Pin to win: 12 tips for a winning Pinterest marketing strategy in 2024

12min read

July 29, 2024

The type of users Pinterest attracts aren’t just ready to buy. They’re ready to spend big, if they see something they like.

More than half of all users consider Pinterest a shopping destination, and users save over 1.5 billion Pins across more than 10 million boards every week, storing ideas for holiday and birthday presents, home renovations, and more.

With its highly visual nature and the ability to create boards for everything from home decor to fashion inspiration, Pinterest is more than just a social network. It’s a shopping-focused search engine that can drive significant traffic and sales for brands—especially those selling premium products.

So, how can you leverage this platform to attract leads, increase conversions, and grow revenue? We chatted with Pinterest product manager Erin Mathews about Pinterest marketing ideas, along with actionable tips and insights for executing your ecommerce brand’s Pinterest strategy.

1. Optimize your Pinterest profile

Your Pinterest profile is the first impression potential followers and customers will have of your brand. Here are a few ways to make sure it’s a good one:

Select a strong profile picture.

Make sure you’ve got a high-resolution, keyword-optimized picture of your brand’s logo as your profile picture. How do you keyword-optimize an image, you ask? Simply include your top keywords in the image’s file name.

Spell and format your business name consistently.

It should appear the same as it does on your other online profiles, like Facebook and TikTok.

Craft a compelling bio that includes relevant keywords.

This helps make it easier for customers (and prospects) to discover your profile. For example, if you’re selling skincare products, you could include keywords like “skincare,” “organic” (if your products are organic), and some examples of popular products, like “sunscreen” and “moisturizer.”

Fill out your profile.

Be as thorough as you can. Add details like links to your website and other business social profiles. Don’t forget to make your profile visible to search engines to increase discoverability. (You’ll find this option in your Privacy Settings.)

Conduct an informal competitive audit.

Check out your competitors’ profiles from time to time and see what they’re doing. This might also spark some Pinterest marketing ideas if you’re stuck on what to write for your bio or what kinds of boards to create later.

2. Strategically plan your boards

Besides your profile, the part of your Pinterest page that most of your followers and prospects will see is your boards section.

There’s no set number of boards you absolutely must have, but you can create 3–5 to start. Organize them in a way that makes sense for your products and is easy for your audience to navigate.

Each board should have a clear theme and include a mix of your own content and relevant re-Pins. Consider seasonal boards or boards for time-bound promotions, as these can direct your audience’s attention and attract more views.

As you’re planning your boards, think about the top keywords and phrases people use to find your brand (or the keywords you want people to use to find your brand). Create boards based on these keywords—the titles of your Pinterest boards will show up in Google search results and lead people to find your boards.

Speaking of keywords…

3. Conduct keyword research

How do you know which keywords to use in your boards and Pins? You can probably think of a few keywords on your own just from knowing the products you sell (“graphic sweatshirts” and “organic soap” are both keyword terms, for example). But if you want to be really thorough, do a little research.

One simple way is to use Pinterest Ads keyword research tool. Just put a search term into the search bar to see suggested keywords (it’ll show you the search volumes, too) and incorporate relevant keywords into your board titles and profile.

As a best practice, you’ll also want to make sure each Pin is keyword-optimized by including one of your keywords or phrases in the Pin’s name, description, hashtag, and image file name. This will increase the chances of your profile and Pins showing up when people search for those terms.

One important thing to remember: when you’re choosing keywords, avoid using your brand or product name as the keyword. 96% of the top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, meaning people are searching for more generic descriptions as opposed to super-specific products or brands.

As an example, it would be better to use “basketball socks” as a keyword instead of “Nike socks.”

4. Stay aware of upcoming trends

Besides keyword research, merchants can also take advantage of several Pinterest resources to understand what trends are around the corner:

Pinterest Predicts: This consumer trends report “comes out once a year, and it’s a really good way to understand upcoming trends for product and marketing,” says Mathews.
Pinterest Business Hub: This resource lets you quickly launch an ad campaign if you have Pins that match trending terms. Mathews provides an example: “Let’s say it’s almost Christmas. If you have content that matches that trending topic, Pinterest will essentially say, ‘Hey, this is a great time to promote those Pins because there are Pinners looking for your content.’”

5. Target audiences that are already interested in your brand

Getting people to your website takes work. But not everyone who comes to your website buys right away.

To stay top of mind for these prospective customers, you can use retargeting to show your ads specifically to people who’ve visited your website before—while they’re browsing Pinterest.

You’ll have to add a bit of code to your website, but it’s pretty straightforward. Just set up the Pinterest tag (which is a piece of code you add to your website) and add the base code across every page on your site.

Then, add the event code to pages where you want to track the actions you care about. For example, an event you might track is when a potential customer added a specific type of product to their cart, but didn’t check out. You could then retarget this person with ads on Pinterest to keep them engaged.

Compared to just running ads to everyone, this is a much more efficient way to reach potential customers, because you know for a fact that these people were already interested enough to check out your website (more later on how the new Klaviyo x Pinterest integration can help with this).

6. Find new customers with help from your current ones

Segmentation lets you run more targeted ads at different groups of existing customers, sure. But if you’ve used lookalike audiences to advertise on Facebook before, then you may know that it helps you reach new potential customers, too.

Pinterest has this lookalike audience feature, too—they just call it an “actalike” audience. This is a group of new consumers who share similar characteristics with a segment of your existing audience—a group of consumers who “act alike.”

For example, you might find that the people who spend the most money on your products are women aged 25–34 who are interested in animals and beauty. Since you know these tend to be your best customers, you could then use this segment to do actalike targeting in Pinterest and find additional women aged 25–34 who are interested in animals and beauty.

