Looking for a place to market your writing business where you may be able to be the only copywriter talking to your prospects? Pinterest may be the answer. Heather Farris, the go-to Pinterest Marketing Expert for a lot of service providers, course creators and others is our guest for the 409th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She shared how to get started, how to find the right key words, and how to get clients off Pinterest and onto your mailing list (or buying your products). This is a good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Stuff to check out:
Heather’s WebsiteHeather’s Pinterest Board
The Copywriter Club Pinterest Board
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:
Rob Marsh: It doesn’t matter how good you are as a copywriter, if your ideal clients can’t find you, you won’t have a lot of work that you really enjoy. In fact, if clients can’t find you, you may not have any work at all. Copywriters have been solving this get-found-by-clients problem in a lot of ways. They’re on Instagram posting photos and reels. They’re on Linkedin sharing client success stories and thought leadership. They guest on podcasts like this one, sharing their frameworks and processes to attract the clients they want to work with. But the problem with all of those platforms is that there are literally thousands of other copywriters doing the same thing—trying to get attention and connect with the clients they want to work with. What if you could attract clients from a search engine that’s been around for years, but it ignored by almost everyone?
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m chatting with Pinterest Marketing Consultant Heather Farris. Her title gives away the answer to the intro, but Heather has been helping service providers connect with their ideal clients on Pinterest for years. As you almost certainly know, Pinterest is an image based search engine with almost 500 million active monthly users. And some pretty easy-to-use tools for finding keywords so you can connect with your ideal clients. Now I’ve always thought of Pinterest as a place to find cool images, but clients? Heather set me straight and not only will you like this interview, but I’m guessing more than a few listeners will use what Heather shares to find their own clients on Pinterest.
Before we jump in with Heather…
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And now, let’s go to our interview with Heather Farris.
Heather, welcome. I’m excited to be chatting with you today. And as we usually do, let’s start off with how you got to where you are. How did you become a Pinterest ad strategist, consultant, and I guess Pinterest marketing expert?
Heather Farris: I just happened to fall into it, to be honest. I have a history and a college degree that I’m still paying for, painfully so. in accounting and management and finance. So I was living in a very, very small town of 13,000 people. When I graduated college, my husband was in the air force and I didn’t want to have to drive an hour one way—I had a family. So that was like commute time. I didn’t want to have to spend time away from them to go into Kansas city to work in an accounting firm.
I found a tiny little bookkeeping firm that was paying $12 an hour and I was making No money. And I was just looking for any way to make more money than what I was making, or at least make what I was making and have more time with my family. And I went to Pinterest one day and I searched “how to work from home”. Today, people would be searching for “side hustle” because that’s the new terminology. But that’s what I looked for. And I found this whole world. I had no idea it even existed. And I was using Pinterest every single day up to that point. And I found blogging. And then one thing led to another, and I was building funnels and starting to sell digital products and making courses. And yeah, here we are eight years later.
Rob Marsh: So I’m curious. First off, most people, when they want to figure out how to do something, they go to Google. You immediately went to Pinterest, which is maybe why you ended up where you are. But why? Absolutely. Why?
Heather Farris: Why? Yeah, because I’d been using Pinterest every day up to that point. as my main search engine. I started using it when I was 20. That’s when the platform came out. It was 2010. I had a brand new baby. And I was newly married. And I didn’t know how to do anything. I didn’t know how to decorate. I didn’t know how to cook. I didn’t know how to properly clean. These are just things that you would normally learn. And I did learn some of those things at home growing up. But when you have your own place and you’re trying to cook food for your new husband, It just – nothing felt right that I was finding on Google and everything was making me sick. So I went to Facebook and I typed in that third party Facebook status from third person. My sister-in-law texted me and she’s like, hey, you should try this platform out. It was Pinterest and it was only in beta and I waited two weeks for my invitation to come and it came and every single thing that I was finding on there was food because all the food bloggers at the time were using Pinterest heavily. And I single-handedly taught myself how to cook. I’ve cooked over 3,000 recipes, Rob, from Pinterest over the years. I have fully taught myself how to do all sorts of different cuisines and cultures and baking.
Rob Marsh: So while we’re talking about that, how many of them were your kids willing to eat? Because most parents have five recipes in rotation, right?
Heather Farris: Not very many. Yeah. Not very many. 3,000 is a lot.
Rob Marsh: 3,000 recipes over 14 years.
Heather Farris: That’s a long time. But that’s where it all started was I went there to learn how to teach myself how to cook because I was cooking literally hamburger helper and it was making me sick. So one thing led to another and it just became my main search engine. So yeah, I went there for everything.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that I see this already is a different, different way of thinking from me. So before we started recording, I told you I’m, I’m like, I have zero knowledge of Pinterest. I do have like a Pinterest account. And I think I’ve pinned three or four things to a board. My daughters love it. My daughters are on it all the time. Uh, but yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t use it, you know, much. We’re going to get into that for sure. Before we do that though, uh, I want to know about your blog. You know, as you started blogging, what were you doing? What were you writing about and did you grow it? Did it start to produce money for you? Like how did that all come together?
