitor key metrics to understand audience preferences and refine your strategy accordingly. Experiment with new approaches and stay updated on Pinterest trends for continued success.

SEO on Pinterest

Pinterest isn’t just another social media platform; it’s a visual-centric search engine. This makes SEO a vital piece of any successful Pinterest marketing strategy. 

To enhance your organic presence on Pinterest, consider the following strategies:

• Keyword Research: Identify relevant keywords for your brand and use them in your board names, descriptions, and captions.
• Optimize Your Profile: Ensure your Pinterest profile is complete, including a profile photo, name, username, and bio.
• Content Creation: Create high-quality, visually appealing content that is relevant to your target audience.
• Pin Consistently: Pin content regularly to keep your account fresh and active.
• Rich Pins: Use Rich Pins to draw metadata from your website pages and provide leads and useful information.
• Organize Your Boards: Organize your Pinterest boards using relevant keywords to make it easy for users to find and browse your content.
• Use Hashtags: Use relevant hashtags in your captions to increase visibility and reach a broader audience.
• Size Your Videos and Images for Pinterest: Design or crop your images and videos for the platform, using portrait orientation and the optimal image size of 735 x 1102 pixels.

Pinterest Advertising

Pinterest Ads are a tool that brands can utilize to better promote their products or services to their target audience. These Ads display seamlessly in users’ feeds, alongside organic search results. 

Types of Pinterest Ads include: 

• Standard Ads: These are the most basic Pinterest ad format, using static images in a vertical or square aspect ratio. They appear in the home feed, search results, and related pins.
• Standard Video Ads: Similar to Standard Ads, but using a video format instead of a static image. The recommended video length is 6-15 seconds.
• Max Width Video Ads: A larger, square video ad format that takes up more space in the feed.
• Idea Ads: A newer ad format that allows for more creative elements like stickers and music, and can be a mix of images and videos.
• Carousel Ads: Allow advertisers to showcase multiple images or videos in a single ad, with each card linking to a different page.
• Shopping Ads: Product-focused ads that display pricing and other details, and allow users to purchase directly on Pinterest.
• Collection Ads: Showcase a “hero” image or video above a grid of up to 24 secondary product images, allowing brands to promote multiple products in a single ad.
• Quiz Ads: Multiple choice questions and answers, with each quiz result allowing advertisers to add outbound links to more content, products, and more.

Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest

Affiliate marketing is a partnership between a brand and an affiliate. The affiliate promotes the brand’s products through their preferred platforms, such as social media, blogs, or newsletters. Affiliate earnings are directly linked to the sales they generate. Pinterest offers a unique opportunity for affiliate marketing due to its visually engaging nature, making it an ideal platform for promoting products through images and videos. 

Affiliate marketing on Pinterest is a powerful strategy for earning passive income by promoting products or services through affiliate links. To effectively utilize affiliate marketing on Pinterest, start by understanding the concept and setting up a business account optimized for success. Create engaging pins with high-quality visuals, relevant keywords, and clear calls-to-action to drive traffic to your affiliate links.

Pinterest Shop

Pinterest Shop is a feature that allows users to browse and purchase products directly on the Pinterest platform. Here’s how you can utilize it as part of your brand’s Pinterest marketing strategy:

1. Create Product Pins: Product Pins are Rich Pins that automatically pull in product details, making it easy for users to discover and purchase your products without leaving Pinterest.
2. Organize Your Products into a Pinterest Catalog: Create a Pinterest Catalog to showcase your entire product selection, allowing users to browse and shop your full range directly on Pinterest.
3. Add the Shop Tab to Your Profile: Add a dedicated “Shop” tab to your business profile, creating a visually appealing storefront for your products.
4. Leverage Pinterest’s Shopping Features: Utilize features like the Shopping List and Explore Shop tab to enhance product discoverability and user experience.
5. Optimize Your Product Pins: Ensure your Product Pins are visually appealing, informative, and properly tagged to improve discoverability.

Pinterest Analytics with Metricool

Metricool is a powerful all-in-one platform that makes managing your Pinterest strategy a breeze. With Metricool, you can create, schedule, and analyze your Pinterest content and marketing efforts from a single dashboard. Streamline your entire social media marketing strategy, freeing up time to focus on creating engaging content and connecting with your audience. 

Analyze Your Pinterest Performance: Track key metrics like impressions, engagement, interactions, and audience demographics to gain valuable insights and optimize your strategy. It also automates report creation and distribution to key stakeholders, freeing up time for content creation and audience engagement.

Streamline Your Content Creation: Create and schedule content for your Pinterest account. Craft visually stunning pins with Metricool’s Canva integration, and schedule them to go live at the optimal times for audience engagement.

Manage All Your Social Channels in One Place: Metricool isn’t just for Pinterest. Manage your Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter accounts all from the same dashboard. Schedule content, monitor mentions and messages, and even handle your Meta and Google ad campaigns.