How to Sell on Pinterest: 10 Actionable Strategies for Brands

Pinterest is a game-changer for ecommerce businesses. With 89% of pinners using the platform to make purchasing decisions and 320 million monthly active users, your next sale is only one re-pin away.

But if you feel like you don’t know how to sell on Pinterest, the good news is it’s easier than you think.

You don’t need:

• Thousands of monthly website visitors.
• Millions of followers.
• And a healthy advertising budget? It’s optional.

In this post, you’ll learn why Pinterest is one of the best social media platforms for sales, as well as 10 actionable strategies to sell on Pinterest. Let’s dive in!

Why Pinterest Is Important for Social Selling

Pinterest is no longer a virtual scrapbook. It’s a powerful visual search engine helping users decide what to buy, and it’s one of the best platforms for driving brand awareness, clicks to your sales pages, and sales.
In fact, Pinterest’s Seasonal Insights report found that:

• 55% of Pinterest users log on to specifically look for products.
• 83% of weekly Pinterest users make a purchase based on the content they’ve seen. 
• 48% of Pinners log on to the site just to shop.

Additionally, a survey looking at how US users interacted with various social media platforms found that 47% of people used Pinterest to shop or find products. That was 4x higher than Instagram and 3x higher than Facebook.

So if your ideal customer is hanging out on Pinterest and you’re not – you’re leaving money on the table.

10 Strategies to Sell on Pinterest

Don’t have a Pinterest account for your ecommerce business? Or is it a forgotten part of your social media strategy? There’s no better time to dust off the cobwebs and invest.

Here are 10 actionable strategies for driving more sales with Pinterest:

Create visually-appealing pins

Pinterest is a visual search engine. If you want to start making money from the platform, you need to invest time and effort in creating attention-grabbing pins.

When a user is mindlessly scrolling, your pin needs to stop them in their tracks and entice them to click-through to your site.

Here are some tips on how to create click-worthy pins:

• Use vertical images. It takes up more space on the feed, giving you more time to make an impression, and the Pinterest algorithm will reward you. Use a 2:3 aspect ratio and aim for the highest quality to avoid pixelation in your images.
• Use a text overlay. Users will see your pin before the title or description. Use your visual real estate to tell people what your Pin is all about.
• Use bold, easy-to-read fonts. Script fonts are hard to read. Make it as easy as possible for users to understand your pin.
• Use complementary, bold colors. The more visually appealing your pin, the better! You can find complementary color palettes with the Adobe Color wheel.
• Include your brand name. Add your logo and brand name at the bottom of your pins. It adds to brand awareness and recognition on the platform.
• Create pin templates. Don’t have a budget for a designer? Use the Pinterest templates on Canva to hit your pin design out of the ballpark every single time.

Leverage Pinterest SEO

You can’t rely solely on beautiful images to get noticed on Pinterest. Effective SEO plays a massive part in getting your pin to the top of search results.

The trick to mastering Pinterest SEO is to use keywords specific to your brand and products, and phrases your target audience is actively searching for.

For example, if your ecommerce store specializes in selling DIY home decor for travelers, you might want to include keywords like “Travel decor ideas” and “Travel decor and accessories”.

Where to add your keywords:

• Pin title: It’s one of the most critical places for Pinterest SEO. Use several keyword variations to rank for multiple search results.
• Pin descriptions: Add your keywords naturally in your pin description. The first 50-60 characters are the most important, as that’s what users will see first before clicking on the More button.
• Hashtags: At the end of your pin description, include 3-5 relevant hashtags.
• Text overlay: The Pinterest algorithm can read images; include your primary keyword as a text overlay to boost the pin’s SEO.

• URL: Your primary keyword should be in your URL. It helps Pinterest see that the pin image, title, description, and URL are relevant to each other.
• Alt text: Adding alt text to your images is something to do on your blog, but it’s an important step for Pinterest because if users pin your image to their board it will automatically pull that text description.

But the SEO doesn’t stop there. You need to tweak your profile to make sure you get found for the keywords related to your brand.

Add keywords to:

• Your display name: Don’t just write your brand name. Add your main keyword and a few variants here to let users know what your account is all about.
• About your profile section: Expand on how your brand can help people by adding more relevant keywords related to what you’re selling.
• Board names and descriptions: Optimizing your boards boosts their discoverability in search results, sends signals to Pinterest about what your account is about, and creates a mindmap of related topics.

Use rich pins

Rich pin is a business account feature that packs a punch. It allows you to add extra information to your pins, like prices and product descriptions.

There are three types of rich pins:

• Product: Pulls up-to-date pricing, availability, and product information from your site.
• Recipe: Adds recipe information such as serving size, cook time, and ingredients.
• Article: Includes the post headline, description, and author with a read more button on mobile.

How to enable rich pins:

• Switch to a Pinterest business account.
• Add the Yoast plugin to your website and turn on the “Add Open Graph” metadata option.
• Validate your pins with the Rich Pin Validator.

