The Ultimate Guide to Pinterest Buyable Pins for Ecommerce

87% of Pinterest users admit to buying an item that they viewed while looking at Pinterest, which is an incredible statistic. That being said, Pinterest is still an often-neglected marketing channel for e-commerce entrepreneurs.

While it might feel intimidating to move your marketing strategy to another social platform that you may be less familiar with, Pinterest is fast becoming more in tune with business and has some great advantages for driving easy sales. One of the newer (and more exciting) features Pinterest boats is Buyable Pins.

Buyable Pins allow people to find and buy your products without ever leaving the Pinterest platform. Sounds ideal, right? In fact, this has already proved very effective for a number of businesses, including fashion retailer Modern Citizen, which saw its number of orders from Pinterest go up by an impressive 73% after introducing Buyable Pins into its social media strategy.

Not only can Buyable Pins increase sales volume, but being able to capture a sale in the moment of inspiration on Pinterest leads to an average order value (AOV) that is higher than all of the major social platforms. To put this into context, the AOV for Pinterest is currently a sizeable $50! But better still, Buyable Pins are proving to be even more lucrative.

So how can you use Pinterest’s Buyable Pin feature for your e-commerce business? Let’s break it down.

How Do I Get Set-up?

First thing’s first: you need a fully functioning Pinterest business account. If you are unfamiliar with setting this up, you can read more about setting one up here.

To access the Buyable Pin feature, you will need to go through an approval process. To do so, you are required to go through your shopping platform partner, which to-date include the following platforms: Shopify, BigCommerce, IBM Commerce, and Demandware.

Once you have connected your shopping platform, Pinterest wants to ensure that what you are selling meets its standards, taking a look at various elements of your account, such as product catalogue, website, return policy, profile, and store name. This process usually takes two business days.

It’s worth taking a quick look at the Pinterest Buyable Pins guidelines here to ensure that the approval process is as smooth as possible and to avoid any unnecessary delays.

How do I add Buyable Pins?

After the two days have passed and you have been approved to use the Buyable Pins feature, you will be able to add your products to Pinterest via a protected products board (it may take a further 3-5 days for your pins to appear as buyable).

Note: This protected products board is not visible to the public. Only you will be able to see it and it will not appear on any Pinterest searches.

One of the quickest ways to pin products to your Buyable Pins board is with the Pinterest Save button extension. You can add the extension to your browser here. Then, when you’re on an individual product page on your e-commerce site, you just click the extension and you’ll get a pop-up allowing you to pin it directly to your profile. Easy, right?!

If you have a Pinterest account, it’s worth noting that Pinterest gives Buyable Pins preference in the smart feed and they will show up automatically.

How Can my Buyable Pins be Found?

Now that you have your Buyable Pins set-up, just like any marketing channel, you’ll need to connect these pins with your target audience. This is where the real work starts, as activating Buyable Pins won’t simply result in sales right away. You will need to optimize your reach and gain more followers to increase the chance of your pins being seen.

THESE TIPS WILL HELP YOU GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR BUYABLE PINS:

• Have a well-defined target audience on Pinterest. Build your pins around your customer persona.
• Make sure to save pins from your private product boards to your public boards, so that anyone who stumbles across your profile can see them. This also allows these pins to show up in a search.
• Make sure that the copy in your pins, your bio, and boards, can help you reach as broad an audience as possible by using keywords that your target audience are searching.
• Ensure your pin description strikes the right balance between being too wordy and not descriptive enough. Between 200 and 300 characters is a general rule of thumb we follow.
• Think of pins as your visual portfolio and make your pins as visually appealing as possible. For Buyable Pins, this starts with high-quality product images.
• Just as you can with normal pins, you can pay to advertise Buyable Pins, which is a great way of driving sales.
• Use Pinterest Analytics to learn more about your audience and how your product pins are performing.

That Sounds Good But…How does Payment Work? Is Payment Safe & Secure?

Buyable Pins are optimized to make the buying experience a lot smoother. Pinterest does not store or share your customers’ information. Once a purchase is made through Apple Pay or credit card, Pinterest safely sends all of the relevant order details through the business’ own checkout system. Once these details are received, you complete the order as you would if the order was made through your e-commerce site.

A useful feature (for businesses) here is that Pinterest leaves your buyer’s items in the cart indefinitely. Therefore, if a buyer gets distracted and forgets to check out with your product before leaving the platform, every time they revisit Pinterest they will see the blue cart icon with the number of items still waiting to be purchased in their cart.

Conclusion

A lot of e-commerce entrepreneurs focus their marketing activity on Facebook and Instagram. However, Pinterest can drive significant sales too. For e-commerce businesses in particular, Pinterest now has more and more potential, and using Buyable Pins is a great way to experiment with sales via this channel.

We know you’re already wearing a bunch of different hats, but it could be worthwhile to make room on the hat rack! If you already have a Pinterest account, introducing Buyable Pins should take no more than an hour or two of work to set up and could really benefit your business!

Still Looking for Some Help with your E-commerce?

Interested in broadening the marketing channels on your website but don’t have time? We deliver results with customized advertising and social media plans that suit your e-commerce brand needs. Book a free call today with a marketing specialist to see how we can help you increase your online visibility.