Why You Shouldn’t Market on Pinterest

Pinterest has made a meteoric rise in the social media world. Now being the #3 social media site on the web in terms of number of monthly site visits.

With all those visits you know companies looking to sell their products and services to Pinterest users can’t be far behind.

And those that are jumping on the bandwagon are getting no shortage of advice. Do a search of Google for “marketing on Pinterest” and you’ll have over 62 million results to choose from. That’s a lot of people chiming in about marketing on a site that’s been around for just about 2 years.

My advice to you when it comes to marketing on Pinterest is simple…don’t!

Why?

Because chasing the latest Big Thing in online marketing is almost always a recipe for failure.

Business owners get caught up in the hype from the media and from marketers looking to make a quick buck and think “Everyone’s talking about Pinterest (or Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or Mobile or…) and jumping on board, so I’ve got to get my business on there too.”

So they hop from Big Thing to the Next Big Thing with no strategy behind what they’re doing. There’s no thought about how Pinterest (or whatever the next Big Thing is) fits into their overall marketing plan. And there’s no focus on what long term success in online marketing is all about…driving targeted traffic to landing pages that efficiently convert prospects into customers.

In most businesses, getting traffic isn’t the problem. Getting targeted traffic that converts is the problem. And using Pinterest’s active user base to drive traffic to your site ain’t gonna fix that.

It’s just going to distract you from doing the hard work that’ll pay off in the long run.

Yes, there are going to be businesses that have success marketing on Pinterest. These are the companies that have honed their sales message, know how Pinterest fits into their overall marketing plans, knows it’ll help them reach their ideal prospects, and are consistently testing, tweaking and measuring their results so they know that Pinterest is worth their attention. (And they’re most likely companies that sell unique, visually appealing products to women.)

So, unless you’ve got all that stuff squared away, do yourself a favor and steer clear of Pinterest. And if you’d like help getting that stuff in order, you can shortcut things by hiring a good online marketing consultant.