How to Use Pinterest to Reach Your Niche Market
We’ve talked before about drilling down and finding a specific niche market, or customer type. Examples include small business owners, single moms, smokers, etc. Having a niche makes it easier to define your ideal client and market to them. You’re no longer speaking to millions—you’re speaking to one idealized representative of that niche.

In this post, we’ll talk about how to reach that niche market using Pinterest. While many of you probably use Pinterest for fun, you probably don’t use it for work. Who goes on Pinterest looking for life insurance, anyway? The trick is to forget about reaching your audience using the usual keywords about insurance. You’re going to reach them by using Pinterest the same way they do—for fun and information.

Did we mention one of the amazing side benefits of using this technique? You just may end up on page one of Google.

How to Find a New Pinterest Niche

Let’s say you don’t have a niche yet. No problem! Pinterest makes it easy to find what’s popular. Browse Pinterest’s most popular topics here: https://www.pinterest.com/categories/popular/. You’ll get a short list of popular categories at the top.

Pinterest popular categories

As of this writing, we can see that airplanes are popular – how about helping aviators get life insurance coverage? Dresses are popular, too – how about helping new brides start married life off right with life insurance? Take a few minutes to click through and explore the categories that pique your interest. Jot down a few ideas on careers, client types, or relevant planning solutions that spring to mind.

Next, explore the popular pins shown below the categories. When we took the screenshot above, the topics were obviously very different from the categories. Instead of airplanes and dresses, we have a lot of weight loss, fitness, and diet tips. Maybe your niche could be helping people who recently lost weight get coverage or a new policy with a better rate.

Take a few minutes to scroll down and browse. What overlap do you see between the topics shown and life insurance? Who are these pins aimed at? What subtopics keep coming up? Remember, these popular categories are huge topics. You’re looking for small groups within your larger niche, all interested in the same thing.

Pinterest popular pins

Based on your research, pick a couple subtopics within your niche. For example, if your niche is smokers, one of your subtopics may be Cuban cigars. If your niche is single moms, one of your subtopics may be single moms with an online work-from-home business.

How to Find Your Existing Niche on Pinterest

If you already have a niche, you’ll want to start with keyword research on Pinterest. Pinterest will auto-fill search suggestions for you, so you’ll get a quick idea of what people actually search for. For the purposes of this example, let’s say your niche is people who’ve recently lost a substantial amount of weight. Here’s what the keyword “dramatic weight loss” gives you:

Pinterest keyword suggestions

It’s not rocket science, but now you have a short list of pinners (people) to check out, as well as a few keyword variations that include “diet.” You could even research particular diets, and find a subniche there. Examples I found include low-carb, Okinawan, Dukan, and ketogenic. Because Pinterest can be overwhelming when you start with a big topic like “weight loss” or “healthy diets,” it’s good to narrow it down to 2-3 sub-topics.

You can also use the suggested search keywords that appear below a completed search:

Pinterest topic suggestions

The Pinterest SEO Bonus

You may still be wondering…what’s the point? Are my target clients really going to log onto Pinterest, browse for fun, and suddenly decide to buy life insurance? Maybe, maybe not. But what they may do is search Google for things like “how to get life insurance after weight loss” or “can I get life insurance if I smoke cigars?”

Because Pinterest pins are indexed individually, your pin may show up in the Google search results. A prospect can find it…and you…without ever clicking into Pinterest.

That’s a prime reason for doing the keyword research described above. You’ll be including the keywords your niche market searches for in your pin elements (title, description, etc.) That will help your pins show up in Google searches, even for users who don’t have a Pinterest account.

For example, here’s a screenshot of the first page of Google results for “best healthy low sodium recipes”:

Pinterest on page 1 of search engine results

Similarly, here’s a screenshot of the first page of Google results for “workspace ideas for work from home moms”:

Pinterest with multiple results on page 1 of search engine results

Especially in that second example, take a look at how often Pinterest scores a top ranking in the results. Depending on the specificity of your search, an individual pin may also appear in the search results. While you might not necessarily want to rank for these keyphrases, consider where your prospects spend time.

It’s never a bad thing to have content on the first page of Google for a search term your niche market seeks out. Even if those search terms don’t contain the words “life insurance,” the sheer volume of views and access you have to potential prospects is worth it. That’s why it’s important to be sure the description of your pin makes a connection between their search term and life insurance.