(The new Klaviyo x Pinterest integration can help with this, too—more on that later.)

7. Cross-promote on other channels

If your brand has a presence on other digital channels and social media platforms, use these channels to promote your Pinterest account by sharing your Pins on Facebook, X, Instagram, and more.

Even if your brand doesn’t have other social media profiles, you can add Pinterest widgets to your website and marketing emails to drive that traffic to your Pinterest profile.

Don’t forget to add UTM tags at the end of your Pins’ links (both organic and paid). “UTMs help you track where the traffic on your website, for example, is coming from,” says Mathews. “You can do it right in the Pinterest platform—no need to use a different tool.”

UTM tags look something like this: utm_campaign=cyber_monday_sale, and they can help you track everything from the campaign (e.g., a Cyber Monday campaign), to the source (e.g., email). These UTM parameters will help you track every click and understand which Pins your audience is engaging with the most, who is converting the most, and so on.

8. Run multiple ad creatives in one campaign

If you’re running an ad campaign, consider running more than one ad. Running multiple ad creatives as part of your Pinterest marketing strategy has two main benefits: it lets you gather more information by comparing different messaging or visuals to see which ones resonate more with your audience, and it’s also more cost-effective.

Plus, “Pinterest’s ad delivery system will automatically optimize your budget by putting more of your spend toward the better-performing variants, which helps spend your marketing dollars as efficiently as possible,” Mathews explains.

9. Leverage product Pins and catalog ads

If you have a large product catalog, uploading or adding products one by one can be a huge task.

Instead of doing this manually, simply upload your catalog or provide a URL link to it, and Pinterest will instantly upload all your products as product Pins. Then, you can promote those Pins across Pinterest as catalog ads.

Product Pins are a special type of Pin formatted with a product title, description, pricing, and availability information—which lets people browsing on Pinterest know they’re shoppable.

“Product Pins and catalog ads are great because they enable you to quickly ingest your entire product catalog for both organic and paid distribution,” Mathews explains. “So that does a lot of the heavy lifting and creates organic value before you even spend any money, and you don’t need to produce separate creatives for the ads.”

“If you run an ecommerce business and have a robust catalog, it just makes sense,” Mathews adds. “You’re improving lower funnel performance, and it’s very scalable.”

10. Schedule Pins for maximum engagement

Like with other social channels, you can schedule Pins ahead of time—up to 30 days in advance, and you can have up to 10 scheduled Pins.

Depending on your industry, audience demographics, and the type of posts you’re tracking, your “best time to post” will vary. Some companies may find that they get more engagement for organic posts on Tuesdays at 7 p.m., while others get more clicks on promoted Pins on the weekends.

Figure out what’s best for you by checking out your analytics dashboard and filtering by time period and content type. You can then use these insights to schedule future Pins during the times when your Pinterest page gets the most action.

11. Review Pinterest analytics and track metrics regularly

If you aren’t using Pinterest Analytics to understand how your content performs, you should be.

“Analytics are an important part of a Pinterest marketing strategy because they help you understand which of your organic Pins are driving conversions, which you can use to create or promote product groups that include those top-performing products,” says Mathews.

Here are just a few examples of the type of data you can see in Pinterest Analytics:

Organic, paid, and earned engagement for all of your Pins
Your most popular Pins and ads
Which topics your audience is interested in based on their behavior on Pinterest

You don’t have to review your analytics every single day (though it won’t hurt), but you should be checking in at least once a week to see which Pins are getting the most engagement and what your audience likes to continuously refine and improve your Pinterest strategy.

12. Elevate your Pinterest strategy with the new Pinterest x Klaviyo integration

If you’re running advertising campaigns on Pinterest (steps 5 and 6 above), Klaviyo’s new Pinterest integration could help you optimize your budget, test out different Pinterest marketing ideas, and maximize impact.

Brands using first-party data for advertising achieve a 2.9x revenue lift and a 1.5x increase in cost savings, according to a study from Think With Google and Boston Consulting Group. And the Pinterest x Klaviyo integration empowers you to use your first-party data from your website and marketing channels—like your email subscriber lists and transaction history—to find actalike audiences and retarget existing customers through Pinterest.

Image shows the Pinterest Audiences setup page in the back end of Klaviyo, which reads, “Let’s get Pinterest Audiences integrated with Klaviyo. Sync lists and segments from Klaviyo to Pinterest Ads. Use the data to improve your ad targeting and performance.” The CTA button below that reads, “Connect to Pinterest Audiences,” with steps following.

Just sync your list and segment data from Klaviyo to Pinterest, and you’ll be able to retarget ads to people who’ve visited your website, then create actalike audiences.

“Like with Klaviyo’s Google Ads integration, you can also exclude people who recently unsubscribed or made a purchase and are unlikely to buy again soon,” says Anthony DelPizzo, senior product marketing manager at Klaviyo. “That ensures you’re showing your best ads to your most qualified customers.”

Image shows the Pinterest Audiences setup page in the back end of Klaviyo, which reads, “You’re almost done! Let’s review your settings. Don’t worry, you can change these settings at any time.” The “audience sync settings” include a dropdown menu to select the Pinterest ad account, a dropdown menu to select the Klaviyo list/segment, and a final dropdown menu to select a Pinterest audience. The CTA button at the bottom of the page reads, “Add connection.”

Start your Pinterest marketing campaign today

Pinterest is an indispensable platform for ecommerce brands, with its uniquely engaged and comparatively wealthy user base, and highly customizable advertising features.

By incorporating Pinterest strategies like optimizing your profile, doing keyword research, and segmenting audiences to spend your advertising dollars more efficiently, you can grow your brand’s online presence and drive more sales.