Using Pinterest To Grow Your Business With Craig Lewis

Andy Splichal 0:02

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. We're happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is using Pinterest to grow your ecommerce business. Today's guest is the founder of Pin and Grow, an agency that helps Ecommerce owners scale their business through both paid and organic.

Pin and Grow is currently one of the very few Pinterest approved partners in the world, allowing him to offer unique customized services to Ecom owners using Pinterest. A big hello to Craig Lewis. Hi, Craig.

Craig Lewis 1:21

Hi Andy. Yeah, thank you for inviting me on the show. And yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out and sharing what it is that we do in my agency and how it is that we're helping ecommerce owners in particular, understand and use Pinterest and use it as a viable channel for their growth.

Andy Splichal 1:43

Great. Well, we're happy to have you here. We I don't think we've ever had this topic before. So I'm excited. Yeah, excited to see what you have to say. So let's get right to it. Why Pinterest? Why should an Ecommerce company be using Pinterest to grow?

Craig Lewis 1:58

Yeah, that's a good question to start. I think this this question actually came up with a few conversations we're having with FBA aggregators at the moment, and the easiest way to answer that question is, it's an underused, but growing platform that has the ability to use organics, so you can rank content for evergreen traffic. And it also has a paid advertising option at the same time. So those two options and processes combined just make it a very good platform to use. And then when you add that into, like, Pinterest user base, it doubled in 20 2020, from I think it was maybe like 240 million active users a month to just under 500 active million active users a month. That's a pretty big jump. So it's a growing platform, but like radically underused, and there's there are so many, maybe like misconceptions as to what Pinterest is, which which is why I think it gets overlooked. But I do feel that is changing. So yeah, there's just an underused platform. It's,

Andy Splichal 3:11

Let's let's talk about some of those misconceptions. I mean, I don't. And I'll be the first to admit, I don't know a lot about Pinterest. I know when I was looking to redo a patio deck. I saw a bunch of pictures on Pinterest, right. And so I'm thinking that HomeGoods similar to House would benefit from being on there. But are there products beyond that that should be on there?

Craig Lewis 3:11

Yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah, you've just raised one of the most common things that people do is like they use Pinterest for creating ideas, not necessarily to buy but they right away anyway, they use Pinterest to gather ideas and information because you can visually see what it is that you created in your mind. So if you know that like you want to improve the garden or you want to improve the home, most of the time we have an image in our mind of what that looks like and then when we scroll Pinterest, this visual representations of that which help us make a decision better. So yes, HomeGoods, yes, definitely. The supplement niche is pretty good. Most of the fashion, jewelry health beauty. Trying to thing another ones, pets really really popular. Yeah, gardening, which would tie into home any kind of arts and crafts, any physical products around those. Yeah, they're probably the biggest ones. This probably through the I'm just not thinking of right now. But yeah, those are the main areas. But yeah, the supplement niche in particular is just wondering to overlook. I'm talking about like health supplements like holistic supplements, all kinds of supplements it yeah, it's pretty, pretty popular.

Andy Splichal 4:59

So how does is Pinterest work when decided to show products? I mean, I did a, you know, I did a search for fire pit. I was redoing a patio and I got a bunch of fire pits. But how do they pull? Which products? How does that happen?

Craig Lewis 5:12

Yeah. Okay, that's good question. So the, the algorithm from what we understand this is fundamentally rooted in SEO, which is one of the misconceptions. So a lot, a lot of people think that Pinterest is a social media platform. But the reality is, it's a search engine, especially the organic side of things. So when you type in things like firepit, or patio or garden, you're using the search function on the platform, which has an algorithm behind it. So it will look for keywords, images, text, descriptions, and content that are specific to that search term. So you're going to get highly targeted searches and findings from the platform. So it's actually rooted in SEO, from the organic side of things. In the last few years, probably like maybe two years, three years, I would say two years. Actually, when I think about it, they've upgraded their algorithm a lot. And it's actually now scanning images, so it knows exactly what an image is. So you could have an image doesn't have text on it, and it would still pick up exactly what it is. And then when which is what we do, we compound that search and make it better and improve it by adding text to a specific image. So you just added signals constantly. It's like, this is what this image is, this is what's behind it. This is the product, these are the descriptions, this is what you get.

