Influencer Marketing with Pinterest: How It Works

Influencer marketing is incredibly powerful for both product sellers and service providers. If you are a service provider, you may be wondering how you could leverage influencer marketing. 

The truth is, there is no one correct way to leverage influencer marketing, joint ventures, collaborations, whatever you may want to call them. 

First, let's chat about what influencer marketing really is. 

Simply put, it's when a brand collaborates with an individual of influential status (sometimes) to reach a broader audience to promote a product, service or even an event.

In many cases, we see collaborations with individuals who are really active on social media with an engaged audience, and yes, smaller influencers can be really, really powerful. 

When it comes to payments for these types of collaborations, you'll most often see the company paying the influencer for their services based on certain guidelines and KPI's.

Influencers often have pricing guides to allow brands to build a package based on their needs. 

You'll also often see the payment in the form of products or service access, and this is most often seen for nano influencers (influencers with smaller audiences.)

You may also see mutual collaborations where a brand and an influencer or other brand come together to form a joint venture where they will mutually benefit from the campaign outcomes. 

If you want better success with your influencer marketing campaign, work with a consultant or create a standard in-company process for your future campaigns. Make sure that you outline expected deliverables to make it a better experience for both you and the person you partner with. 

Deliverables should really vary based on your goals for those specific campaigns, and keep in mind that the pricing will vary based on your needs and the influencer's rates. 

Now that we covered some basics let's review how we do influencer marketing on Pinterest. 

Pinterest is sometimes underestimated when it comes to influencer marketing. We have to remember that there are long-term evergreen traffic opportunities with Pinterest, which can increase the campaign's value. You can also drive a lot of reach faster with new features such as Idea Pins. 

Here are some of my favorite types of influencer collaborations currently for Pinterest. 

Idea Pin series for product reviews & demos. 

Really try to mix it up with videos and photos with a strong call-to-action on the last slide. Give your influencer some prompts and examples of other content that you have created that worked really well. 

Video pin reviews for products and services. 

This is ideal for ongoing evergreen traffic for products that are non-seasonal. For both organic or paid ads as well. Remember that your influencer marketing campaign with Pinterest can include both organic and paid efforts. 

Graphic Pin carousel for product or service reviews. 

Create a series of graphics showcasing a mix of reviews and product demos' FAQs, also. Get the input from your influencer since they know their audience best. 

Although many influencers that I have worked with allow for the pins to be up on their account permanently or as long as needed. The pricing for some influencers may vary based on how long you want the pin to be up on their account. 

With that being said, I always recommend requesting evergreen pricing, especially if you are able to keep the campaign or any promo link active on an evergreen basis. It can take 30-120 days to see good traction from a pin. It sometimes happens as fast as a day or two, and it really depends on the search volumes and keyword competitiveness as well. 

If you want to get traffic faster from an influencer marketing campaign on Pinterest, consider doing a paid partnership. Take the time to ensure that the paid campaign meets the advertising guidelines. 

Now, let's review some ideas in more detail. Make sure to take some notes because these are from real influencer collaborations we have helped clients do on Pinterest. 

Influencer marketing good-to-know info: Pinterest point of view.

• Celebrities (mega audience size)

• Macro Influencers (100K to 1M audience size)

• Micro Influencers (10K to 100K audience size)

• Nano Influencers (1K to 10K audience size)

• Brand-Advocates (Any follower count with high levels of impact and engagement who regularly share products about specific brands.)

All influencer types can be beneficial with Pinterest. Yes, “influence” plays an important role in the results, but traffic, engagement, and sustainability do as well. 

When you vet your influencer, be sure to ask for some website traffic reports defined by their website. Also ask for some engagement reports and, finally, some links to some of their pins that are ongoing collaborations or case studies of past collaborations. 

Here are a few things to remember about influencer marketing with Pinterest or in general. 

Remember that it's not just about the influencer and audience size. The key to success is also the relevance of their audience. It's important to discuss this in the vetting process. 

For example… You find an influencer who seems to have high engagement, but mostly shares content related to sports events. Would he be the best influencer to promote your waste-free shampoo bars too? No. You have to ensure that the audience is relevant. 

You'll also want to remember to include in your contract that you must obtain the original videos and graphics so that you can also share them on an evergreen basis (if applicable) on your Pinterest account.

The same goes to getting access to content created for other platforms such as Instagram or Facebook stories, you can easily repurpose them on Pinterest. 

One tip that I love to always share is to also remember that your influencer knows their audience best and will know whether video or graphics could respond the best based on past campaigns. 

I hope that you found these tips helpful. Need help with your Influencer marketing campaign on Pinterest or other platforms? Book a call!