Having supported startup fashion brands, I’ve always come across people who want help to scale and grow. What’s the best route to take? Most people look into Instagram, but I wish more people asked me about Pinterest --- especially for growth.
Pinterest is my favourite way to grow a fashion brand, for free! Instagram is great, but when it comes to building a brand, acquiring customers, and generating cash, which is what startup businesses reach out to me for, Pinterest is the way to go.
If you’d like to learn more about Social Media Marketing and how I can help, you can check my Fashion Sales Kit. This kit will help you grow your mind through various tools, in just 10 mins every day! Should you see that you need more help with anything else that isn’t covered by the kit, feel free to reach out and ask. I’d love to see how I can help you better.
Pinterest is where I started and launched my fashion brand, and it has been a reliable tool that has helped me help clients I’ve worked with one-on-one establish authority, increase discoverability, and reach their respective target audience.
For a business to thrive and continually generate income, knowing the right tools for scaling and reaching your target audience is essential. In this post, I’ll let you know how and why Pinterest has always worked for me and my clients. Hopefully, you can learn a thing or two about Pinterest and apply it to your business.
If you do, please let me know! I’d love to hear more of your thoughts.
A Visual Search Engine
I’m not sure if you’ve used or tried Pinterest yet, but if I had to describe this to someone who has never used it before, I’d say it’s like a virtual search engine where people discover what they’re looking for. People can look for photos similar to something they saw or have a picture of, or they can search for ideas and pegs, pin them to their boards, and save them for reference.
And that in itself is what separates it from other social media platforms such as Instagram. If I have to sum it up, one main difference would be buyer intent. Buyer intent is what your audience’s intention is when opening the app.
Think about it, on Instagram, people open the app intending to do one among these things:
- connecting with friends and see what they’re up to
- catching up with friends and relatives
- posting a photo or an idea
- scrolling aimlessly out of boredom
No judgement here! While these platforms have evolved and already allow merchants to set up stores and advertise, it is still not the primary reason people open these apps.
One would not typically open Instagram first to buy a fashion product or discover a new fashion brand.
This is what makes Pinterest different, people mostly go to Pinterest for:
- inspiration,
- finding a new product, or
- discovering a new brand.
And this is why I’ve always put Pinterest first. Because if I look closely and compare the like-for-like followers on Instagram and Pinterest, I can see that I’ve made a lot more cash on Pinterest.
Users on Instagram often tend to passively like, whereas, on Pinterest, users tend to click the pin and go to the website, leading to more email signups and sales vs other social media platforms.
Also, a virtual search platform works wonders. Sure, you can search for hashtags and keywords on Instagram, but that won’t be as accurate as a visual search of a similar photo or pin that you have on Pinterest.
For example, people can go to Pinterest and search for custom wedding accessories – I know because this is one of the businesses I had and how people found me!
I was able to market on Pinterest for free and didn’t pay for ads at that time. Regardless, people found me anyway, because they were looking for my products! This was from 2011, and I’m still getting likes and pins from my old posts until now.
This brings me to my next point on what makes Pinterest worthwhile……
An Evergreen Marketing Platform
Content on Pinterest has an impact that lasts much longer vs Instagram. If you’ve tried Instagram, you know what I mean!
For instance, a post sort of just dies within 24 hours on Instagram, and in about a week for Reels. So many factors affect discoverability: the algorithm, likes, engagement, and saved posts to name a few.
You won’t usually get new people to follow you from a post beyond a short time frame.
On the other hand, and for reference, my oldest pins (as mentioned, I started in 2011) grow in popularity over time. This is great especially because we pour so much time and effort into creating great content.
Organic growth is so much easier on Pinterest. Imagine: when you build your profile and people who like what you do follow you and repin your posts, it continues to grow!
In fact, there had been months where I wasn’t able to post for a month or two, and it still generates traffic (for free!) every single month.
I only recently started using Pinterest ads, so most of my content is generating free traffic. And without spending so much on ads, I was able to get up to as much as 300,000 monthly viewers, for free!
I love the fact that it doesn’t take a lot of time too, since it doesn’t provide many functionalities for engagement (comments, and likes). I simply put up a good pin regularly!
When it comes to generating traffic, Pinterest has outperformed most other platforms that I’ve used.
I hope you learned a thing or two from my experience and thoughts on using Pinterest as a great platform for being discovered online and growing your brand. This has worked for me and my clients, and if used the right way, this will surely help your business grow too!
Should you have more questions about how Pinterest works or would like to discuss how you can use Pinterest and other platforms for your business’ growth, feel free to reach out here. Would love to hear your most pressing concerns, or simply drop by to say hello and let me know if this has helped you.
Pickleball outfit inspiration……