Heather Farris: Yeah. So I started that blog in July of 2017. Yes. I believe that’s the right timeline. And by December, I had grown it to with Pinterest traffic. I’d grown it to over 5,000 page views a month in just that very short amount of time. I had started to apply for ads and I had started to sell a digital course on budgeting because I was blogging about motherhood and budgeting and like meal planning and all of these things. It was like a lifestyle blog that I was just sharing my life with other people. It had done really well. And I’d started to monetize with some affiliate links, and I was looking for some sponsorship opportunities. When the winter came about and the new year came around, and I had an opportunity to actually just do what I was doing for my own Pinterest account for some other bloggers. And I realized very quickly I could make a lot more money and do a lot less work by just offering what I was doing as a service to other people. So I continued Doing the blog thing for a while, I continued selling digital products. I was actually approached by companies like Trello. I had featured them on my blog and they had found out that I had featured them on my blog and they reached out and did an interview with me. There was a couple of other things like that too that had popped up, but it just kept coming around that I was really good at this thing. I was really good at doing Pinterest marketing and driving traffic to websites. And I didn’t have to share my life anymore in order to still make an income. I just got in this rut where I felt like I was living my life in order to make money and I didn’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that today. I like privacy and yeah, it just, one thing led to another and people started hiring me.
Rob Marsh: It feels like a lot of people are doing that on Instagram, the same kind of thing. It’s like, what interesting thing can I do today so that I can post a photo of it in order to get attention?
Heather Farris: I just don’t want to do that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I get that.
Heather Farris: I like my private life and I want my kids to not have to live online. So when the opportunity presented itself, because I had used the platform every day up to this point for the six to seven years that it was in existence, I understood why people were using the platform and how they were using it. It enabled me very quickly to take the information from client websites and position it in a way on Pinterest that people were searching for it and really quickly get them traffic to their websites, grow their email list, sell their products, get people into their coaching funnels. Ultimately, that’s really what I’ve become known for over the years is doing Pinterest management. later on Pinterest ads. And I just have never looked back. I mean, I obviously have my Pinterest blog. I also have another travel blog that I just do for fun, but the mom blog ended up getting archived about two years ago completely. It doesn’t even exist anymore.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Before we get into Pinterest stuff, one more question. You were selling digital products as part of the blog. What were those? What were you creating and how were you selling those?
Heather Farris: My most successful digital product for the mom blog was a Trello for moms course. So I was teaching moms how to use Trello to do all of their household management. My most popular template that I had sold, and this is why Trello came to me and featured me in an article, was actually two. The one for meal planning, and then one for saving your kids artwork. And then not having to actually have all this paper laying around in your house. And they had never heard of moms using their tool before. It was just like business owners or whatever. So I was bringing like a new market to their platform and they wanted to talk about that. So that was actually really interesting. I turned ads on to that funnel, Rob, before I went on vacation to Colorado that year. And over the course of me running those ads, um, I made like six or $700 in the two weeks I was on vacation, just from sending people to, that landing page for the Trello for Moms course. So that was my first foray into Pinterest ads. But that was it. It was the Trello for Moms course.
Rob Marsh: Wow. Okay. Let’s, yeah, let’s talk Pinterest. So, uh, I have to admit, I have some hesitation even talking about Pinterest because in my small minded way of looking at this, I, you know, I have a really hard time imagining like, okay, how could a copywriter use Pinterest for their own business? I can see a lot of applications and how they can use it for their clients. And obviously, you know, copywriters who figured this stuff out can carve out a really nice niche for themselves, depending on who they’re serving. But yeah, let’s, let’s talk about what good is Pinterest for business owners? Because to me, it feels like a pinboard with a lot of artwork. And like you said, a lot of photos of food and, and, and a bunch of inspirational quotes.
Heather Farris: So I know a lot of copywriters in your audience are probably just doing copy work and they have referral sources or pipelines of leads and they don’t really have to go outside of that. Then there’s probably this other segment of your audience who probably do have their own website. They probably are talking more about copywriting in kind of a value driven way and those are the people that probably have the biggest opportunity on Pinterest. The ones that do have a small blog or even like you Rob, you have a podcast. Anyone that has a YouTube channel, anyone even creating content on Instagram or TikTok that is value-driven where they’re trying to reach their clients because this seems to be a new marketing method these days. where we showcase our expertise and then clients find that attractive and want to hire us. Those opportunities present themselves for Pinterest in a really positive way because it’s an opportunity for people who are looking for something specific like sales psychology, copywriting tips on Pinterest. And then those pieces of content have that opportunity to be surfaced in search.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So, I mean, that definitely rings a bell for me. You know, we talk about sales psychology and all kinds of persuasion techniques, that kind of a thing. Are people going on to Pinterest and typing in, you know, sales psychology or, you know, how to write an email, those kinds of searches?
Heather Farris: Yeah, they are. In fact, they’re actually looking for the value-driven content that teaches them how to do those things. And they’re also looking for templates. So a lot of people now sell copywriting templates for sales pages, and emails, and about pages, and all these things. And they’re actually looking for those items as well. So not only are they looking for the information, but they’re looking for products.
