What types of eCommerce businesses should use Pinterest? 

Pinterest is a unique social media platform. It is very visual, it has over 433 million active users globally, 77% of Pinterest audiences are female, and more customers (77%) go on Pinterest to discover a new brand or product, more than on any other social platform out there. That creates a unique opportunity for eCommerce brands to reach wider audiences, influence their purchase decisions, and acquire organic traffic fairly cheaply. 

The top five most popular categories on Pinterest are: 

• Travel
• Health & Wellness
• DIY
• Women's style
• Beauty

So if your eCommerce business is in one of these categories, or even if you sell products that are related to these categories then you should definitely be on Pinterest.

Organic posts vs Pinterest ads

Organic marketing strategies on Pinterest work surprisingly well. Pinterest as a whole receives 52% of its traffic from search engines and that might be a clue to why it does so well organically. Business pages could receive millions of impressions on Pinterest without spending a dollar on an advertising campaign.

However, Pinterest Ads are really powerful as well, especially when you want to reach a specific target audience. Promoted pins actually earn $2 for every $1 spent, which is a pretty high return on investment, all things considered.

There are many different rich pin formats you could use organically - app, article, product, and recipe pins, and a wide range of Pinterest ad types including: 

• Standard pins
• Carousel ads
• Video pins ads
• Shopping pins
• App install pins

What to look for in an eCommerce Pinterest agency

The right experience

Any digital marketing agency you work with should have experience in your niche and a proven track record of working with similar brands. It should know how to create ads for your target audience that get conversions, and how to connect your social media to your email marketing efforts (via retargeting).

The right Pinterest marketing strategies

There are many digital strategies you could try on Pinterest and the right advertising agency should be able to pick the ones that can get you closer to hitting your business goals. 

The best advertising strategies on Pinterest include:

• Repurposing your blog post content into pins
• Posting visual content + short videos
• Retargeting your abandoned cart users
• Retargeting specific segments of your referral traffic
• Running advertising campaigns around holidays

Once you have the right strategy, it all comes down to nailing the process.

The right process

What's the process that the agency you're considering follows? Which person on the team will be your point of contact? How often do they come up with new ideas and create new campaigns? Do they have an internal design team or would you need to have your own designer on staff? 

Analytics and reporting

Last but not least, there's always optimization involved especially when you're running a social media campaign. Ask the agency how they go about analyzing their results, which KPIs they track, and how often they report to you. Also, ask which marketing tools they use and see if you already have some of them in your tech stack.

Questions to ask your eCommerce Pinterest agency before hiring them

• How many happy clients do you have? 
• Do you have expertise in my industry? 
• Do you have experience running advertising campaigns on Pinterest?
• How do you go about creating a keyword strategy for our account?
• Which business metrics do you regularly track?

We have over 600+ marketers and agencies of all sizes and types, from the performance-based, full-service agency to the micro-agency that's focused on one channel. Looking for the right advertising agency to work with? Get started today.