Partner Spotlight: Market Your Business on Pinterest With Marie O’Shea from The Pinning Bees

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Hey, thanks for tuning in to another Partner Interview at EcomBalance. At EcomBalance, we’re all about creating win-win partnerships where we are able to grow with other companies in the ecommerce space.

In this exclusive interview, we have a conversation Marie O’Shea from The Pinning Bees.

Marie is Founder and CEO of The Pinning Bees Pinterest marketing agency. She is also a unique product designer, KDP book Publisher and e-commerce course creator.

In the 2021 Global Amazon Seller Sessions Poll, Marie was voted in the top 3 positions of Outstanding Contributions & her Amazon FBA Titan Facebook Group ranked in the 2nd position.

Her main drive is to help sellers to rapidly scale, in sharing her latest hacks, and off-Amazon marketing techniques that help solve the industry’s biggest problems.

Amongst her social media audiences, Marie is well known for teaching Pinterest marketing strategies that are sustainable, where Amazon sellers can succeed, and be in the game for the long run.

Connor: Hey Marie, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. As a company, one of our goals is to highlight our partners so that our clients can benefit where it makes most sense. To get started, can you give us a high-level introduction to The Pinning Bees and a little bit about how the company got started?

Marie: Hi Connor, thank you for inviting me.

As an introduction to The Pinning Bees, we offer a high performance-based, full service Pinterest marketing agency.

Our team uses a data-driven approach to help eCommerce businesses to cost-effectively maximize visibility, drive free evergreen traffic, and convert potential customers digitally.

We have created opportunities for businesses to further leverage this free traffic by applying Pinterest Ads (PPC) at a competitive rate and re-distribute traffic flows.

Where advertising costs on many platforms are increasing drastically, Pinterest offers a sophisticated interactive marketing platform in ways to redistribute this traffic while reducing the headaches of high traffic costs.

Amazon Ads partnership with Pinterest.
With the latest breakthrough in the world of online shopping and digital advertising, Amazon Ads has partnered with Pinterest.

This is the biggest, most positive e-commerce news in the better part of the decade.

Pinterest has a drive to develop shoppable content on Pinterest and evolve the face of e-commerce to involve discovery.

This recent partnership with Amazon will bring “a seamless on-Amazon buying experience for consumers and offer advertisers strong performance.”

I believe that brands that don’t promote on the Pinterest platform now, will lose out to a sea of competitors, especially come the holiday season.

How The Pinning Bees Started

I personally have used Pinterest for marketing my own private label products and books over the past 5 years.

I found that Pinterest is a goldmine of affordable external traffic, and is a great cost effective tool to also build brand loyalty. To fully understand the Pinterest algorithm, I realized that 4 different skill sets are required to reap optimum results;

Digital media designing
SEO copywriting
Pinterest marketing
Pinterest PPC

Succeeding on Pinterest is a whole different ball game than any other social media platform.

Having the right Pinterest techniques is gold, and harnessing this power to grow brand awareness and increase traffic to a business is valuable.

However, it’s impossible to source a Pinterest strategist who is qualified in these 4 individual skill sets, and it would be unfair to expect to.

In 2021, after realizing this gap in the market, I performed market research to validate an idea I had of starting up a Pinterest marketing agency that addressed the current issues. Hence “Pinformative Group Agency” was born to help eCommerce sellers drive traffic from Pinterest.

As Co-Founder, my position in the company was managing director, and chief content marketer. My partners have since moved onto other ventures, and I have since started up my own agency, “The Pinning Bees”. My goal is to help bring our clients’ businesses to new heights.

Connor: Thanks for sharing that! Can you dive a bit more into your marketing efforts with Pinterest as your main medium? Our audience is always looking for reputable companies that they can lean on for specific parts of their eCommerce businesses.

Marie: My pleasure! Sure, at The Pinning Bees agency, our slogan is “Pinspired Marketing, Proven Results”. We are committed to implementing our proven marketing strategies to help sellers bring their businesses to the next level.

We have formulated the latest techniques using Pinterest as the ultimate marketing tool for obtaining free organic traffic flows, with the option of competitive Pinterest PPC application.