Rob Marsh: So what, let’s say I go, I could probably do this. I should be pulling up Pinterest right now and saying, you know, teach me how to write an email or something. But what should I be creating then to put on Pinterest that’s going to connect with that searcher?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so I’m going to talk to you through this through the lens of my Pinterest account because I’m a service provider too. OK, good. So being a service provider, I obviously offer the services and do the services that I talk about on my website. But I also have a YouTube channel and a blog. And I have an Instagram account where I create value-driven content there. Most of your audience can probably relate to one of those three things. what I do and what I’m doing right now. So I just had a pin go out today for a free keyword workshop. And it just landed on Pinterest this morning. It’s got very few views so far because it’s brand new. It just published, but it’s literally called the Keyword Workshop for Pinterest. That pin is linked to the landing page where someone can sign up for that free workshop. So if anyone in your audience listening has a lead magnet, for example, and they want to get people on their email list and maybe they have a free welcome email series that they give away. teaches people how to write their own welcome series, but also gives them a template to do so. I’ve actually seen quite a lot of these on Pinterest. That would be a really great Pinterest pin for them to create and direct back to the landing page where they could then capture people who are interested in writing that email series. Now, a couple of things are going to happen. That pinner who clicks on and signs up for your email list is going to go away either happy with their new template, and they now have a welcome sequence they can put in their business, or still in need because they still don’t understand the concept of how do I write this effectively? How do I plug my own products or services into this? They’re still going to have questions, a group of them are, and that’s where we can capture those people in that kind of nurture sequence behind the scenes and land them as clients or even sell additional products to them in that funnel. And that’s what I do, actually, a lot, is capture people on my email list, if I can get them on my email list. Because I’ve hired copywriters to write emails for me. They’ve done a really great job of doing so, because I’m not an expert in copywriting. Those copyrighted emails from professionals in my funnels convert people like gangbusters.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So people are, they’re searching a need and I mean, this is basically like any other search engine that we’d be doing. Yeah. It’s searching a need, getting some kind of an answer. So lead magnet that answers the question, and then obviously leading into some other kind of a funnel, small upsell, possibly course, you know, getting people onto a list where you can then sell them through email. I assume I’m understanding that correctly.
Heather Farris: You are. And then on the flip side of that, for any other free or paid content, if you have a course that you’re selling, if you have paid digital products that you’re selling, any of those templates, if you have free content in the form of YouTubes, podcasts, blog posts, all of those things can also become Pinterest pins. So if you have a blog post on sales psychology tactics for beginners, That can become a Pinterest pin. The Pinterest pin would say something to the effect of sales psychology tactics for beginners. It’s very simple. If you’re already writing on your blog, use the same kind of language on Pinterest, and then link it back to the blog post. Or if there’s a paid product, link it to that.
Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes sense. So as I think this through then for a lot of copywriters who are probably listening, most of us don’t write for other copywriters. So we want to be talking to people in our niche. And I can see this, I’m guessing, you know, coaches, course creators, there are certainly a lot of them that are going to be on Pinterest. If I’m writing for maybe plumbers, maybe there are plumbers on Pinterest. I certainly don’t want to limit and say there are no plumbers on Pinterest because that’s probably not true. But do you see niches that are definitely going to be better for Pinterest than some of these others that I could imagine might not be? Or maybe I’m just putting up a block there that really isn’t real and I should try it anyway.
Heather Farris: So the local businesses that I tend to stay away from, not that they aren’t there, it’s just I want to see people get results in a way that feels good to them and it’s quick. I don’t want people to wait years in order to see ROI. So I tend to stay away from hyperlocal businesses when I’m marketing, but if you’re If you are a copywriter for digital product sellers like myself, we are definitely on Pinterest. Yeah. We’re there marketing our own businesses, but we’re also there looking for resources to grow our businesses as well.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. So again, just sort of thinking through who’s going to have the biggest impact, you know, advertising on Pinterest or putting up content there. People who are probably in creative industries, entrepreneurial, but maybe not necessarily the come to your home and perform a service type business. Although again, I’m guessing that there are people that are there. It’s probably just a longer build.
Heather Farris: Yeah, they might be there. They very well could be there. I was doing a consult with a fellow Pinterest marketer recently, and she had recently landed a client for a garage door company out of Canada. in the Ontario region. So it was very hyper-localized to only that province in Canada, but I wouldn’t touch that myself. because I prefer digital businesses. So if your target market are digital businesses, they are there. Coaches, service providers, course creators, anyone that needs copywriting services generally in the digital business is probably there. Now, I would say it’s probably a good thing to think through who your ideal target market is. If you’re looking to write for the Jenna Kutchers of the world, they have Pinterest managers like myself. So you might be reaching their Pinterest managers and not the business owner. So be thinking about that too.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, aiming for the top is always a little bit of a gamble. Obviously it’s awesome if you can hit that home run, but you gotta work up to it.
Heather Farris: Yeah. And you would actually be surprised. I found a multi seven figure client through Pinterest. I didn’t find them. They found me and they have a huge YouTube channel. I was blown away when I logged into this discovery call for that client and they were like, yeah, I found you on Pinterest and I’m looking to run Pinterest ads and I’m like, okay, let’s do it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that can be great. So Pinterest is obviously a visual medium. Very visual. And copywriters, we can’t, you know, I mean, most of the time we spend our, you know, typing into a Google Doc. And so taking a screenshot of, you know, our work, probably not going to fly. Let’s talk through some of the visual strategies that we should be thinking about.
Heather Farris: So my visual strategy, if you go visit my Pinterest account, and we can link it in the show notes for anyone that just wants to check it out, is very much, because I also am mainly creating in a Google Doc or I’m filming YouTube videos, I try to become as visual as I can. So my way of doing that has been showcasing the templates that I’m creating. So right now, one of my most recent Pinterest pins that went live is a tablet with a screenshot of the templates that I sell for that product. I also share video clips from my YouTube channel or any video like podcasts or anything like that that I’m on over to Pinterest. And then a lot of my pins are just brand photos of myself. And I’ve actually found that to be true for a lot of service providers in the space.
Rob Marsh: And I’m looking at some of your pins right now, and they’re actually pretty copy heavy. They are. There’s a lot of words on them. Obviously, the descriptions include a lot of words. And so I’m guessing your advice would be don’t run away from having words or copy there. It’s not entirely visual.
