5 Tips for Boosting Sales on Pinterest The photo-focused social-media site has eye-popping statistics no online marketer can afford to ignore.
By Ann Smarty Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you are selling anything online while not leveraging Pinterest, you are losing out. Pinterest converts very well. According to Venture Beat, Pinterest generates four times more revenue (per click) than Twitter and 27 percent more per click than Facebook. Moreover, users coming from Pinterest tend to buy more. According to Shopify, Pinterest referrals have the highest average order.
Pinterest is one of the ecommerce-friendliest social media networks out there. Its active userbase is 80 percent women and everyone knows women are the best buyers.
That being said, if you are into ecommerce, you must think of Pinterest as one of your revenue sources. Here are five actionable tips for you.
Related: The 10 Commandments of Using Pinterest for Business (Infographic)
1. Switch to a business account for better analytics
Pinterest offers the most useful analytics I've seen in social media. You can track your boards, popular and trending pins, follower acquisition, etc.
My favorite part, though, is domain stats. If you have a business account and your domain is verified, you'll see all pins from any Pinterest user as well as how many impressions, clicks, repins and likes each pin received. That's one of the best ways to monitor your business activity, catch the trend and support (by likes and repins) any pin that is able to drive sales to your site.
2. Go for product Schema.org
Rich markup allows Pinterest to find the most essential information on your page and show it on the pin page. Rich pins are effective for better conversions. If I see a price underneath the pinned image, I'll know it's for sale. If I click, I am considering buying the item.
Rich pins work well for better traffic, too. According to published data, Target saw a 70 percent increase in visits to its site from Pinterest after creating rich pins for its products.
If you are not using Schema.org for Google rich snippets yet, you may want to start now: It will work for both Google and Pinterest. Here's an easy product Schema.org generator for you to better understand how to implement rich markup on your product pages.
Home Depot is a great example of Schema.org product schema well-executed. Each pin from the domain contains item name and price information.
Related: 11 Advanced Pinterest Tips and Tricks
3. Make sure the image alternative text is descriptive
In most cases, no matter how one pins your product images (a bookmark or an on-page button), by default image alt text is what is going to be used as the pin description.
By controlling what that Pin description contains, you can in some way control what message (and thus intent) is accompanying your product image throughout Pinterest (in all pins and re-pins). Deal Pursue is one of the best examples of how to handle a Pinterest description properly: Each pin contains the product details, detailed deal description and why it's an excellent offer.
Think about all of those people who use Pinterest to bookmark products and deals to create a holiday shopping list: Having a descriptive alt text like that may dramatically increase your referrals and especially conversions.
4. Embrace a more creative visual marketing strategy
Images are not just for fun, any more. Unless you get creative and flexible with your visual strategy, you are losing out in social media big times:
- Create more visually-appealing product pages (to ensure more visitors will want to pin them).
- Brainstorm more ways to add visual content around your brand. Coffee Makers USA and their coffee-related visual quotes are a great example of brand taking memes and images seriously.
- Create original images and get productive with that (here are some free tools for that).
5. Try image hover-over "Pin it" button
Product image hover-over "Pin it" button is the most subtle social media call-to-action you'll see on an ecommerce product page: It's not distracting and will only be visible to those who are interested in your image. That's a very good way to encourage active pinners to bookmark your product to a public Pinterest stream.
The easiest way to to do that is to use "Shareable images" feature by Shareaholic. It's very easy to implement and it's cross-platform-friendly.
Related: Pinterest 101: Marketing Tips From Whole Foods
