How to successfully promote your products on Pinterest for free with links and an example

Pinterest is an amazing, FREE search engine!

I have shops on ETSY, AMAZON, FOLKSY and REDBUBBLE and post on Pinterest to drive traffic to my website, this in turn links directly to my products in their respective stores.

To successfully promote your products Pinterest wants you to create new, original pins, for you to post regularly for a steady stream of content and for every pin to be clickable by adding a URL (website address) to drive traffic back to your site. Finally, it wants you to organise your pins into boards that have clear and descriptive titles (e.g. "London Themed Gifts").

Before I get into how I do things (skip to below), a bit of background information:

Etsy and Folksy advertise my prints on Pinterest, if I image search my pins Etsy and Folksy will show up directly linking to my products. I ensure all of my designs have different styled mockups in separate stores, if I have the same image boosted by Etsy and Folksy it somehow messes with Pinterest alogorithms and cancels each other out (I think!). I also ensure my descriptions are different for the same reason.

Marketing: there is a basic marketing principle that it takes "7 touches" before action, this means that, generally, customers like to see your product 7 times before purchasing. The more you help your product be seen, the more likely you are to sell.

Tracking: I use google analytics on my website, Folksy and RedBubble. Etsy provide their own stats and from that I see that Pinterest is an amazing driver to my Etsy products - this is why you should use Pinterest it's free marketing.

I also have this blog on the very basics on pinterest pinning.

So, as mentioned above and through much trial and error I've found Pinterest desires original pins, if I share the pin from any of my shops that also advertises it, my pin doesn't perform as it is not "new". If I share a product promotion pin from e.g. RedBubble it does not get good exposure - I'm sure in someway Pinterest knows it is a common mockup and decides not to place the pin very high.

I'm going to use RedBubble as an example as they do not advertise my work on Pinterest currently. I created this pin and it performed well (5.8k impressions in 24 hours). In comparison sharing the promote product images provided by RedBubble performed poorly. I believe the pin performed well as Pinterest sees it as a new design and is therefore happy to put it in front of people. This was my process:

1. I downloaded the promote product image from Redbubble.

2. I used remove.bg free tool to cut out the images.

3. I created a square board and placed my images around a title in the middle in the style of a glossy magazine layout.

4. I added the image to my website blog creating hyperlinks to link to each individual product.

5. I added the square image to my Instagram post (linking in bio directly to my website blog). It didn't actually perform very well, I'm not surprised as my Instagram account is mainly people who want to see my prints.

6. In CANVA I chose a Pinterest "tall" template and added my square image to it, amending it to my colour scheme and preferred font. A tall pin is the most successful pins within Pinterest.

7. Tags - there are many tag generator websites that are free (e.g. keywordseverywhere) but I also have a list of 50 keywords that always apply to my products (depending upon the site), the list is separated out into single words e.g. "London", two words e.g. "English prints" and three words "Expat Leaving Gifts", it helps with hashtags in Instagram too to have a list. For instance I recently had a free Etsy Optimisation call and they said to avoid single word tags e.g. "Amsterdam" should be changed to "Amsterdam print" but single word tags e.g. "seaside" works well on Folksy and is suggested as a tag in their Clubhouse. Try to think about your unique selling points "USP" (USP blog here) and they will also point you in the right direction and can add to your keywords.

8. Finally, I added my tall pin to Pinterest, when you do this it requests a destination website and I inputted the blog link. Everything I read suggests the fewest and most direct links possible as people become bored quickly but I don't want to link directly as I want people to visit QuMoo Design website and I've found that other stores links break.

I hope this helps, it has been a rocky road to get to this point for me!

Queenie

x

FEEDBACK FROM OTHERS:

I recently posted in a group about my findings and feedback from others that I am going to try out:-

1. I should create more boards with different names and hashtags - e.g. "awesome t-shirts to wear" etc; and

2. placeit is a recommended layout site.