How To Use Pinterest For Etsy In 2023 (Detailed Guide)

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If you’re an Etsy seller like myself, you probably know the importance (and oftentimes, the struggle of) getting your Etsy products in front of potential customers. Without actually getting people to see your products, there’s no way you can get people to buy your products!

Luckily, there are lots of ways that you can drive traffic to your Etsy listings, and one of them is an incredibly powerful platform that has the potential to skyrocket your reach – Pinterest.

Yes – you can use Pinterest to promote your Etsy shop, and most times, you should! With the right strategy, using Pinterest for Etsy promotion can help your products to get in front of hundreds or thousands of people and can result in a bucket load of sales.

When I started using Pinterest to promote my Etsy shops, I quickly saw how spending even just a few minutes on Pinterest a day can result in some precious Etsy traffic.

In this post, I’m going to share with you how you can effectively promote your Etsy on Pinterest – all based on my first-hand experience promoting my Etsy shops on Pinterest.

Let’s dive in.

Please note: Pinterest is always changing, and while I try my best to update my posts, not all information may be up to date. If you’re looking too see the most updated tips, strategies, and information, check out this resource page.

What is Pinterest?

Before we get into how to use Pinterest for Etsy, what even is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a powerful visual search engine that connects its users with inspiration and solutions by showing them content based on their interests and search queries.

Although it is often referred to as a social media app, Pinterest is actually more of a search engine. Content on Pinterest, which are called “pins,” are visual. They show people solutions and inspiration rather than writing it out in words.

Pinterest is great in that you do not need to have a large audience to get your content in front of people. Since the Pinterest algorithm seeks to provide users the most relevant pins, as long as your content is well-optimized and people are interested in it, you have a chance to get your content seen.

Related: Is Pinterest A Social Media? The Answer Might Surprise You

Can you use Pinterest to promote Etsy products?

Yes, you can use Pinterest to promote Etsy products. Promoting Etsy products on Pinterest can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your Etsy listings. With the right strategy, it can also result in many more sales!

Benefits to promoting your Etsy shop on Pinterest

When it comes to using Pinterest for Etsy, there are so many reasons why this can be a great marketing choice for your shop:

• It has the potential to connect you with lots of potential customers that otherwise wouldn’t see your products. 

• Pinterest says that “46% of weekly Pinners have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest.” This shows that pinners can be ready to shop!
• Since a large part of the Pinterest platform is Pinterest’s search feature, if your product solves the problem of a pinner and shows up in the search results, they may be more likely to purchase it.

• Pinterest can bring consistent traffic long-term. It isn’t a platform where you publish a post and it disappears into the deep abyss of the platform – Pinterest content exists forever, and one pin can bring consistent traffic for years!

• Pinterest can give you a very high return on time investment, meaning a pin that takes you 10 minutes to design and post can bring you significant traffic! It’s not a very time-consuming platform, but the results can be incredible.

Can you actually get sales by promoting your Etsy shop on Pinterest?

Yes, promoting your Etsy products on Pinterest can actually help you to get more sales. I very much believe that Pinterest has contributed to multiple sales on my Etsy shop, and many other Etsy sellers have also seen fantastic success by promoting their Etsy products on Pinterest.

So yes, it can actually work!

How do I know if Pinterest marketing will be good for my Etsy shop?

As much as I wish I could tell you that Pinterest marketing is the best marketing strategy for any Etsy shop, that’s not always the case.

While Pinterest has millions of monthly users, some niches on the platform are far more popular than others. Some niches barely have an audience at all.

I highly recommend doing Pinterest keyword research to verify if your ideal audience is even on Pinterest before you invest lots of time in Pinterest marketing.

I have an entire in-depth Pinterest keyword research guide that will walk you through my favorite tried-and-true keyword research methods for Pinterest.

If your ideal customer simply doesn’t spend time on the platform, then Pinterest may not be the best platform to market your products on. If you figure this out right off-the-bat, you may save you loads of time that can be better used somewhere else.

Can you use Pinterest to promote digital products on Etsy?

You can use Pinterest to promote both physical and digital Etsy products. Either will work!

