210: How To Market Your Business Using Pinterest With Alisa Meredith

Podcast: Download (Duration: 49:58 — 68.9MB)

Pinterest marketing for ecommerce works because 97% of Pinterest searches are non-branded, which puts a new store on roughly even footing with established brands. Lifestyle images convert to sales at 170% the rate of plain product shots, and most activity on the platform happens through search rather than through followers.

Alisa Meredith is the content marketing manager at Tailwind and specializes in Pinterest advertising. Pinterest is one of my own top social traffic sources despite my having no personal enthusiasm for pinning, which is a position she says most marketers share.

This episode covers the image specs and styling that actually convert, how Pinterest search decides what surfaces, why board organization matters even though nobody browses your profile, the hashtag feed most people ignore, and how to structure promoted pin campaigns around audiences rather than keywords.

Key takeaways

• Lifestyle images convert to sales at 170% the rate of straight product photos.
• Pinterest does not favor faces the way Instagram does, since pinners are picturing themselves rather than looking at you.
• Use 600×900 pixel images. You can go to 600×1500 before the feed starts cutting you off.
• 97% of Pinterest searches are non-branded, which levels the field for small brands.
• Hashtags surface new pins immediately in a purely chronological feed, working only on original pins rather than repins.
• Pin the same image to multiple relevant boards. Pinterest permits it and it teaches the algorithm what your content is about.
• Pinterest’s sales cycle runs at least double Facebook’s, since 93% of pinners are planning purchases months ahead.
• Phrase and exact match keyword targeting converted 60% better than broad match in a head-to-head test of 74 identical ad groups.

What kind of images perform best on Pinterest?

Lifestyle images convert to sales at 170% the rate of plain product photos, so styled photography is where your budget belongs. Straight product shots still serve a purpose for Pinterest’s visual search, which matches photos people take against inventory images.

Alisa’s analogy is staging a house for sale. You remove the family photos and repaint the loud walls so buyers can picture themselves living there.

Pinterest images work the same way. The viewer is planning for their own life rather than admiring yours.

That is why faces underperform on Pinterest even though Instagram rewards them. Fashion pins on Pinterest are frequently cropped at the chin, or the subject is turned away or wearing large sunglasses.

What image size should you use for Pinterest?

Use 600×900 pixels, which is the ratio Pinterest itself recommends. Going larger does not hurt and it is not necessary.

The ceiling before the feed truncates your pin is around 600×1500. Taller images occupy more feed space, which matters most on mobile.

Adding text overlay has become more important as descriptions have receded from the feed. Pinterest used to display rich pin data as a bolded headline with the description underneath, and now often shows the image alone.

If your product is self-evident from the photo, skip the overlay. If it is ambiguous, or if you are running a collage of several items, text gives the browser the context the description used to provide.

Rich pins handle pricing automatically by pulling it from your site, so never bake a price into the image itself.

How should you write Pinterest descriptions?

Write a description that tells a small story while working your keywords in naturally. Pinterest runs its own SEO formula and the description feeds it, so keyword stuffing and bare keyword lists both fail.

Alisa’s reference point is a J. Peterman catalog, which is deliberately narrative. A description like “I made this dinner for my family and even my kids loved it” is the register that performs.

Keywords matter in several other places too. Your profile name, your profile description, your board titles, your image filenames, and the content on your linked page all feed Pinterest’s understanding of what you sell.

Board descriptions are worth filling in and appear to matter least. Half the boards ranking in a keyword search have no description at all.

Do hashtags work on Pinterest?

Hashtags work on Pinterest and function completely separately from the main algorithm, surfacing pins in a purely chronological feed. Pinterest spent years saying hashtags did not work before reversing that position.

The distinction matters. The smart feed weighs pinner quality, pin quality, popularity, and engagement, while the hashtag feed sorts by recency alone.

Two limitations apply. Hashtags only work on original pins you create from a website, not on repins, and the ordering means your visibility decays quickly as newer pins arrive.

The practical use is speed. The smart feed can take a while to pick up new content, and a hashtag gets it surfaced immediately.

How does Pinterest search ranking actually work?

Ranking depends on pin quality, account quality, popularity, and engagement, with no equivalent to backlinks that you can manipulate. Pinterest drips your pins out gradually, watches how people respond, and expands distribution based on that response.

Early engagement therefore matters disproportionately. Tailwind’s smart schedule exists for exactly this reason, timing your pins to when your followers are most likely to be active.

Followers do not determine search ranking. You can receive website clicks with no Pinterest account at all, simply because other people pin your content.

Pinterest also removed the visible repin count from desktop deliberately. They said plainly that they did not want people repinning things merely because those things were already popular, so that good content gets a fair chance to surface.

Should you delete Pinterest pins that do not perform?

Leave underperforming pins alone and spend that time creating new content instead. Alisa has had pins do nothing for three, four, or five months and then take off.

Deleting can actively hurt you. There is no upside to removing something that might still find its audience.

Do product pins or blog post pins perform better?

Blog content consistently outperforms product pins, because 93% of pinners say they use Pinterest to plan purchases and they start months ahead of buying. What they want at that stage is inspiration and usefulness.

That early-funnel position is Pinterest’s structural advantage. You reach people before they have decided what to buy, let alone from whom.

97% of Pinterest searches are non-branded, which is why a new store competes on close to even terms. Nobody is searching for your brand and everybody is searching for what you sell.

What if you do not have a blog for your ecommerce store?

