Pinterest Marketing in 2021: What’s Working NOW?

How to use Pinterest to fuel organic traffic in your business; How to use Idea Pins?; Metrics to monitor on Pinterest in 2021 

Is Pinterest still relevant in 2021? | How to use Pinterest for your Business | The rise of Idea Pins

You know what they say about digital marketing and working online? You have to be where your people are. And with over 500 million users and growing all the time, your target customers are probably on Pinterest. 

Yes. Pinterest. This visual search engine has been around for a decade, and in fact, yours truly was a beta tester for the platform, so I know a lot about Pinterest and how to use it to fuel growth in your business. 

Let’s break down some basics before we get into how to start using this platform to bring organic traffic to your website and business. 

What are the benefits of using Pinterest? 

Pinterest is a visual search engine. So contrary to popular belief, it is not a social media. (Although, Pinterest did just adjust it’s tracking and algorithm in 2021 in a way that might be starting to shift this a bit). 

These Pinterest statistics from Omnicore Agency paint a pretty good picture of the platform and show how it’s entirely possible that your clients are scrolling through Pins regularly. 

• 479 Million Active Monthly Users
• 50% of Pinterest users live OUTSIDE the United States
• Between October 2020 and March 2021, Pinterest had 1.22 BILLION visits
• 77% of Pinterest users are women
• 34% are between the ages of 30-49
• 38% are between the ages of 50-64

But here is the one statistic about Pinterest that I love and why it’s so key to not underestimate its power for building your business. 

89% of Pinterest users come to the platform with an intent to purchase something. 

And to add fuel to the fire

50% of Pinterest users have made a purchase after seeing a Promoted Pin ad in their feed. 

So what does this tell us about the average Pinterest user? 

When it comes to fueling growth in your business, Pinterest is like a juggernaut. It’s got massive potential to reach a warm audience who is ready and willing to buy from you! 

It also paints a picture of a platform that is mostly set-it-and-forget-it when you compare it to other social media like Instagram. In fact, my personal goal is to break up with Instagram as soon as humanly possible. 

What types of businesses should be on Pinterest? 

Pinterest works for any kind of business that is able to sell and deliver anything online. 

But, as I mentioned at the top of this article, Pinterest is going through a major redesign, and you need to know what it means for your business.

Pinterest Marketing in 2021: What’s Working NOW?

With the rise of Instagram as a shoppable platform and Tiktok coming up behind it very quickly, content creators and business owners are asking if Pinterest is still relevant in 2021. 

Rightly so. And it most definitely is, but there have been changes that mean the Pinterest strategies from 2019 are no longer optimal and will need to be tweaked. 

Note: Any strategy that is not being regularly tweaked to improve organic traffic conversions is going to be stagnant after a while. You want to be constantly monitoring any strategy and not just doing the same thing over and over again all the time! 

The rise of Pinterest Idea Pins

Originally dropped into the feed and Pinterest dashboard in 2020 for creators, these moving pins were met with a lot of hate from the creator community. 

In fact, for a hot minute, they were called Story pins, which lead most people to believe that Pinterest is trying to compete directly with Instagram in terms of user experience. 

After about eight months, the powers that be at Pinterest renamed the function so they are now called Idea Pins.

Essentially, Idea Pins are a series of image frames that lead the Pinterest user through a project or mini explanation. 

Pinterest seems to be prioritizing these types of Pins in their algorithm right now. 

But the catch is that, as of right now, Idea Pins are NOT CLICKABLE. 

This flies in the face of what Pinterest started out doing with Static and Traditional Pins. 

For traditional Pins, the user flow was: 

1. Searches something in Pinterest
2. Sees a relevant pin served in the search feed
3. Clicks on the pin
   1. Either saves the pin to their boards for later (otherwise known as ‘repinning’)
   2. Clicks the image to enlarge it and see more detail in the photo
   3. Clicks through to the creator’s website
   4. All of the above

The ability to drive traffic through Pinterest was fairly simple so long as your Pins were optimized for searcher’s intent. I was able to create, launch and monetize an organic traffic funnel on Pinterest and generate more than five figures in profit in less than two months. You can read more about how I launched my first Organic Traffic funnel here. 

Traditional pins still exist and I absolutely still recommend they be a large part of your strategy, but if you aren’t also using fancy new Idea Pins, you’ll be missing out. 

Metrics to monitor with Idea Pins 

Given that they aren’t like traditional pins and are not clickable, most users are reporting that what is happening instead of outbound clicks, is an increase in Pinterest profile visits. 

So the user flow with an Idea Pin is 

1. Searches something in Pinterest
2. Idea Pins are served
3. User watches an Idea Pin
4. User may or may not click to the Pinterest profile of the person who created that pin
5. User may or may not click to the one profile link available in that person’s profile

You can probably see why some people are upset by this. Because it used to be a lot easier to drive traffic to a specific webpage using Pinterest. Nevertheless, my sense is that soon the algorithm will shift AND that Pinterest will cave and add linking abilities to Idea Pins. 

So if you aren’t on this bandwagon yet – then it’s time to get on there and leverage good favor with this algorithm shift. 

It also means that you’ll want to optimize your Pinterest profile and likely your home page on your website or blog. 

The link in your Pinterest profile will be your main URL. If it’s not optimized for traffic and SEO, you will be leaving opportunities on the table.