While the strategies for these two may slightly differ (specifically in the pin design area), Pinterest can be effective for driving traffic to physical and digital products.

Can you claim your Etsy shop on Pinterest?

Although this is a feature Pinterest used to have, you can not claim your Etsy shop on Pinterest.

Pinterest removed the ability to claim an Etsy shop (as well as an Instagram account and YouTube channel) some time ago. However, this does not mean that you can’t promote your Etsy shop on Pinterest! You can absolutely still use Pinterest for Etsy, and I’ll share all about how to do that in this post.

Related: Can You Claim Your Etsy Shop On Pinterest?

What is the best Pinterest strategy to promote your Etsy shop on Pinterest?

A combination of frequently publishing Pinterest SEO optimized pins that showcase your Etsy products and saving them to highly relevant boards is the best way to grow your Etsy shop using Pinterest. You also want to monitor your analytics and keep track of what is working so you can create more of it!

(Below, I’ll break down step-by-step how I’ve promoted my Etsy shops on Pinterest.)

How to use Pinterest to promote your Etsy shop

Here is how you can effectively promote your Etsy shop on Pinterest:

1. Create a Pinterest business account

The very first thing you want to do is set up a Pinterest business account for your Etsy shop.

There are many benefits to setting up a business account on Pinterest. One of the most important benefits is the detailed analytics you receive about your account. Analytics are crucial to helping you see what is working and what isn’t and using this data to form your strategy can be very important!

You can create a brand new Pinterest business account for free here.

If you already have an existing account for your brand (such as if you have a blog and later added your Etsy shop), you can decide if you want to continue using your existing account or if you want to set up a new business account strictly for your Etsy shop.

Similar: Should You Have A Personal Or Business Pinterest Account?

Setting up your Pinterest business account and optimizing it for Pinterest

When setting up a Pinterest business account to promote your Etsy shop, there are a few key things that you should keep in mind:

1. Give your account the same name as your Etsy shop (if possible). You want to make it very clear that this is the official Pinterest account for your shop and that they are connected. This includes your username and the name you use on your profile. Make your brand known!

2. Use your Etsy shop as the link on the profile. While you can’t claim it, placing the Etsy shop URL here gives potential customers an easy way to access your shop. Be sure to remove any extra unnecessary characters from the end of the URL to clean it up (seen below).

3. Design an attractive profile cover that showcases some of your products. You want to make it clear to users what you sell. If you need help creating your Pinterest profile photo, you can read my Pinterest profile cover guide here.

4. Explain what you sell in your account bio with important related keywords. Pinterest SEO, which is the process of optimizing your Pinterest content to help it to be found by others, is essential for reaching users. Including relevant keywords helps the algorithm to understand what your content is about and to push it out to users who may be interested. My 20+ step Pinterest SEO checklist shows you how to do this step-by-step.

5. Use an image of yourself or your business logo as the profile picture. You want to make your account look as professional as possible. Wouldn’t you be hesitant to purchase a product from a brand that seemed unprofessional?

Here is an example of a Pinterest account belonging to an Etsy shop that embodies everything mentioned above:

This is a shop that I created and worked on for some time. I did not put much effort into marketing it on Pinterest. However, with just a couple pins up, it still gets some couple outbound clicks almost every day.

2. Create some SEO optimized boards

Boards are essential on Pinterest. They’re where you save all of your content to, and they play a large role in Pinterest SEO and helping the algorithm to understand and distribute your content.

You do not want to overlook the importance of boards and optimizing them.

Since Pinterest board SEO is so crucial, I wrote an entire guide strictly on how to create optimized boards to help you grow on Pinterest. You can read that detailed guide here.

How many Pinterest boards should you have?

There is no “magic number” of Pinterest boards that you should have to see results. I have seen pretty good results on an account that has just one or two boards!

In those cases, all of my products fall into the category of the board, so I am able to pin my pins to it and really build up the board to help Pinterest know exactly what my pins and the pins on the board are about. This helps the Pinterest algorithm to distribute them.

