No matter how much Pinterest traffic you drive to your website, if you don’t have a solid content marketing strategy already in place, the business growth you want will likely fall flat.
I’ve seen it time and time again and the reason why is that Pinterest users are at the top of your sales funnel aka your customer journey.
Pinners (aka Pinterest users) are in discovery mode and looking for inspiration to solve a problem or do something in their lives.
In basic terms, Pinners are planners.
They’re open to connecting to your business since 97% of searches are unbranded but they need to see what’s in it for them and that’s where your solid content marketing strategy comes into play.
The goal of your content marketing is to get the pinner to join your online ecosystem so that you can stay in touch with them.
I’m a big fan of building your own online real estate and it’s why I can stand behind Pinterest as a solid marketing platform – it assists online business owners with building their assets whether that’s traffic for ad revenue, email list growth, online shop sales, affiliate income, and more.
Let’s deep dive into content marketing so that you can make sure your efforts on Pinterest will go that extra mile.
This post is part of my series about the pillars of successful Pinterest marketing.
Here are the pillars:
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #1 – Keyword Strategy
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #2 – An Optimized Pinterest Account
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #3 – A Content Marketing Strategy
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #4 – An Image Strategy
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #5 – A Consistency Strategy
Make sure to check out the other posts to learn how to effectively market your business on Pinterest!
What is a Content Marketing Strategy
The definition for content marketing is, “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.” – the Oxford dictionary – snippet found in Google.
In other words, a content marketing strategy is basically a plan to create high-quality content that is relevant to your audience and will attract them and ultimately get them to take action.
Ie. buy a product, join your email list, or become part of your online ecosystem.
To peel the onion back even further, it basically means to have content for every single part of your customer’s journey.
You need to educate, inform, and nurture the traffic that comes from Pinterest so that you can eventually convert them into paying clients/customers.
The idea is to attract, nurture, and convert.
This is very simplistic for the sake of this post but that is the ultimate goal of all content marketing.
From there, you would identify what metrics to track so that you can see if your content marketing is working.
These are called KPIs in the business world which means key performance indicators.
Some common KPIs are traffic, engagement, and conversions – there are more types and that is why it’s important to figure out what matters to YOU in your business.
Different Types of Content Marketing
There are many content marketing methods so I’ll share a list of some of the more popular ways to create content.
- Written blogs
- Vlogs
- Email marketing
- Social media
- Podcast
This is not an exhaustive list of content marketing types by any means but I wanted to give you something to get your creative juices flowing.
How you create content will depend on what type you’re comfortable with creating.
Don’t try to force yourself to create content if it doesn’t feel good.
If you don’t enjoy the content creation process, I’m willing to bet you won’t actually create the piece of content!
Sit down and map out your content.
Does your content take your ideal person from discovering you to making a purchase from your business?
If you answered no, create a content plan by outlining your idea person’s pain points and then create the answers in the content style that fits your personality best.
Approaching content creation this way means you’ll fill in the gaps missing in your content and stop you from creating content for the sake of creating content.
Need an example of a content marketing strategy from discovery to purchase?
Don’t worry I have you covered! We’ll be going over a content marketing strategy example later in this post.
Essential Parts of a Solid Content Marketing Strategy
Let’s go over the important parts of a content marketing strategy.
Now that you know the different types of content marketing and why you need to have a strategy in place, it’s just as important to know the pieces.
Here are the essential things you need to understand before crafting your content marketing strategy.
- Understanding of your ideal customer/client/person.
- Audience research.
- Brand messaging and positioning.
- Competition research.
Now that you have that information, the goal is to create content for every piece of your sales funnel while keeping in mind all the things mentioned above.
Here are the different stages of a sales funnel:
- Awareness
- Research and consideration
- Decision and purchase
- Retention and repurchase
Content Marketing Strategy Example
For example, I’m a writer so creating blogs makes sense to me.
From there, I can take my written blog posts and break them down into shorter pieces to record videos about.
I can then take those videos and share them across social media platforms and on Pinterest, of course.
Let’s look at an example – say you’re a wedding planner who targets newly engaged brides-to-be about to start planning their wedding. The bride has no clue where to start or what will ultimately be involved with planning a wedding but that’s okay because you’re the ultimate guide who can show her the way.
Remember, Pinterest users are at the start of the customer journey and have no clue what you offer, so how will you get your business in front of this new bride?
Let’s look at the bride’s journey to purchase.
A free ultimate checklist of must-know things to plan a successful wedding of her dreams ==> She signs up for the freebie and is now on your email list ==> You start nurturing her with useful content that you know will help with wedding planning ==> You also inspire her with content that helps her imagine her own wedding ==> She feels overwhelmed and is looking for tools and resources to alleviate the stress of planning a wedding ==> You offer wedding planning services or other paid tools you have in place that help.
In this example, you will have effectively attracted, nurtured, and converted your ideal client.
Having these content pieces in place before you drive traffic with Pinterest is the most ideal situation but that doesn’t mean you can’t get started building and growing your Pinterest account.
Learn how we can help you start and grow your account with our Pinterest marketing services.
While there is a lot that goes into a content marketing strategy, the goal of this post is to educate you about how important having a content plan is.
To recap, create content that covers every part of your ideal client/customer buyer journey.
Create the content in the format that works best for your personality.
Make sure you’re creating with the goal of growing your own online real estate.
Once you have a few pieces of content, look at ways you can repurpose it using other content formats.
Choose which KPIs are important to your business growth and track them.
After some time and consistency, look at what is resonating with your ideal audience and do more of it!
Ready to take your time back while having experts grow your Pinterest account? Make sure to check out our Pinterest management services.