Pinterest Marketing: Tips for Helping Your B2B Brand Get More Online Visibility
Pinterest is an idea hub where people go to find creative inspiration. I use Pinterest to look for home construction ideas and natural hairstyles, and I find a lot of great options. Have I ever used Pinterest to search for a B2B-related idea? Admittedly, no — mainly because I’m not in the market for a B2B product.
B2B brands often think that most Pinterest users are like me — people searching for ideas related to consumer goods and services. Why use a platform that isn’t specifically targeting B2B buyers? LinkedIn is the obvious choice; Pinterest, not so much.
Here’s the truth.
Pinterest has 498 million users, 76.2% of Pinterest users are female, and at least 66% of Pinterest users consider Pinterest the go-to platform for their online searches.
Your B2B buyers are people and if you’re targeting female decision-makers, Pinterest provides a great opportunity to reach them with creative ideas that will make their jobs easier.
But it doesn’t end there. Crystal Waddell, founder of the Simple and Smart SEO Agency, shared during a recent podcast interview that Pinterest can help brands be discovered up to three times more in search engine results!
I’m going to share Pinterest SEO tips, as well as general Pinterest marketing strategies that can help your B2B brand reach a wider online audience. Most of these insights come from my conversation with Crystal about Pinterest SEO. You can listen to the conversation by clicking the link below.
3 Powerful Ways to Use Pinterest to Improve Your B2B Brand’s Online Visibility
Connect Your Pinterest SEO Strategy with Your Website SEO Strategy
Crystal explained during the conversation that your Pinterest SEO strategy should support your website SEO strategy and vice versa.
“They work together. One feeds the other. If I have a blog post on my website, I can use keywords from the blog post to make pins for Pinterest. I can use those seed keywords on Pinterest to see what other keyword ideas come up and then use those keywords on my website.
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It’s more difficult for a B2B brand to use Pinterest for expansive search engine visibility in the same way as a B2C brand. For instance, a Google search for “hair braiding ideas” shows Pinterest as the top result both in the image and main searches.
The B2B keywords I’ve searched for haven’t revealed similar results. In fact, Pinterest is often nowhere to be found. Not having that expansive visibility is a bummer, but all hope isn’t lost.
Pinterest can be a powerful platform for your content repurposing strategy by directing traffic to your landing page or blog post. More highly engaged traffic ultimately leads to an increase in search engine rankings.
Here’s an example of how HubSpot used this approach to Pinterest for one of their landing pages.
HubSpot’s Pinterest page has 1.8 million monthly views, as shown in the image below.
A quick search for “infographic templates” on Pinterest produces thousands of results, with HubSpot’s 15 Free Infographic Templates pin being the first option.
The landing page linked to that pin appears in Google Search for the keyword “infographic templates” as shown in the image below.
This infographic template landing page is also the third option in Google’s image search results.
The infographic template pin is also the first pin you see on HubSpot’s Pinterest account.
HubSpot’s infographic template landing page gets hundreds of monthly views with the support of the pin on Pinterest. People discover the pin through Pinterest search and directly on HubSpot’s Pinterest page. The traffic from Pinterest supports the landing page’s visibility in Google Search.
Here’s another example from Quickbooks.
Quickbooks has a very active Pinterest account with more than 10 million monthly views as shown in the image below.
There’s a recent pin about creating business plans that’s linked to a blog post on the Quickbooks website.
The article is in position eight on Google Search for “plan for small business” at the time of writing this article although it was only published four days ago.
The article has already received more than 66,000 views. I don’t have visibility on the amount of traffic that’s going to that article from Pinterest. But with Quickbooks getting more than 10 million monthly views on Pinterest, some of those 66,000 article views are likely to be coming from the Pinterest pin.
The Lesson: Create pins related to popular search terms in your niche and link those pins to the relevant landing pages and blog posts on your website. You’ll get more website views which ultimately helps with your search engine rankings.
2. Use Pinterest Advertising
Crystal suggested that Pinterest ads, coupled with a strong organic strategy, are the best way for B2B brands to use Pinterest. There are two ways that you can advertise on Pinterest. You can use the traditional Pinterest ad network or you can tap into Pinterest influencers within your niche.
There’s a bit of a snag with the Pinterest ad network though. Pinterest ads are only available to Pinterest Business accounts within the regions shown in the image below.
This list represents only 17% of the countries in the world and puts businesses in non-represented countries at a disadvantage. Pushing this snag aside, let’s do a quick review of some key Pinterest Advertising features.
