Pinterest for Product-Based Businesses: Why It Might Be Your New Favourite Platform
I've talked a lot about how service businesses can use Pinterest, but there's another type of business that has an amazing opportunity on the platform: businesses that sell products.
In fact, if you have an online shop and good product photography, you already have two of the things that can make getting started on Pinterest considerably easier.
Pinterest describes itself as a place where people discover, plan and shop, and says the number one reason people use the platform is to find new products and brands.
That last bit is important.
People don't have to know your business exists before they find you
One of the things I like most about Pinterest for business is that discovery isn't dependent on someone already knowing or following you. Someone might search for small living room ideas, gifts for a new mum, summer wedding guest outfit, silver jewellery, home office ideas or natural skincare for dry skin. They're not necessarily searching for a particular business; they're looking for an idea, a solution or a product that fits what they have in mind.
According to Pinterest, 96% of its top searches are unbranded.
That means people aren't necessarily typing the names of businesses or brands they already know into the search bar. For a smaller product business competing against much bigger and better-known brands, that's worth paying attention to. Your potential customer doesn't have to know your name before your product has an opportunity to appear in front of them.
Pinterest sits somewhere between inspiration and shopping
Think about the way you might discover a product on Instagram. Perhaps a business appears in your feed, an influencer mentions something, or an ad catches your attention while you're scrolling. Pinterest works differently because people often arrive with some degree of intent. They might not know exactly what they want yet, but they're actively looking for ideas and starting to make decisions.
Someone planning a bedroom makeover might be months away from buying a lamp when they first start searching, while someone planning a wedding might save jewellery, stationery, shoes, flowers and gifts long before they're ready to order any of them.
For a product business, that creates an opportunity to be discovered much earlier in the buying process. Rather than waiting until someone types the exact product into Google, your products can appear while they're still working out what they like, what they need and what they might eventually buy. Because Pins can lead directly back to your website, there's a clear path from that initial discovery through to learning more about the product and, potentially, buying it.
You don't need to endlessly Pin product photos
This is where Pinterest gets much more interesting for product businesses. Having plenty of good product photography is useful, but that doesn't mean your Pinterest account needs to become an endless catalogue of product, product, product.
Let's say you sell jewellery. Of course you can create Pins featuring individual products, but the same jewellery could also appear in content around wedding guest accessories, bridesmaid gifts, Mother's Day, capsule wardrobes, minimalist jewellery, birthday gifts or what jewellery to wear with a particular outfit or neckline.
The same applies to homewares. A blue ceramic vase doesn't have to exist on Pinterest only as Blue Ceramic Vase – $89. It could appear in content about living room styling, styling open shelves, blue and white interiors, housewarming gifts or simple ways to update your home for spring.
If you sell skincare, clothing, stationery, children's products, food, furniture, art, gifts or almost any other visually interesting product, there are usually multiple ways to approach the same item. Instead of simply advertising the product, you're creating different opportunities for someone to discover it through the things they're already searching for.
The content you've already created can do more
This is another reason Pinterest can be such a good fit for an established product business. Chances are, you already have quite a lot to work with: product photography, lifestyle images, product descriptions, collections, customer questions, seasonal promotions, gift guides, blog posts, videos and social media content.
Getting started on Pinterest doesn't necessarily mean creating an entirely new content machine. A single product can become several Pins using different photographs, keywords and search angles. A useful blog post might generate several more. A video you've already created for Instagram may be suitable for Pinterest too, rather than disappearing into your archive after its initial run on social media.
It becomes less about finding yet another platform you have to constantly feed and more about making better use of the content you've already invested time and money in creating.
Pinterest also has tools specifically for product businesses
For businesses with an online shop, Pinterest goes beyond standard Pins. Businesses can connect or upload their product catalogue, allowing Pinterest to create Product Pins containing information such as pricing and availability. Pinterest also supports ecommerce integrations including Shopify and WooCommerce, so businesses with an existing online store don't necessarily need to manually add every individual product.
Shopping is also integrated into the wider Pinterest experience rather than existing only in a separate shopping area. That's particularly relevant when you consider why someone might be using Pinterest in the first place. They could be planning an outfit, redecorating a room, organising a wedding, putting together Christmas ideas or looking for a gift, and discovering products is a natural part of that process.
For a product business, the goal isn't necessarily to interrupt someone with an advertisement. Your products can become part of the ideas they're already exploring.
Seasonal businesses have another interesting opportunity
Pinterest users tend to plan ahead, which is particularly useful if your products are connected to Christmas, weddings, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, birthdays, travel, seasons or other events people prepare for in advance.
The timing is quite different from the last-minute promotional approach we're used to seeing on social media. If you're waiting until December to start putting your Christmas products onto Pinterest, for example, you've missed a significant part of the period when people were researching, saving ideas and deciding what they wanted.
That means Pinterest content needs to be planned with future searches in mind. If you know what your customers will be thinking about in two or three months, you can start creating and publishing relevant content well before the buying period peaks.
Pinterest's own trends data can be useful here too. The platform publishes information based on the searches and content people are engaging with, which can give product businesses an insight into emerging interests, the language people are using and what they may be looking for next.
Pinterest won't be right for every product business
As with any marketing platform, having products to sell doesn't automatically mean you should be on Pinterest. It depends on what you sell, who buys it, whether people are searching for your products or for ideas related to them, what content you have available and what you're trying to achieve.
There also needs to be somewhere worthwhile for Pinterest traffic to go. If your website is difficult to navigate, your product pages aren't doing their job or buying from you online is unnecessarily complicated, sending more people to the website isn't going to solve those problems. Pinterest needs to work as part of your wider online presence rather than being expected to compensate for everything else.
But if you sell products online and Pinterest hasn't been part of your marketing so far, I do think it's worth asking whether you've overlooked an opportunity. Particularly if you're already creating beautiful product imagery, videos and useful content that gets posted to social media once, has its moment, and is then largely forgotten.
That content could be doing considerably more work for your business.
Could Pinterest work for your product business?
That's exactly the kind of question I help businesses answer. My Pinterest work starts with understanding your business, your customers, the content you already have and what people are actually searching for. From there, we can work out whether Pinterest makes sense for you and what using it strategically could look like.
And if it does, we can get it underway.
Ready to put your products on Pinterest?
If you've been reading this thinking Pinterest could make sense for your business, but you don't particularly want to figure out the strategy, setup and content yourself, Pinterest Launch is designed for exactly that.
I'll develop the strategy around your business, products and customers, set up and optimise your Pinterest presence, create your branded Pin templates and turn the content you already have into your first 30 Pins.
You'll finish with Pinterest properly underway, rather than another marketing idea sitting on the list.