326 | Pinterest Analytics: Which Numbers Actually Matter (And Which Ones Are Lying to You)

If you’ve been on Pinterest for a few months and you’re not sure if it’s actually working, you’re probably looking at the wrong numbers.

In this episode, I’m breaking down which Pinterest metrics actually matter for service providers, why monthly views are the most misunderstood number on the platform, and what a healthy growth timeline really looks like month by month. I’m also covering how to use Google Analytics alongside Pinterest analytics, the early positive signs that tell you your foundation is building, and when you should actually change your strategy versus hold steady.

ALL LINKS MENTIONED: https://jenvazquez.com/pinterest-analytics-for-service-providers/

Transcript

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If you've been on Pinterest for a few months and you're not quite sure if you're actually doing anything, you're probably looking at the wrong numbers. Hey, I'm Jen Vazquez. I help female service providers use Pinterest as a long-term traffic engine. And today we are talking analytics. Doesn't sound very sexy, but in terms of your marketing, it is the most sexy thing because you get to find out what works and what doesn't. Specifically, which metrics actually tell you if your strategy is working and which ones are misleading. And also what a healthy growth timeline looks like. So you're not quitting right before the good part. I'm your host, Jen Vasquez. Let's jump right into it. Before we get into the numbers, I want to mention my free resources library, the Visibility Vault. It's got Pinterest tools, templates, and resources, including tools that help you track and understand your results. And it's all free at learn.genvasquez.com slash resources. And in particular, I want you to specifically look for the Pinterest analyzer. So go grab that and anything else that looks good to you in there because what I'm about to show you is going to make a lot more sense. The number everybody watches and really misunderstands. Monthly views. Everyone checks it and almost everyone misunderstands it. Monthly views are impression metrics. It tells you how many times your PI appeared on Pinterest, whether it was a home feed or in a search results or on someone else's board. Now you may not know that, right? That if somebody sees your PIN on their board, you're getting those analytics, by the way. But what I want to make sure that you understand is that the impressions number is that it's just an impression, right? When someone first meets you, they don't really know you yet. And it's just like a first impression. As an example, if you have a pin that has amazing impressions, and what that could mean is that it the pin was served up on like the sixth page of the your home feed, right? So just because it's seen doesn't mean that the person who's searching on Pinterest sees it. I always want everyone to know that. These numbers can spike when one pin gets reshared by someone with a larger following. It can also drop when Pinterest is testing your new content in small batches, right? It definitely fluctuates. It's kind of like a roller coaster. And fluctuations are not a bad thing. Increases and decreases aren't a bad thing. It's Pinterest really niching and narrowing down to the exact numbers and the exact content that your ideal client is going to love. And impressions is not the number that tells you whether your strategy is actually working. I want you to hear that. It doesn't tell you if your strategy is working. A service provider with 50,000 monthly views and 200 outbound clicks is actually doing worse than someone with 8,000 monthly views and 400 outbound clicks. Views without clicks do not book you clients. The metrics that actually matter. So outbound clicks, also referred to as link clicks because it's the click that's going out to your link. And just to give you an example, when somebody sees your pin in the feed and clicks on it, that is called a pin click. It then, if you're on desktop, it opens up and on the left side you have the image of the pin graphic, right? That's a pin click. An outbound click, this is people leaving Pinterest and landing on your website. This is the metric that most directly connects to leads, signups, and clients. So if your link clicks are growing over time and it's the last metric to actually start growing, right? First you have impressions, then you have maybe saves, then you have pin clicks, and then outbound clicks. And that can take some months sometimes. But even if it's growing over time, even if it's growing slowly, your strategy is actually working. Profile visits. This tells you whether people are finding your pins interesting enough to want to see more of your content. Growing profile visits means growing brand recognition on the platform. Saves. When someone saves your PIN, Pinterest takes that as a very strong signal of relevance. Saves tells the algorithm to keep surfacing your content to similar audiences. A healthy save rate is a very, very good sign. And it's really what Pinterest wants, right? They want you to save pins and come back to Pinterest and look through all of those pins or click on more pins, right? That means that you're active on the platform. Outbound clicks, that's my favorite click. Those, I like to call those the money click because you're that much closer to booking someone. It doesn't mean they go to your website and they're gonna instantly book you, especially if you have a high-ticket service. That's not really what it means, but it means that there's enough interest. That means the keywords did their job and got you found. And it's your chance to go ahead and then nurture that person, whether they went for a lead magnet, so they're on your email list and they're gonna start getting your information. Oftentimes they'll go to your website and they'll be like, ooh, that's interesting. And they want to learn more. This is where they're gonna go to your TikTok or your Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever it is, wherever you are most often active. Outbound click rate is your link clicks divided by your impressions. So even if your monthly views are low, a healthy outbound click rate means that the people who are seeing your content are interested enough to act on it. Quality over quantity every single time. Because it's it's the words and the image on that graphic that drove people for that last click to go through to your website. So, what is a realistic growth timeline look like? Month one and two, quiet, and this is typical. This is not fully accurate. This is sort of an average of what I see for all of my service-based businesses. Low impressions, low clicks. Pinterest is indexing your content and running small test batches. And this is completely normal and does not mean that your strategy is broken. Do not start pivoting right before it connects. So sometimes people will be doing it for three months and they'll assume that they're doing something wrong and they'll change up their strategy, and that throws you back into that testing and small batch review. So freeze, pick a strategy, move forward, and don't change it for at least three to four months to see what's going on. Month three and four, impressions start rising. You might notice one or two pins getting more traction than the others. Pay attention to those metrics and to those pins. Months five and six, link clicks start moving. Website traffic from Pinterest