We create Pinterest optimized images and eye grabbing videos that entice the scroller, we write compelling SEO content that converts, and use innovative marketing strategies that ensure our clients gain traction in the digital world.

We leverage long tail SEO where pinners fail to capitalize on, creating fresh optimized content to out-rank our competitors.

Through directing multiple traffic flows, we are able to hit other marketplaces such as YouTube, Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, Ebay, Etsy and more.

Our clients’ creatives reap the highest ROI (return on investment) of content creation Versus any of their other social media channels .

Unlike posts on other social media sites, such as Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, content doesn’t get buried in the feed. Pinterest pins continually get redistributed, and are basically immortal. They could show up in a user’s feed months, even years later!

So, when you finish running a social media Ad, it basically dies. With Pinterest, when you turn off paid Ads, your pin continues to be distributed by pinners for years later! We promote our clients top performing pins to get maximum results with higher conversion rates.

Connor: Jumping off of that…when you’re thinking about your ideal client, who is that? Where are they selling online? Where are they located in the world? How much sales do they typically have in a year? If there’s any other qualities, please include them as well. We’re all about making introductions where it benefits both parties.

Marie:

Our ideal client is a 7+ figure eCommerce seller, who sells on their own website or online marketplace, located anywhere in the world. They need to have products that are viable for the Pinterest demographic audiences.

Pinterest shoppers are premium buyers, searching for unbranded products. So Pinterest is the perfect platform to market unknown private label brands, or for launching new products to an existing warmed up ready made audience.

Amazon sellers can avail of full funnel SEO marketing on Pinterest to catch their ideal audience at every step of the shoppers journey.

I believe that Pinterest is the ideal platform to grow your reach and diversify your income where you’re not stacked against competitors who determine your price points, or compete against reviews.

The current most popular niches on Pinterest are: Pets, Art, Home Decor, Health, Design, DIY & Crafts, Education, Hair & Beauty, Women’s Fashion, Travel, Sport, Electronics, Gardening, Wedding, Children’s Fashion, Men’s Fashion, Food & Drinks.

Our clients in these niches do very well on Pinterest.

Connor: For our audience to truly understand what makes you stand out from other companies providing marketing strategies, can you share a story of how The Pinning Bees truly helped one of its customers?

Marie: At The Pinning Bees, a hair and beauty brand recently benefited from our strategies while building up to the launching process of new products.

A solid foundation of organic growth was built with the account, creating viral pins that weigh the Google SEO boards that they’re attached to very heavily. Any product pin that is attached to these viral boards, will expand its reach on Pinterest, causing a viral effect.

The account is optimized to nurture the brand’s ideal target market, increase organic traffic, grow buyer intent followers with established trust with the brand, build brand recognition, and ultimately sales.

Connor: As you and your company think about the next year ahead, what does it look like? Are there any specific initiatives that you’re working on as a team to better your product or service for your customers?

Marie: Yes, our team is constantly testing the Pinterest algorithm to bring optimum results for our clients account. We spend so much time, not just in the general Pinterest management, but in the pursuit of major ground breaking discoveries. So there is constant A/B testing on images, videos, desktop versus mobile, topics, and keywords.

Google Ranking

We frequently test Google for ranking, and after optimizing my own Pins and boards using Google SEO, my products were indexed in the top positions of the first page for my main keywords within months.

This was an exciting breakthrough for me, and I attribute half of my Amazon sales to Pinterest organic traffic and from my Google indexing.

At The Pinning Bees, we multiply ranking juice and our marketing results by pinning clients’ content to their Google SEO optimized boards, which also gets Pins indexed highly on Google.

Clients will eventually see their products’ pins appear in Google search results where 35% of all online shopping searches begin on Google. Traffic derived from authority sites such as Google and Pinterest ranks Amazon listings highly.

Youtube 360’ Traffic Machine

For ultimate rapid growth, I put another theory that I devised last year to test. We were able to leverage YouTube videos on Pinterest, to take advantage of what we call a double-backlink to our YouTube channel.

We uploaded SEO videos on YouTube and sent traffic to them from our Pinterest account. As a result, our pins ranked very highly, and this is now part of our tried & tested overall double backlink strategy. Clients can take advantage of this ranking juice if they have a Youtube account and video content that appeals to their audience.