Anatomy of a Pinterest Board

Each of your Pinterest boards will have three main components:

  • When someone clicks through to your board, they’ll see this text at the top of the page. It’s your chance to tell them what’s in this board, why they might also be interested in life insurance, and how/where to contact you, including a URL for your website or quoter.
  • Pinterest board description
  • When you upload an original pin, you can include a title, a source URL (your website or quoter), as well as a >350-word description. The URL will only be visible when someone clicks on a pin—it won’t show in the feed. To upload, click the red + button near your profile photo, at the top of your screen. When your pin is uploaded, it will look like this in the Pinterest feed:
  • Sample pin on Pinterest
  • When you repin someone else’s pin, you can replace their text with yours, but you can’t overwrite their source URL.
  • Repin someone else's image on Pinterest

Sourcing Your Pins and Repins

Sourcing pins and repins is easier than you think – and can also be fun! Here are just a few ideas:

Browse Pinterest and repin others’ content

This is a no-brainer. All you have to do is scroll or search to find content that’s valuable to your target audience. Hover your mouse over a pin and click the red Save button. Choose which board to save that pin to, then delete the existing description and replace it with your own.

Repin someone else's image while browsing on Pinterest

Browse the web and pin an image to your board

You can pin just about any image you find online. There are several ways to do it:

  • Some websites have Pinterest-friendly code that places a pin button on all their images, visible when you hover your mouse over them.
  • No button when you hover? Within Pinterest, click the red + button and select Save from site. Pinterest will bring up all that page’s pinnable images – just select the one you want, and add your description. Here’s what it looks like: Pinterest will find pinnable images when you provide a URL
  • Install the Pinterest Chrome extension. It lets you pin from a site without having to go into Pinterest and paste the page URL. Once it’s installed, hover over any image or webpage and click Save.

Blog about your subtopic and pin your post’s featured image

You get a blog post and a pin – two chances to reach your niche with one piece of content. If you blog on WordPress, be aware that most themes’ featured images are rectangular, while vertical images score the most attention on Pinterest. Horizontal images still work, but don’t take up as much real estate in the Pinterest feed. That’s where the next idea comes in…

Create a custom image just for Pinterest and upload it to your board

We can cover this in its own post, if you’re interested. For now, all you need to know is that custom Pinterest images work best when they’re vertical (700 pixels wide by 1100 pixels long). You can create custom images in this exact dimension using online tools like PicMonkey or Canva. Need background images? Try free photo sources like Unsplash, Pexels, or Pixabay. Just put your text over the photo, and voila! Instant pin.

How to Write Your Pin Description

Once you’ve found or created content to pin, it’s time to write the description. The good news is that your pin descriptions don’t have to be very long—a couple sentences, max. You can even pre-write a few transitions from your subtopic into life insurance and paste them into your pins and repins as needed.

Here’s the formula for your description:

  • Title
  • Subtopic-specific sentence
  • Transition
  • Life insurance-specific sentence
  • Call to action (CTA)

Let’s say your niche is stay-at-home moms who need life insurance coverage for them – and their businesses. Here’s an example of what you’d write for a pin description:

  • Stay-at-Home Moms Can Make Big Money Online
  • Here’s a great list of work-from-home ideas that prove you don’t have to join the rat race to provide for your family.
  • While you’re building that nest egg (or the kids’ college fund), don’t forget to protect all your hard work with a life insurance policy.
  • From the money you earn to the work you do as a stay-at-home mom, your contributions are valuable! Your family can’t replace you, but you could give them financial peace of mind. It’s part of a smart financial plan for moms who work from home.
  • Get a free life insurance quote on YourWebsiteHere.com.

Create a Board Targeting Your Niche Market

Now that you know the Pinterest basics, it’s time to create your first board! You can even keep your board secret until you’re ready to share it with the world. When you're logged in, click your profile icon and then My profile.

Accessing your profile on Pinterest

From your profile, click Boards.

Accessing your Pinterest boards

Click Create board.

Creating a new board on Pinterest

Name your board, and toggle the selector for Secret if you're not ready for your board to be publicly viewable. You can change this at any time.

Give your new Pinterest board a title and toggle the Secret setting as needed

That's all there is to creating a board - it's easy! Ideally, you want to have at least one board per sub-topic in your niche.

Your last step? Pin, repin, repeat!

Fill up those boards with a combination of original pins and repinned content. The more pins you have, the more you'll be seen by pinners browsing your sub-topic. If you're diligent about creating optimized descriptions, you'll stand a good chance of landing in one of Pinterest's "top 25" list compilations that frequently make the first page of Google's search results.

Have you used Pinterest to target a niche market? Tell us about it in the comments!