becomes visible in your analytics. Beyond month six, that compounding effect of posting pins consistently and Pinterest running those small batches, all of those analytics start catching up. Old pins start to resurface. Traffic builds without you having to create more content. The library that you built on Pinterest in months one through six is now working around the clock and is just driving more and more people. Most people quit in month two and three. That's typically that sweet spot of people thinking it's not working. Right before the momentum shifts, stay consistent. I cannot say that enough. Using your website analytics, Pinterest Analytics shows you what's happening on your Pinterest. Your website analytics show you what happens after the click. You need to look at both. In Google Analytics or your website platform, look for Pinterest as a traffic source under referral or acquisition data. And FYI, there's gonna be a ton of different ones. So you'll have Pinterest.ca maybe for Canada, you'll have a Pinterest for mobile, you'll have a Pinterest for desktop. Like there's a bunch of different kinds. So if you see one of them, I want you to keep scrolling through those analytics to look at all of the Pinterest so that you can count them up and have a more accurate picture of exactly what's going on. I will tell you that you will never, at least never in all the years I've been doing it since Pinterest started, it will never be the exact analytics that Pinterest has. It's like Google Analytics and Pinterest Analytics will never ever match. They measure things differently. Somebody could click on that link and immediately close the window or close their laptop, and Pinterest counts that as an outbound click, but they didn't actually make it to your website. So always default on the Google Analytics. Those are people that made it to your website. And that's just something I think that you need to know because I for years tried to figure out how I would be able to see them equal in both places. And they're two different platforms that measure in completely different ways. So see which pages Pinterest is sending people to. See how long they're staying. See whether they're signing up and clicking to your service page or booking call or signing up for that free lead magnet. See what the results are after they make it to your website. A click that leads to a five-second bounce is very different from a click that leads to a sign-up. Knowing which pages convert helps you create more content like that one that actually works. Early positive signs to watch for. Sometimes your pin will stand out because it's different than the feed. So I'll give you an example. If you go and search for wedding anything on Pinterest, chances are your entire feed is going to be pastel because that is very typical for the wedding industry. So maybe, like I have done in the past when I was a wedding photographer, I would make a black pen with white writing. Or I, my brand colors, I picked a bright pink color for my website because I wanted to stand out in that whole wedding market as being different. So test, test, test is the bottom line. Profile visits climbing slowly. People are discovering you and wanting to see more, which is great. That's brand recognition that's growing right there. Saves increasing on a specific board. That topic is resonating and lean into that subject matter. Saves gives you a really good idea of what's interesting to people because they may not want to do anything with it right now, but they may want to save it because they're going to be doing research on it or finding someone to work with. When should you actually adjust? We talked about this a little bit in the beginning of the video, that testing is important and that it will take longer than you think or expect to see those analytics grow. And as I mentioned before, that three to four months is that point when people start to give up and think that their time investment is not worth it. Little do they know that if they waited for at least six months, things would be hopping. So if after six months of solid, consistent pinning, not pinning for you know five months and then sporadically, like for sure, you're consistent for six months and it's still not growing, that could be a sign. If after six solid months of consistent pinning and you're still seeing zero of those outbound clicks and no website traffic from Pinterest, something does need to change. Whether it's me or someone else, go work with a Pinterest expert to get some understanding of your business, what your Pinterest has done or not done, what your industry is, because chances are they're tiny little changes that will end up helping you to grow amazingly. So all of your work will not be for nothing. Because once you get a really good, juicy strategy going, everything starts to grow, not just the recent things. And usually it's just one of these. So keyword gaps, your content exists, but it isn't optimized for what your ideal client is searching for. So using the wrong keywords basically. Go back to keyword research and update your pin titles and descriptions moving forward. Content mix match. What you're creating is not what your ideal client is looking for on Pinterest. So you want to look at which pins are getting saves and lean into those topics, at least initially, to get the interest. And then you can broaden your horizons a little bit. Destination problems. This is a big one that so many people don't actually understand unless they like come and work with a Pinterest person. Your pins are getting clicks, but people are bouncing fast. The page they're landing on doesn't deliver on what the PI promised, or there's no clear next step for them to take. Anything you can see on your computer or your laptop or anything you can see on your phone when it goes right there. So you don't have to scroll at all. It's just what you see. If that does not bring them in, there's nothing you can do about that. Like so many people will blame Pinterest for not having it work for them, but in reality, people are not converting, they don't have a reason to stick around on that website. Inconsistency. Posting, this is another very common one. Posting 20 pins in one week and then disappearing for three weeks breaks that compounding pattern and it really sends signals to Pinterest that you're not trustworthy. Steady and consistent always beats bursts followed by gaps. Pinterest analytics isn't about watching numbers, it's about understanding what's working so that you can do more of that. Okay, real talk. If you've been watching this series so far, or any of my videos really, and thinking this sounds great, but I genuinely do not have time to manage all of this. That is literally what my agency does. We manage Pinterest for service providers who want the results without having to do all of this themselves. And we handle the strategy, the pinning, the scheduling, all of it. If that sounds like exactly what you need right this minute, the discovery call link is below. One thing that dramatically improves Pinterest performance is having brand images that actually stop that scroll, right? Not just on Pinterest, but on Instagram, everywhere else. The visual really matters a lot, especially on Pinterest. So next week I am talking about how brand photographs. Photography fits into your entire marketing system, including how to plan your next photo session so that you always have Pinterest-ready content to work with. See you next week!