I always say it’s better to have a few highly optimized boards than a bunch of unoptimized boards. A general rule of thumb is to create as many boards as you can consistently pin to. 

3. Design pins that showcase your product

Once your account is set up and ready to go, it’s time to create pins to promote your products!

Designing pins for your products can be difficult at first. If you’re struggling with that, I’ve been there too! It can be tough to determine how to promote a product on such a tiny image and make people actually want to click and buy it.

However, it is possible (and many people have done it)! It just might take some time to see what type of designs work best for you.

You want to show your product in action. Think of different mock-ups you could try, flat lays, and more. For example, for my digital products, I like to use computer mock-ups to show what my products actually look like on the computer.

When it comes to designing pins to promote your Etsy products, I suggest two things:

1. Experiment. You’ll never know what works best unless you try multiple designs and see what sticks best! It’s okay to have lots of different designs and to experiment. Try different designs in batches, and hopefully over time you will have data-driven evidence to understand what’s working and what converts your audience.
2. Find inspiration from others. I highly recommend looking at what others in your niche are doing and what seems to be working for them! I struggled a bit on how to design pins for my digital products, but seeing how others promoted theirs gave me many ideas that I could spin into my own unique ideas! Don’t blatantly copy ideas. Rather, use it as inspiration for your own pins!

I use Canva to design all of my Pinterest pins, and I LOVE it!

The free version works great, and the pro version has even more amazing features. I used the free version of Canva for years before ever trying the pro, so you don’t even have to spend a penny to design great pins!

There are lots of great tips for designing attractive pins such as lighter images, scroll-stopping titles (check out my favorite ebook on writing Pinterest titles that convert here!), having bold titles, using warmer colors, not using too many fonts, and being mindful of script fonts as they can be difficult to read.

One very important tip is to make your pins vertical (ex. 1000×1500 pixels). Although Etsy listing photos are generally horizontal, horizontal images do not tend to perform nearly as well as vertical pins on Pinterest. You can also experiment with square designs, but I do not recommend anything horizontal.

If you need help creating pins, you can always look for Pinterest templates that would fit your products! (Etsy is actually a great place to find these!)

4. Add the URL of your Etsy listing as the link

When you’re creating your pins, you’ll want to add a link to the Etsy listing that your pin is promoting.

Make sure you link to individual listings and NOT your shop page. If you repeatedly link to your Etsy shop homepage instead of individual listings, this could get you flagged as spam.

You can retrieve the URL of your Etsy listings a few ways. One way is to click on the actual listing and copy the URL from the search bar at the top of the page. (Example below is from this listing.)

When you paste the URL, it will likely look something like this (this is an example listing from one of my shops):

https:// www.etsy.com /listing/1302250762/ canva-sales-page-template-online-course?click_key=126854501bd242ce714ae8fcee9d15fe836b14ec%3A1302250762&click_sum=943ffb63&ref=shop_home_active_6

I like to clean the URL up by deleting all of the unnecessary characters added to the end of the URL.

To do this, I delete all of the characters from the first question mark “?” and on. So, the URL above would then look like this:

https:// www.etsy. com/ listing/1302250762/canva-sales-page-template-online-course

The URL will still get to the listing you need it to!

Should you pin directly from Etsy to Pinterest?

You can, but I don’t recommend this.

I have tried both ways – saving pins directly from Etsy to Pinterest by using the Pinterest Chrome extension and manually designing pins and adding URLs to individual Pinterest pins.

I have seen far better results designing my own pins and adding the link manually than pinning from Etsy. I highly suggest that this is what you do, as you can also experiment with different designs and more.

5. Optimize your pins for Pinterest SEO

Doing Pinterest SEO is an essential part of Pinterest marketing.

Pinterest SEO is the process of optimizing your Pinterest pins (and boards and profile) with relevant keywords to help the algorithm understand what your content is about and to distribute it to users who may be interested in it.

Pinterest SEO not only helps your content to be seen more and to rank in search results, it helps your content to be seen by people who actually want to see it. This can help to increase your conversions rate as well.

I have an in-depth Pinterest SEO checklist post that walks you through how to optimize your Pinterest pins, boards, and profile. 