Heather Farris: Yeah, you definitely should have words on your pins. That’s what we call a text overlay. And Pinterest, being that visual search engine that it is, actually indexes the words, the imagery on your pin, the words on your pin. the elements on your pin, and it also indexes all of the copy that you assigned to it. So your pin title, your pin description, the link, it will crawl the webpage that you link to. So all of those things are getting indexed into that file folder for SEO purposes to be served up later when someone’s searching for it. So if someone were to search for Pinterest board cover templates, that Pinterest pin that’s at the top of my feed that published probably yesterday would likely come up in the search because I’ve done my keyword research and optimization.
Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about that then, because my first inclination would be, okay, I’m going to throw a bunch of pins up on my Pinterest page and let’s see how it goes. But I wasn’t even thinking keyword strategy yet. So what do I need to be thinking through to make sure that they work?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so the long-term sustainability of Pinterest is what sets it apart from all the other platforms. So Instagram posts will last, you know, maybe a day. Facebook posts, maybe a day. Tweets, who knows. Minutes. Pinterest pins will come up for years, and the reason being is because of keywords. So Pinterest is that search engine. The first iteration of a search engine on Pinterest came about in 2011. It wasn’t even a year old when the founders figured out people were searching for stuff more than they were browsing. They eventually took away the browse functionality in the search bar and it’s only search now. And there’s a few iterations of the search engine that take place. So as you’re looking for keywords on Pinterest, you can simply go to the search bar and search for things like copywriting tips for email marketing and then see what comes up not only in the search results, but also in the autofill of the search bar and then use those words on your pins.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So, and what if, I mean, obviously, you know, using other people’s words or whatever, you know, gets you that start. How do I differentiate?
Heather Farris: So you differentiate with the presentation. Being visual, you’re going to have your own Pinterest pins and the way that you’re presenting your content is going to look different than everyone else. You don’t want to look the same as everyone else. So if you were to search copywriting tips for email marketing, You don’t want to make your pins look exactly like everyone else’s, but you can use the same word. You can use the same phrase. And I would actually encourage you to do that.
Rob Marsh: OK. And then what else should we be looking for as far as keywords? If I’m doing an SEO plan for my website, am I thinking about the same kinds of keywords for that as well? Or is it more product-related or service-related, the traffic I’m driving?
Heather Farris: Yeah. Definitely full funnel marketing platform. So people are looking for things before they even know what they want. They’re in that awareness phase. They’re in the consideration phase as they move through and make decisions and ultimately leading them down to that purchase phase. So, and Pinterest themselves builds them as full funnel. So when you’re thinking about your keyword strategy, you should definitely use both informational and commercial keywords. If it’s a free piece of content, but within the free piece of content, like on a blog post or whatever, if you have a product in there that you want to sell, you can, in that instance, I would encourage you to use both informational and commercial. Now, to your question and to your point, you’re creating a keyword plan for your website. Is it similar on Pinterest? Because pinners have been using this platform the same way they use Google. In a lot of cases, the same keywords will be in both places. So if you have that keyword of like, you know, copywriting tips for email marketing on your blog, search for that exact keyword for the blog post or the landing page in the search bar on Pinterest and just validate that it exists. They’re not always there, but in a lot of cases they are. And to further your point, If any of you are listening right now, you’ve probably gone to Google recently and you’ve seen a lot of search results for Quora and Reddit, but you’ll also see search results for Pinterest pins that are in the Google search. If you are using your Google keywords as supplementary keywords on Pinterest, you do also have a chance to show up on Google for your Pinterest pins and your Pinterest boards.
Rob Marsh: Okay. That makes sense. I just did, you know, a quick search for, you know, as you’re saying this stuff out, you know, copywriting tips for email. And I’m starting to see some copywriters who have actually been through some of our programs, which is gratifying to see. They’re way ahead of me on some of this stuff. So good job to them. But I’m also, you know, I look at it and say, oh, wow, there’s a lot of really good design here. And I’m not a designer. To really make this work, should I be working with the designer or can I get away with templates from Canva? Am I going to look like everybody else if I do that? What’s the best approach as far as design goes?
Heather Farris: The best approach for me is just to make sure you’re following best practices. So I’m going to tell you what they are, and then you can take this and apply it to either custom templates that you hire someone to make or Canva templates. I will say I wouldn’t use the Canva templates that are just in the Pinterest library on Canva because everyone is using those and you don’t want to look exactly the same. So if you are going to use them, I would edit them enough to where you look like an individual.
Rob Marsh: Not just change the colors, but really change them.
Heather Farris: Change some of the design elements. So I have this methodology for creating a cohesive Pinterest design for your profile. And my tips are always following best practices for Pinterest. So best practice number one is to have a text overlay, especially in this market for service providers like your copywriters. They’re not selling fashion, so we can’t just get away with no text on our images because people aren’t going to know what we’re selling, you know, for copy. So always use a text overlay and in your text overlay, you want to use your main keyword. So looking at my account right now, I have a pin that says how to sell digital products in your business. My main keyword is how to sell digital products. So within your text overlay, No matter what template you decide to go with, always leave space for that text overlay for that main keyword. Best practice number two is to limit the number of colors that you use in your overall design. So three to five max. Don’t go crazy. Number three, don’t use a lot of script font because people are mainly on mobile except for your copywriters. Their audiences are probably primarily like mine going to be on desktop. But even then, the pins might be slightly bigger, but they’re still small images, and you don’t want to use script font that’s really hard to read. Stick to, you know, if you go look at my account, I definitely stick to best practices, but don’t write paragraphs and paragraphs of text on your images. One of my Instagram images recently imported to Pinterest, and it’s on there right now. And there’s a ton of text. It’s very small, hard to read. Don’t do that on your standard Pinterest pins. And then the last best practice is to use tall imagery. So 1,000 by 1,500 is the sizing. If you stick to those things, no matter whether you have your brand designer create custom Pinterest templates for you, or you use something out of Canva, or you go to Etsy or Creative Market, you’re going to find something that works.
