314 – Why Pinterest In 2023?

Companies are slashing marketing budgets everywhere in an effort to cut their marketing dollars. We have seen a lot of clients and other business owners slashing their budgets and cutting out Pinterest in 2023. But when we asked about their analytics, most showed that Pinterest was their #1 traffic driver BY FAR.

Pinterest is a powerful traffic-driving, awareness-building platform that often takes less time then the other social media platforms out there. So before you slash it from the budget or throw in the towel, let’s break down how to evaluate the platform and the results you’re seeing.

Data is ALWAYS the most important indicator of success.

recession proofing in 2023

I recently attended a training on how to recession proof your business, and learned a lot. I took away one really good tip that can work for not just the budget piece, but for deeper parts of business.

It’s called the ladder plan.

Essentially, you’re making sure you KNOW what you need to fuel, maximize, or potentially remove a piece of your marketing.

The top rung of the ladder is what level a metric of your business is at when things are good – sales, conversions, leads, clients, etc. This can be any metric that actually fuels and grows your business.

RELATED: Key Performance Indicators – How to Measure Success on Pinterest

example of the ladder plan

At 400 product sales per month via Pinterest traffic, we can run at full marketing functionality (employee hours, infrastructure, advertising dollars).

If you start to drop below 400 product sales per month, the next rung of the ladder means you evaluate. If you know your sales funnel generally converts well, maybe it’s time to take a look at sales copy or freshen up images. Maybe it’s time to pull back on ad spend for a bit to make up the difference.

If you drop even lower (the next rung down the ladder), it may be time to make some harder choices. Maybe you temporarily have to slim down the number of employee hours spent on the platform, change the plan in any software programs you’re working with.

On the lowest rung, this may be where you have to fully cut or pause the efforts you’re putting in. If your marketing efforts aren’t able to sustain the time and money you’re spending, it’s most likely time to jump ship before you fall completely off the ladder.

At this point, you can move your marketing efforts to another “ladder” – aka platform or revenue stream – that’s making you money or growing your business in another way.

before you do that last step

Don’t put money in another program because you THINK it’s working. It’s really easy to say Instagram is working because people like your posts, but is it driving leads, sales, email conversions, or whatever your key performance indicator (KPI) is? The ladder analogy should be put into practice here as well. 

Don’t just go with your gut, look at the numbers. Where is the traffic to your website coming from? Your website should be where you drive your email conversions or sales. Sometimes our gut instinct tells us that a particular part of our marketing feels hard or slow or frustrating, but when you look at the numbers, they tell a more optimistic story.

what are we testing at simple pin?

Pinterest is still a good chunk of our social referrals; more than any other social platform we use. I’m certainly not going to cut off my cold lead generator. So for at least the first quarter of the year, we’re going to be doing some testing with more voice and face.

We’ve always thought Pinterest users would push back on this, but our posts that include our face/voice do better. But here’s an important point, it has to be about the tip, feature, or content. This is not a place to share about your day. 

Remember, people on Pinterest generally don’t care about YOU. They care if you have a solution to their problem.

We’re also going to double down on e-commerce with Pinterest in 2023. Now that we have a Shopify store for our Pinterest products, we’re going to see how the platform can help lead to more sales. 

what are we pulling back on?

We did make the hard choice to cut YouTube video creation for at least 6 months. 

There just wasn’t the momentum built up yet to sustain a project where we could put in seed money. We knew that Google and Pinterest were powerful content arms for us, so we were okay cutting back on YT for a while.  

Cutting projects and people are difficult. We’ve seen it with several companies in recent days, but before you cut out Pinterest, really evaluate. Use data and your ladder analogy. It may be that you just need to cut for a short time, to be able to climb back up the ladder.  

We’d love to hear from you! What has been a hard decision you’ve had to make for 2023 when it comes to cutting back? Will Pinterest be a part of that or not? Leave a comment on this blog post or DM us on Instagram.

If Pinterest is a big driver for you and you need inspiration, grab your copy of our 2023 Pinterest Marketing Planner. Available in instant digital download or a print version.

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