3 Reasons Pinterest is Newly Relevant in 2024
Discover 3 key reasons why Pinterest is making a comeback for eCommerce in 2024. Learn why it lost relevance, how it's reinventing itself, and the challenges eCommerce sellers face in navigating this renewed platform. What should you do to grow your presence on the platform for awareness and traffic.
— In This Article —
My Pinterest Experience over the Years
I have always been fascinated by Pinterest and the role it plays in our marketing ecosystem.
In the early years, I loved using it as a consumer, and as a business owner, I used to see traffic and bursts of sales from the platform for my baby products brand.
I even created my very first training on how to use Pinterest for eCommerce sellers (buy the tiny course here). The challenge was it quickly became out of date due to the constant changes happening on the Pinterest interface. I stopped recommending Pinterest as a valid traffic source due to the low quality of traffic and lack of control and transparency in analytics and ads results.
I believe Pinterest lost relevance due to other newer platforms including Instagram and Tiktok having a better user experience. Pinterest as a company seemed lost and didn't have a clear focus, or direction. The platform was full of glitches, traffic quality declined and overall the experience felt junky and unreliable.
Pinterest Reinvented
Then in late 2023 I started to see and hear that Pinterest was again a worthwhile place to consider spending some marketing effort.
First I heard success from the bloggers, who are always early adopters and a reliable source of what's working. They started talking about Pinterest traffic coming back with better-quality visitors. I believe this is due to the money the company has invested in machine learning and AI and a new, clear direction on monetization through partnerships and big brand advertising.
Pinterest has publicly announced a new focus on becoming a Shopping Platform through partnerships with key global players relevant to retailers: Shopify, Amazon and Google.
They are taking shopping seriously and I believe that means it is time for us eCommerce sellers to revisit our Pinterest strategy and put a plan in place to have visibility on the platform.
How to Create your eCommerce Brand Pinterest Strategy
First set your expectations. Pinterest is a long game, anything in SEO takes at least 4-6 months to get any traction. That said, once it does start building the momentum and results can be exponential.
Building up exposure for your brand on Pinterest will take time and be a purely TOF (Top of Funnel) activity but with the current state of audience fragmentation, it is more important than ever for product-based solopreneurs to lean into discover opportunities that are cost-free and have a lasting impact.
Pinterest is one such platform. Don't make it your #1 focus but do put effort into a few key elements.
Here are 5 ways to use Pinterest for maximum results in 2024
1. Create an SEO optimized profile and boards
2. Sync your Shopify catalog through the app (broken links, out of stock product are what caused bad UX in the old Pinterest)
3. Repost your top-performing video reels, lifestyle images of best sellers, and new products
4. Add new content 1-2x per month. The platform rewards new content.
5. Visit Pinterest trends to find how you can align with what users are looking for.
SUCCESS ON PINTEREST
To check on your progress look in 3 places:
#1. Shopify dashboard - are you seeing an increase on your Social Traffic Source: Pinterest
#2. Pinterest analytics - what are your top pins by Impressions (views), Saves (interest), and outbound clicks (traffic)
The first 2 tell us what pinners are interested in, and can help inform trends and what types of visuals to repeat
The outbound link clicks provides traffic and we should then make sure the website experience is optimized for these visits.
#3. Google analytics - How is this traffic behaving on our site. Are we getting a very high bounce rate or are we seeing adds to cart, sales or other purchase intent signals?