Some might dismiss Pinterest as a place for outfit ideas and motivational memes, but the platform is becoming a powerful online shopping tool. We've already established that Pinterest is fantastic for advertising, but it also works great with direct sales conversions.
Some might dismiss Pinterest as a place for outfit ideas and motivational memes, but the platform is becoming a powerful online shopping tool. We've already established that Pinterest is fantastic for advertising, but it also works great with direct sales conversions.
As a place that encourages endless scrolling, the power of Pinterest is boundless. If you take the platform seriously and put some love into your business page, you can start selling products on Pinterest in 7 simple steps.
Why sell products and services on Pinterest?
Pinterest is so much more than a fun way to kill an evening on your tablet with a glass of wine. Launched in 2010, the platform has become very popular in recent years, and its developers have seized the opportunity by adding more and more features for brands, without taking anything away from the user experience.
The truth is that Pinterest is the go-to choice for retailers and its sales potential shouldn't be underestimated. Here are some of the reasons why:
it's growing fast
The app is rapidly approaching half a billion users, and this meteoric growth is inspiring more and more business owners to get started. According to our survey, Pinterest's marketing effectiveness has increased by 140% between 2021 and 2022, and many marketers plan to invest significantly more time and money in Pinterest 2022.
It's shopping friendly
Pinterest is a perfect hybrid between social media and window shopping. Whether they're casually scrolling or actively planning a major purchase, an estimated 47% of users consider Pinterest to be the platform for buying products. Considering the number of people who use the service, this is a considerable number of potential buyers.
It's autonomous
Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest lets you make sales right on the platform — you don't have to send potential customers anywhere else. Pinterest shopping features allow you to create a unique and seamless shopping experience that will minimize the risk of customers abandoning before checking out.
Note that in-platform payment is currently only available to US-based iOS and Android users. Brands from other countries can set up Pinterest storefronts and direct users to their e-commerce stores for checkout.
It's avant-garde
The surge in interest in Pinterest means there have never been more people using the app, and the company is continually rising to the occasion by rolling out new features.
In 2022 alone, Pinterest launched the Try On for Home Decor feature, which lets Pinners test out home items using augmented reality (AR). With this feature, you can see what a piece of furniture would look like in your space:
Source: Pinterest
Pinterest shopping features
Pinterest has been user-friendly for many years. In 2013, they introduced Rich Pins, which pulled data from brands' websites to their Pinterest content. In 2015, they added "Buyable Pins", which were rebranded as Product Pins in 2018.
Yet the app went above and beyond what brands expected during the COVID-19 lockdown. In 2020, they launched the Shop tab, which made it even easier for users to shop while searching for the app or browsing a board.
There are currently 5 ways for Pinterest users to purchase the app:
- Shop Boards: When a Pinterest user visits a home decor or fashion board, the Shop tab displays products from pins they have saved. If these exact products are not available, it will offer pin-inspired products.
- Buy from Pins: When browsing regular Pins on Pinterest, users can tap on similar shop to see related products for looks and parts.
- Buy from Search: The Shop tab is now easily accessible from search results. So if Pinterest users search for “summer outfits,” “apartment ideas,” or “home office,” they can easily tap the tab and receive shopping options.
- Shop style guides: Pinterest curates its own style guides for popular home decor terms like “living room ideas,” “mid-century,” “contemporary,” and more. The goal is to help Pinners find products even if they don't know exactly what they're looking for.
- Buy from Brand Pages: Stores that sign up for Pinterest's free Verified Sellers program can have a shop tab right on their profile (like the example below), which means Pinners are not just one click away from a shopping spree:
Source: Pinterest
Sounds pretty good, right? Well, let's sell!
How to sell on Pinterest
As we've already established, there are plenty of ways to use Pinterest as a retailer.
Whether you're using it to send out #inspo vibes and drive awareness, or to drive sales on the platform, you need to have a solid strategy in place.
Here's a complete step-by-step guide on how to sell on Pinterest.
1. Find the right niche
It's a key part of any brand philosophy, but it's especially important on Pinterest. Before settling in, consider your target audience and your content strategy. After all, this app is all about curation — making sure you're starting from the right place is key.
