Is Pinterest marketing going to work in your niche?

This is a question I asked myself more than a year ago.

Of course I had used Pinterest as a user but, as a marketer, I had not used Pinterest at all.

Because I didn't think it would work for my usual niches. So I never took it seriously.

It was only when I decided to start this blog that I realised I needed to learn more about it and that it might be worth trying Pinterest marketing in other niches too.

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Pinterest Marketing: Will it work for your niche?

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[Disclaimer: Some links in this post contain affiliate links. This means I get a commission if you purchase the product through my link at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.]

Learning about Pinterest Marketing


Anway, as I was saying, I decided to learn more about Pinterest and I did look for some free resources to get the basics.

A couple of great  FREE courses for beginner's are Mackinzie Bean's Pinterest course called Pinterest Primer and Kimi Kinsey's Get Pinned Pinterest Course.

Then I applied the principles and the strategies to not only my own profile but to the other profiles that I manage, the ones that SHOULDN'T work on Pinterest.

I was surprised when traffic from Pinterest started to grow for all profiles and I was even more surprised affiliate marketing sales started happening

So how do you know if Pinterest Marketing is going to work for your niche?

To find out if you can use Pinterest Marketing to draw traffic to your blog, you are going to need to do some research and answer a few questions.

Don't worry. It won't take you long. 

Is your audience in Pinterest?

81% of Pinterest users are women according to Omnicore. This already gives you an idea if it's going to work or not.

But to be sure, let's go to Pinterest and do a search.

For example, I am going to do a search for "soap making recipes". 

There are lots of pins and all the pins I can see are relevant and match what I expected to find. 

Soap Making Recipes Pins on Pinterest

There's a long list of suggested keywords as well. So I know people are looking for these recipes.

So far so good.

If I look at boards instead of pins, I can also see there are lots of boards. And they all match what I expected.

Soap Making Boards in Pinterest

If you do a search in your niche, do you get a similar result?

Let's search for something else:

To be fair, I already knew that soap making was a popular niche in Pinterest. So let's search for something else:

What about "gin making recipes"? No idea if that's supposed to work or not.

Nope. Not really finding anything, so let me try with "gin making".

Pins about Gin Making

Oh-oh. I am not getting the same result. I get pins and boards that are about gin but I also get pins about cocktail recipes and other things.

Now the boards.

See?

Gin Making Boards on Pinterest

Only a few about gin making, the others seem to be mostly the type of boards a gin lover would keep, and it's not the same.

From your point of view, this is important because it means that:

  1. People are not interested in the topic at all or 
  2. People that are interested in gin making are not on Pinterest. Who knows, they might be on Reddit or Twitter...

Still not sure if your customers are using Pinterest?  

No problem, let's go through a few more questions. 

Do influencers and brands in your niche use Pinterest Marketing?

You have two ways of answering this question:

  1. You do a Pinterest search for an influencer or brand you know is on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. And then look for them in Pinterest. 
    • How many followers do they have? Less or more than in other media?
    • Are they active pinners or is their account in the doldrums?
  2. You don't know any influencer. So you do  Pinterest search but instead of searching for pins, you search for people. If I look at people that use the "soap making recipes" in their profile, I only see two. But if I do a search for "soap making" I see lots of people. And if I look for "gin making" I don't find any.
Soap Making Recipes
Search for Soap Making Recipes - People on Pinterst
Soap Making
Search for Soap Making Recipes - People  on Pinterest

Are there any group boards in your niche?

I can already see that there are a couple group boards for "soap making" but if I do a search for "natural beauty" I can find some more group boards where those pins would work.

A Pinterest marketing tip is to use different keywords that apply to your niche or go for a more general niche where your topic would fit.

Obviously, none for "gin making". 

#Pinteresttip: Another way to find group boards for your niche is to go to www.pingroupie.com and do a search there. #Pinterestmarketing

Click to Tweet

Are there any Tribes in Tailwind for your niche?

To do this you need to sign up for Tailwind.

Click here to sign up for Tailwind and get a FREE month and then you can use the Tribes, which is free.

Go to Tribes, it's on the left hand menu. Click on Find a Tribe and do a search.

See? I can see some tribes for Natural Beauty and Soap Making.

Tailwind Tribes screenshot

Don't worry if there aren't many in your niche but make sure they are active. 4-5 bars is good.

#PinterestmarketingTIP: You can use Tailwind Tribes that accept pins from any niche if you can't find many tribes in yours. #Pinteresttips #socialmediatips

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Are relevant articles, magazines, etc. suited for Pinterest Marketing?

