163: Pins to Cash: Selling Digital Products on Pinterest
Want to learn how to sell your digital products on Pinterest, even if you don't have a Shopify store?
In this episode, I sat down with Kate Ahl, the owner of Simple Pin Media, a Pinterest marketing agency. Kate shares her proven strategies for leveraging Pinterest to drive organic traffic to boost sales for our digital products, online courses, and memberships.
From the benefits of utilizing Pinterest as a marketing tool to the nuts and bolts of setting up product pins and where to drive Pinterest traffic (which is so critical!), Kate walks us through the latest trends and best practices in promoting our digital products via Pinterest.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Where to find Kate & Simple Pin Media: Website, YouTube, and Podcast
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Promoting Your Digital Products on Pinterest with Kate Ahl of Simple Pin Media
In this episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Kate Ahl, with Simple Pen Media, a Pinterest marketing agency. With a decade of experience under her belt, Kate brings her insights into leveraging Pinterest to boost your digital product sales. If you're eager to transform your Pinterest account into a sales-driving machine, you're in the right place. Let's dive into the expert strategies Kate Ahl shared with us.
Why Pinterest?
Pinterest stands out as a unique beast in the digital marketing arena. It's not just a social network; it's a search engine tailored for discovery. For businesses selling digital products, Pinterest offers a great place to grow your visibility and sales. Unlike other platforms, Pinterest is where users actively search for inspiration, solutions, and products. This behavior makes it a goldmine for digital product sellers to tap into a warm audience ready to explore and purchase.
4 Ways to Promote Your Digital Products Via Pinterest:
1. Link Pins to Informative Blog Posts
One of Kate Ahl's golden strategies is utilizing blog posts to connect with your audience. Creating pins that link back to blog posts about your digital products not only educates potential customers but also enriches their understanding of the value your products bring. This method is storytelling at its finest, transforming curious browsers into informed buyers.
2. Direct Traffic to Your Landing Pages
Another option is sending traffic directly to your sales page or landing page for your digital products. By pinning directly to these pages, you create a direct pathway from discovery to purchase. This strategy simplifies the buyer's journey. Pinterest users who find your product intriguing can immediately learn more and make a purchase, all thanks to your strategically placed pin. This strategy works best for lower cost digital products that are an easy “yes.”
3. Leverage Product Pins Through Catalog Connection
Kate emphasizes the power of product pins connected to your online catalog. This seamless integration ensures that your Pinterest audience has access to the most up-to-date information about your digital products, including pricing and availability. Automating this process through a connected catalog can save you time while keeping your product listings fresh and appealing.
4. Engage Pinners with Video Content
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, video content reigns supreme. Pinterest is no exception. Video pins capture attention, convey information quickly, and add a dynamic layer to your marketing efforts. Showcasing your digital products through video can help demystify their value, demonstrate their impact, and engage potential customers on a deeper level.
Final Thoughts
Pinterest is more than just a platform for inspiration; it's a powerful tool for digital product sellers aiming to expand their reach and boost their sales. Kate's insights offer a roadmap to success on Pinterest, emphasizing the importance of strategic content creation and the power of visual storytelling. By following these expert strategies, you can harness the full potential of Pinterest to grow your digital product business.
Are you ready to dive deeper into Pinterest marketing? Listen to my conversation with Kate Ahl on our podcast and unlock the secrets to Pinterest success for your digital products. Your next big sale might just be a pin away!
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Transcript:
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:02]:
And my special guest today is Kate Ahl. Kate is the owner of Simple Pen Media, a Pinterest marketing agency. And I wanted to bring her on to chat with her today, and I'll tell you kinda what sparked this whole conversation. I'm on Kate's email list. I've been on it for many, many years. And in her weekly newsletter, I saw a YouTube video in there, which was how to sell digital products on Pinterest. So I went to that YouTube video and watched it several times. I've super interested in this.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:46]:
So, Kate, as you know, I have a ton of questions for you. But before we get into all of those, can you tell the audience just a little bit more about you?
Kate Ahl [00:00:55]:
Yeah. And I love that. I love that you watched it multiple times. I have to say, I was like, yes. More views for us on YouTube. So we're a Pinterest marketing and management agency. We've been doing it now for 10 years. So I like to think of myself as a Pinterest educator, but also a little bit of a Pinterest historian.
