How to use Pinterest Marketing to Grow Traffic to your Etsy Shop
Pinterest Marketing will help increase your audience and drive more traffic to your Etsy Shop. Combining a well designed Etsy Shop that’s ready for Pinterest traffic with an optimized Pinterest Business Account is the perfect way to drive new customers and increase sales in your Etsy Shop! In this blog post, I am going to focus on sharing some best practice tips to optimize your Etsy Shop and will also add a few tips to optimize your Pinterest Account for your shop.
Your next step after preparing your Etsy Shop should be to ensure your Pinterest Business Account is optimized and ready to help you share your products and drive customers to your Etsy Shop. Pinterest is a SEARCH ENGINE! People go to Pinterest to find solutions to problems, to find ideas for products they are looking for, to find gift ideas and much more! Be there with your products to help them solve their problem. A beautiful pin with your product, an intriguing title and description and link to your Etsy Shop will give new customers the opportunity to find you!
In this blog, I am going to share the two steps you need to take to maximize your ability to grow your Etsy Shop sales with Pinterest Marketing. FIRST…optimize your Etsy Shop. There are a few key rules that Etsy prefers you follow. When you follow those rules, Etsy is more willing to show your products in search. SECOND, be sure your Pinterest is optimized and ready to help you sell more on Etsy.
Let’s FIRST address your Etsy Shop and some Etsy best practices that will help you rank higher in search on Etsy, and will help your products be found.
OPTIMIZE YOUR ETSY SHOP
ETSY SHOP BASICS
Include a custom Banner that represents your brand, use your brand colors, logo, and a photo of a product if possible.
Include a Picture of yourself. Customers like to see who they are buying from. A picture will humanize your shop.
Add your Shop Details including business name, logo, location, website.
Select several products to be "featured" at the top of the page.
Use product Categories for easy search within your shop.
ETSY PRODUCT LISTINGS
When creating product listings for your Etsy Shop, follow these tips to increase the chance of being found in Etsy search. Following these guidelines will also assure you have optimized your products so that when pinned to Pinterest, they fall into best practice guidelines for Pinterest.
Keyword Rich Product Title
Detailed Product Description
Product Titles and Descriptions should be complete. In the title, include descriptive "key" words, terms that shoppers will use to search for an item like yours, fill the title field completely. Product Descriptions should be detailed and fully describe the product. Tell customers the color, size, shape, how they can use it. Try to anticipate any questions your customer may have and answer it for them in the description.
Use Tags
The Tags for your product should match the words in the product's Title. This is very important. Make sure to use all 13 Tags and use the same descriptive words and phrases you used in the product title. This will help Etsy match your item to someone's search.
Optional Fields
Complete as many of the optional fields as you can for your product.
Images
Make sure you are adding multiple, clear and attractive images of your product. Show it from lots of different angles, close up, and in use. For example, if it's a home decor item, show it in the room or on the wall. Your customers want to be able to imagine what your product will look like in your space. If it's a digital product, show screen shots of what they will be getting with the purchase of your product.
When taking your product pictures, consider that Pinterest prefers vertical images with a ratio of 2:3 (1000 x 1500 pixels). If your images on Etsy are optimized for Pinterest, they will perform better when people save them to their Pinterest Accounts for viewing later.
GENERAL ETSY SHOP TIPS
Free Shipping
Etsy loves free shipping and will reward you in search if you offer free shipping. Tip: round the price of your item up to cover shipping.
Reviews
Etsy favors accounts with reviews. Encourage your customers to include reviews of your products when possible.
Advertising
Advertising is easy and can be as inexpensive at $1 a day. Try spending $1 a day for a few weeks to help increase your traffic.
If you apply these tips to your Etsy Shop, you will be setting your shop up to be found easier in search.
PINTEREST FOR YOUR ETSY SHOP
In addition to optimizing your Etsy Shop for more success in search, let’s set your Pinterest Account up for success too.
PINTEREST ACCOUNT TIPS
Create a Pinterest Business Account, or convert your personal account.
The first step in using Pinterest for your business is to create a Pinterest Business Account OR you can convert your personal account. The Pinterest Business Account will give you access to tools for your business such as analytics and ads. CLICK HERE for my blog post about business accounts.
Pinterest Account Basics
Next, make some updates to optimized to your Pinterest Account so that it is appealing and clear to visitors who you are.
Update your Profile Picture - use a logo or personal photo
Display Name - add your name or shop name
About Profile - describe your account to visitors. Be sure to use words that will help people find you in search. Do your Keyword research and use it here.
Include your Email Address
Select a Business Type
Claim your website.
Creating Boards
Next you should start to create Pinterest Boards. Be sure to create at least 10 to start. The majority of your boards should be relevant to your business but a few should be personal and about things you love. These personal boards will help humanize you and help your visitors get to know you! So tips for your boards are:
Board Titles - use relevant keywords to name your boards.
Board Descriptions - use relevant keywords to describe what will be included in your board. Fill it with lots of keywords.
Cover Photo - Either create board covers (this is easy in Canva) or pick a cover pin/photo for each board.
Board Type - pick a type of board from the list, try not to use other.
Sections - you can further organize your boards into sections or categories within your board.
START PINNING
Once you have your Etsy Shop and your Pinterest optimized, start pinning. Pinterest loves fresh pins. Be sure to create new product pins regularly. Change up the text, the image, the look of your pins. Pinterest will reward you with a better ranking in search. In addition to pinning your own content, make sure you are pinning other people’s content as well. The ratio for pinning should be 80% other people’s, 20% yours.
ETSY AND PINTEREST ARE GREAT PARTNERS
I hope you will use these tips to help you start using Pinterest to share your Etsy Shop and products. Pinterest is the perfect partner for your Etsy Shop. Once you have optimized your shop and Pinterest Account, you will be able to grow your audience and send more traffic to your Etsy Shop. Pinterest will bring a completely new audience to your shop! Good luck and send questions if you have them! (If you want to save this post, I have added several Pinterest Optimized images, simply click to pin to your account and it will be there for you if you want to refer back).