Regardless of what type of businesses you are in if you can find a way to be successful on Pinterest it is in your best interest to do so because Pinterest is driving more buying traffic to businesses than any other social media platform including Facebook. Shoppers are on Pinterest so you need to be there too, grabbing their attention and sending them to your website.
But here’s the thing … even though many of my online friends are in a similar industry, the variety of biz owners who consume my content and are a part of my Profits On Pinterest course, encompass such a wide variety of industries and business models!
For example, just a sampling of my Profits On Pinterest students include a productivity coach, wedding planner, virtual assistant, makeup designer, and sketch artist.
I don’t ever want to slip into getting stuck in my own little “online bubble,” forgetting about everyone else. So today I’m doing something kind of fun!
I’m taking 7 different businesses, and showing you EXACTLY how I would utilize Pinterest marketing in each.
I’m covering the full range from service-based to product-based, local to online, solopreneur to big brand. Regardless of your industry, I hope you’ll “find” yourself in this list of 7 businesses, and begin to understand how Pinterest is the ideal social media marketing platform, no matter what you do!
#1 – HAIR CARE BUSINESSES
Why is it important to the hair care industry? The biggest reason is the simple fact that Pinterest is dominated by women. 97% of the people who like Pinterest’s Facebook page are women. 20% of all women active on the Internet use Pinterest. That number is only 5% for men. So for a Hair Salon, Spa or even the individual hair stylist these are critical stats. This is where the eyes of your ideal consumer are. People don’t pin or repin something on Pinterest unless there is a desire to have what they’re pinning. It’s basically a visual bucket-list.
Keys to Pinterest success:
- Low Maintenance – Using Pinterest is really easy and requires very minimal maintenance. Where in Facebook and Twitter you’re keeping track of comments and shares; with Pinterest you upload a beautiful image, tag it with proper tags and add a good description. Then just sit back and let the Pinterest Community do it’s thing.
- Connect Visually – Stylists are visual people. What you do is extremely difficult and requires great judgement and excellent execution. Your customers want to walk out feeling great so if you can give them that confidence before they even book an appointment, you’ve already completed one extra step in the sales process.
- Increase Sales – If your salon sells hair care products, you can definitely take advantage of the traffic Pinterest can generate. I’ve explained how to do this near the end of this post. As a side note though; the products you sell shouldn’t be items you can easily find in a drugstore or supermarket. I personally love the Kevin Murphy Night Rider texture paste. It’s something that I either have to find through my stylist or buy online.
- Inspire and Get New Customers – No one really goes onto Pinterest to buy something. They’re generally there to get ideas, and be inspired. The beauty industry has always had the opportunity to inspire but more so now than before. With images of cuts and styles and coloring that you’ve done in the past, you can potentially move a customer to take action when they had no intention of doing it in the first place. When someone is ready to buy a product online, they just go to amazon or eBay. But what if they find a hair color that they feel would look spectacular on them? Could that not inspire them to book an appointment?
#2 – INTERIOR DESIGNER
For interior designers, Pinterest can bring amazing traffic to our sites. You can use that traffic to become more well-know and gain free exposure for our work.
But Pinterest benefits more than only interior designer businesses—it’s great for interior design clients too. It allows us an easy way to share ideas with them and put together design schemes for their projects.
Keys to Pinterest success:
- Everyone in the design world uses a digital binder (or bookmarks for that matter) in order to better catalog their inspiration. Pinterest helps any eager interior design prodigy to create a streamlined, digital version of their files. That’s one way of using social bookmarking websites – after all, these virtual boards can help you as a business better show off your tools of the trade and finally help everyone keep track of your ideas and developments.
- Another advantage of using Pinterest is browsing and repining – this basically creates engagement with digital tastemakers and if you start making waves you’ll soon find that clients start emailing or calling you out of nowhere. This is the part where you lead prospects to your websites and you can always point back to your website for viewers to learn more about who you are and how they can get in touch with you.
- Pinterest is useful if you own an interior design business and you want to create a visual portfolio of whatever you might have in stock. Pictures of installations or rooms/environments you recently worked on are a great way to keep your audience engaged.
- The SEO part of your business is nothing to neglect as we all know – backlinks are easily created with a platform like Pinterest, and having price tags for some of your most interesting designs is certainly one way to help people figure out your financial range. Sharing your pins on social media websites such as your Facebook page or your business’ Twitter account can also make a difference in terms of social media rankings.
Just like anything worth doing in business, you can’t just throw together a Pinterest account and hope that it magically drives traffic for you. It takes an intentional strategy and some advance planning to make Pinterest work. If you’re intrigued and want to know more, be sure to sign up for my FREE 5 Day POWER OF PINTEREST E-Course. It’s the ultimate guide to getting traffic and paying clients from Pinterest!
#3 – REAL ESTATE AGENT
A real estate agent needs to attract a local audience, and showcase their knowledge of their hometown. They’ll want a Pinterest page with a strong group of board topics that is of interest to potential home buyers in their city.
Keys to Pinterest success:
- Boards based on their local city that would be of interest to someone moving there. For example: Atlanta restaurants, Atlanta schools, Atlanta festivals, Atlanta day trips, Atlanta for kids, etc.
- A regularly updated board of homes currently offered for sale.
- Informative pins with text overlays, that link to blog articles that showcase the agent’s local knowledge, and home buying knowledge.
