#139 – The Transition from Facebook Marketing to Pinterest Marketing

Facebook and Pinterest are worlds apart when it comes to marketing your business. Hear the story of how a Facebook ads strategist is making the transition from Facebook marketing to Pinterest marketing.

Today I am talking to Amanda Bond, who is a Facebook ads strategist. We met a couple of months ago when we were working on a promoted pin campaign for Ruth Soukup, who I just had on the podcast earlier this year when we discussed changing your blogging mindset. 

Amanda’s mind was blown with how marketing works on Pinterest and she’s curated a big list of questions to ask me about the process. I know there are other people who listen to this podcast who aren’t sure if Pinterest is right for their business, so I decided to answer all of Amanda’s questions on the podcast (so you can benefit from this conversation as well).

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The Ad Strategist

Amanda is the owner of The Ad Strategist, where she helps people stop guessing and start getting results with Facebook marketing. She helps business owners achieve success on Facebook, despite the constant algorithm changes.

Amanda’s Prior Pinterest Experience

As a Facebook marketer, Amanda did not originally use Pinterest as a marketer. She just enjoyed it as a user.

She used the platform to plan out a lifestyle and used it as a vision board. In 2011, she participated in her very first webinar. The topic? — The Power of Pinterest. As a marketer, she knew that there was potential but up to that point, she didn’t understand the power of Pinterest marketing.

After dismissing Pinterest for many years and spending over a million dollars on Facebook marketing, she’s looking toward the future and trying to find more channels and platforms where her potential customers are hanging out.

Amanda’s “aha!” moment came when she was making plans for her business for 2019 and she realized that a lot of the things that she was doing on different channels, (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc…) produce only quick, time-limited results that disappear in a flash.

Theses methods don’t have the ability to build momentum over time. But Pinterest does provide that opportunity.

Amanda jumped into learning everything she could about Pinterest. Since having her “aha!” moment, Amanda has updated her profile and created two images. Since then, her impressions have already increased dramatically.

Now that you’ve got the back story, we’re going to dive into Amanda’s questions!

Making The Transition from Facebook Marketing to Pinterest Marketing: What You Need to Know

The Vision Behind Using Pinterest

Amanda’s first question was:

What is the vision I’m aiming for on Pinterest?

Because she is very data-driven, she likes to know what she’s trying to achieve with any given platform. She keeps hearing that “Pinterest is great for traffic.” It is, but a lot of people don’t go to the next level to examine the measurables. The “measurables” or Pinterest key performance indicators are however many sessions you’re getting and what those sessions convert to for you.

Pinterest is a search and discovery platform.

The typical user on Pinterest is operates in two different places on the platform. The first is the smart feed, where all the mindless scrolling of Pinterest takes place. In the smart feed, you’ll see what you’ve recently searched for, promoted pins, ads, who you follow and suggested pins based on your pinning habits. The whole goal is to serve the user base with a feed where they can spend time finding more ideas.

When you’re marketing to the smart feed user, you want to focus on creating the hook. What is on your Pinterstimage that will hook the user in with something they’re already interested in? 

This information is not served to the user chronologically. Pinterest could serve something that you pinned 8 months ago! The algorithm works based on how they can best serve the user by delivering interests they love. It’s not based on followers or chronological order.

How Long Does It Take to See Success on Pinterest?

Like many of you, Amanda wanted to know how long it takes to see a positive ROI for all the time spent on Pinterest marketing. I always lean towards lowering the bar instead of setting unrealistic expectations. We don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver. We tell our clients 1-3% growth, but our data analysis has revealed that it’s more around 6% average growth.

If we are working with a client who is already well-established, it can also depend on their seasonal content. For those clients, we always look at the entire year in their Google analytics to track when their busy periods are. For marketers like Amanda and myself, we have a more steady trend throughout the year.

We have had some clients experience up to 1700% growth in the first six months of Pinterest management. One of the great things is that they were very specific about their keywords, they created physical products, and they knew exactly who they were marketing to.

They created at least ten new images about the products per month, and it just exploded.

This amount of growth isn’t typical, but it can happen if you’re very targeted in who you want to see your pins and click on them. Other clients of ours experience 40-50% growth month over month.

Your growth depends on lots of factors, including how often you’re creating new content and your keyword relevance. The search feed will allow your keywords to really shine. Pinterest will know exactly what your content is about and will be able to push your content to people who are looking for it.

Where Do People Waste Time On Pinterest?

Great question Amanda!

The first area where I see people waste time on Pinterest marketing is when they spend time fretting. They get a month or two in and don’t see immediate growth and decide that Pinterest marketing is not working for them.

You have to spend the time getting people to trust you. You are working on building relationships and investing in your readers to help solve their problems. Watching your traffic every single week isn’t doing you any good. I urge you to look at a one-month time frame in your analytics because of how the smart feed works.

People also waste time over-analyzing every single thing they do on the platform. Focus on pinning really great content all of the time so that Pinterest will pick up on your content.

We all come to the table with different knowledge and difference experiences. Being able to share those things with each other allows all of us to grow, wherever we are on our business journey.

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Amanda and I plan to have a follow-up call in 6 months to see how her Pinterest marketing has grown after she has an opportunity to implement some of these tips. We can’t wait to be able to share that with all of you. 

For further reading:

• Pinterest is NOT Facebook:  A Breakdown of How They Differ
• How To Create a Pinterest Marketing Strategy That Works For You
• Using Analytics As a Content Creation Tool
• Understanding Pinterest Analytics
• Pinterest KPis: How To Measure Your Success

Time Stamp:

• 4:51 – The Ad Strategist
• 7:46 – Amanda’s View of Pinterest
• 12:20 – The Vision Behind Using Pinterest
• 23:51 – How Long Does It Take to See Success?
• 40:17 – Where Do People Waste Time On Pinterest?