Rob Marsh: OK, so that’s a shortcut. And then, of course, if I can design, you know, I should feel free to decide it to look like my own brand standards, you know, so it looks like me.
Heather Farris: And you want people to leave Pinterest and land on your website and they don’t feel like they’ve really left the platform. It looks the same. So the same colors, the same fonts, the same you know, little elements, if you have custom illustrations as, you know, supporting elements that you use in your brand kits, anything like that, your logos, you want to use all of those things within your design, within your Pinterest banner, on your profile. Use a picture of yourself, you know, unless you’re not a personal brand. then maybe use your logo as your Pinterest profile photo. But when people see you on Pinterest and they land on your website, you want them to feel like they’re actually just on an extension of Pinterest.
Rob Marsh: So again, I want to try this out. I want to play around with it. And from what we’ve been talking about, it sounds like best practice is you go to some kind of a free lead magnet. You know, other ways of promoting would be going to a low ticket or even a high ticket purchase. Do you see much success with that or do you really have to get them into a funnel as far as buyer behavior goes?
Heather Farris: I personally, my preference is to get them into my email list. That’s my number one goal because I know I can sell there. So if you know you can sell on a sales page, if you’ve sold organically via a sales page to high ticket, If you have a call funnel that you can get people into, wherever you sell the best, I want you to test out sending traffic to those places. Now just understand that historically Pinterest pinners are gathering information, and the bicycle does take a while. The average bicycle is about 18 days. And that’s generally for physical products. That’s not even for like services and things that might be $2,000, $3,000 or more. So just understand that the bicycle might be that they’re collecting information. You know, pinners are hoarders in Pinterest pins. They love to hoard Pinterest pins and they’re looking for information to make decisions. If you can link them to your email list in order to further nurture them, if you can link them to your blog post or your YouTube videos or your podcast episodes, do those things because any opportunity that you have to build trust with them is going to shorten the buy cycle.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. So we’ve talked about best practices. What are the mistakes that we need to really look out for? Obviously the opposite of the best practices, but yeah, where are the pitfalls?
Heather Farris: Some common mistakes that I see creators on Pinterest making is just repurposing without any regard to what they’re repurposing. So a lot of people will just put up their Instagram reels that are more entertainment, and they don’t actually bring any value to Pinterest pinners. Now, Pinterest pinners are here to find inspiration, to do, buy, and try. They are just like search engine users where they have a problem and they’re going and searching for something. So if you are creating an Instagram reel, that’s a day in your life as a copywriter. Pinterest painters don’t care about you. They care about themselves. So if you’re going to repurpose content to Pinterest from social media, you want to repurpose that content that’s value driven. So take taking that same style of video that you made with that music and overlaying, you know, for copywriting tips or for copywriting mistakes. or how to write a sales page tips. Those kinds of things will do better than just your repurposed entertainment style reels. That’s mistake number one. Mistake number two I see often is obviously using no keywords at all or only focusing on a hashtag strategy. We don’t use hashtags on Pinterest. They are there. They are clickable, but they only exist because of shuffles. So when you’re thinking about repurposing content from Instagram to Pinterest, remove the hashtags and write pin copy. Write about the thing that you’re sharing. If you are creating Pinterest pins in Canva to link to your website, opt to use the keywords that you want to rank for versus the hashtags.
Rob Marsh: Anything else, any other big mistakes?
Heather Farris: Yeah, some other mistakes. So not necessarily mistake, but it’s definitely like you’re going to miss out is not using any video ever.
Rob Marsh: So Pinterest is… That was going to be my next question is video versus images because video is big everywhere. I mean, even Instagram’s moved away from images and is now mostly video. TikTok’s all video. Even LinkedIn is seems to be… Going video. Yeah, video. So how should we be thinking about that?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so be using some video over there. Again, I kind of already harped on using value-driven content and video. If you can do that, that’s great. You can also, any of the carousels that you might be creating on Pinterest, if you’re creating those in Canva, you can download that as a video instead of a carousel and actually put that on Pinterest as a video too. That actually works really well for clients. So that’s kind of like not a mistake, but like you might be missing out on potential reach. A lot of people don’t understand the algorithm from the standpoint of search, but they understand algorithms from the standpoint of engagement. But if you can do that search part of the algorithm over time, you’re going to build that engagement side of the algorithm as well, that social side. So be thinking about how you can generate saves. And don’t just be thinking about impressions. One of those mistakes I see people making a lot is only focusing on their reach, where they’re not actually focusing on the downstream things that make a difference in reach. And those are things like saves and outbound clicks.
Rob Marsh: So yeah, let’s talk a little bit more about that because if I’m thinking, okay, I want to get saves. Obviously, if I, you know, I can follow the best practices or whatever, but is there something else, you know, can you basically say, Hey, save this for later? Or, you know, are there other things that you do to generate those saves?