Andy Splichal 6:40

So it's working a lot like Google SEO, the organic, but it's not because I didn't know if it was more like to go shopping where you have to upload a feed of products with images. But that's not the case?

Craig Lewis 6:53

You can yes, you can have a feed of products. And one of the programs that you can join, which is called the Verified Merchant Program, which is the equivalent of Facebook's and Instagram's blue check, you can do that on Pinterest, where you become a verified merchant. And when you're in that program, you upload a catalog feed. So your products are freely displayed by Pinterest. It's actually one of the things we're suggesting to all of our ecommerce clients to do now is once we go through the initial process, to apply to this program through my agency with Pinterest, because when you have your products inserted in the way that we're talking about, there's like a 30 or 40% uptick in organic traffic just from having this like, just for being part of this particular program. So it's a very like, beneficial thing to do as an econ brand. If you have a range of products, they really show them to Pinterest users. It's actually something that was introduced quite recently. And it's called the shoppers experience. And this is where Pinterest have actually changed the algorithm quite a lot. They are they've changed it so much that their favor and products, because they want to improve the shoppers experience for all of the users. So they're basically making it really, really easy for people who are searching for products and product related content to show them specific content as quickly as possible.

Andy Splichal 8:26

So that data feed is that for organic traffic, paid traffic or both?

Craig Lewis 8:31

Both but specifically for organic, but it does help with the paid because with the paid advertising manager, there's one teacher within that new business, new paid ad manager, you can run paid ad campaigns to your product catalog. Obviously if you don't have that, you can't obviously do that. You can still do retargeting and consideration and a bunch of other stuff. You can do the catalog campaigns. So it actually works for both.

Andy Splichal 8:59

So quick question, and I'm not sure if you know the answer. But so with Google paid and organic are completely separate. They don't. It doesn't matter how much organic traffic you get. You're not getting a cheaper price on paid. Alternatively, Amazon's different Amazon, you're sending traffic to your organic it's going to benefit your paid.

Craig Lewis 9:20

Yeah.

Andy Splichal 9:20

How does Pinterest work?

Craig Lewis 9:24

In terms of

Andy Splichal 9:25

Well, does organic benefit paid?

Craig Lewis 9:28

Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, there's a couple of key points around that, actually. So the first one is, if we're using organic strategies for a brand, and we're seeing a particular piece of content, or a product image that seems to be performing quite well, organically, we can then use that exact same creative and turn that into an ad because we kind of know that will perform well because of its already performing well on the platform. So you have that element to begin with. The other aspect is, when you run paid ads on Pinterest, obviously you get a massive spike in traffic while the ad is running, it reaches all the right people because the campaign is set up an optimized. However, when you switch off the ad, you're still generate traffic, and it will remain on the platform to generate traffic for a long time after the ad is switched off. The other thing to mention on that is if a user on Pinterest shares a paid ad that a brand is running, that paid ad no longer shows as promoted or paid ads, so it organically goes in a different direction. Does that make sense?

It does. It does.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit complicated, because there's like there's so many different factors with when you combine the organic and the paid at the same time. And the benefits just ricochet out a long time after the ad is switched off.

How expensive are the ads on Pinterest compared to your Google Shopping or your Amazon campaign manager?

Yeah, that's a good question. So we don't have enough data to make that call of mostly because we've we've only ever specialized in Pinterest. What we do see is the ads on Pinterest, so I'd say I don't have a comparison on from Pinterest to another platform. But what we do see is, the longer the ad is running, once it's set up and optimize the costs drop, like dramatically, so they may start off a bit a bit high. Because the campaign has been optimized, and it's finding the right people. But after it's run for a specific amount of time, like that timeframe does change, it does drop significantly, and it doesn't impact any of the reach or any of the people that it reached.