You can select one of four campaign objectives for your ad campaign — build awareness, promote video views, get people to visit your Pinterest profile, and direct traffic to your website.
You can also choose your targeting strategy as shown in the image below.
One of the cool things about Pinterest ads is that you aren’t limited to the traditional static image, carousel, and video ads. You can also create quiz ads with multiple choice questions and answers. Outbound links to landing pages or product pages can be included in the quiz results, and people who interact with your ad will see personalized results based on what they choose.
Here’s an example of a quiz ad from Pinterest Business.
There are many creative ways to use Pinterest ads for B2B marketing. For instance, you can use quiz ads to learn more about the interests of your target audience and direct people who engage with your ad to relevant and helpful content assets.
Let’s look at another Pinterest ad option — influencer marketing. I’m going to use a current Pinterest influencer as an example.
Denise, a former corporate marketer turned travel enthusiast, has a very active Pinterest account for her brand, Wander Her Way. The account has 1.7 million monthly views and features travel inspiration for solo travelers globally.
How could a B2B brand use Denise’s influence? Let’s say your B2B brand sells remote work software to solopreneurs. You could work with Denise to create a work-from-anywhere Pinterest board with ideas for making remote work easy in some of the most popular cities in the world using your tool.
The key to using Pinterest influencers for your B2B marketing is to identify influencers who share your vision and whose audiences align with your brand’s message. These influencers could be mega influencers like Denise or influencers with smaller audiences but high engagement on their pins and boards.
The Lesson: Paid advertising can be a great way for you to reach your target B2B buyers on Pinterest. Consider using Pinterest ads and Pinterest influencer marketing as part of your overall digital marketing strategy.
3. Use Pinterest Trends for Keyword Ideas
Crystal mentioned a cool Pinterest feature called Pinterest Trends that will help you identify the best keywords to target on Pinterest.
Here’s how you can access it.
Go to your Business Hub and click Analytics Overview.
Click on Pinterest Trends.
Search for keywords related to your niche based on the regions that matter to your brand.
I searched for “digital marketing” and chose the United States as my region. Pinterest Trends gave me a useful graph showing interest in the keyword over time.
This graph is particularly useful for brands selling seasonal products. Peaks in the graph show areas of high interest. Let’s say that I compared the charts for 2023 and 2022 and discovered that there’s always a peak in digital marketing interest at the beginning of the year.
I can use that knowledge to plan my Pinterest content for that peak search period. Crystal recommends publishing content three months before an expected search peak to increase the chances of being discovered.
Pinterest Trends also provides demographic information about people who search for your keywords. Here’s an example based on my digital marketing search.
This graph let’s me know that the content I create should be tailored to women who are 25 to 34 years old. Super useful information to have for content planning.
Pinterest Trends also has a section that shows the most popular pins related to your keyword. You can use this section for inspiration and to evaluate what makes those pins stand out from the rest.
Finally, there’s a section of Pinterest Trends where you can see the growing trends your audience loves. It’s a great place to get ideas for content your audience cares about.
The Lesson: Use Pinterest Trends to understand the keywords that will work bet for your audience on Pinterest.
Other Helpful Pinterest Tips
Embrace video. According to Pinterest, their users watch videos 3 times more and complete videos two times more than other social media platforms. Create engaging short-form videos (with eye-catching thumbnails) that inspire your target customers to try new ideas.
Use eye-catching visuals. Create images that relate to your content and have an attractive text overlay.
Group your brand’s most helpful pins into relevant boards. Pinterest boards are collections of related pins. Grouping your relevant pins into boards will increase your visibility on Pinterest and make it easier for your customers to find what they need when they need it.
Monitor performance. Use Pinterest Analytics to keep track of the performance of your pins and boards. You can use this area of Pinterest to see how many outbound clicks you’re getting and how your pins are being discovered.
Consider Including Pinterest in Your B2B Marketing Strategy
Pinterest isn’t for all B2B brands. There are some B2B products and services that are too technical and don’t have good search volume on Pinterest.
But there are some companies, like HubSpot and Quickbooks, that have B2B products with wide appeal. If your B2B brand has wide appeal, consider making Pinterest part of your B2B marketing strategy. Pinterest will give your brand more visibility when used correctly — a fact that’s particularly important based on what the future of search will look like.
Want to learn more about Pinterest SEO? Watch my interview with Crystal to hear her thoughts based on 5+ years of experience with the platform.