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How eBay leverages Pinterest content to increase site traffic

How eBay leverages Pinterest influencer content and promoted pins to drive traffic to eBay.

2 min read

Marketing Strategy

EBay's Tracy Baeckler

Photo: SocialMedia.org

Tracy Baeckler, senior manager of paid social media at eBay, and her team were tasked to increase site traffic from Pinterest. What she found was eBay content and Pinterest content were complete opposites. EBay listings come and go quickly, while Pinterest posts can last for years. They realized there was a gap between linking the content.

At SocialMedia.org’s Brands-Only Summit, Tracy explains how they filled the gap by leveraging influencer content and promoted pins to drive traffic to eBay. Here are a few ideas behind their strategy:

  • Set stretch goals: Figure out what you’re trying to achieve. Tracy’s team decided they wanted triple-digit growth, with every pin having engagement, as well as leveraging their seller community. Stretch goals allow you to think differently and create incremental objectives.
  • Know your platform: Who is your audience? What are they doing on the platform? On Pinterest, content lives on the site forever. The platform is used to search for content that inspires you, or things you are going to use in the future. No other platforms use search like Pinterest does. Tracy needed to figure out a way to leverage search.
  • Leverage influencers: They took advantage of their loyal seller community by partnering with influencers who were experts in different fields. Tracy says that’s where they developed the 1-on-1 relationship to use their content. Influencers created content like guides and tips that live on the eBay homepage, and that content was used to create pins on Pinterest to drive traffic back to eBay.

To see more details on, watch Tracy’s full presentation here, or check out her presentation deck.

Andy Sernovitz builds organizations that help people help each other. His company, GasPedal, builds peer-to-peer communities for people leading meaningful change at the world’s biggest companies, including SocialMedia.org and SocialMedia.org Health. He wrote the best-selling book Word of Mouth Marketing that teaches you how to earn the respect and recommendation of your customers.