So how valuable of a marketing channel can Pinterest be if you're an Ecommerce company?

Yeah, I mean, if if the if the brand and the niche on Pinterest align, in terms of like popularity, because ultimately, we do turn down some brands because they're just not suitable as much as I'd like them to be suitable. Because I like some of the brands that we come into contact with. They wouldn't be suitable just floating.

What are what are some of the brands that aren't suitable?

So we've had one like, how can I describe him? It was a seeds for indoor plants. Now, that in itself could work. But it was so niche that that just the volume wasn't available. So we kind of said it might work. But it will probably do an a disservice if we say yes, go at it. Because it was very, it just there just wasn't enough data on the platform for us to say yes, this is what people are looking for. So we cannot declined that one. And there was another one around a pet product. But pet products are usually high volume and popular. But this specific one was for cats with big ears, I would have loved to have seen that dwell on the platform, but it just wouldn't have performed as well as the expectations would have been.

So let's say you you have a product where there is volume, you're you're not selling stuff for cats with big ears. How, how valuable of channel marketing channel will it be? Could it be?

Yeah, I mean, it's great. I mean, you have the ability to build a brand. And by build a brand, I mean, you can create content around products while building an email list. And you can do all of that organically, then you have the paid advertiser manager at the same time. So you can like supercharge your efforts by putting the two options together. So once you know that the organic stuff seems to be working and clicking while building a brand, like off a different platform. In this case, a lot of the clients that we're working with are looking to replicate success of Amazon on a different channel and Pinterest is a channel that they're looking for. You have the ability to build a brand and run paid ads to a product that kind of already has proof of concept.

Can it generate as many sales as Amazon?

Yeah, so good question. Yeah, we don't have enough data for that. Like it would be unfair for me to say yes or no either way it would boil down to what is the product like the product would have a big factor in that if you're in a product if you're in a niche like bendy jewelry or supplements, I would suggest that the volume would be there. Even for clothing and some apparel like that the the potential is definitely there. But there may be for some other like very specific products, maybe not but it would still be enough of a channel to generate a significant amount of sales revenue leads and website traffic.

So when a potential client comes to you if they've been using Pinterest before, what are some of the mistakes that you have seen? That could cause you to not be successful using Pinterest?

Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, I think there's actually a failed, maybe if I just give it a couple that might help anyone that's listening to this who's either using Pinterest or thinking about using it. The first one is, everything you do must have an intent. So a lot of what I mean is a lot of people, before they start using Pinterest with intent, they'll just pin anything. So any image that they think people might like, they just pin it. And there's no real intent behind there. An alternative way to do that is to you take the same image, let's say it's a product image, and tell people they can buy it so that you, you're telling them exactly what to expect, when they click that image, what's going to be behind this image. So instead of having a go image or blank image of just a product, tell them the price, put the price on the image. So if this is installed, you can even put the words in stock, and even put the price on. So they know exactly what happens when they click that. So that's one of the thing, it just sets the expectations of somebody who sees this image, they're probably already looking for it, click through and they know that there's going to be a product page, and they're able to buy their product. The other one is, and this has been around like since they introduced this feature. And it's actually a ton of videos on YouTube, which in my opinion, this particular topic is quite misleading. And it does send people down a rabbit hole of doing something that has no benefit whatsoever. On when you register a Pinterest account, and you turn it from a personal account into a business account, you get all of the business aspects like the analytics, and you get to see inside what people are looking for. One thing that also you get on your feed as the as the brand or business owner is a number that tells you the monthly views. And those monthly views do not correlate to anything. And it's easy to manipulate this number so you can see a brand and we've seen inside companies that have 10 million plus monthly reach. Now if you don't know what that is, on the face of it, you may think this is amazing, this must be a really popular massive brand was like hundreds of 1000s of traffic and making sales. But that number doesn't reflect in anything it all that number is showing is how popular some images are. And they may not even be the brand owners images that they've shared on the platforms that increases that number. A lot of the brands that we have seen that have 10 million plus when we've looked at their analytics, they haven't less than 100 visits a day. And then on the flip side, we've seen brands have 1 million, 2 million, 3 million monthly reach and have hundreds of 1000s of website clicks from Pinterest. So there's there's no correlation whatsoever.