Kate Ahl [00:01:13]:
Like, what have we seen on the platform? What changes have we seen? And how are we going forward? And I find that Pinterest, when they communicate information to creators or sellers, there seems to be this lost in translation. It feels like too marketing speak or too corporate speak. So we like to take what we're hearing from Pinterest, distill it down into really actionable items that don't overwhelm people in their business. Because we have limited time, and we don't wanna sift through everything. So our goal is to really make Pinterest marketing approachable, efficient, and really productive for your business.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:01:51]:
And I can say that I definitely rely on you for that. And if, anybody's been listening to this or been on my email list, you know that one of my goals this year is to place a lot of emphasis on Pinterest. And I know a lot of you are also interested in this. I know there's been a lot of Google changes, SEO changes, so we're looking for other avenues to kinda drive that organic traffic to our website, and I am focused on it for Pinterest. I have 3 different Pinterest accounts, and we're definitely gonna kinda get into some of the questions that I have for for Kate here. But one of the things that I found interesting, Kate, when I was watching your video, and you mentioned this at the very beginning of it. And, of course, the video was all about how to sell digital products on Pinterest, but you also mentioned you can't sell them on Facebook or Instagram. And I was like, you know what? That is true because I do have 2 Shopify stores, and I know I can connect my catalog and sell them on, you know, sell them on Pinterest, but they don't allow digital products on Facebook and Instagram to be sold.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:02:59]:
Is that am I understanding that correctly?
Kate Ahl [00:03:01]:
Yeah. It's a huge bummer too because we we've tried to, like, backdoor it and see if we could list our products on Facebook or on our Facebook page or even try to do it on Instagram and you can't. And I actually find that really frustrating because there are so many digital product sellers on those platforms, but Pinterest has been super friendly to digital products by saying, you bet. You can do digital. You can do physical, and we will support all integrations.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:03:29]:
So even if somebody doesn't have a Shopify store like I do, but they have digital products, maybe they have memberships or online courses or even low cost digital products, Can you talk a little bit about why they might want to consider Pinterest, in their marketing strategy?
Kate Ahl [00:03:49]:
Yeah. I would say number 1 is when we look at marketing options overall, we put Pinterest in the bucket of YouTube and Google. It's very much search based. It's a cold flow of traffic. And if we put Instagram over in the warm or TikTok or Facebook, it has a completely different place in your marketing options. So what we find is that a lot of people, they might focus on Google. It tends to be the thing that we all know we want SEO. We wanna get ranked.
Kate Ahl [00:04:18]:
We wanna get seen. But then we kinda jump ship really quickly into the warm based marketing, forgetting that cold traffic is just as valuable as warm traffic. And so we like to tell people, if you have not added Pinterest to your suite of marketing options, it's a good idea to, 1, go over to the platform, search your name, search the type of products to see if actually Pinterest is already hosting ideas or even people are saving your products already. And if that's the case and you see a market there, it is 100% a good idea for you to diversify, especially with all the Google updates, the helpful content update. I know that I just talked to somebody who is worried about the March updates that are happening. So anytime you can keep a really good content or not content flow, but a traffic flow coming to your website, and Pinterest provides that, we always say you should pursue that option.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:05:14]:
So I think you made some really good points there, and I can I can tell you that I'm all in on Pinterest? I know how important it is for my business, especially for the long term strategy of it. But let's talk about the ways that we can sell digital products on Pinterest. Even if we don't even have, you know, even if we don't have a Shopify store catalog that we can connect there. I know there are are other ways that we can do that. Yeah.
Kate Ahl [00:05:40]:
So here's an example. Let's say somebody has a really great meal plan. It's all digital. When somebody signs up for it, they either get connected to a particular app. I've seen that pretty common. Or they get a PDF download each month. If we're going to use Pinterest, then what we would do is we would have a couple of different options. 1, content, a blog post either short or long, always, always helps your your content get seen on Pinterest because what you don't wanna do is you don't wanna say here's a meal plan for March.
Kate Ahl [00:06:13]:
Well, somebody might not be looking for that. They might not be searching monthly meal plan for March, but they might be searching things on, you know, how do I make dinner every week? Is there a meal plan that works for saving money on groceries? Grocery saving meal plan. So if we go from that perspective and we target the people in where they're searching, they come to our website and read this blog post, whether short or long, and then the option is your March meal plan. Now you're taking them through this whole journey, and you don't have to have a Shopify store. You don't have to have any of these connections, but you've just really bridged this gap between the pain point and the solution through this process of pinning a a pin, and then it answers the question. You know, people get curious. They click on it. They come to the website, read, and then they purchase the product.