Spend some time on Pinterest to understand the distinct communities and where your brand might fit in, whether it's fashionistas or addicts to mid-century modern homewares.
2. Create a business account
To do business from your Pinterest account, you need to make sure you have a business account. No headache, right? Well, a business account is different from a personal account in many ways – it gives you access to features like analytics, ads, and a great business toolkit.
There are two main ways to get a business account. You can convert your personal profile to a business account by following the instructions here, or you can create a new business account from scratch.
Learn more about setting up a Pinterest account in our guide to using Pinterest for business.
3. Solidify your brand
Before we get to the fun stuff, it's important to make sure your Pinterest profile is aligned with your brand as a whole. This means taking the time and making sure everything is in order, from your username and profile picture to your bio and contact details. Pinterest users who come across your brand on the platform should be able to easily identify it if they've seen it before.
As mentioned earlier, you can also sign up for the Verified Merchants Program, which is free and will add a blue checkmark (much like Twitter and Instagram's verification mark) to your page. This will make your brand more credible on the platform.
Here's what a verified Pinterest account looks like:
4. Define your aesthetic
While it's truly a unique beast, at its core, Pinterest is a visual search engine. This, of course, means keeping SEO-optimized titles in mind in your posts, but it's very important that you create a strong visual identity.
In Moyens I/O's Social Trends 2022 report, we looked at how Structube created a series of visually striking 1950s-style ads to promote their furniture. On Pinterest, these photos were tagged by room — a savvy marketing move, given that's exactly how Pinners shop for home decor products. The result was a 2x higher return on their ad spend.
5. Create a catalog
Before you start pinning, there's one more crucial step in setting up your Pinterest store: creating a catalog. This process requires a spreadsheet containing key information which is then used to generate product pins and create a catalog on Pinterest.
The product spreadsheet has seven requirements: a unique ID, title, description, product URL, image URL, price, and availability. Pinterest has made a sample spreadsheet available here.
You also need to host your data somewhere. To submit to Pinterest, you must provide a link to your CSV which will always be available to them. It can be hosted via an FTP/SFTP server or via an HTTP/HTTPS download link, but it cannot be password protected. Once you submit this link to Pinterest, your products will be available as Product Pins.
Pinterest refreshes your data source once every 24 hours, so you should be able to add products to the spreadsheet and have them automatically appear in your Pinterest store without too much work. The company also claims that it can process up to 20 million products per account, so unless you're running the biggest store to ever exist on earth, you should be able to build a full product list.
6. Use Rich Pins
A product spreadsheet is a fantastic way to keep your Pinterest up to date, but there's another way to access many special features on the app. If you have claimed your website as mentioned in step 3, there are many more features available to you.
For example, you can generate Rich Pins, which use your site's metadata to create standalone Pins ready to be discovered in search.
To get Rich Pins, you will need to apply for them. Next, Pinterest will analyze your site's metadata to make sure it's syncing properly. Find more information about Rich Pin types and the setup process here.
Once approved, Rich Pins will be readily available whenever you tap Create New Pin .
7. Take marketing steps
You know your brand and you know exactly what you want to do with it. Now is the time to bring your marketing acumen to Pinterest boards.
Has a celebrity been photographed wearing your clothes? Or has an influencer used one of your home decor products in their photos? Go on a tagging spree and pin your products. Plus, you can get a lot of mileage by tagging your items on Shop the Look posts.
Pinterest also reports that brands that tag details like free shipping or product reviews have seen double payouts, so it doesn't hurt to tweak your feed with those full details as well.
As cliché as it sounds, the most important technique is to have fun with it. You want to be a brand with a Pinterest account, not a brand that spammed the site with products. Make sure to pin relevant and engaging content that isn't a product as often as you do. This way you can engage with the community organically while generating sales.
Save time by managing your presence on Pinterest with Moyens I/O. From a single dashboard, you can compose, schedule, and post pins, create new boards, pin to multiple boards at once, and run all your other social media profiles. Try it for free today.
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