Pinterest: 5 Ways to Use it Effectively to Market Your Business


Oh no! ANOTHER social media platform?

Oh yes – and it’s one you might want to take a look at, to see if it makes sense for your particular business. But a caution here – even it it does – don’t feel you have to add it to your social media marketing. If you’re already overwhelmed and just keeping up with your current social media efforts, then leave Pinterest be, at least for now.

But if it appeals to you and makes good business sense to add it to your business platform, here are five specific ways you can use it in your marketing efforts:

1. Less Clicks = More Conversions

The less clicks your visitor has to make to get to the information or product they want, the higher your conversion rates. With Pinterest, there are just two clicks from first seeing something of interest to visiting its site of origin. That translates into more leads and more sales.

For example, let’s say you have a book for sale and you pin the image of the cover from the book’s sales page to your board. When one of your followers sees your pin and clicks on it, it will allow them to share it with others immediately. And if they click it again, it will take them to the site where the image was pinned from, in this case, the sales page for your book.

2. Drive tons more traffic to your site

Because Pinterest has such a large following (10 million unique views at this writing) it’s a great tool for driving more traffic to your site via the links that are attached to the pins you make to your board.

In fact, there are tracking stats that are showing Pinterest is driving more traffic back to websites than Facebook or Google+.

3. Easy for people to share your content

Pinterest makes it super-simple for your followers to share your pins and therefore links back to your site. Because every pin includes a link leading back to the source of the image, this can translate into a lot more inbound links to your website. So the more followers you have, the more those followers share your pins, the more traffic to your site.

4. Gain from user addiction

Some markets have already fallen in love with Pinterest, with more to come as more people become aware of and start utilizing this new social media platform. If your market is a fan of Pinterest, then you need to get onboard and get in front of all that traffic. Just start with one board, pay attention to what your followers are re-pinning (sharing with others) the most, and pin more of that content.

5. Connect it with your other social media sites

Since I’m all about leveraging your time and talent, if you’re going to use Pinterest, then you need to connect it with your other social media platforms to do so. You can connect Pinterest with your Facebook profile (hopefully they will add the ability to connect to your fan page soon). You can also connect your Pinterest account with Twitter so your pins are automatically tweeted. And you can add a "pin it’ button to your website, much like other share buttons, so your visitors can pin for you.

I’d love to know your thoughts on Pinterest – share with me below…

How to Use Bonuses to Boost Your Sales


As part of your launch strategy to boost your online sales, create partnerships with colleagues, and increase the overall value of your product or service, add a bonus (or several) to your offering.

Here are 5 ideas for bonuses you can use to increase your sales:

1. Offer a special report.

Take several of your articles with a common theme that complements your offering and compile them into a special report. If you don’t have articles that seem to fit, think of additional information that you did not include in the original product and write it up as a special report. Use your word processing software to write it, then convert it to Adobe PDF to make it look nice. Or offer a special report written by a colleague of yours with information that complements your offering.

2. Offer an audio.

If you are selling a product that is education-based, offer a follow-up teleclass to answer any questions that your customers may have about the material. Or record a special audio to go along with your product that offers some additional material that you didn’t get to cover in the actual product itself, or that is an introductory or overview of the material covered in your offering.

3. Offer a resource file.

If you want to increase your customer’s satisfaction with your product, offer a quality resource list, so they don’t have to waste time and money searching for where to go or who to hire to follow your sage advice. Put together a list of the service providers, websites, ezines, books, magazines. etc. that you personally use (or that come highly recommended to you by your trusted colleagues) and that are related to your product or service. Create a PDF of your compiled resources to offer as a bonus. For example, one bonus that comes with my 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System™ is Alicia’s 6-Figure File of Recommended Resources, which is a list with links of who and what I personally use to make my business run successfully.

4. Offer a workbook.

Just like so many self-help books do, create and offer a workbook, action guide, success journal, or the like to go along with your product or service. Pull out the main points of your material and create exercises to deepen your reader’s understanding, or create sections in which your reader can add their own thoughts and ideas as they work through your information.

5. Offer a discussion list.

You can do this a number of ways, but the easiest and the one that will require the least amount of effort on your part is to create and offer a discussion list via Google Groups, Facebbok Groups, or NING. It’s free and can help to build a community of people who have YOU in common, and it gives them a place to offer each other support. You can pop in and out at your leisure, maintaining and strengthening your relationship with your customers.

Another way to do this is by offering a membership site as a very valuable bonus. For example, with 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System™ I offer a trial membership in my L.E.A.P™ MasterMind as a bonus.

If you haven’t tried tacking on a couple of bonuses to your offerings, do so and see what happens. My bet’s on increased sales… 🙂

Are you ready to learn how to “Launch Your Products, Programs, and Services to Instant Success”?

In my brand-new L.E.A.P.™ GOLD* program, Once your product or program or service is complete and you’re ready to offer it to your market, if you don’t know how to effectively launch it, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table. There is a science to it and I’m going to teach you the precise steps to take, pre-launch, during the launch, and post-launch to guarantee you get the biggest return on your investment in your time, energy and money.

Most entrepreneurs simply don’t know how to offer their products, programs and services to make the most of them in sales and clients. It’s a simple process that you’ll learn from me (the first launch I did using this formula converted 40% of my list from potential buyers to paying customers (many of whom turned into clients as well) – that’s unheard of in the industry).

To make it even easier for you to follow this process, I’m including the same checklist we use in my business every time we launch something new.

Interested? Reserve one of the *very* limited seats TODAY

I’d love to hear which of these bonuses you’ll offer next and what your results are. Feel free to share with me below.