Pinterest continues to grow at an exponential rate, with 87 million U.S. users—a 61 percent increase since last year, according to comScore.

This enthusiasm for Pinning has prompted marketers to spend $100 million on Pinterest advertising in 2015, reports Wired. And with 100 million people using the network, 75 percent of saved Pins are business-sponsored.

Pinterest for Businesses

If you’re not already actively marketing on Pinterest, now’s the time to get a better understanding of why it’s valuable and how to monetize your presence.

First, understand the type of user Pinterest attracts. Here’s a hint: the Pinterest logo mimics apple pie to appeal to Midwestern moms. Indeed, the site draws droves of women in their 30s, especially those with young families. These women are their household’s primary shopper, they’re ready and willing to spend, and they use Pinterest as a curation and research tool for a range of products and services.

Second, understand the value Pinterest brings. While other paid social advertising has the potential to disrupt the user experience, Pinterest offers opportunities to promote your business in an organic, non-invasive way.

How It Works

As a consumer, you probably know how Pinterest works; you sign up for an account, create a profile, organize boards, and pin your favorite items. But for businesses, things work a bit differently. There are two features businesses can uniquely use on Pinterest: “Buyable Pins” and “Promoting a Pin”.

How to Capitalize on Pinterest’s Buyable Pins

Pinterest recently announced Buyable Pins, a feature through which users can purchase items directly on Pinterest.

When an item is marked correctly with Rich Pin data, Pinterest can serve up pricing information on that Pin. But Buyable Pins goes a step further; in addition to the rich metadata, businesses can add the functionality of buying the product straight from the Pinterest app. A blue-priced Pin signifies that an item is buyable.

Here’s how to set up Buyable Pins for your business:

Step 1: Ensure You Have a Pinterest Business Account

First, ensure your Pinterest profile is converted to a business account. If it isn’t, visit this webpage to get started. Select your business type: professional, public figure, media, brand, retailer, online marketplace, local business, or institution/non-profit. Plug in your website address under the business type field. All that’s left to do is hit the red button that says “convert”.

Step 2: Optimize Your Pinterest Presence

Before you pursue monetization, you need to make sure that your Pins are top notch. To do this, get all of your Pin elements on point:

  • Pinterest is highly visual, so make sure your images and product shots capture a user’s attention
  • Keep your descriptions short, sweet, and optimized with pithy and keyword-specific words
  • Properly tag and categorize your Pins for easy searching
  • Make sure you use Rich Pin data—Buyable Pins are supported by Pinterest’s existing Rich Pins, where businesses can include a URL and product detail for Pinterest’s browsers to read. Rich Pin categories include apps, movies, recipes, articles, products, and places.

Step 3: Get Integrated

In order to properly use buyable pins, you must use one of the five commerce platforms. Each platform has its own rules and practices for using the Buyable Pins, so read on for more information:

Step 4: Make Sure You Accept the Right Form of Payment

Buyable Pin payments can only be processed through Apple Pay and credit cards. Never fear, if you work with any of the above retailers, you shouldn’t have a problem.

Step 5: Get Compatible

Once you have selected the commerce platform of your choice, make sure your website meets the set of requirements to be approved to use Buyable Pins.

To ensure this, go to your commerce platform’s admin account and add Pinterest as a sales channel.  Then, connect your Pinterest business account to your commerce platform.

How to Promote a Pin

You can also promote a Pin so it appears to your most relevant users. Promoted Pins are a great marketing tactic for businesses to expand reach and improve website click-throughs. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Verify You Have a Business Account

Duh.

Step 2: Make Sure You Have Rich Pins

Enable Rich Pins. Similar to how you set up Buyable Pins, ensure each Pin is backed by meta-data—or information about the Pin—so that can be indexed by Pinterest.

Step 3: Decide Who Sees the Pin

Similar to other social networks like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, you can use advanced audience targeting to reach and target the right people for your business.

Step 4: Pay for Play

You can choose to pay for engagement or visits to your Pinterest page. Promoted Pins are available on a cost-per-click basis, so each time a user engages with your Pin, you pay.

Step 5: Track and Optimize

Once your campaign starts, see how it’s doing and make changes with Pinterest’s analytics platform. Inform your current and future marketing decisions.

Now is the time to harness the potential to capitalize on Pinterest. Head to Pinterest’s Business Blog for more information.