Heather Farris: It’s generally the type of content that you’re creating. So if you are focusing on value type content, like what I do as a service provider, you’re going to generate saves naturally because people are going to want to come back and reference it. One thing that works really well for saves for my clients and students is creating infographic style Pinterest pins, but not the size. of infographic, not like that 2000 by 3000 or whatever size, that really crazy tall one. Yeah. Not those, but like 1000 by 1500 style infographic pins where you’re laying out steps or you’re showcasing, you know, your knowledge for something. Those actually generate a lot of saves and then videos.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. Okay. I’m trying to process all of it as I grab my brain around this thinking, okay, you know, how can I do it? How long, you know, let’s say I start today, I start throwing up pins. Well, maybe the first question is how many times should I be pinning a day or a week in order to start the process? And then how long until this really starts to pay off generating traffic, not just to my site, but maybe I’m getting attention on my pins and starting to see views or saves. It’s probably not a three-day process. It’s not a miracle cure.
Heather Farris: No, it’s not. It’s a search engine. So much like your Google SEO is going to take a while, Pinterest is also going to take a while. I tell people six to 12 months on average of putting your content on Pinterest. I like to educate people and equip them with a growth mindset of we’re going to park our content on Pinterest, and we are going to build sustainability over time. So we’re not looking for Pinterest to immediately drive six figures to our business. Pinterest is probably going to start by generating 50 to 70 page views a month, and then it’s going to grow over time. But when we are looking at a social media strategy and we’re comparing it to a search-based strategy, the difference in the volume in page views and eyeballs on your website is greatly different for Pinterest. So it’s definitely one of those benefits. So let’s go to the top of what I think should be the first question, is how many times a day should you I think it depends on how much content you have in your business. And content can be anything from sales pages, products, to actual content like these podcast episodes. If you have a huge library like you do, Rob, or like I do, you could probably afford to pin one to three times a day. And you don’t have to do that in the moment. You can be planning all of this behind the scenes. It’s not one of those things where you have to have your makeup on, Rob, and your hair combed to do an Instagram reel, right?
Rob Marsh: Which is good. It doesn’t happen very often.
Heather Farris: Right. Neither, not me either. So it’s definitely a behind the scenes platform. So you can do a lot of planning. You can do a lot of batching and scheduling in advance to make those one to three pins a day happen. If you don’t have a lot, if you maybe just have service pages and you want to drive traffic to your website to land some clients or get people into call funnels, you could probably withstand doing just a couple of pins a week. Just know that the lower amount of output you have, the slower the slog is going to be. And I love full transparency. So I just I want to give your audience that information. Now, the timeline. I tell people six to 12 months on average before you’re really going to see considerable results from this platform, and that is really dependent upon your goal. I think a lot of people in your audience are probably conversion copywriters, so they know how to write copy that actually converts. they may be lacking in the design part of that process because maybe they’re not designers, they’re the copywriter. So making sure that your design and your copy are working together on your website to convert is going to be important. And then presenting your Pinterest pins in a way that’s, you know, captures the attention. So just get after it and just have that mindset of This is just another platform for me to build on. I don’t have to be present in order to put content on the platform. I’m just going to park it there. And when people find it, they’ll find me.
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. One thing that strikes me as being very different from, say, Twitter is, you know, in Twitter, you repost a lot of content because it only lives for a couple of minutes at best. And then if it doesn’t pop back up, it never pops back up again. Right. So we’re always scheduling the same content to go up. Probably don’t have to do that with Pinterest the way that that works. Or it seems like, hey, if I’m trying to write copy for coaches, reposting the same pin over and over isn’t actually going to do a lot of good.
Heather Farris: No, in fact, what I would encourage you to do is create 20 pins for the same piece of content and schedule those out throughout the year. So having a wider, having more buckets, having more nets and spreading it out wider is going to do more of a service. So I don’t create content for, I don’t create a Pinterest pin for a piece of content once and I’m done. I will come back to that content, especially my big Converters. So I have a few blogs on my website and they have YouTube videos embedded in them and they have products embedded in them. These are pillar pieces of content for me and they are huge conversions. They drive a lot of conversions in my business. I create pins for those every single month.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. And so you’re just saying the same thing, really, but in a different way. You’re just using a different hook or different images, a different combination of things. Yeah. Again, that makes sense. So before we turn to the ad side of all of this, how about tools for making this easier on us? You know, again, I’m looking at my own skill set and I’m thinking, okay, How would I create 20 pins using my preferred tool, which is Adobe Illustrator, which would be a nightmare or if not a nightmare gives me a lot of control, but would probably take me three days to create, you know, 20 very different pins. So let’s talk about like design tools, posting tools, all of the stuff to make this easier. So that like, like you’re doing, you’re basically automating it.
Heather Farris: Yeah, so my preferred tool in my design work life is Canva. And I think that’s probably true for a lot of business owners. So you actually can convert your Illustrator, your PSD files into Canva templates with PSD or with PDFs. So you can import a PDF into Canva, and it will come in with all the layers. And you can manipulate those. So if you have something you like in Illustrator you want to bring over to Canva, you can do that. You can also do it in reverse. Canva is going to be the easiest way for the majority of people to design quickly. I actually would suggest having a set of templates between 15 and 20 different you know, very different templates that you can very quickly write some copy for and then plug in images. So when I make pins for my all my new content, so I publish a blog today, I make three pins for that right away and schedule those three pins to Pinterest. So they’re going out over the next few weeks. And then I’m going to put that URL back into my queue to make pins for again. So you can make things in bulk. And if you have templates to work from, you can very quickly replicate. You could use the same exact template with the same copy and just change the image or change the color slightly. And that’s a new image for Pinterest. So that’s really the only tool I would suggest people really start with is a design tool of their choice. You don’t need to pay for a scheduler right away because Pinterest has a native scheduler built in. And you can schedule up to 30 days in advance with it. and you can schedule images and videos.