- For example:The 10 questions you must ask yourself before buying a home, Atlanta’s top 5 dog parks, 5 key characteristics to look for in your real estate agent, 7 best date night restaurants in Atlanta. And of course they’ll want to include content upgrades in their blog posts to offer in exchange for an email address. Start building that email list!
#4 – VIRTUAL ASSISTANT
As a virtual assistant, it’s likely that you’re going to achieve the best results by immersing yourself in one specific industry, and catering to business owners in that industry. Therefore it’s important that your Pinterest account showcases the type of information that biz owners in that industry would be attracted to, as well as your skills as a virtual assistant.
Keys to Pinterest success:
- If your clients are open to you sharing openly that you work with them, have aboard that showcases all of your clients and their work that you help to produce. Social proof is always a plus.
- Create boards based around your skill sets. That could mean you’re including boards on graphic design, email management skills, providing an excellent customer service experience, project management programs, etc. These boards should also include your own pins, and links to blog posts that you have written on these topics, showcasing your knowledge and experience.
- Create boards and pin content related to the industry that you are targeting. So dependent on your ideal clients, you might focus on travel/hospitality, fitness/health, blogger/entrepreneur, etc.
#5 – ONLINE CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES SHOP
When you’re marketing clothing and accessories businesses to an online audience, often your goal is the direct sale of the product (especially when it’s a lower or moderately priced item), rather than adding the person to your email list. So your Pinterest strategy is a bit different when you’re focused on the direct sale of your items.
Keys to Pinterest success:
- When creating product pins,stunning photography for your pin images is of utmost importance. It should be bright, fresh, sharp, and with little distracting in the background.
- You’ll want to createsome boards that solely showcase your shop’s products. Perhaps, a “top sellers” board, a season specific board, or other categories that contain only products that you offer.
- You’ll also want general category boards that showcase not only your products, but others’ too, that fit into that category. For example, if candles are one of your offerings, you’ll have a board to which you pin your own candles mixed in with others’ (still always looking for pins with bright and fresh photography).
- Even as a product seller, it’s important to utilize your blog in conjunction with Pinterest How-to, step-by-step, and instructional content is some of the most popular on Pinterest. You’ll want to consider including blog posts such as: The 5 top accessories to update your wardrobe for spring; How to create a complete capsule wardrobe for Moms; 10 complete outfits perfect for Christmas.
- Throughout these blog posts you’ll highlight the products that you offer, and give opportunities to purchase. Your pin on Pinterest will include a text overlay that draws attention to the informative nature of your article, rather than directly promoting your products.
#6 – FITNESS TRAINING
A fitness trainer will likely be interested in attracting a local audience for personal training sessions. However they may also offer workout plans, videos, or health-related products that can be purchased by anyone online. So this industry requires both a local and online audience approach.
Keys to Pinterest success:
- Includelocal based boards that revolve around your industry. For example: Chicago Parks, Chicago Greenways and Trails, Chicago Healthy Restaurants, etc.
- Create boards catering towards keywords that people would most likely search for on Pinterest when searching for fitness information. For example: abs workout, bikini body workout, 10 minute fitness routine, etc.
- Create full fitness routines that can be showcased on pins that give Pinterest viewers a sneak peak of each move.
- Consider including pins that link to short workout videos.
- Add boards that have to do with related topics: Healthy Eating, Paleo Diet, etc.
#7 – EVENT PLANNER
As an event planner, you certainly have to be creative and organized – two traits that clearly align with Pinterest’s. There’s much more that an account on this social media site can do for you, though.
Keys to Pinterest success:
- Find Your Inspiration. As previously mentioned, you’ve got to be creative to be an event planner. There’s nothing wrong with using others’ party ideas to jog your own. For example, let’s say that your client is a bride who wants to have a country-chic wedding. It’s simple to type these two words into your Pinterest search bar and peruse what others have done with a similar theme. You can take it one step further and pin flowers, table settings, reception decor and bridesmaids’ dresses to separate boards that you can review with your client to get a better idea of her vision.
- Organize Your Thoughts. Similar to the above tip, this one is very similar to the traditional use of Pinterest: you can use your boards to organize your event-planning ideas. This will make you more efficient in the workplace, something that clients who foot the bill will certainly appreciate.
- Promote Your Event. If you’re planning a for-profit event, Pinterest is a great way to build hype. One way to do so is to share your inspiration boards with followers on other social media sites so that they’ll have an idea of how snazzy your party is going to be. Or, you can use your boards to show off what you’ve done with a particular venue in the past so that potential event-goers will want to come and see what you come up with this time.
- Sell Yourself. You can use your Pinterest boards to sell your skills, drive traffic to your website and, potentially, increase your number of clients. First of all, your main Pinterest page that shows all of your boards should include a bit of information about your business, as well as your contact information. You should also link the photos that you pin from your own events directly to your site so that when viewers click them they will be sent to your company’s site. This way, they’ll be able to easily learn about the brains behind the operation — and be able to contact you should they require your services.
Is your biz in a different industry that I didn’t cover, and you’re a little lost about how to apply Pinterest marketing for it? Tell me about it in the comments below! I’ll respond with my top tip or two specific to you business industry. Come on, try to stump me! 🙂
If you’re ready to really leverage your Pinterest presence for your business and blog, you can get your step-by-step profitable Pinterest formula by joining Profits On Pinterest. It walks you through the exact action steps you need to take, to turn Pinterest into a client conversion machine!
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