[Affiliate disclaimer: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. BUT THESE ARE ALL PRODUCTS I RECOMMEND AND USE MYSELF.]
‘Tis the season for lots of sales!
The holidays are fast approaching and the number one thing at the top of everyone’s mind is getting sales. Ideally, you’ve spent the first part of the year building your customer base. You’ve started working on your social media following and you’ve built an email list.
But, what if this is your first holiday season?
Or, what if you just don’t have much of a following yet?
What can you do to drive traffic and get sales during the busiest shopping season of the year?
If someone said to me…”You can only choose one marketing strategy for this upcoming holiday season and it’s the only way you can reach customers this year”, I know exactly what I would do.
Without hesitation, my go-to strategy would be posting my links on Pinterest. If you only do one thing for marketing this holiday season, Pinterest is where it’s at.
Now, you do have to keep in mind that Pinterest is not a social media platform. It is a search engine. But, it’s a great tool for getting eyes on your product.
Pinterest Demographics
Not quite sold on the Pinterest idea?
Let’s talk about the Pinterest user demographics:
•250 million people a month use Pinterest
•34% of Americans aged 18-49 use Pinterest
•39% of households with an annual income of $75,000 or more use Pinterest
•59% of millennials have discovered new items for purchase through a Pinterest search
Pinterest is a unique tool that allows you to reach a highly concentrated demographic who is interested in purchasing or testing new products (like yours).
Design Your Pins
One of the most important things to keep in mind is that users are searching for products and using boards to plan or design life events. They are also creating a virtual life when they add pins to their boards. This means that you want to create pins that are visually appealing and compel the user to click that ‘pin’ button.
This part takes a little extra work. You don’t want to just click pin from your cover photo on Etsy or your website. Pinterest users tend to prefer lifestyle type photos or what is called a long-pin. Things like trend boards or gift guides also do really well.
This is an example of a stylized long-pin:
Personally, I like to use Canva to create visually appealing pins.
You just select the Pinterest design option. Then, drag and drop your photos into the layout you selected. Easy-peasy. No Photoshop or graphic design skills needed.
Scheduling Pins
Once you’ve designed your pins, how often should you post?
I aim for 20 to 30 pins per day. This does not consist of all my own content. I try to mix it up so that 50% of the pins are my products and the remaining 50% are pins that my target audience would find interesting.
Just like with anything, you don’t want it to be 100% sales all the time. In fact, if you only post content from your Etsy shop or website and you post too frequently, you may get flagged as a spam account by Pinterest. So, be sure to mix it up. This is where Tailwind Tribes come in handy.
Tailwind Tribes
Tribes are pin exchange groups. Tailwind allows you to connect with other Pinterest users in your niche via Tribes. When you join a Tribe, you can extend your reach by having other Pinterest users re-pin your items for you. You also have more content for your feed by pinning their content in exchange.
Use A Pinning Scheduler
Tailwind is my favorite automation tool for Pinterest. For about $10 month, you really can’t beat the amount of time it saves. It’s also incredibly user friendly.
I see other people say that they schedule all of their pins one month at a time. This method doesn’t work for me. Doing that much at once would take me five or six hours. This is especially true because I like to create new photos for my pins on a regular basis.
Honestly, I just don’t have the patience or the attention span to focus on pins for that long. So, rather than spend several hours at once, I take about an hour to plan for a week at a time. This is just more manageable for me.
One benefit of using Tailwind is that it allows you to choose your own time slots throughout the day or you can let it optimize the post times for you. So, you can just add the pin to your queue and let Tailwind do the rest of the work.
( Bonus: If you have a Twitter account, you can also select to have Tailwind tweet the photos and captions for you as well. Automation is amazing.)
Manual Pinning
Rumor has it that Pinterest gives preference to accounts that also manually pin. To make sure that Pinterest still sees your account as active, try to log in and pin a few things from your masterfeed. Don’t spend a ton of time on this. Pinning 3-4 things while the coffee is brewing in the morning is plenty.
Search Engine Optimization
Oh, that dreaded SEO. Before starting a handmade business, I had never heard of search engine optimization. Now, it is the bane of my existence. No matter where you are posting online, you can’t escape search engine optimization.
When posting on Pinterest, it’s important to include keywords to help potential customers find your pins when they are searching within the toolbar. This doesn’t mean keyword stuffing. Write the description in a way that is easy for the user to read.
Get Holiday Traffic Fast
If you are strapped for time and looking for a way to get your handmade products in front of as many customers as possible this holiday season, I highly recommend that you start working on your Pinterest strategy immediately. Tailwind is a great tool for streamlining the process so that you can focus on creating rather than posting.
Concentrate on designing visually appealing pins and sharing content that is relevant to your target audience and you will be driving traffic to your shop in no time.
Try out these tips and let me know how they work for you in The Sassy Creative Business Besties Facebook Group!