Kate Ahl [00:07:05]:
That's kind of our most common pathway for people who maybe don't have a Shopify store but still wanna sell digital products.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:07:12]:
So I love that. So, basically, taking the pin, linking it to the blog post. And the other thing I just wanna mention here, and this is something that I'm working on, I haven't actually done this yet, but I have it in my strategy, even for my Shopify stores, having blog posts there and maybe even, you know, linking to those blog posts instead of directly to the actual product in the Shopify store. Would you say that's a good strategy
Kate Ahl [00:07:36]:
to use? A 100%. One of the an older example that we used, we worked with a client a couple of years ago, which feels like it was probably 5. Right? Like, all time runs together now. But one of the things that they were selling were grief boxes. And so it would be if somebody's lost a pet or a parent or a child or anybody who's important to them, they're experiencing grief. They were able they were you know, they had a website where they had all their products, but what they realized is that the Pinterest user was asking the question, what do I give to somebody? What meal do I take to somebody? How do I console somebody? So they started writing these short form blog posts that attracted and solved that. You know, really the primary question, here are 5 things you can take to somebody, but we also have these grief boxes. And what we find actually with ecommerce is that, yes, we want to pin our product to Pinterest, but people on Pinterest need more context.
Kate Ahl [00:08:34]:
They really need back at that first pain point. They need a solution, or they're curious, or they're dreaming. And so I think it's really important for anybody who sells digital or physical products to really come from that vantage point of being open to writing short form blog posts. And we get a lot of push back from people who say, I don't wanna do that. And it's really hard for a Pinterest strategy to work. And I would argue kind of any strategy to work without a form of content that warms people up to the why of why your product even exists on the market.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:09:12]:
So I love that, and you've definitely sold me. So I have that on my to do list for my Shopify stores. I haven't gone there yet, but it's on my to do list. So here's the next question I have for you. Now a lot of people listening, they might have a course whether it's you know, it could be even be like a a mini course or a monthly membership that might be low cost. So something that would be somewhat of a low barrier for somebody who might not know them as well, maybe coming from Pinterest. Should they pin do pins directly to their sales page or their landing pages, or what would you recommend there?
Kate Ahl [00:09:53]:
Yeah. I've done this in the past too because I used to have a membership. I used to have a course too as well all before we had the Shopify store. And that's what we would do is we would lead to the the sales pages or the landing pages so that people could actually read and they could learn more about it. We actually found when we tested those compared to a blog post or even compared to, like, a simple email opt in, it was really hard to get people to convert. We found that a lot of people were were there, but they weren't really saying yes. Some of that could be price point. We do find that anything less than $30 or anything on the consumer side, if it's less than $20 is kind of an easy easy yes.
Kate Ahl [00:10:35]:
When it comes to business to business products, it's a little bit tougher. You can do a little bit higher, but I would say that to the landing page, which is the sales page, but really get crafty about maybe a really cool email lead magnet that's free. And then down the funnel or down the nurture sequence, then there's more conversation about the product, and they might be more open to buying it because they've been nurtured by you. So try a bunch of different things. And that's what I tell people as well is that your data will tell you what's working or not working. So really trying to dig in and say, okay. I'm gonna try pinning to my landing page for 3 months, and I'm just gonna see how many sales I get. I'm gonna see, you you know, how many people land on it.
Kate Ahl [00:11:23]:
Do I get any sales after they land on it? And maybe at the same time, I'm also gonna pin pins to my email lead magnet that leads to the purchase. And I'm just gonna be able to compare and contrast what worked and what didn't work. And a lot of people will try it for a couple of weeks, and then they're like, oh my gosh. This is not doing anything. But Pinterest traffic is really slow. So that's why we always tell people, give it a good 3 months to get good information and good data about what you would keep doing or what you will stop doing.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:11:56]:
So I love that, and I like what you said about kinda testing it. And maybe maybe one of as you were talking about that, one of the things that came up my mind, try the lead magnet and then maybe have a tripwire. That's another thing
Kate Ahl [00:12:08]:
to test.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:12:09]:
Mhmm. Yep.