Rob Marsh: When would you want to use a paid scheduler? Is there a reason that a business owner would want to shift away from the free tool?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so in a lot of cases, shifting away from the free version to the paid version is when you want to schedule more than 30 days in advance. you have more of a need to bulk schedule a lot of content. I do this for all my clients. I actually am completely done with all September content. It’s only the 13th of August. And we’re already moving into scheduling all that content. But I can’t do that on the native platform because I can only schedule to September 13th if I were to do it today. So that’s why we would use a scheduling tool instead.
Rob Marsh: Okay. That makes sense. Let’s talk about ads and the difference between the organic things that we’ve been talking about and ads. What’s, you know, is it a different approach or is it simply you’re paying for exposure?
Heather Farris: It is a different approach. The number one way I would suggest your audience to use ads is to drive traffic to their funnels. So either getting sales into their low ticket funnels, driving people into a call funnel or getting people onto your email list. That’s what I’m doing right now, actually myself, and I’m getting leads to my email list at about $1.50 for a lead.
Rob Marsh: That’s not a bad price. Yeah. Compared to what people are paying on Facebook and Google for the same thing. Yeah. So as far as, is there like any difference in images or is it you’re basically doing the same kind of content, but you’re really just using a paid platform?
Heather Farris: Yeah, very similar images. In fact, one of my ads that’s running right now shows the digital download that someone’s going to get instead of a stock photo or like a photo of myself, a brand photo. So in that way, that’s really the only difference in what I’m doing for the images. You could also do the same thing that you do for your sales pages, where you have mock-ups of what’s included. Using those mock-ups on the Pinterest pins for ads are actually really effective. So it helps people to visualize that this is going to be something like a course or whatever. If you’re doing webinar funnels or workshop funnels, or you’re promoting to those, That might be you might need to use more brand photos of yourself unless you just have a mock up of the workshop in that case. Webinar funnels I’ve done in the past for clients. I’ve had a few celebrity clients we’ve done webinar funnels for and we used their brand photos now that I’m thinking about it and just with text overlay. So we basically took their Instagram and meta ads and we made them tall, 1000 by 1500 with the text overlay and the call to action for like free webinar. And then we directed it straight to that landing page.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Again, makes a lot of sense. Let’s say that I’ve been listening to the conversation here and thinking, all right, I definitely want to do Pinterest, organic, maybe ads, but I don’t want to do it myself. I want to work with a consultant like you. Talk me through the process, the price ranges that people can be expecting, the kinds of things that you help people do as a consultant.
Heather Farris: Yeah, so price ranges are going to vary depending on where you go. If you go to Upwork, you’re likely to find people from anywhere from $15 an hour overseas to $35 to $50 an hour locally in the US. I guess it depends on where the majority of your audience lies. I would, if I were you, I would be looking for people who specialize in Pinterest and that aren’t necessarily doing Pinterest because they also do social media. So look for a specialist. Because Pinterest definitely is not a social media platform. So social media strategists, oftentimes, unless they went through some sort of Pinterest education, are not quite equipped with a full tool set for Pinterest. So just be aware of that. Now, pricing as far as retainer packages, it could vary anywhere from I’ve seen some people offering Pinterest services for $500 a month. My rates are on my website. Right now, I charge $1,000 for organic, $1,000 USD for organic, and I charge $1,500 for ads. I also have a package together for the two for $1,800 USD. I’m very transparent in my pricing. I don’t want people to feel like they have to get on a call in order to work with me and find out what that pricing is. And then there are agencies that charge $3,000, $4,000 for the same thing. So I would do some price shopping.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. Again, another opportunity that copywriters may be thinking, well, uh, in addition to, you know, writing blog posts for my clients or helping them get social media, maybe there’s an opportunity to help them with face or with Pinterest ads, Pinterest content to drive additional traffic. Um, you know how, I mean, you do this, you know, if I wanted to sort of become that consultant or, you know, offer that, how long do you think it would take me to learn these skills and to get really good at it?
Heather Farris: Probably to learn the skills three or four months. I have a program that teaches people how to use Pinterest. And in that container, I also have courses on ads and design for Pinterest. So I think it just depends on the readiness of your clients that you can use as use cases, or if you have your own website and you can test these skills out for yourself. You want to do the thing in order to really refine it, like writing copy. in order to land our copywriting clients, and I say our, and I don’t mean me, in order to land those clients, you obviously have to write copy. So do the skill, learn the skill, implement the skill, probably three or four months to learn the skill. Probably over the course of a year, you could really have it down.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. How is AI changing this whole landscape and what are the tools emerging that we could be trying out for this?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so I actually have an AI chatbot that I have in my membership. I also sell it in my Shopify store that I’ve built for Pinterest. So the guardrails for the AI tool are for Pinterest specifically. So it will create you know, pin titles and pin descriptions and board titles. And it’ll give you like a general of like what you should do for Pinterest strategy and all those things. So there are chatbots like those out there. But AI, generally speaking, ChatGPT and Canva, if you see any content on that, they don’t work together very well at all. It’s clunky. You can’t use your own custom templates. Stay away from it. If you’re using AI for Pinterest, I wouldn’t necessarily use it for creating images. I would more so use it for writing copy and then editing, but you’re copywriters. You’re already going to know how to write copy without having to use the tools. In this instance, I don’t use AI for much unless it’s for copy in an industry that I’m trying to better understand.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. It feels pretty easy when you talk about it.
Heather Farris: It’s easy, it’s just there’s a lot of steps.
Rob Marsh: Yes, right. So what are some of the craziest things you’ve seen happen on Pinterest that have worked for clients or for driving traffic?