Interesting. So what does that reach number use for that?

We don't know. You can manipulate the number really easily. If you for whatever strange reason wanted to grow that number at the expense of everything else, what you would do, you would just go and find all of the popular content in your niche and start sharing them onto your boards and on your feed. And that number would go up but it wouldn't make more it wouldn't it wouldn't benefit your brand. Like nothing at all, there will be no kickback for you whatsoever and doing that it makes no difference at all.

What would you say regarding the rap that Pinterest is unresponsive? They kind of have the same rap as Yelp that it's hard to get a hold of somebody there's you know, for example, I have a client where I manage their Google ads. And before before we started working together, he was using Pinterest, but they had their accounts suspended. And they've been sending emails for probably a year year and a half with no answer on what they need to do when there are super frustrated. So what would you say? Is Pinterest can you get a hold of them if you have a problem?

Um, yes. So the it's quite common for times when it gets shut down. Now it's a common it's not like it's not something that happens all the time, but it does happen from time to time. There is a process to go through. Personally in the last since 2017. I don't know anyone that had an account shut down that didn't get it back as long as they went through the process of inputting information into Pinterest and then following up with the emails. It is super frustrating because up until recently, they just had canned responses. So it was just automated and I think it was from Zendesk, they will just have an automated responses and things are going to be looked at, which I'm assuming is what happened with the client. But sometimes you get a reply back from an actual human. When you do get a reply from an individual, take note of that email address and just send an email directly to them. That does seem to shortcut anytime delay in helping.

Yeah, no, that's a great tip follows and and keep their email.

Yeah, I think. Yeah, definitely. I think the the other thing to do is email daily, like follow up daily, because,

Daily?

Yeah, daily follow up daily until it until it gets resolved. It will get resolved as long as you are persistent and keep going. And recently, in fairness of Pinterest, they have, in my opinion, changed the support system, you do get actual people replying back now, it used to be 99% automated accounts responses, and it was super, super frustrating. Now we're seeing accounts get closed down, and we're getting them back up within 12 hours.

Most of them,

Wow.

Yeah, most of them are less than 24 hours.

All right. So there's hope still? Yes. Now, do you have a favorite success story of one of your clients that you could share with us?

Yeah. He's actually a friend of mine. And we met online, first of all, back in 2017. And then we actually met when we were in Thailand in 2018. And at the end of 2018. And he just started Pinterest. I've been doing it for a while. And we kind of shared some strategies and give him some kind of advice on maybe try to do this or try this. And long story short, he implemented what we said plus stuff that he learned, and he'd grown his site to like crazy, crazy levels. We're talking millions and millions of website visits each year. He was at that time, he was monetizing with display ads. And he sold his site for multiple six figures after starting from scratch, like with no idea what to do. So yeah, that's kind of like a success story of like a friend stroke.

What kind of content what what vertical was he in?

So he was in, the best way to describe is just lifestyle. So he had like a lifestyle blog. And it had a range of things like recipes, diet Tips, weight loss, health, fashion, well, being just kind of range of everything that you would associate with lifestyle, really. Yeah, he sold that site for multiple, six figures, and in the space of like, 18 months. So he did really, really well, just using Pinterest and 99% of the traffic was Pinterest traffic, didn't focus on anything else. He just just focus it on Pinterest. So the traffic potential is it's definitely the

Was he's selling anything or just trying to get traffic?

No he wasn't selling at that time. He wasn't selling anything. He does now have an Ecom brand, which is really, really cool, but use that money to start his econ brand. But no, at that time, he was just monetizing with display ads.

Interesting.

Yeah, not not selling any any product of his own. He didn't have an affiliate setup is all crazy. Like he just kind of stumbled into it and just grew really, really fast. And then he managed to yeah, so for a nice amount of money.