Kate Ahl [00:12:10]:
We've done that too as well. That's been an interesting test. I highly recommend that. Okay. So let's talk about connecting or doing pins directly
Dr. Destini Copp [00:12:20]:
to our products. It let's just say we have a Shopify store. And I'm assuming this works. I don't know anything about WooCommerce. I'm sure you do. I'm assuming this works with, like, WooCommerce and some of those. Okay. So walk us through how that works and how do we set that up so that it works.
Kate Ahl [00:12:39]:
Right. So Pinterest has tried to get super smooth about the integrations. I think it's Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce. There might be a new one that is like Adobe Commerce, I think I heard, that was coming down the pike. And what this means is that Pinterest has, like, a simple turn it off and turn it on button. Like, it's if you add the code, kind of I am not a techie person, so when we went through this, it was kind of we went into the Shopify back end and did a few things and, voila, it was, like, all connected. So when you connect through those integrations, you get what is called product pins. You can also get product pins when you upload your catalog.
Kate Ahl [00:13:20]:
Let's say you have a different site that you sell on that's not part of the, quote, unquote, approved integrations that Pinterest has. When that happens, you allow your products to be updated and refreshed every 24 hours into these product pins, which is pretty cool because for a lot of sellers for a long time, the main frustration was my price has changed. My items have gone out of stock, and I have all these pins out on Pinterest. And how do I get rid of them? And you really couldn't because people would pin it, and then once it's out in the ecosystem, it's just out there. Whereas if you update your catalog since it refreshes every 24 hours, then all of a sudden that will update. And if you're out of stock on an item, all those pins get removed from the platform. So that's, like, the auto way that it's done. A product pin just gets pulled from your product listing.
Kate Ahl [00:14:13]:
It kind of does it without you doing anything. Now there's another option that you have more control over, and this is creating your own image from scratch. We will usually use Canva. It's always gonna be a 2 to 3 ratio. It's a vertical pin, and we might do either lifestyle shots. So even if you have a PDF, we've had many photo shoots where we print off our PDFs, and we take them to the photo shoots so that people can see them either open on a table or open on an iPad. It looks like it's a desk, and we have a little more context by using text overlay, which the product pin that is automatic will not have that. So in this way, I can decide, okay.
Kate Ahl [00:14:56]:
I want to create a pin that leads to my Pinterest planner. It's in my shop. People can either get it digitally, or they can actually have it printed and shipped to them. And I can show what it looks like. I'll upload that pin to Pinterest, and then I'll link to that shop listing. So that image doesn't live on the shop listing, but the image on Pinterest gives it way more context.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:15:21]:
So that is related to connecting our catalog. Correct?
Kate Ahl [00:15:26]:
Yeah. When you connect your catalog with, you'll get the product pins. That is correct.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:15:31]:
But that is different from being a verified merchant. Can you explain how all that works? Because I think that's confusing to folks.
Kate Ahl [00:15:38]:
Oh, so confusing. I really wish Pinterest would tighten up their the speaking of wording, tighten up their wording. So you can connect your catalog. You can connect your Shopify. You can do all of that at any time. Now if you want to become a verified merchant with Pinterest, which essentially gives you the blue check mark, we all, like, fawn over blue check marks whenever we can get them, then you would apply to be a verified merchant, which means Pinterest is going to be looking at all of the details of your shop. They wanna know your shipping terms, your return terms, your address. They wanna make sure that if they are putting their blue check mark, their stamp on your Pinterest profile, and then they're saying, we approve this shop.
Kate Ahl [00:16:25]:
So you can apply for the verified merchant, and it'll walk you through the steps of what you need to do. And then it is a little bit here's kind of some pitfalls. You can only apply once and appeal twice. So before you apply, make sure you go through their checklist. It changes every so often about what Pinterest needs. And if you don't have any of your information public, we've even had people denied because their LLC name was different than their shop name. It's kind of a whole rigmarole. But when you do get verified merchant, you get the blue check mark.
Kate Ahl [00:17:03]:
It says what your shop is. And I don't believe there's any extra analytics information that you get. I I still think you can get that with uploading your catalog, manually or even through the integrations. You don't necessarily have to be a verified merchant to get access to all of the analytics. It's really just Pinterest saying we approve you and we support you as a shop on Pinterest.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:17:26]:
So all good information. I love the fact that you don't you can still connect your catalog without being a verified merchant. So thanks for clarifying that. Now tell us a little bit about video. How can we use video to sell our products on Pinterest?
