If you’ve never engaged with Pinterest for your business before, you’re probably wondering if there’s even any point to start now. After all, it’s just a ‘picture site’, right?
As experts at Pinterest, we have seen the huge scale of traffic and sales that can be driven from this platform, so if the question is ‘is Pinterest still worth it in 2024?’, the answer is a resounding yes, and we’re going to break down exactly why that is.
Before we get into the nitty gritty, once you understand how Pinterest serves its audience, you’re already half way there to understanding its value. Pinterest is a visual search engine, users come here to discover, find and leave decided.
Images are super important, but they are largely keyword driven from descriptions and titles. So, if you have a visual niche, then you could be missing out on thousands of traffic and sales each month, and who wants to leave that on the table?
Is Pinterest Still Worth It In 2024 For Businesses
YES. Pinterest is not only highly relevant in 2024, but the way we search continues to change. Visual based and video based searches are largely being driven by the Gen Z population, and as the saying goes, a picture tells a thousand words.
Pinterest still remains an underrated platform for traffic and sales growth IF a) you largely depend on another platform and just focus on that b) you’ve dabbled in Pinterest before and ‘it never worked’ or C) You just think it won’t work.
But because of this, it remains a great place for advertisers and those who want to grow organic traffic levels. Being a visual search engine, it means your content won’t disappear from users feeds after 24-48 hours, and that content will continue to gain impressions, traffic and sales overtime. Instagram could never.
Let’s look at some of the key reasons as to why it’s still an effective marketing tool in 2024.
You Can Still Win At Gaining Masses of Organic Traffic
With the content changing landscape of search and algorithmic updates, it has become even harder to win at attracting organic traffic.
Over on Pinterest? You can still attract thousands of organic traffic each month with the right strategy over a period of time.
Take our Pinterest case study on an online interiors publication, we 10x their traffic in a 6 month period taking their daily traffic from 100 clicks per day to 1.4k, and their account is still growing. If you employ the correct Pinterest strategy for 2023 and 2024, the possibilities are endless on this platform, and we are experiencing these levels of organic traffic across all of the clients that we work with.
Here are just a few things you can use in your Pinterest strategy to start growing your organic traffic;
- Show up consistently and pin, we recommend pinning 2-10+ fresh pins daily, a brand new account should pin less to begin with until your account becomes more established and your content isn’t identified as being ‘spammy’
- Post consistently about the same topic, don’t start re-pinning other peoples pins, they will do nothing for the growth of your account
- Use keyword research for each pin, and use those keywords in your pin titles and descriptions
- Ensure eye catching, visual imagery is being used, adding a text overlay encourages click through rate. Use vertical imagery only, 1000 x 1500px is best practise, but really, as long as its vertical, then bigger is better as you get more real estate on the feed
Want some more pointers? We share 11 of the best ways to get more organic traffic on Pinterest in one of our other posts!
Shoppable Surfaces (Free)
Nobody does it like Pinterest, and shoppable surfaces is what I often refer to as essentially free Google shopping ads all over Pinterest that will display when the right search intent is there.
In order to appear on thousands are surfaces across Pinterest, you just have to have a verified business account with a valid shopping feed, this is for e-commerce brands only.
Once connected, you have the ability to appear on these surfaces every month. A shoppable surface is when a user finds an image and they tap on the shop icon on the image, they can then locate similar items to those that appear within the image.
For example, the user may love a lamp in a shot of a living room, by simply tapping on it, the Pinterest database will display 1,000s of similar matches which leaves the user happy, and hopefully leads to a purchase. This reiterates the fact that people come to Pinterest to discover, yet leave decided.
Here is an example of how the shoppable surface on Pinterest is delivered to the end user;
Different Paid Advertising Tools
Not too dissimilar to other social media platforms, Pinterest offers a whole plethora of paid advertising tools, and they’re consistently adding to their toolset.
If you have an e-commerce brand, catalogue sales are a great place to start. These work in a similar approach to standard Google shopping ads, but they appear in a users feed, and aren’t directly triggered by exact match searches. They’re great for both brand awareness and driving catalogue sales.
Standard campaign ads rather than focused on a specific products can be brand campaigns. These are generally designed pins that are promoting a category or specific campaign, these are typically best for brand awareness, but you can run retargeting campaigns on these too which are better for conversions.
You will be assigned a Pinterest account manager when you begin running ads so you can seek additional help and learn about the latest advertising tools as you need it.
Highly Effective For Certain Niches
Pinterest is a great marketing tool for businesses, but it won’t work for every niche or industry if your audience isn’t already actively on there. But if you are within one of the high performing niches on Pinterest, then your ideal audience is currently sat there and being advertised to by your competitors.
Here are some of the most highly effective niches on Pinterest;
- Home Decor and DIY Projects
- Fashion and Style
- Food and Recipes
- Health and Wellness
- Travel
- Beauty and Skincare
- Weddings and Events
- Parenting and Kids
- Quotes and Inspiration
- Technology and Gadgets
However, there are exceptions to the rule. Just because your niche isn’t listed here, it doesn’t mean it won’t work. The best thing you can do if you’re not sure is to research the niche, keyword volumes and your competitors on Pinterest, this will give you an idea of the appetite for the niche and if the pursuit is worthwhile.
No Barrier To Entry
Most platforms and search engines have an invisible barrier to entry that makes it incredibly difficult to grow in the early stages. Google imposes what many call a ‘sandbox’ where a new website can remain for 6 months before Google can learn to trust the source.
There’s no real evidence this is a thing, but those early days on Google are an uphill climb, and it can take 3-12 months to start noticing any substantial traffic from the search engine.
Then, when we talk about other conventional social platforms like Instagram and Facebook, when you start posting from an account with 0 followers, you will literally be seen by no-one except from those who may happen to click on the hashtags you use. And, it’s become even harder to grow on the platforms as it has become so saturated, what you’re bringing to the party really has to be original, unique and offer value that no-one else is.
But things on Pinterest are a little bit different. Whilst it takes a a few months to 6 months to establish big numbers on the platform, you can start gaining impressions, traffic and sales from day 1, regardless to how many followers you don’t have.
Followers Don’t Mean Anything (You Don’t Need To Chase A Vanity Metric)
That’s right, followers literally mean nothing over on Pinterest (except for keeping that vanity intact).
6+ years ago followers did mean something on Pinterest and it was an important part of getting your content seen, but Pinterest is different now. Pinterest is a visual search engine so pins are found through search, or they appear in a users feed because they have engaged with similar content before.
Your content is not discovered because you have followers.
You could have 0 followers and still gain traffic and sales to your site, of course a level of brand trust and gravitas comes with having followers, but it has no bearing of success on the platform which is great news if you are yet to start your journey on Pinterest.
Diversification of Traffic Is Key
This year has been further proof that no traffic source is ever going to be consistent. The HCU google algorithm update was the biggest shake up in the SEO industry since the Panda update in 2015, and it left niche site owners and businesses with their traffic gone over night.
So, if you’re wondering when the best time to diversify is, it was yesterday!
Pinterest is an amazing supplementary traffic source, it works well with organic traffic from Google and it can be a great way to create a more stable, solid foundation, so if there are any surprising algorithm updates in the future, you do have a back up source of traffic in the meantime.
I say it every year, but diversification is going to be even more important in 2024 with the changing search landscape on Google, and the continuation of AI tools.
If you’re looking to kickstart your journey on Pinterest, need some advice or just want to find out a bit more, we love to talk Pinterest! Please get in touch with us for more information.