Now you've meantioned and the results if there's a demand for products. But are there any challenges you struggled with in getting results with your clients?

Yeah guess it's so we kind of said, if this is a brand new account, like with no Pinterest presence, no Pinterest account, it's important, especially on the organic side of things to set expectations, even though like we just mentioned about that particular site having millions and millions of views per year. It's also important to remember and recognize that like as a starting brand, it's important to have some time frame of expectations of like this is going to take a while for things to figure out. The platform is constantly evolving. And it does seem to impact sites that are brand new. So just a time expectation that if you're just using organic strategies and approaches, as with any platform, it will take time, but the compounded effort over time will pay off. It's just a matter of just being consistent. Just publishing new content and just making sure that the content that's going out is what people are actually looking for. And then on the paid side, obviously you can shortcut the timeframe of expectation. But as with all ad platforms, there's an element of learning and and just optimizing. So I think, to answer the question, like more concisely, I think it's just expectations and setting those with the clients that we have.

No, I mean, that that makes complete sense, like Google's the same way, right? Google SEO, it's gonna take your time, it's gonna have to be consistent, as well as putting into best practices where they're paid ads, you can be up in 15 minutes. So that that makes sense. It works the same way with Pinterest. Now, personally, are there any business books out there that you can attribute to your journey as an entrepreneur?

Yeah, it's really interesting to ask this because it's the questions and the answers, I should say, is tied into two books. And maybe if I share some backstory, it will help understand why I was reading this first book. Because the second book catapulted my life, like astronomically and in a totally different direction. In 2014, I left my job of 12 years as a project manager. In a building services company, which I've been at it since I was 16. I went into university to study sports science in with the intention of becoming a strength and conditioning coach, in the second year, so the summer before the third year, there was finally I picked that I was reading tons and tons of books like about the topic I was studying. And I picked up a book called CEO Strength Coach, which, which I thought was about building a foundation. Yep!

Sure, yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, so I was reading that book. And I got, I didn't get halfway through. And he kept referring to this book about systems and automations. And a guy called Tim Ferriss, and I'm like,Who is this guy? Well, why is this guy talking about strength and conditioning, but constantly referring to Tim Ferriss? And it actually bugged me, I was like, what is the Who is this guy and I Googled it, I bought the four hour workweek while I was reading the CEO Strength Coach. And the two or three days later, that book came, and I never finished the CEO Strength Coach, and I knew going into my third year, I was not going to be a strength coach, I was going to be doing something very different. And I use the four hour workweek I implemented as much as I could, it totally changed how I observed and experienced like my world, I sold everything I had in 2017, and flew to Thailand to start my first company. So it made a big difference on the trajectory of my life.

That is a great story, you know, where I thought you were going, I was completely wrong. But with the name Pin and Grow, I thought you were going to reference Think and Grow Rich?

Oh yeah, that would have been a good story as well, actually.

So how how did you get the name, Pin and Grow? It's not from Think and Grow Rich, obviously. .

Yeah. No, it's not from though, but that would have been good. So this is another funny story. My agencies have unofficially started in 2019. And it grew quite quickly. To the point of yeah, it just, it just grew really, really quickly. And I came up with the name on the spot, and it will make for the first nine months of my company, I had no website, and I had an email address. That was nothing to do with Pin and Grow. It was actually called the Pinterest Marketer. I just made it up on the spot. And then over time, I was like, I need to change this name. I don't really like any to actually get a proper name. So I sat down, I was like, Okay, what do we do? And I was like, Okay, we pin for our clients. And the

intention for my agency is to grow then. So it's like, okay,

Pin and Grow.

Interesting. Well, that's a great thing. It definitely works for you. Now, what problems are you solving for your clients? And how does your agency stand out from the competition? I assume there's other agencies doing this.

