Pinterest Marketing for Interior Designers
Pinterest and interior design are a match made in heaven. For a small number of interior designers, Pinterest works as a powerful marketing tool to grow their brand & build their business.
Sadly, the vast majority of interior designers don’t use Pinterest to their full advantage. That’s why we asked one of the world’s top Pinterest experts, Cara Chace, to give interior designers some advice on how to use Pinterest to build their brand & grow their business.
Here’s what she had to say:
Interior Designher: Why should interior designers be on Pinterest?
Cara Chace: Interior Designers have an incredible opportunity to use Pinterest both in a way that benefits their clients and their business. It’s not just a place to pin dream home ideas, recipes, or wedding color schemes.
Chances are - right now - your clients are on Pinterest saving ideas and inspirations for their next design project. Pinterest is where people go to dream, to learn, and to plan - everything from their next living room couch to feng shui design to architecture plans.
Interior Design has the privilege to be included in several top-level Pinterest search categories, including Architecture, Design, and Home decor. These top-level categories are what Pinterest sees as the most popular content on its platform.
“Unlike other social platforms used to pass the time or for entertainment, users visit Pinterest when they want to find something. To some people, it’s their default search engine.” - Influencer Marketing Hub https://influencermarketinghub.com/pinterest-stats/
Interior Designher: How does Pinterest compare to other social media platforms, SEO, etc?
Cara Chace: Pinterest is a visual search engine that will drive traffic to your website! While it does get lumped into the “social media” category of digital marketing, it’s actually a unique kind of platform.
It’s a true search engine, which means it has much more in common with Google and YouTube than with Facebook or Instagram. It functions on keywords to find what users are looking for, not so much on followers or engagement. It has the added bonus of being the only visual search engine out there - which makes it easy for users to quickly see if the pins are the content they are looking for.
And what are Pinterest users looking for?
According to a 2020 article from Sprout Social:
85% of women on Pinterest use it to plan life moments, compared to 44% for Instagram and 53% for Facebook.
43% plan on getting their ideal home within the next five years.
58% say it helps them make shopping and purchasing decisions.
For interior designers, this means that whether your client has a collaboration board with you or not, they are likely on Pinterest searching and gathering ideas and inspiration for their design projects.
Interior Designher: If a designer operates their business under their own name, do they need to set up a business account? Or just operate with their personal Pinterest acct?
Cara Chace: Whether you operate under your own name or a “company” name doesn’t matter to Pinterest and both are ok.
However, setting up a business account on Pinterest gives you access to a bunch of features that are handy to have, like:
Pinterest analytics
Audience insights (like demographics and locations)
Rich Pins
Promoted Pins
It’s totally free to have a business account and it shows that your business is utilizing Pinterest to its fullest potential as a marketing platform.
If you still want to maintain some personal boards for your own inspirations, you have 2 options:
Have two separate accounts - one for business and one for personal.
Make all your personal boards “secret”
I prefer option 2 because I don’t want to confuse my profiles and pin the wrong things to the wrong account.
Secret boards are hidden from your public profile, but you can still collaborate with other users on them. They are also a great option for clients who don’t want your project together to be public.
Interior Designher: Should designers use Pinterest strictly as a brand-building tool OR can Pinterest actually work to send potential clients to their website, email, telephone?
Cara Chace: The beauty of Pinterest is that it will help you accomplish both!
By putting up quality Pins that are designed well and have keyword-rich descriptions, your Pins will show up in search results to build brand awareness AND will drive traffic to your website.
“On Pinterest, keywords get you found, and graphics get you clicked.” - Cara Chace
Every time someone clicks one of your Pins, they are going to go directly to your website (unlike Facebook or Instagram, who want users to stay on their platform).
Remember, that Pinterest can drive traffic to your website all day long, but it’s your website’s job to convert that traffic into leads and calls. If you’re getting Pinterest traffic to your blog or gallery or portfolio, but your contact information is hard to find, or worse - you don’t ask your visitors to contact you...that traffic isn’t going to do you much good.
Every Pin you put up that links back to your website should go to a page that optimized to convert that visitor to a lead.
Interior Designher: Is there a "best way" for interior designers to set up their Pinterest boards?
Cara Chace: Think of boards as the digital folders people create to keep their ideas and inspirations.
I remember having a “Dream Home” accordion folder where each section was for a different room and was filled with magazine tear-outs and floorplans. Pinterest Boards are the digital equivalent.
Your Pinterest boards are an important place to put your keywords - both in the title of the boards and the descriptions. This will help users find your boards (which should have a bunch of your work along with your inspirations).
Fun fact: Pinterest boards (and Pins!) are also indexed by Google - which means that your Pinterest content has the potential to show up on other search engines.
Look at the screenshot below. I typed in “Modern fireplace” and the first 2 search results in Google after the “Places” results are for a board and a Pin with those keywords.
You should have as many boards as you think your potential clients are interested in and what fits your brand. For example, if you only do modern design, you wouldn’t create a board on farmhouse decor just because it’s popular.
Consider what else your client might be interested in that you don’t offer, like modern landscape design. Complementary ideas are a great way to attract users to your profile as well.
Interior Designher: Is there a "best way" for interior designers to set up their Pinterest profile?
Cara Chace: There is definitely a right way to make sure your Pinterest profile is set up for success.
Fill out your business settings and “confirm” your website with Pinterest.
Set up the Pin It button on your website.
Enable Rich Pins (https://help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/rich-pins)
Upload an “on brand” cover photo for your profile page.
Make sure your main keywords are in 5 places:
Profile “about” section
Board titles
Board descriptions
Pin titles
Pin descriptions
Create 5-10 Pin templates that are “on brand” with your logo, fonts, colors, etc. so you have an easy way to create Pins from your website content - easy to do in Canva.
Create a consistent schedule of Pinning - I recommend Tailwind App. If you use my affiliate link, you’ll get an entire month for free!
There are so many amazing opportunities to use Pinterest for your interior design business.
When you look at the stats around the lifespan of Pins (the longest of any platform) for content marketing, combined with the fact that 98% of users report trying new things after browsing Pinterest (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-statistics/), it makes sense to create a marketing strategy around using Pinterest for your business.
The #1 thing I hear from other business owners who haven’t tried Pinterest yet, is they are confused and overwhelmed by the idea of learning Pinterest for marketing their business. Because it’s a unique platform with its own best practices, it can be hard to wrap your head around something new. Maybe you looked at that list of 7 things to do about and thought, “no way”...
That’s why I created the Pin Power Roadmap™ - a free guide and bonus video training to help you go from the very beginning of setting up your business profile to creating an organized system for consistently marketing your content on Pinterest. (https://carachace.lpages.co/pinpowerroadmap/)
About Cara Chace
Cara Chace is the creator of Pin Power Method™ - a Pinterest marketing membership designed for online entrepreneurs. She started in social media in 2011 by managing 13 million fans across 17 social media accounts for a worldwide band. Since then, she's gone on discover what makes a fantastic digital marketing strategy for online entrepreneurs by teaching how Pinterest fits into that strategy and creating lots of lightbulb moments. She loves nothing more than helping fellow business owners, except maybe a good book and one more cup of coffee.
Find out more about Cara Chace at her website or on social media:
For all you DIY business owners out there, if you’re not going to get Cara to level up your Pinterest game, then at least download our free guide to Pinterest for interior designers.