How to Improve Your Marketing Results on Pinterest – and Metrics to Track

Pinterest has gained marketers’ attention. Within the past year, the image-based network has rolled out new offerings such as search-based ads, upgraded promoted videos with autoplay, and a Lens app that identifies objects with a camera and locates similar images on the network.

Many brands find Pinterest especially valuable since users express strong purchase intent. They may start searching up to three months before a purchase.

“We know that it is a planning platform, and there is purchase intent when someone pins something — and that’s gold from a marketer’s perspective,” Jill Sherman, senior vice president of social strategy at DigitasLBi, told Digiday. “We recommend it often.”

Advice for Organic Pinterest Marketing

Pinterest recommends posting compelling Pins, images that are beautiful, helpful and actionable, and then promoting in order to reach your goals. Social media marketing experts also offer these tips.

The first steps. First, verify your website. By taking the time to authenticate your website, Pinterest recognizes your content as more trustworthy material, advises Melissa Megginson, manager of Tailwindapp, in Social Media Today. Next, add Pinterest buttons to your website. This gives your customers the ability to pin your products directly from your website.

Optimize your Pin for search. If you’re uploading images directly to Pinterest, make sure to name your image file based on keywords, complete the image description. Provide details about the content visitors find on the other side of that image, recommends Rebekah Radice, founder of RadiantLA.

Make your images easy to scan, click and repin. Understand your audience. Speak their language and use their diction and vocabulary. Make sure text on images is easy to read and understand. Beware of fancy fonts like handwritten and calligraphy fonts as well as bold and italic wording.

Stay on brand. Determine what colors, fonts, graphic style and typefaces to use in your marketing. Then retain that style across all your images.

Integrate Pinterest into your social strategy.  Promote your Pinterest presence on other networks. For instance, add a Pinterest tab app to your Facebook Page with an app like Shortstack or Tabsite. Fans will be able to visit your Pinterest profile and repin content without leaving Facebook.

Pinterest Metrics

Pinterest also now provides marketers key metrics directly on their Pins. Marketers will find a new stats icon on each of their Pins by visiting their Pinterest for Business profile. Only the business can see the data. “Stats like these make it quick and easy to see which Pins are meeting your business goals, so you can create more winning Pins in the future,” Pinterest states in its blog.

Accessible statistics include:

Impressions, the number of times the Pin was displayed on Pinterest. Pins, sometimes viewed for months, have longer live spans that posts on other social media networks, like Facebook and Twitter.

Total engagements, the number of times someone taps on the Pin to get a closer look, clicks through to your website or saves your Pin.

Close-ups, the number of times people tap your Pin to take a closer look. Close-ups indicate people are interested in the image and considering other actions.

Clicks. If driving traffic to your website is your objective, examine clicks to learn how many times people looked at the Pin and clicked through to your website. Pin images with multiple products in them tend to drive traffic because they speak to different tastes and stimulate curiosity.

Saves. Saved Pins indicate compelling content. When someone saves your Pin, their followers can see it too. More saves boost impressions. The longer content stays on Pinterest, the more saves it accumulates. Pins that show products in a realistic setting, like a lamp shown in a living room, inspire people to make similar plans and save your Pin.

A media analytics service such as Glean.info can automatically capture the data and incorporate them into a fully-integrated media measurement dashboard and written report.

Bottom Line: Brands can now easily view metrics on their Pinterest Pins. The analytics offering is one of several new features aimed at increasing marketer and advertiser interest. Many brands may benefit by boosting their Pinterest marketing efforts.