Pinterest is a thorny proposition for many small retail businesses. The platform is popular among consumers, yes, and it’s been around for a long time. In the UK, approximately 14.7 million people use Pinterest more or less regularly, and its popularity shows no sign of declining. However, from a business perspective, Pinterest is not as easy to monetise as, say, Instagram or Facebook.
As we approach Christmas, many Pinterest users will be looking to the platform with renewed interest. As a powerful visual discovery engine, Pinterest provides inspiration and ideas for everything from Christmas present ideas and wardrobes to full festive home decor.
So, how can you use Pinterest to inspire your Christmas shoppers and boost sales?
1. Create Christmas-themed pins and boards
As Pinterest becomes a hub for holiday inspiration, you can use your pins and boards to reach out to festive shoppers to increase both sales and general brand awareness. A good place to start is to create a few boards dedicated to Christmas themes, such as ‘present ideas’, ‘Christmas decorations’, or festive recipes, depending on your line of work. This will help users find the festive content they’re seeking more easily, and also help you track engagement. You can also design visually appealing Christmas pins to showcase your products in a seasonal context, using rich reds and greens, festive motifs, and warm text overlays to draw customer attention.
2. Optimise your pins for conversion
Unlike Instagram, it’s not possible to make direct purchases through Pinterest, so to maximise conversions you’ll need to link each pin to a product page on your website or a campaign-specific landing page. Product Pins and Shop the Look pins allow users to search for up-to-date pricing, product details, and availability, and click through to purchase directly from the vendor’s website.
As prices and availability can fluctuate over Christmas, make use of Rich Pins to automatically update product details across your Pinterest assets, maintaining accuracy and increasing shopper trust and engagement. If you use Shopify, it’s possible to integrate your product catalogue with Pinterest, driving traffic to your e-commerce site and increasing engagement and visibility on the Pinterest platform.
3. Showcase your Christmas gifts and product ideas
A good way of monetising Pinterest around Christmas is to use the platform as a curated gift guide for your customers, highlighting pinned products that are ideal for different gift recipients. Align these with search terms for maximum visibility, such as stocking stuffers, gifts for mum, or budget Christmas gifts 2024., Showing your products in action in a Christmas context that captures the warmth and joy of the season will make them more relevant to Christmas shoppers and help your customers to envision your products in use.
4. Search optimisation
Seasonal keywords are crucial for improving the discoverability of your content on Pinterest in the run-up to Christmas. In the same way as you would do with seasonal content on other social platforms and your website, optimise your pin descriptions and board titles with festive keywords to maximise the chance of your material appearing on holiday searches. Hashtags can also be used to increase the reach of your pins over Christmas.
5. Advertising on Pinterest over Christmas
Don’t forget that Pinterest offers a cost-effective paid advertising service, which can be used for Christmas marketing. For example, investing in Pinterest ad formats such as Promoted Pins and Video Pins can promote your festive pins to specific buyer groups or personas looking for Christmas inspiration.
Next steps
For more information about using Pinterest to boost your seasonal sales this Christmas, please get in touch with the social media specialists at JDR today by clicking here.
Image Source: Canva
