Is good enough really good enough?
A lot of business owners find themselves at this stage in their business — they get enough clients from referrals or sporadic Instagram posting, but they’re hitting a wall (or several). You can only take on so many clients at once, while continuing to market yourself, and run your business, and keep up with your life outside of work.
Something’s gotta break.
Usually, this is when the idea of passive income becomes really appealing. It did to me, and it did to my client, Sarah Kleist of Kleist Creative, too.
As a busy, multi-passionate creative, Sarah needed a way to get more visibility for her 1:1 design services, grow her email list, and sell more of her Showit templates. Enter: Pinterest.
Let’s take a look at how we transformed Sarah’s DIY Pinterest marketing efforts into consistent visibility, Pinterest search rankings, industry authority, sales, subscribers, and clients!
About Kleist Creative
Sarah is a Showit brand and web designer for creatives, and if you spend 0.1 seconds on her website, you’ll also learn that she’s a talented, multi-hyphenate creative herself.
As her headline boldly states — she builds digital stages (websites) and performs on IRL ones, too. That’s right, she’s an actor and web designer.
Okay, Hannah Montana, go get the best of both worlds!!!
I was stoked to add another Sara(h) to my roster, because Sarah Kleist came my way via Sara at BTL Copy, and I was ready to collect the full pair.
In all seriousness, Sarah’s actually a wicked talented designer with a cool, edgy style. I knew she would crush it on Pinterest and was stoked to help her get more visibility to her site and bring in some passive income via website template sales.
Before Pinterest Management
Sarah’s design business was doing well and she had been passively selling her Showit templates for over a year before she reached out to me for Pinterest management.
Prior to working together full-time, I audited Sarah’s Pinterest account so she could continue to DIY it until she was able to hire me for management.
Despite her Pinterest account doing fairly well, Sarah knew Pinterest marketing “was the one thing I knew I needed help with that I had abssoooolutteeely no desire to do for myself.”
So, at the end of 2022, Sarah was looking to get more eyeballs on her business and the budget was right to outsource Pinterest management.
Before beginning Pinterest management in February 2023, here’s what Kleist Creative’s Pinterest analytics looked like:
- Impressions: 72,541
- Saves: 348
- Outbound Clicks: 221
A lot of the engagement on Sarah’s Pinterest account was being driven by repurposed TikTok videos and some website projects from her portfolio. However, Sarah also had lots of blog content and more design work to share, in addition to her collection of Showit templates that all needed to be promoted on her Pinterest.
Our initial goals were focused on visibility and template sales. Sarah was confident that once people landed on her website, they typically converted (or self-selected out of inquiring). Email list growth was also one of our secondary goals.
During
Sarah’s Pinterest account started growing right away. With consistent pins to her templates, portfolio, and blogs, all metrics increased consistently.
In the example of this Pinterest case study, we weren’t starting from zero. Sarah had been using her Pinterest account to market her design business for a while and had even made sales from it already. My job coming in as her Pinterest manager was two-fold:
- Keep up the momentum already built so Sarah didn’t have to do it
- Improve visibility and conversion
When onboarding a new Pinterest management client that’s already established on the platform, I always pay attention to what content has been doing well for them so far. Usually, if a pin has gone “viral,” it will stay that way, and you’re better off leaning in to that direction than trying to fight the algorithm.
One such example of this with Sarah Kleist’s Pinterest account was that one of her client case studies was already performing well. This guided the content I chose to pin at the beginning of our time together, as I created new pins that linked back to that same case study.
Because Pinterest already had so much historical knowledge and data built up about that URL, the new pins to it performed even better and more quickly. It also had the effect of maintaining the original pin’s virality. Today, both of those pins are still in her top 10 highest performing pins.
Although we began Pinterest management with the intention to repurpose some of Sarah’s TikTok content into pins, after about 3 months, we discovered it wasn’t really converting to clicks or engagement that much, so I put all my energy towards promoting her website content.
We’ve maintained that strategy for over a year, now, to great results.
Current Pinterest Statistics
As of March 2024, Kleist Creative’s Pinterest analytics have all more than doubled, and in the case of saves and outbound clicks, they’ve more than tripled.
This is the data I reported in February’s analytics report:
- Impressions: 273,137
- Saves: 1,608
- Outbound Clicks: 965
As Sarah’s business continues to grow, we have more and more content to work with. New lead magnets, new client work, and new content all serve to emphasize Sarah’s distinct perspective and style in her industry.
Now, she feels visible, legit, and like people trust her more because of that visibility. She’s gotten clients, made digital product sales, and grown her email list, all directly from Pinterest.
Why It Worked
When the design is good, it can almost stand by itself. You just need someone doing the work and making sure it’s reaching the right people. The content that continues to perform the best for the Kleist Creative Pinterest account is anything to do with website designs, particularly screenshots from several popular client websites and her most popular website template.
My job as her Pinterest manager is to notice those top-performing pins and continue to create pins for them to capitalize on and sustain that success.
In the background, over months and months, we slowly got more traction on her educational content. As this isn’t our main focus, it was never something we were particularly worried about. However, now that we can see cornerstone pieces of blog content doing well, we have the opportunity to capture readers who aren’t quite ready to buy yet by directing them to more educational content, free resources, and her email list.
Tips to Take
If you’re a designer or you create any sort of visual elements in your client work, USE THEM. That’s your best form of content and self-promotion, especially on such a visual platform like Pinterest.
With Sarah’s account, we didn’t just use a singular mockup of her website template’s home page. We used lots of different mockups, with different text overlays, and even different pages of the template.
That gave us more content to work with and more specific keywords to use.
The other important lesson to take is that you should keep creating pins for your most popular content, especially if that content leads back to one of your primary offers.
One of Kleist Creative’s most popular pins links back to her most popular website template. Because of that, we’ve had pins scheduled to that sales page at least 1/week for the entire duration of our work together (going on a year, now).
There’s no limit to the amount of pins you can create for a single blog post or product. Use that to your benefit.
What She Says
“Sarah Burk is THE Pinterest manager, full stop. I literally do not think about or touch my account at all and my Pinterest has grown to almost 300K views/mo in just one year.“
“My biggest wins are probably email list growth and a few random template sales from people I’ve never heard of before! I just feel like a lot of random people know who I am now or respond to my emails. I feel like someone who people know of now, thanks to you!”
Learn more about Kleist Creative’s custom web design and template customization services, subscribe to her weekly newsletter, Act Break, or check out her drool-worthy Showit design portfolio!
Think you need a helping hand with your own Pinterest marketing? Reach out to schedule a no-pressure connection call here! You can always start with an audit just like Sarah did 😉
