If you're like most business owners, you're always looking for ways to drive more traffic to your eCommerce store. And free traffic is the best traffic. One great way to do that is by using Pinterest.

Pinterest can also drive long-term traffic (your pins can live for years), build brand awareness, and find new customers. In this post, I'll share the process you need to take to increase traffic to your store. I'll also give you some tips for getting started. So, if you're ready, let's get started!

Hi! I'm Melissa, and I am a Pinterest marketing strategist for eCommerce and online shops. I help eCommerce businesses amplify their online presence, drive high-quality traffic to their sites, and increase sales by leveraging the power of Pinterest marketing.

Five steps you need to take before you can market your products on Pinterest

Any successful marketing strategy requires a strong foundation. The same is true for Pinterest. If you want to be successful, make sure you take the time to build a solid foundation first. That way, you can market your products effectively on Pinterest.

Step 1: Groundwork

Before driving traffic from Pinterest to your store, you must set up a Pinterest business account correctly and optimize for SEO.

A Pinterest business account differs from a personal account, allowing you to access analytics to see what pins are working. A business account is free, and it is easy to sign up.

Once you enter all your personal information, there are a few things you need to do to finish a setup.

Claim your website
Enable rich pins
Upload your catalog
Craft an SEO name and bio
Create 5 SEO boards with titles and descriptions
Design a banner and board covers

Step 2: Keyword research for SEO

Pinterest SEO is vital and plays a massive role in how users find your profile and pins on the platform. Think of Pinterest as Google for visual searches. Users come to the platform with the intent of finding something specific.

Having relevant keywords in your pin descriptions and boards will ensure your pins appear in potential customer feeds and are found in searches.

Think of how your audience is going to be looking for you. What terms are your potential customers searching for?

Want to find your own keywords for Pinterest SEO? Read this blog to find out where to search for them.

Once you have a list of keywords, sprinkle them in your:

Pinterest profile name
Bio
Board titles
Board descriptions
Pin file name
Pin text
Pin title
Pin description

Step 3: Images

Make sure you have high-quality images for your pins. Pinterest is a visual platform, so having beautiful images is essential. The two types of Pinterest images that product sellers must have are:

Single product image (up close to show the details)
Lifestyle image of the product (product being used or worn in real life)

Portrait-oriented images work best in the feeds, and Pinterest favors images designed in a 2:3 ratio.

Canva is an excellent, free tool for creating stunning pin images. I use Canva to design my blog and clients' pins, banners, and board covers.

A paid version unlocks the excellent features I need in my Pinterest management business. Canva gives you a 30-day trial before committing, so you can see these features in action.

I am not an affiliate, but here is the link to Canva.

If you are strapped for time like most business owners are. You will need to use Canva to change the fonts, colors, and images to fit your brand. I have created 15 free Pinterest templates for your eCommerce products.

Step 4: Schedule

To be successful on Pinterest, you need to be active and consistent.

Before, driving traffic to your products meant scheduling 20-50 pins a day. But Pinterest's best practices now consist of quality over quantity.

I recommend scheduling at least one pin daily, and one idea pin weekly to start your Pinterest marketing strategy. You can use a tool like Tailwind to automate your pinning and help you stay consistent or pin manually from the Pinterest dashboard.

Step 5: Analytics

Finally, you need to analyze your data to see what's working and what's not. If understood, Pinterest has helpful metrics and will help you improve your content strategy.

Pinterest Analytics will show you which of your pins are performing well so you can create more like them. You can view which pins get the most clicks, saves, impressions, etc.

You can also see what time of day and week your pins get the most engagement. This information is vital to understand when you are scheduling your content.

Final Thoughts

Pinterest is an excellent way to drive free traffic to your eCommerce store. Follow these five simple steps, and you'll be on your way to successful product marketing on the platform.

If you need help driving traffic to your eCommerce or online shop, we would love to help! We can help you set up and optimize your business Pinterest account, and we also offer Pinterest marketing for eCommerce, so you won’t have to lift a finger.

You can also sign up for our newsletter (right here), where we often share Pinterest tips, tricks, and of course, awesome freebies. We send emails every Wednesday, mainly focused on Pinterest marketing for online shops and how we can get Pinterest working for you.

Book a FREE discovery call (right here), and we can discuss whether Pinterest marketing would be a good fit for your eCommerce or online shop.