Introduction to Pinterest for Digital Marketing

Ask most business owners, both online and local, and they’ll say there are two main sources of traffic sent to their business. One is organic traffic from Google and other search engines. The other is Pinterest traffic. But why would Pinterest send traffic to your website? And how does it end up being one of the two top traffic sources for so many businesses? Let’s dive into a beginner’s guide to using Pinterest for digital marketing and explain.

What is Pinterest?

The first thing to understand about Pinterest is that it isn’t a social media site. It’s a visual search engine. While it does have some social features to it, it is primarily a search and discovery platform. It is Google search, but with pictures.

That being said, Pinterest does works best when you can put together enticing images to share. Pinterest was the biggest contributor to my website traffic for my local garden shop. It’s easy to put together pretty pins with flowers and plants. However, I did a search for some trades such as auto repair, electricians, and plumbers – and there were plenty of pins to choose from.

So, for any business with an online presence and who can create some kind of graphics for their content, Pinterest is a must-have part of the marketing arsenal. Unlike social media, which doesn’t really like to send people off the platform, Pinterest is all about providing users with information that they follow through to the website to explore.

How does Pinterest send traffic to your website?

The idea is that businesses pin images that relate to their content, products, and services. They use keywords in the descriptions they add to those pins, and when someone searches the relevant term that pin appears.

Let’s say I’m looking for a new cocktail recipe to use my tasty gin with. I might search for ‘gin cocktails’ or ‘drinks or gin’ or even a specific gin cocktail. If you have a recipe on your blog that is for a gin cocktail and you’ve pinned an image of it, then your recipe could appear in my search.

Getting the click

Appearing in search is one of the main ways you drive traffic to your website. But you need to compel me to click on your recipe over the others that appear on the screen. That’s where a few factors come together:

• The Pin Image – in this case, a photo of the cocktail that looks tasty, or maybe a shot of the finished drink with ingredients scattered around it.
• The Headline – the words on the pin that tell me what the cocktail is and pique my interest.
• The Description – the part that tells me more about the drink and prompts me to click the image with a call to action to visit the website.

Strategy and tactics

Now there’s a bit more to using Pinterest for digital marketing than just popping up a nice image with a headline, a good description, and expecting hundreds of people to click. But they might!

Strategy and tactics are the key things to understand. Strategy is the overall why you are using Pinterest and what you want to achieve with it. Tactics are the things you will do to drive that traffic and get in front of your audience.

Building for success

Pinterest is a great platform to market almost any type of online business. It can be amazing if you create content, and also if you have products. Even service-based businesses can find they can drive traffic to their websites from it. But, you do need to learn the basics so you can make the most of it.