You can also download it for free below!

6. Experiment with different pin designs

I believe that experimenting with your pin designs is such an important part of Pinterest marketing!

Your audience could love designs that you don’t particularly love. (I’ve seen it over and over – sometimes pins I think are “ugly” are the ones that take off!)

Try different fonts, mockups, types of titles, colors, overall designs, pin sizes (ex. 1000 x 2000 pixels) and more! Try plain images of your products, try text overlays, try videos, etc. Do what you think would be best for your business and your products.

And again, don’t be afraid to use elements from others’ designs as inspiration

You never know what will work better than others until you have data-driven evidence to support you.

7. Do more of what’s working

Once you’ve been pinning for a while and have begun to get some traction on some pins, go into your Pinterest Analytics (Analytics > Overview on desktop) and go to the Top Pins section to see if you see any common things among your top performing pins.

It’s important to pay attention to outbound clicks over any other type of metric. (Outbound click rate may also be a metric you want to check out.)

You want to see the data on the pins that are actually getting people to click onto your Etsy shop. While metrics such as impressions and pin clicks can be helpful to monitor, you want all of your decisions to be made with the goal of getting more people from Pinterest to Etsy.

Note: I recommend using Pinterest Analytics on the desktop version of Pinterest as it can be easier to see the data.

Then, implement more of these things into your future pins! 

Maybe you notice a certain color performing better. Or pins with text overlays versus pins without any text. Maybe you notice that bright colored pins get way more conversions.

Whatever it is, take note and use it to your advantage!

8. Publish new pins regularly

I’m a firm believer that the more pins you publish, the more chances you have to get traffic or even get a “viral pin” (just make sure posting regularly doesn’t mean you’re suppressing the quality!).

This is something I have definitely struggled with, but when I’ve been consistent, I’ve also seen the fruits of how it can pay off in the long-run!

I recommend trying to publish at least one pin per day. This should not take too long, but the return on investment could be great! If possible, publishing even more than that per day could yield even greater results.

Related: When And How Often Should You Pin On Pinterest?

9. Create multiple pins for each listing

Creating multiple pins for each listing is a great way to help your pins get seen more.

You can always create new pins for old listings, and I highly recommend it!

One thing you want to be careful of, however, is not pinning the same URL too often. This can trigger the Pinterest spam filter (read my experience here), which you do not want to get caught in. It essentially removes your pins from rankings and suppresses them in the feed, causing devastating effects for your account.

As a rule of thumb, I try to wait at least 3-4 days before pinning to the same URL, but many Pinterest marketers suggest waiting a couple of weeks or even a month!

When you’re just starting out, you may not have enough Etsy listings to space out URLs like this, but I suggest waiting at least a few days if possible to stay on the safe side.

10. Be patient

I know this is a tip that no one likes, but it’s important! Pinterest is a long-term game, and if you expect to suddenly get hundreds of people clicking to your Etsy listings overnight, you’ll probably be disappointed.

It usually takes time to start seeing results on Pinterest. While traffic may begin to trickle in early on, it can take weeks and months to grow consistent and substantial traffic from Pinterest.

Some Pinterest marketers say you should wait up to 8 or 9 months to see great results on Pinterest! (I know, not fun, but it could be totally worth it.)

Can you see how many Etsy sales come from Pinterest?

While you can’t see how many sales come directly from Pinterest traffic, you can see how much traffic comes from Pinterest and to which listings traffic is driven to.

There are two ways you can do this: (1) Etsy Stats or (2) Pinterest Analytics.

Etsy Stats

To find your Pinterest traffic through Etsy stats, first go to your Etsy shop’s Shop Manager.

Once you’re there, click Stats in the left sidebar.

Scroll down to the How shoppers found you section.

Then, click to expand the dropdown under Social media.

From there you can see a breakdown of where social media traffic to your listings comes from. To see more specific data about Pinterest, click Pinterest.

If you scroll down, you can see a variety of information such as visits from Pinterest to Etsy over time, most visited listings from Pinterest, and more!

To see the individual listings that get the most traffic from Pinterest, just scroll down a bit further.