Kate Ahl [00:17:40]:
Yeah. Video is having it's really interesting right now. I'll say video had this really big boom. It was doing really well for a lot of our clients. And on Pinterest, a video that's less than a minute 30, even less than a minute is always gonna do really well because people on Pinterest, they scroll by really fast. One thing to know is that videos don't always auto play when you're scrolling through. So sometimes people don't know it's a video unless it has a little timer in the upper left. And then sometime well, all all the time, it won't play with sound.
Kate Ahl [00:18:15]:
So it's really important to note that video is, I guess, an important component to your Pinterest marketing, but it feels like right now, static images seem to be doing better than video. However, we do have a few outline accounts where they've uploaded potentially, like, repurposed reels or YouTube shorts or even TikToks. Whenever you upload to Pinterest with your video, please, please, please remove any watermark. Just like every platform, they don't want someone else's watermark on the video. But once you upload it, you can link to whatever place you want it to go. You just wanna make sure you optimize the pin title and the pin description, and it's really important to use text on the actual video. We were just at a conference, and we were looking at some people's videos. And a lot of times people would do the video, but they would forget either captions or they would forget text that went over the top because they assumed people were listening to it.
Kate Ahl [00:19:18]:
But especially on Pinterest, people are not listening. Like, it's a kind of a barrier to get people to turn on the sound more so than it would be on Instagram. So using, I think we use CapCut is one that we like, and then Opus AI is another tool. But just have either a cover image to start, buzzy words throughout the video, something that's gonna kinda captivate their attention.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:19:45]:
So that's good information. People are are listening to your videos on Pinterest. Mhmm. Kate, before we wrap it up here, do you have any last minute tips for the audience?
Kate Ahl [00:19:56]:
Yeah. I would say in having conversations with other business owners right now, I know that there are so many options for you to choose when it comes to your marketing. In fact, it's so overwhelming sometimes. I find it for me as a business owner super overwhelming too. But I always tell people, you wanna make sure you have at least 2 traffic drivers and 2 audience drivers. And I find right now that Google with its moment of ups and downs, some people choose YouTube, and some people choose Pinterest. If you have never investigated Pinterest as an option for your business, I would highly encourage you to do so because it still does drive traffic. When we look at analytics of business owners, we see Google and Pinterest, especially if they've been using Pinterest, tend to be in the top 2 traffic drivers, and that is organic free traffic that is not paid.
Kate Ahl [00:20:53]:
Whereas we see on Instagram or Facebook, there is those aren't big traffic drivers. So if you have not tested Pinterest to see if it can be a good option, I would highly encourage you to do so. And then just spend at least 6 to 9 months playing around with it, testing it, seeing how it works and how it doesn't work. And then you can, of course, listen to my podcast and figure out how you can test and try different things. But I think most of all, I just wanna tell business owners that our landscape of marketing tools is shifting and changing so fast, and it feels like it's every other Tuesday that it's really important to grab on to something and just hold on to it for a little bit, test it, try it, and see if it's gonna drive the results that your business needs right now.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:21:40]:
And I can attest to what you're saying in terms of Google and Pinterest being my biggest organic traffic strategy, so which is why I place so much emphasis on it. So, Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you let everybody know where they can find you and definitely let them know about your podcast and your YouTube channel?
Kate Ahl [00:21:59]:
Yeah. So we have the Simple Pin podcast. You can find that on all players. Go ahead and subscribe to that. And then YouTube has been, I would say, like, our test. You know? I identify with people who are testing out Pinterest this year. YouTube has been the thing for us that we've diversified into and really trying to get feedback about what videos people need. So you can find us over there at Simplepin Media, and then my website is simplepinmedia.
Kate Ahl [00:22:24]:
We have the newsletter that you get every Wednesday too, and that's just a really brief overview of what's happening in the news, what things have changed, my kind of thoughts about Pinterest marketing. And I'm in the weeds with you. So even right now, our Pinterest traffic has taken a weird dive. We're trying to figure it out. It is definitely not something that I just teach on, but we definitely practice in the day to day.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:22:48]:
And I'll make sure that those links are in the show notes. And, Kate, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I loved our conversation.
Kate Ahl [00:22:55]:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.