Yes, here's definitely other agencies doing this. However, they don't. From all I can see they don't specialize in Pinterest. The you you have some amazing agencies that like do exceptionally well with Facebook ads and Instagram and even TikTok for clients. But what we've seen is they add Pinterest into that. So you have agencies that basically do everything. We just do Pinterest like organic and paid and we solely focus on Ecommerce. There's a quite a lot of agencies that focus on like your blogger and your info product, and they seem to do quite well. But I've not seen like maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe someone listening to this will correct me. I have not seen a specific Pinterest agency solely work with Ecommerce and maybe I've missed it but I have not seen that yet. So yeah, there are a lot of like, agencies doing Pinterest but I don't think they've been doing it in the way that we're doing it all with the audience and clients that we're working with.

So how does your agreements work with with clients? Is it for a certain length of time? Is it month to month? Is it retainer? Is it commission? I mean, walk walk us through that.

Yeah, we provide two options. Because a lot of the FBA aggregators that we work with tend to favor one option, and then brand owners tend to favor another option. So we provide the option to sign up for six and 12 months at a time, which is what the FBA aggregators tend to tend to favor. And then the, the individual brand owners tend to favor the month to month. So like a monthly retainer, the minimum, the minimum, like requirement is to just sign up for three months, because we need that kind of time for him to like, test a lot of different things. So the minimum time for him to sign up is three months. There's a monthly retainer for for that. And then obviously the six and 12 month signup options, pay the full, which is what the FBA aggregators tend to tend to favor.

Now who is the perfect client for your service? Who if they're out there listening right now should make sure they contact you?

Yeah, I mean, FBA aggregators seem to be working, like quite well for us and vice versa, we seem to be generating value. And then obviously, they provide us with additional brands as we go.

Can you can you clarify for people who might not know what an FBA aggregator is?

Yeah, good. Yeah, so essentially, there's quite a lot of organizations and companies out there right now about acquiring brands that perform well on Amazon are looking to replicate the success of Amazon. And were providing us a new alternative and a different approach using Pinterest. Because it ties back into what I mentioned at the beginning, it's an underused, or growing platform. So we're helping them achieve their outcomes of growing a brand that's already popular on Amazon of Amazon. So typically, this is through Shopify. And then other brands that we tend to work with, tend to be in the niches that we spoke about earlier. So it's anyone else already having like, some traction on a different platform doesn't matter what platform it is, in the fashion, jewelry, health supplements, home decor, furniture, those types of niches, those brands, in particular, tend to work really, really well on Pinterest. And those are the ones that we tend to speak to the most.

So how can an interested listener perfect or not learn more about working with you?

Yeah, that's amazing question, what I can do is, I will provide a link to you so that if it's okay with you to share with your readers, and if they fill in the questions on the box, what I can do is if they say, Andy, Make Each Click Count in the relevant section, box at the bottom, what we can do is we can audit the existing Pinterest account for free. If they have one. If they don't have one, we will do like a mini brand analysis and make a decision for them. If Pinterest is a viable channel or not.

That's great. Well, we'll make sure we get that link up in the show notes. Now, anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up today?

Yeah, I guess like just as a maybe if someone's listening to this as an Ecom brand, and maybe they're just starting out, but have proof of concept. I would just maybe think about spending some time and just have a look on Pinterest, and just see what comes up. Because I think most brand owners tend to be quite surprised at what is actually on the platform. It's not just for recipes, and to be used as a mood board. There's a definite growing business aspect of it. So yeah, just just maybe have a play around and just see what comes up, type in some product terms and just see like, what kind of content comes up. Yeah, and just have fun with it. It's a good platform, like everyone likes a visual representation of what it is that they're selling and creating. Yeah, and just have fun with it. It's a decent platform to use.

Well, this has been great. Thank you again for joining us today Craig.

Yeah, thank you Andy appreciate being asked on has been. Yeah, it's been good fun. Thank you.

All right. For listeners, remember if you liked this episode, please go to Apple podcasts. Leave an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding pin and grow or connecting with Craig, you will find the links in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our all new podcasts Resource Center available at www.makeeachclickcount.com. We have compiled all the different past guests by show topic and included each of their current Tech information case you would like more information on any services I've discussed during previous episodes. That's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I will talk to you in the next episode.