When you’re a service provider, everything depends on getting clients and building your network. Many coaches recommend places like Facebook groups or LinkedIn to get started. Instead of doing what everyone else is doing, consider that when you use Pinterest as a service provider you might get more traffic, leads, and clients.
I started my business in 2016 as a blogger, so I was already very familiar with the power of Pinterest. As my business shifted into being a virtual assistant, I knew I was able to gain traction and momentum with Pinterest strategies.
With some strategic content you can use Pinterest for your business as a service provider. Besides clients, I have been found on Pinterest and asked to be a guest speaker in a variety of Facebook groups and summits so I was able to grow my visibility as a Pinterest expert.
I want that for you too, no matter the service you provide.
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Use Pinterest as a Service Provider to Get Clients & Build Your Expert Status!
Your ideal clients are probably on Pinterest
There are now over 478 million monthly users on Pinterest. Out of those people, 89% have made a purchase because of something they saw on Pinterest. That’s a pretty significant number! If you work with female coaches or other service providers, you’ll be happy to know the fastest growing segments of users in 2021 are females (81%) and millennials. While Pinterest may have started out as a blogging platform, that has really changed in recent years. Now more digital product creators, course creators, coaches, service providers, and product based business owners utilize Pinterest.
This means it’s a place that can bring you a lot of traffic, especially if your demographic is female and they have purchasing power.
The niche you serve is probably on Pinterest
There are a lot of popular Pinterest niches. If you wonder if you should be using Pinterest, I always recommend using that search bar to type in what you do. You’ll see whether or not people on Pinterest are doing what you do. If there are, maybe you need to be there too.
Position yourself as an expert
Pinterest can help you position yourself as an expert. You already know this is extremely important as a service provider.
Your audience needs to know you are the best person to solve their problem.
It’s so common for us service providers to get elbow-deep doing client work and not doing enough to market your business. If you do become intentional about marketing, think about what has the most reach. If you post on your Facebook business page, you’re lucky to get any reach at all. If you decide to post on your Facebook personal profile, I would guess you might be lucky to get 5 hours of reach with your post. One pin on Pinterest, on the other hand, lasts for four months. After that, you can repurpose your content by creating new pins and sending content to those same blog posts. In that way, you can get two years of reach out of one piece of content!
How Pinterest Works
Pinterest works as a funnel and it starts with your pin. Each pin is attached to the URL of a blog or social media post. You’ll include a call to action within the post such as “book a call.” Jump on a discovery call and get a new client!
The Pinner Mindset
Think about your own use of Pinterest. It makes sense that when a pinner uses Pinterest they are searching to solve a problem. It works similar to the way we use Google. We are looking for answers, ideas, inspiration, but we tend not to take action right away. We usually save it and return later.
I want to remind you that’s okay! There are Pinterest statistics that show when you save something first and they saw you first on Pinterest, that the pinner will return. It’s good to have people save your content because not only will they be able to access the information later, but others searching for similar information will be able to find it as well.
Pinterest is a search engine and you must master Pinterest SEO. You need to position your service as the solution to a problem that your audience has and you need to keyword everything. That’s how Pinterest SEO works similar to Google SEO. This is how you are going to be found in search.
Lead Magnets
If you send a pin to a lead magnet, that lead magnet will be delivered through an email. The emails will have a similar call to action, and you’ll end up with a customer, or at least the opportunity to nurture a potential customer.
Often when we get started online, the very first thing we’re taught is to start growing your email list with a lead magnet. I agree with this piece of advice, but I’ll add the lead magnet doesn’t have to be any big ornate, complicated thing. Instead, focus on creating one quick win for your clients. How do you help in your business? What value can you provide?
Take this opportunity to wow your potential client! Leave them feeling like, “If Suzy Service Provider can help me figure out how to organize my Trello boards, what else can she help me organize?”
My suggestion is to create blog posts showing that you are the expert in whatever it is that you do, whether you’re an OBM, a tech VA, a Facebook ads manager, or any type of service provider. Just share what you do! Create tutorials and let potential clients know what it’s like to work with you. Using myself as an example, you know I write a lot about Pinterest. One blog I wrote is “How I Help My Clients Dominate Pinterest.” It provides a walkthrough of how I help clients increase their visibility using Pinterest and share how easy it is to work with me and takes the burden off of them.
Don’t forget to include your call to action at the end. When they are thinking, ‘Hey I need your help!” let them know the next step, how they can book a call, or how you can turn chaos into organization. These are different ways to show expertise. Get creative with your calls to action: “Imagine if you had inbox zero,” or “What would it mean to you if you could get leads and sales on autopilot using Pinterest, and I can do it for you.”
Finally, if you have case studies (which I highly recommend as a service provider), you’ll again have a call to action to book a call so they can experience similar results, and you’ll end up with a new client.