Pinterest Analytics

Please note that this will work best if you exclusively use Pinterest to promote your Etsy shop. If your Pinterest account also promotes other things, such as a blog, it may be difficult to isolate the pins that link to Etsy.

To view your Pinterest stats on desktop, click on the Analytics dropdown at the top of the screen. Then click Overview.

Pinterest has very in-depth and robust analytics, which can be great for helping you to create your strategy!

In this post, we won’t go very deep into how to use Pinterest Analytics. However, when using it, I recommend two things:

1. Use the Performance over time graph to see trends among outbound clicks to your Etsy listings. Are they increasing? Decreasing? Are there patterns? Tip: Be sure to change the dropdown from Impressions to Outbound clicks so you can see the data of people actually going to your listings!

2. Go to the Top Pins section and look at the top pins by outbound clicks. That way, you can see the pins that have the most clicks to Etsy! (You can also strategically use your observations to design more pins that convert better or see what products your audience gravitates to!)

Note: There may be some discrepancies between Etsy Stats and Pinterest Analytics. This isn’t uncommon when comparing data from different sources, so don’t worry! 

How long does it take to drive traffic to Etsy from Pinterest?

Pinterest traffic can start trickling into your Etsy shop in as little as a few days, but to get consistent and significant traffic, it will likely take many weeks or months.

Pinterest is more of a long-term game. Most of the time, it takes time for you to begin to see results. In fact, some Pinterest marketers say that it can take up to eight or nine months to begin to see the full power of Pinterest on your account.

Even though you may not see your pinning efforts pay off right away, have hope that your pins will rank and get seen more in the future and stay patient! You never know when a pin will take off or when traction will roll in.

Related: How To Rank On Pinterest (8 Tips)

Can pins that link to Etsy rank on Pinterest?

Yes, pins linking to Etsy can rank in Pinterest search. I’ve seen this with my very own pins. Some even make it to the top row of the search results!

When I first started pinning to Etsy, I was slightly nervous that pins linking to Etsy would have limited reach since Pinterest removed the ability to claim an Etsy shop. However, I haven’t seen any issues at all! The pins seem to perform like pins linking to claimed websites on other Pinterest accounts.

I’m not making sales. Now what?

There are so many things that could be contributing to a lack of sales. It could be things from Pinterest, from Etsy, or even from the product itself.

It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what the issue is. However, here are some things you can think about when it comes to your strategy:

• Are your pins converting into outbound clicks? Impressions don’t mean much unless people are actually clicking to your Etsy shop. If you aren’t getting many outbound clicks, think about what might help improve it. This post on outbound clicks may help. 

• Are your Etsy listings optimized for mobile? Can you easily read and see everything? A majority of Pinterest users use the mobile Pinterest app, meaning that they will likely view your Etsy listings from mobile.

• Are my listings optimized on Etsy? Have you used lots of keywords to help the Etsy algorithm understand what your listings are about?

• Are my listings getting views but no conversions? If this is the case, how can you improve your listings to make people check out more?

• Is my niche over-saturated? I have seen this with my own Etsy shop. Sometimes there are just so many of one type of product that yours just get buried in the sea of them. How can you make your products stand out? How can you make yours unique to others? Can you sell the product but position it to a more specific need?

• Do people actually want my products? Ultimately, it may come to this. If people don’t want the products that you’re selling, they’re just not going to buy them! Think about what your customers want and need. How can you better cater your products to them and solve their problems?

Conclusion: Is Pinterest worth it for Esty?

Yes, Pinterest can absolutely be worth it for Etsy!

Promoting your Etsy products on Pinterest can really pay off. Posting a few pins per day or week can bring tons of new eyes to your products even long-term. If your ideal customers spend time on Pinterest, this can certainly be a great marketing strategy for your Etsy shop!

All in all, it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to take the plunge into Pinterest.

If you want more valuable Pinterest information so you can skyrocket your success, read more on my blog or join my email list (I provide some of my MOST VALUABLE INFORMATION to my email list!)

If you have any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments below!

I hope to see you around again soon. Thanks for reading!

Leah Marie

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