A Pinterest Pin has the potential to go viral hitting several APIs all in unison. Meaning that, this will not only rank your Pins on Pinterest, Youtube videos, your Pinterest boards on
Google, your Website, and your marketplace listing!

Pinterest truly is the ultimate hybrid central ground platform for all channels, and by using our techniques, we are able to create a 360’ cross-platform resource pool of free traffic flow.

This is powerful for SEO because the more backlinks from trusted sources, the more Pinterest will raise your ranking.

Pinterest for Product Research

Pinterest is the perfect place for product research to grow a long term sustainable business, where you can run free/ cost effective traffic to your marketplace, build your brand name, and drive up your website rankings.

Using a data driven approach in using tools, we are recently advising our clients on how to expand their product line, by choosing relative products in their hot Pinterest niches with proven demand. Niches where nearly half a billion Pinterest shoppers are looking for inspiration, to plan ahead and get ready to buy.

95% of pins are going to boards that are named after categories, and 5% are going into explicitly commercial boards with titles like “my dream list” and “I want this”. That’s almost a social customer relationship management for online retailers, who can check those boards and see which products are hot!

We are continually diving into different ways of helping our clients to utilize Pinterest in many ways to expand their businesses.

Connor: How about this…everyone loves a company’s growth story. We all naturally go through ups and downs as a company. What was one of the biggest challenges that the company faced in its growing stages?

Marie: Our biggest challenge at The Pinning Bees was convincing Amazon sellers of the long term sustainable rewards of marketing on Pinterest to acquire evergreen free traffic and brand building.

We understand that the hustle of doing it all and wearing all the hats in a business really does make it difficult to take on Pinterest marketing.

The time commitment it takes to actually make a difference on Pinterest is what turns sellers off.

It can take months to see anything happen, but the algorithm helps to build long-term sustainable growth.

But to succeed on Pinterest, you need to start your account with a solid foundation.

Initially, we create a Pinterest account that is optimized to nurture your ideal target market, increase organic traffic, brand recognition, and ultimately sales.

Because Pinterest is a slow moving train, a lot of people give up on Pinterest really early.

Our ultimate goal in our business is to be transparent with our clients, so we’re upfront with them regarding expectations.

Not every product is suitable for the Pinterest platform, and after a thorough analysis of viability, we will advise perspectives of whether they should pursue marketing on Pinterest, and how long it can take to see results.

Connor: Thanks! Let’s talk some eCommerce! Where do you see the industry heading in the next 1-2 years? Any big changes that you’re predicting for the industry? How can eCommerce companies prepare for it?

Marie: In the next few years, I expect to see continued growth in subscription services, social commerce, personalization, AR/VR, and sustainable and ethical shopping practices. Online retailers who stay ahead of these trends and provide excellent customer experiences will be well-positioned for success in the years to come.

Connor: Changing gears a little bit…When it comes to bookkeeping and accounting, what do you think the biggest pain points for eCommerce business owners are? Feel free to speak from personal experience as well.

Marie: There are lots of accounting challenges for ecommerce business owners: A combination of complicated Ecommerce sales tax, inventory management, financial rules, hidden fees, currency exchange, handling returns, manual data entries, limited access to store performance data, profit margins all put pressure on an ecommerce businesses financial management. Personally, I struggle in some of these areas.

Connor: Okay, here’s an open mic opportunity. If there’s one thing that you’d want the EcomBalance community to hear from you, what would it be?

Marie: Slow and steady wins the race. 🙂

Connor: As we close this out, I just have one more question. Where is the best place to find and follow you and the company online? Also, if you have one, is there any special offer that you’ll be offering to the community today?

Marie: You can find Klaidas and me in our Pinning Bees Pinterest Marketing Facebook group on LinkedIn where we post daily tricks and tips on how to market on Pinterest.

Alternatively, you can reach out to me at [email protected] if you have questions regarding services.

We would like to offer your EcomBalance community a 25% discount off our Pinterest course and services for the initial 12 months of boarding with us.

We appreciate this opportunity of inviting us to your Partner Spotlight, and wish you all the best in your own journey to help Ecommerce Sellers stay on top of their bookkeeping and accounting.

What The Pinning Bees Can Do for Our Clients