Build a hybrid page that sits between a product page and a blog post. It carries a lifestyle image featuring several products, describes what the combination is good for, and links each item for individual purchase.

Alisa’s example of the simpler version is what Target does. One pin shows two dining room sets and clicks through to a dining room category page.

The hybrid page does not need to be a thousand-word article, because you are not trying to rank on Google. You need a destination where Pinterest traffic finds inspiration and an easy path to buy.

Frame it around an occasion. Spring branches, a baby shower, a particular kind of entertaining gives the page a reason to exist beyond the products in it.

How should you organize Pinterest boards?

Keep board titles and themes specific, because that is how Pinterest learns to categorize your content. Board organization matters for the algorithm rather than for human browsers, since almost nobody browses profiles anymore.

Pin the same image to every relevant board. Pinterest has no duplicate content problem, and one pin across fifteen relevant boards actively teaches the platform what the content is about.

Board sections are useful for your own organization and do nothing for SEO. A general marketing board with sections for social media and blogging is worse than separate specific boards.

Board covers are not worth your time. They change constantly and people are finding you through search rather than through your profile page.

Create at least one board containing only your own content. Most content on Pinterest is repins, so a board of exclusively original material is genuinely unique and tends to perform well.

Should you pin other people’s content?

Pin other people’s content unless you can produce an endless supply of the best material in your category yourself. Pinning high-quality content that people engage with lifts your standing across all your pins.

Pinterest analytics tells you exactly what to pin. The people you reach section shows the other interests of everyone who sees your pins, not just your followers.

Quotes, DIY, and food show up almost universally, and the rest varies. If your audience is interested in motivational quotes and you do not produce those, build a board and fill it with other people’s.

The mechanism is associative. Pinterest learns that people who like your content also like that category, which brings your own pins to more of those people’s attention.

Group boards remain worth joining. When Alisa audits accounts, a group board is usually among the highest performing boards and also usually among the worst, depending entirely on whether that particular board is active and relevant.

How long is the sales cycle on Pinterest?

Expect at least double whatever your Facebook conversion window is. If Facebook sales peak around two weeks, plan for a month or more on Pinterest.

The reason is the planning behavior. People may pin something three months before they are ready to purchase it.

Conversion tracking is available and requires either custom code or a plugin. Once installed, the Pinterest dashboard reports add to cart, signups, and purchases per ad, so you can see which targeting actually produces sales.

How do you structure a promoted pin campaign?

Build one campaign per product with eight or more ad groups, each testing a different targeting method. Starting with a handful of products keeps the test affordable.

A budget-friendly variant is promoting a collage. Six related products in one pin lets you test demand across all six without funding six separate campaigns.

The four audience-based ad groups come first. A website visitor audience, a customer audience from your email list, an engagement audience, and an actalike audience built from whichever of those performs.

Visitor audiences deserve thought rather than a blanket setting. Targeting everyone who visited your site is different from targeting the people who viewed those six specific product pages.

What is a Pinterest engagement audience?

An engagement audience lets you target people who saved a pin linking to your site, even if they have never visited it. That is the most useful cold-traffic mechanic Pinterest offers.

The chain works like this. Someone pins your product page, a friend of theirs saves that pin, and you can now advertise to the friend.

Actalike audiences are Pinterest’s equivalent of lookalikes and work differently from Facebook’s. Pinterest matches on pinning activity and interests rather than on demographics and job titles, and you can build one at a 1% to 10% match.

Audiences under 100,000 people are hard to scale, which is when the actalike becomes necessary.

Should you target interests or keywords on Pinterest?

Use phrase and exact match keywords for conversions, since those reach people at the moment they are actively searching. Alisa tested this directly with two sets of 74 identical ad groups.

Phrase and exact match converted to sales 60% better than broad match. That result follows logically: searchers are looking for what you sell rather than browsing.

Broad match keywords behave unexpectedly. Alisa found her broad match ads appearing in home feeds rather than search results, which means broad match functions as a way to define your own custom interest category rather than as search targeting.

Pinterest also offers roughly 7,000 preset interests, some of them oddly specific. Competition concentrates in a fixed set of categories so they can be expensive, and an unpopular but relevant interest can perform well.

Reach beyond your own audience from the start. About 70% of people who purchase through promoted pins are new customers.

Frequently asked questions

What image size works best on Pinterest?

600×900 pixels is Pinterest’s own recommendation. You can go as tall as 600×1500 before the feed truncates the image.

Do lifestyle photos really outperform product photos on Pinterest?

Yes. Lifestyle images convert to sales at roughly 170% the rate of straight product shots, because pinners are imagining the product in their own lives.

Should you include faces in Pinterest images?

Generally not. Pinterest users are picturing themselves rather than looking at a model, which is why fashion pins are often cropped at the chin.

Do hashtags work on Pinterest?

Yes, in a separate chronological feed sorted by recency. They only work on original pins you create from a website, not on repins.

Can you pin the same image to multiple boards?

Yes, and you should when the boards are genuinely relevant. Pinterest has no duplicate content penalty and it helps the algorithm classify your content.

Do you need Pinterest followers to get traffic?

No. Most activity happens through search, and you can receive clicks with no account at all because other people pin your content.

How long does it take to convert a sale from Pinterest?

At least twice as long as Facebook. Pinners often save something months before they are ready to buy.

What keyword match type works best for promoted pins?

Phrase and exact match, which converted 60% better than broad match in a controlled test. Broad match behaves more like interest targeting and shows up in home feeds rather than search.