Find 3-5 blogs or magazines in your niche and answer this couple of questions:

  • Is the Pinterest sharing button available? If they use Facebook, Twitter and Gmail and not Pinterest it means that it's not really being used for Pinterest. 
  • Are the images suitable for Pinterest? This means that the images should be in the right format: tall images that are 600x900 pixels, or 2x3 with a description that either contains the name of the article, or a SEO-optimised description for Pinterest and Google.

So is it worth it for you to invest some time on Pinterest Marketing?

Did you answer affirmatively to all the above questions?

Then go for it! Get your FREE month of Tailwind and start experimenting with your pinning.

If your answers aren't all affirmative, it doesn't mean that you cannot use Pinterest for business marketing:

  • If there are no tribes in Tailwind, it means that it will take a bit longer because you cannot piggyback on their followers. But it will still grow. Plus you can create your own Tribe as well.
  • If there are no influencers, this could be a golden opportunity for you. You'll become the influencer.
  • If the articles and blogs you follow are not Pinterest-ready,  that means that you will have to be a bit more creative when you share that content, but it also means that YOUR CONTENT will stand out.
  • What matters are the users: If people interested in your niche are there, they will still use Pinterest as other people do: They look for things, they keep things for later, they click on articles and read them, they buy products, they sign up for your mailing list, etc.
  • And what really really matters is what you do: Pinning consistently every day is what can make the biggest difference. That's why I went from pinning manually to using Tailwind. I can now pin regularly when I am not in front of the computer.

Look at the following screenshot, for instance: 

Pinterest Analytics

It is for one of the profiles I use, where there are no Tribes, no Group Boards, no influencers, no resources...

It's from July, a month when I did very little manual pinning cos of the holidays, so it's all down to Tailwind scheduling.

Having said all this, I have to say that Pinterest marketing results depend on your specific niche, so I can't say what results you will get.

To see what the average growth rate looks like for all members of Tailwind, check out their Typical Results of Tailwind for Pinterest Members.

So, even if you're not sure and you don't think it shouldn't work, just try it. Get a FREE month of Tailwind and start pinning for a month and using the Tribes.

What's the worst that can happen?

Does Pinterest Marketing Work for All Niches?

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  1. My blog is about women’s rights, gender equality and women empowerment. Pinterest has really really disappointed me. With this kind of niche, SEO could be very challenging as there are lot of International and National humanitarian organizations, non-profits working on this field. I feel lost and feel like giving up already as it has been around 6 months and I don’t see any organic traffic at all.

    1. I can understand how disappointing it is to put all your effort into this and not get a lot of traffic.

      I have just used some of your keywords and gone through the steps in the blog post and there aren’t many profiles/boards or pins that come up in the searches. You are right about SEO, it would be difficult to compete with the big organisations in Google but Pinterest should be OK because you don’t have a lot of competition. I have seen that happen.

      I am not certain that you couldn’t get traction in Pinterest with the right posts, the right pinning frequency and the right strategies, you are welcome to get my Quick Start Guide to Pinterest Scheduling, it tells you how to prepare your Pinterest profile, how to set up your boards, how much to pin,etc.

      However, I feel Facebook and Twitter might be better for you. This type of topic requires you to actively promote engagement to grow, so you need a “more social” media than Pinterest to grow your audience and traffic.

      Try finding some similar profiles in Twitter and Facebook and see what they’re doing. You might also try syndicating your posts in Medium and guest posting in relevant blogs and magazines.

      Hope it helps.

  2. Hi Laura..Nice post..
    I have a tech site and I’m interested in driving traffic from pinterest.
    Do you think pinterest works in tech niche..

    Thanks in advance 🙂

    1. Hi Devan. I would recommend that you follow the steps I explain in the blog post to see if you can find relevant profiles, boards and competitors and, most importantly, see if your audience is there.

      From experience, content in geeky niches can do very well on Pinterest, particularly when they’re evergreen posts, you have optimised your site and your Pinterest profile and you have a variety of pins to use. Get my guide if you need help with this.

      If your site is not set up for Pinterest it is going to be harder, cos Pinterest is very visual. Also, adding pin descriptions to each image is important for Pinterest SEO.

      For example I saw that you have a collage in one of your blog posts but the collage is horizontal, I’d recommend a vertical 2×3 pin for the collage instead + adding the title of the blog post to the collage, though you can try it with and without and see what happens. And of course make sure your Alt text is there and add a description with your pin description to each image.

      You might have to experiment a bit with your Pinterest strategies because these niches don’t always work the same as others but it’s worth trying for 3-4 weeks to see what happens.

      Or if you are driving people to buy products, try doing a promoted pin and see how that works. The good thing about promoted pins is that it gives your content a push but then it can continue getting pins and repins after your promotion has finished.

      Hope it helps.

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