Use Pinterest ads and promote your pins

Generate more sales with Pinterest ads. While the feature is only available in select countries, it’s a powerful way to target your audience.

You can create entire campaigns or quick ads for one-off promotions. With Pinterest ads, you can target users around:

• Interests
• Location
• Gender
• Age
• Language
• Keyword phrases

You can take your ads a step further and use the audience targeting feature to reach more specific groups of people like:

• Customer lists.
• Website visitors.
• People who have engaged with your pins.
• People who have engaged with similar content.

Tip: Tweak your Pinterest Ads by A/B testing different pin designs, titles, descriptions, keywords, and audiences to find what combination gives you the highest ROI.

Organize your pins with catalogs

Catalogs are a newer Pinterest feature for brands who sell products. Think of it as a traditional brochure, but clickable!

You can upload your entire catalog to the site and turn your products into dynamic shoppable pins.

To set it up, you’ll need:

• A Pinterest Business account.
• A claimed website URL on Pinterest.
• A data source (a file with a list of products and attributes).
• A website that meets the Merchant Guidelines.

While the setup is a bit technical, your Pinterest catalog automatically updates when you update your website’s product feed once it’s up and running.

Get creative with your pins

With 2 billion searches on Pinterest every month, you need to make sure you’re standing out on the platform.

Instead of only making stock-standard photo pins, add some spice to your Pinterest content mix. Think about how you can add value for your audience and stand out from your competitors.

You can do this by:

• Creating video tutorials showing users how to use your product.
• Creating shareable infographics.
• Taking advantage of different features like stories and video pins.
• Repurposing content from other platforms (like Instagram and TikTok) and uploading it to the platform.

For example, Nordace created a video pin and promoted it as a top search result for “how to pack a carry on bag.” It gives the brand a unique way to show off its products in action, helping users visualize how the bag will fit into their lifestyle.

Leverage affiliate marketing on Pinterest

Don’t have a product-based business? You can still make money on Pinterest through affiliate marketing.

It’s the perfect option for influencers who want to monetize their audience and make some money on the side.

Here’s how to set up affiliate marketing on Pinterest:

1. Find a product you want to recommend to your followers.
2. Create a new pin and add your affiliate link in the URL section. Fill in your pin headline and description.
3. You can’t add pictures from Amazon on Pinterest. Instead, use stock photos from sites like Unsplash or Pexels.
4. Hit publish!

Tip: For affiliate networks like Amazon Associates, always make sure that you’re allowed to use those links on Pinterest. In the EU, it is allowed, but in the US, the rules are a bit unclear.

Connect through user-generated content

Are your followers on Instagram tagging you in posts with your product? Repurpose that UGC and upload it onto Pinterest.

You can take it one step further and use Shop the Look pins. This feature lets you tag multiple products in a photo (similar to Instagram shoppable posts).

It’s a double-whammy of social proof and helping people buy from your shop faster than ever before. Another option is to make specific community members contributors to your Pinterest boards or creating a group board for you and similar content creators in your niche.

Engage with your followers

Just like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you need to be social to:

• Grow your audience.
• Increase engagement.
• Create a community.

While people don’t come onto Pinterest to comment and interact with users as much as other platforms, there are still a few simple things you can do to increase interactions, including:

• Reply and heart comments on your pins.
• Follow people in your target audience.
• Follow other brands and influencers in your niche.
• Re-pin content from your target audience.
• Re-pin content your audience will find useful.

On the other hand, Pinterest scrutinizes how your followers respond to your content. Their engagement will determine how fast and far to distribute your pin.

So how can you avoid creating pins that go nowhere?

• Use Tailwind Communities to get your pins seen and re-pinned by other users in your niche.
• Find Pinterest engagement groups on Facebook for your niche.
• Find the best times to post on Pinterest.
• Analyze your content to see which pins are getting the most re-pins and clicks, and look for the common threads that make them so enticing and shareable.

Plan out your Pinterest content

The secret sauce for getting results on Pinterest is to have a plan. Use a content calendar to make sure you’re creating new pins regularly – the algorithm loves this!

Socialbakers has a robust publishing tool for all of your channels. Since holiday content is especially big on Pinterest, it also helps by letting you trigger to start re-sharing your Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Easter content.

It’s a simple tactic that can yield significant results. According to Pinterest, searches around holidays and seasons increase, and promoted pins that align with these life events see a 22% increase in sales.

Tip: Start sharing your seasonal content 30-45 days in advance for the best results!

The Takeaway

With visual search on the rise, and the sheer amount of users logging on to find stuff to buy, Pinterest is one of the most lucrative social media networks for brands. So if your target audience is using the platform, it’s time to get in on the action and give your brand a competitive edge.

To recap, here’s what you need to do to start making sales on Pinterest:

• Switch to a business account.
• Optimize your pins and profile for search.
• Enable rich pins.
• Upload your catalog.
• Run Pinterest ads and re-target potential customers.
• Create a consistent Pinterest content strategy.

Don’t miss out on all the potential sales that Pinterest can bring. By following these steps, you could see real improvements and create another community with your audience.