Pinterest for Marketing

Pinterest for Marketing: The benefits for design-led businesses

Why is Pinterest good for digital marketing?

For design-led businesses, whether interior designers, product makers, or luxury artisans, Pinterest is a powerful yet often underutilised marketing tool. This visually driven platform excels at showcasing products, designs, and concepts in ways that not only inspire but also drive traffic, engagement, and ultimately sales. Here’s why using Pinterest for marketing should be a key part of your strategy and how you can make the most of it.

Visual Discovery Meets Luxury

Pinterest is where people go to discover ideas, whether for their home, wardrobe, or lifestyle. Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest users are actively seeking inspiration and are more likely to engage with brands that match their tastes and even become followers of your account. For businesses in the design industry in particular, this means your audience is already primed for your offering. The platform’s search and recommendation algorithms work especially well for products and designs with strong visual appeal.

Design-led businesses can leverage Pinterest for marketing a portfolio of their best work or products, each pin acting as a gateway to your e-commerce store or driving relevant website traffic. The ability to link directly from pins makes it seamless for potential clients to engage with your brand.

And if you don’t have shoppable pins, ensuring you have the right organic Pinterest strategy in place is essential to ensure you are being found when people are searching for inspiration.

Longer Shelf Life for Content

Unlike Instagram, Facebook or other social platforms, where posts quickly lose visibility, Pinterest pins have a much longer life. Pins can resurface in search results months, even years after they’ve been posted. This long-term visibility is particularly valuable for high-end design-led businesses, where products and services are often evergreen or follow slow-moving trends.

Build a Brand Story

Pinterest boards allow you to build a cohesive brand story on your business profile. Create mood boards that reflect your design philosophy, showcase the materials and processes behind your products, or share before-and-after transformations of your interior design projects. These curated collections help potential customers see the value and craftsmanship in your work, while simultaneously positioning your brand as an expert in your field.

Developing content marketing plans that allow you to articulate your USPs is a vital on a platform such as this and adds value to your audience experience.

Capitalise on trends to improve your discoverability

n October 2024, Pinterest ran its annual Pinterest Presents seminar and Sandford attended. This event essentially allows marketers such as ourselves to see what is in the pipeline for the platform, where they are planning to take it and how Pinterest marketing could be a good fit for you.

There are several key takeaways and we summarise them below.

Pinterest is broadening its audience and reach

Today more than half a billion people (522MM global monthly active users) use Pinterest worldwide. This covers all age groups and demographics but now more than 40% of their users are Gen Z (12 to 27 years old though we’ll assume 13+ as that’s the lowest age group allowed on the platform). They come to the platform with intent - they are visually their ideas days, weeks and months in advance and with the platform being considered as a positive space, audiences are more likely to come here than other spaces to interact with brands.

They are the fastest-growing and most engaged audience. They come to the platform to find inspiration, curate ideas and shop the products they love. Naturally, marketers are finding it a great platform to connect with their audiences. Shopping in particular is integrated into all experiences across the platform. So if you have products to sell or services, this is a great place to do it!

The platform has evolved to ensure it offers marketers solutions that can help at all stages of the marketing funnel - from brand awareness to purchase. So, whatever stage your potential customers are at and whatever your own business goals, there is a way the platform can help.

Pinterest marketing tools are being enhanced

As a starting point, Pinterest for Business offers brand targeting tools that help you reach people by demographics, interests, relevant keywords, and so on. You can also use auto-targeting, and they will show your ads to the people that they think will like them. This is part of their newer AI offering which we will touch on later.

Pinterest Personas have also been developed to help you reach your target audience, those interested in a specific topic on Pinterest. They feed into your campaign set-up in Ads Manager and again, their AI-led tools help to make these as accurate as possible.

Pinterest Trends tool allows you to tap into what topics are trending on the platform too. There are a number of filters on there to narrow your search which can be useful.

You can also leverage Pinterest analytics to better understand what content is performing well and what is not capturing the audience's attention.

Shopping experiences are improving

So this may not apply to specific service-led offerings but it can still be useful to be aware of this functionality for both small businesses through to much larger ones. Perhaps tapping into that sense of feeling overwhelmed with decision-making and offering potential solutions e.g. we can help you bring your Pinterest boards to life, could be a way forward.

However, shoppable pins are seeing huge growth and with new formats and tools being added all the time, simply relying on standard or Idea pins may mean you are missing out on other Pinterest marketing opportunities.

From the home feed, search results, within boards and in collages too, there are opportunities to advertise everywhere across the platform now. So when someone is pulling together inspiration for a new kitchen, a whole house renovation or simply an extension or room upgrade, you can suggest your products or services at the point of planning and move from awareness to consideration.

AI tools are becoming more prominent in improving Pinterest's marketing performance

Pinterest is introducing Pinterest Performance+ - automated, lower-funnel ad products to really make sure you are reaching the right audience with your ad spend.

From enhanced targeting and bidding to improved budget management and creative tools, all of these, when activated, can increase your chances of success and are quicker to help set up campaigns.

These new tools promise an increase of 10% in CPA performance so it is worth exploring this when setting up ad campaigns.

Sandford is improving its Pinterest Marketing Strategy Expertise

With so much improvement in platform performance, it can feel overwhelming to take this platform on especially when you are trying to simply get on with your day job. At Sandford, we have successfully been running client accounts and campaigns for many years, and we continue to keep on top of the latest trends, including platforms such as Pinterest, in our marketing strategies, maximising reach and ROI.

That’s why we are delighted that our Digital Account Manager, Eleonora is now Pinterest Advertising Academy certified! This allows us to work with our clients to better understand the potential for advertising on this platform and reaching new audiences, making sure you get the best return on your investment. This can work hand in hand with organic strategies to ensure success at every level.

Conclusion

Pinterest is more than just a platform for collecting ideas; it’s a dynamic marketing tool that can help high-end design-led businesses build their brand, engage with potential clients, and drive long-term sales. By using Pinterest for marketing and focusing on strong visuals, storytelling, and smart strategies, designers and makers can effectively showcase their unique value to a discerning audience.