The Importance of Keywords
Starting with the basics, you need to find your keywords. I recommend using the search bar to type in what you do. If people wanted to find you, what words would they use? For example, if I wanted a “virtual assistant tech VA,” or “Facebook ads manager,” or “Pinterest strategy,” and so on. Start writing down keywords that people would use to find you when you hit the enter key.
As you scroll down, you’re going to see something called related searches. While these can put you down a rabbit hole, they’re also very helpful as far as giving you similar content. Pinterest is making connections for you, so if you are searching for a “virtual assistant,” you might get different options in the related searches area.
The third place to find keywords is a tool called Pinterest trends, which is at trends.Pinterest.com and it works the exact same way where it has a search bar. It will bring back results down at the bottom with suggested searches as well.
Keywords are going to put in six different places including your display name. This is where you’re going to find a wider variety of different keywords, but you need to use them strategically. Notice the most common keywords that describe what you mean; you’ll find them in the display name and your profile description.
Again, if I was looking for a “virtual assistant,” I could start typing in virtual assistant and your name hopefully would pop up board names with descriptions.
How does Pinterest associate keywords with your pin?
Pinterest is able to read the titles, descriptions, and the text overlay you use on a pin. So you’ll want to plaster these keywords everywhere so that when a pinner searches for “virtual assistant,” that connection will be made and you’ll be found.
Time and again, people come to me and tell me Pinterest doesn’t work. Chances are, they’re not using keywords correctly. You have a lower chance of your content being found.
While the Pinterest AI does most of this keyword reading and matching, remember 85% of Pinterest users are using smartphones. This is important when creating your pins because you’ll want the text on the pins to be large, attention-grabbing, and easy to read. The AI might place your content in a pinner’s feed, but you still want them to click and engage with your pin.
Use Pinterest as a Service Provider to Drive Traffic to Your Offers
When you create a pin, you are going to determine the URL. That means you get to determine where you’re going to drive traffic.
If you like to do videos and have created YouTube videos, you can send them to YouTube. Be sure to include a call to action.
As a service provider, YouTube is perfect for creating tutorials and how-tos. These tend to do really well on all platforms as people search for ways to manage various platforms or troubleshoot tech in their business. Another option is simply sharing what it’s like to work with you. Consider interviewing a happy client in a video testimonial about your process and results.
If you choose to do a Facebook video, repurpose it by uploading it to YouTube and repurpose your content that way.
If you are interested in growing your Instagram, you need to have an intentional strategy.
Conventional Pinterest education has told us to only use vertical images, but I want to reassure you it’s okay to post directly from Instagram even though they are square images. They are still a decent size, so if they are branded, have a URL, a call to action, and a text overlay, they can work as pins. Choose pins that have a good message where you spent time creating an intentional message versus just like an engagement question.
To use an example from my own Instagram feed, I can choose my Nine Reasons to Use Pinterest Promoted Pins. In the text, I would include three and add a call to action to click on the link in the bio and continue to read the rest of the blog post. In the meantime, I’d invite them to follow me on Instagram. This strategy is good for growing your Instagram only if you are giving you’re providing them value with a good intro.
Tips for Getting Started with Pinterest as a Service Provider
Use Pin Templates
I love Canva and I highly recommend using pin templates because it just makes creating pins so much easier and faster. You need to create multiple pins because Pinterest doesn’t like you to pin and repin the same pin. Each pin design should have a different look, different image, perhaps different titles. This is easily done by creating pin templates.
Create a Content Workflow
You’re busy enough, so be assured adding Pinterest to your marketing doesn’t have to take extra time. I share my best time-saving tips here. To help you create those multiple pins, create a workflow. I like to add Pinterest into my blog post workflow, this way I create an optional square image that can be used on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Then I resize it or create a whole bunch of pins from templates. Whichever method feels more intuitive to you is fine, as long as you create multiple pins at one time.
I also include scheduling into my workflow. For this, I use a tool called Tailwind.
Final Thoughts on Using Pinterest for Your Service Provider Business
Ready to start using Pinterest for your business? You can get my course called Pinning Foundations. It’s everything you need to know to get started on Pinterest and only $37!
As I mentioned above, people have found me and approached me to talk for summits. They’ve approached me as guest experts for their Facebook groups to come in and do a training. I’ve woken up to have discovery calls on my calendar and I’m like how did they find me? And they’re like, oh, I found you on Pinterest. 🙂
As a service provider, I highly recommend Pinterest as a long-term strategy because it is search-based and you really need to commit at least six months to really see momentum start building on Pinterest.
While your Pinterest is growing, in the short term, I would definitely have another strategy, going into Facebook groups, direct messaging on Instagram, or going into LinkedIn, whichever is your platform of choice. Then, build this as you go along and it will build momentum and bring you new leads
