339 | The One Pinterest Metric That Actually Books Clients (Not Impressions)

You're pinning consistently, your impressions look great, and your calendar is still empty. Here's the problem: you've been watching the wrong number. Pinterest shows you 5 metrics, and only one of them is actually connected to whether you book a client

In this episode I'm breaking down:

• What impressions, saves, pin clicks, and outbound clicks each actually mean for your business
• Why saves feel like a win but rarely turn into a client
• A real client story where outbound clicks jumped 315% after we fixed her titles and descriptions
• What a good Pinterest click through rate actually looks like in 2026
• The exact words that move outbound clicks (and the keyword mistake that tanks them)
• Two things you can do this week, starting today, to move your number

ALL THE LINKS: https://jenvazquez.com/pinterest-outbound-clicks/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Impressions, saves, and even pin clicks are not paying your bills. Outbound clicks are. Here's how to get more of the only Pinterest metric that actually turns into bookings. There are five metrics Pinterest shows you, and only one of them is directly connected to whether you will get clients. Today you are going to be learning the difference and how to move the right needle. Let me walk you through what each metric actually means for your business. I'm your host, Jen Vasquez. Let's jump right into it. Impressions. Your pin appears in search results or a home feed. That's it. One pixel of your pin visible for one second counts as an impression. I know. I know. Your pin could be five pages down in search results and still rack up impressions. Impressive number, but almost zero connection to bookings. Saves. Someone saves your pin to a board that they have. Pinterest loves saves and rewards them with more distribution. So that is a positive. But saves are not buying intent. A 16-year-old could be saving your wedding photography to a dream board right now. By the time that she gets married, you may not even be in business because you could be retired. Great for the algorithm, great for Pinterest. It does get you seen a little bit more, but not great for your calendar. Pin clicks. Someone clicked on your pin and it opens up on the screen and they see the title and the description, and they have usually a bunch of pins on the right side in the same sort of category so that people can go from your pin to that pin. It creates a little bit of a FOMO kind of situation. It's meaningful though, because your visual stopped the scroll, your pin, either the keywords or the image or something on there stopped the scroll. But they are still inside Pinterest. They have not come to your website yet. Outbound clicks. They read your title and your description and decided that they want more and they click through to your website. That is buying intent. Outbound clicks are the bridge between discovery and that purchase. If you want to go deeper on keywords, so the right people find your pins in the first place. I did a whole video on that, and I'll put the link down below in the description. I want to tell you about a photography client of mine. She was already doing everything right, three to five pins every single week from every blog post, consistent as a machine. She hired me for a Pinterest audit and a strategy call because she wanted to get more out of what she was already doing. And when I went through her account, the problem was not her consistency. It was her words, her titles and descriptions and the text overlay on top of the pin. They were way too generic. And the wrong people were clicking. Outbound clicks were really, really low. After six months of optimizing her pin titles, her descriptions, and really beefing up keywords, look at what happened. Outbound clicks up 315%, not impressions, not saves, outbound clicks. The metrics that actually send people to her website. Her monthly views went up by 137%, and followers were even up 92%. Those are the bonus, but the 315% outbound click growth is what changed her business. She has around 30,000 monthly viewers on Pinterest. In the Pinterest world, people would look at that number and feel sorry for her. She is actually booking clients every single month directly from Pinterest. Now, oftentimes people go from Pinterest, they go to her Instagram and they'll stalk her for a little bit. And so it could be three, four months down the road, maybe when they get engaged, who knows? But it is direct from Pinterest. She really cares nothing about the monthly view numbers. Outbound clicks are her whole game now. When I asked her how likely she was to recommend working with me on a scale of one to five, she said five absolutely. She also said the one thing that she wished she had changed was working with me sooner. So what actually moves outbound clicks? Two things your words and your design. When the right person sees their exact situation in your text overlay, they stop scrolling. Your pin description is the closer, right? After someone clicks on your pin to see more, to be convinced, maybe to go to your website, they read the description to decide if they want to visit your website. So keep it focused, keep it human, and end with one clear call to action. Research shows that the most viral pins average between 220 to 232 characters in their description. Short, specific, and action-driven. That's directly from Tailwind's 2025 Pinterest Marketing Benchmark report where they studied over a million pins. What not to do? Too many distinct keywords sends very mixed signals to Pinterest and will probably lower your ranking on every single term. Make five pins from one piece of content, each with a different keyword angle. Rather than stuffing all the keywords into one pin. I covered the full batching workflow for this in my last video. Link is obviously going to be in the description. Here is the number to know so that you can measure where you stand right now. The platform-wide average Pinterest click-through rate is only 0.2 to 0.5%. Most accounts have significant room to improve. A good organic click-through rate from Pinterest in 2026 is 1 to 1.5%. If you are consistently hitting that, your titles, descriptions, and keywords are fully aligned with what your audience is actually searching for. Here is how to calculate yours. Take your outbound clicks, divide it by impressions, and multiply it by 100. That's your click-through rate. But you can also see that right inside when you're looking at your top 10 pins and searching by outbound clicks. And remember, always use outbound clicks for this calculation, never pin clicks, because pin clicks inflate that number because they count people who tapped the pin but never left Pinterest. Grab the free organic pin checklist that I created for you in the description for free so that you have everything in one place. That's going to be at learn.genvasque.com slash resource. The organic pins checklist walks you through everything that goes into a pin that earns outbound clicks. Title, description, text overlay, design specs, and call to action. It is free inside the visibility vault, so go grab it right now. Here are two things that you can do this week that will move your outbound clicks without rebuilding your whole Pinterest strategy. Add alt text to every pin. Pins with alt text earn 123% more outbound clicks on average. It takes 30 seconds per pin and almost nobody does it. Go add it in your top 10 pins today. And every pin description with a specific call to action, not click for more, something like read the full guide or grab the free checklist or see how we can work together. Match the call to action to what they get when they click. That one line at the end of your description is doing more work than you think. Bonus, schedule your pins through Tailwind, which by the way, you can add alt text to. And pins scheduled through Tailwind are 54% more likely to drive over a thousand outbound clicks. The platform guides you through best practices at every step, and free plans are available. So just go genvasquez.com slash tailwind. It's an affiliate link, but you can sign up for the free one. Here is exactly where to find this number in your Pinterest account so that you can start measuring it today. Go to your Pinterest account, click Analytics, then overview. Your top pins will be sorted by impressions by default. That is the vanity metric. We don't want to be even looking at that. Change the sort filter to outbound clicks, and now you see the pins that are actually sending people to your website. Look at what those pins have in common. The title style, the description length, the text overlay language, the call to action. That is your research. Do more of exactly that. My photography client said that she wished she had worked with me sooner. Where could she be if she had started a year earlier? That question is worth sitting with.junvasquez.com slash sprint. Of course, I'm gonna put it in the description. Impressions, saves, and even pin clicks are not paying your bills. Outbound clicks are. Now you know the difference and you know the two fastest ways to move that number starting this week. Optimize your titles, your text overlays, your descriptions, and your calls to action. And then go check the outbound clicks filter in your analytics. Watch what changes. Tell me in the comments when you look at your Pinterest analytics right now, which and be honest, which metric have you been focusing on? I want to know. And if this video changed the way you think about Pinterest, do me a favor, share it with someone who needs to hear it because I know that they will thank you. Bye.