Heather Farris: I once had a client, this is, you said crazy, so I’m going to give you a crazy example. I once had a client I was selling organizing products for. They’re like an organizing company and they sell really pretty organizing stuff. I spent $2,500 in ads and we made $95,000 in a month, which was insane.
Rob Marsh: Wow. And those are physical products, but- Physical products.
Heather Farris: Average order value is $175. It just went viral and it went insane. Things that I’ve seen just work really well, if done right, is recouping some of the content you’re already creating for other platforms, but then just making sure that you’re positioning from Pinterest pinner usage. So instead of making your smoothie and dancing, let’s create a reel that’s very similar, that gives tips and value and putting that on Pinterest and linking it to your website. Pinterest can be a really great traffic driver if done correctly.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I’m a believer. You’ve convinced me. And like I said, I want to, I mean, you know how it is as a business owner, there’s so many levers to pull and things to do, but it feels like compared to Facebook or Instagram, there’s a lot of more open ocean here, open field, you know, because the there’s fewer people using it and there’s fewer people doing it. So a real opportunity, especially if you can talk to a particular niche and really stand out as being the one copywriter, the one content writer who’s really targeting that particular user on this platform. Again, a really great way to stand out.
Heather Farris: Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of opportunity. And again, just going into a platform like this with that mindset of I don’t have to be made up. In fact, Rob, the majority of my client work is done watching a movie or listening to an audio book. You have a lot of books behind you. I listen to a lot of audio books and podcasts. And it’s just done behind the scenes. I don’t have to have. you know, nice clothes and have my hair combed in order to do my Pinterest marketing. I can do it all behind the scenes. No one ever has to see me. And that’s what I love about it is I can just go about parking all my content, all my clients’ content on this platform, and I can just do it while watching my favorite show or listening to my favorite podcast.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like that. We could all use more time watching our favorite shows, knocking off the latest series or whatever. Um, you’re going to actually come into the underground and teach a class for us, uh, next month, uh, when this goes live, it’ll be about four weeks away. Tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be sharing. I think it’s Pinterest 101, you know, this basic stuff.
Heather Farris: I am. Yes, exactly that. So Pinterest 101, and I’m going to position it from the point of a copywriter. So I’m actually going to do a bunch of research on the platform and finding copywriters, finding examples of exactly how you can do this. creating slides that kind of speak to that and show you exactly what you’re going to do. So I’m going to teach you how to find your keywords, how to use them. I’m going to teach you how to build your profile, where to use all the keywords on your profile. Then I’m going to teach you the basics of creating Pinterest pins and creating catchy, like click worthy Pinterest pins. So those are what the underground can expect to learn and walk away from. And by the end, they’re going to have an action plan. And they’ll be able to reach out to me on Instagram and share their progress or ask questions.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Amazing. Like I said, I’m excited for this because I want to try it out. I want to see if I’m hoping for slightly better than six to 12 month run rate on this, but we’ll see how it goes. We definitely have a lot of content that could be turning into pins and using it more effectively. So Heather, where should people go if they want to learn more about you or from you or jump on your list?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so just HeatherFerris.com. It’s F-A-R-R-I-S. No E. It’s not Ferris Bueller, okay? HeatherFerris.com. Everything is there, from my low-ticket membership that you can do all of this learning on your own, or you can jump on my email list.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, this is great. And like I said, I’m excited for the upcoming workshop. I’m going to try to implement some of this stuff and see what happens. And yeah, we’ll go from there. But thanks so much for joining us.
Heather Farris: Thank you for having me. And Rob, when you’re done setting all this stuff up, let me know when it’s done, and I’ll take a look for you.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. I appreciate that. And maybe you can point out what I’m doing wrong when we get to that workshop. Sure. We do it a lot better. That’ll be great. Thanks, Heather. Thanks to Heather for going so deep on the ins and outs of marketing on Pinterest.
Usually I have something to add or a few additional thoughts, but I have to admit, I don’t know enough about Pinterest marketing to add very much here. Obviously, general marketing principles apply. You can’t just post images or video on Pinterest and clients are going to flock to your business. You still need to fix real problems for your clients. You still need to know your niche and exactly whom you serve. And you need to be able to talk to those potential clients about the problem that you solve for them. All of that stuff comes first.
Once you have that figured out, you’ll have a lot more success on Pinterest or whatever other platform that you show up on. And of course, that is the stuff we figure out in The Copywriter Accelerator program. So if you don’t already know that about your business, you don’t know who you serve, you don’t have a signature service or a product that appeals to them, you don’t talk about the problem that you solve for them, the value that you create, you’ve got your pricing wrong, If you don’t have that, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com now, and let’s get that straightened out. It’s open until Friday of the week that this episode goes live. So if you’re listening to it on August 20th, 21st, 22nd, right in there, you can still get in. So jump in there at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Thanks again to Heather for, again, going so deep on how to market a business on Pinterest. I’m going to try out a bunch of what Heather shared. So if you’re on Pinterest, search The Copywriter Club and follow us there. You should see at least a couple of posts that I’ve started working on since Heather and I recorded this a few days ago. And over the next few weeks, you’re going to see us trying it out and maybe find the inspiration to try Pinterest for your own business. You can connect with Heather at heatherferris.com. That’s Ferris with an A, not an E. And since this episode is all about Pinterest, you should definitely follow her there and see how she applies what she was talking about today to her own business.
That’s the end of this episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please visit Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the podcast to leave your review. Of course, we’re on Spotify, we’re on your favorite podcast app, wherever. Let us know what you think.
And better still, copy a link to this episode and share it with another copywriter or content writer who you know might be able to learn something from it. I promise they’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness in sharing the episode.
