search engine Archives - American Quilt Retailer

What is a digital agency?

Digital agencies help you advertise digitally. There are three primary ways to advertise online:

Social Media: Social platforms allow paid advertising to help you get your message in front of new audiences, generate new leads, gain page likes, or increase website traffic. This is the easiest option of the three.

Search: Search engines (like Google or Bing) allow advertisers to pay to show ads above or below organic search results. Bids are placed on keywords so when searched, you show up on the results page. Advertisers are only charged if the user clicks the ad.

Website Remarketing: Website remarketing is a great trick to reengage past website visitors. This tactic places ads in front of a targeted audience and is a great cost-effective tool for small businesses.

Why do I need one?

In a sentence, digital agencies outsource online marketing for you. This means you can continuously advertise, even when you’re on vacation.

Additionally, the process can be time consuming. Setting advertising goals can be outside of your scope of knowledge. Search advertisements use detailed data and analytics. A digital agency will do all of this for you as well as use the data to optimize campaign results and keep track of status updates.

In conclusion, if this sounds like something you can benefit from, make an appointment with a trusted digital agency to receive advice on what would be best for your business.

Inspiration for this post came from “Get Vacation Ready” by Lillie Huhndorf in the June 2022 issue of American Quilt Retailer.

If you’re looking for more information to guide you in owning a retail business, subscribe to American Quilt Retailer today. Already a subscriber? No worries—join our Facebook group for insights and dialogue from industry specialists like you. And don’t forget, you can always purchase single issues if you prefer that instead.

In part two of Pinterest for Business, we start pinning! Read on for best practices and everything you need to know to start creating boards.

Pinterest Best Practices

Remember that Pinterest isn’t social media, but it does operate similarly. Pinterest also utilizes algorithms, and like social media, it changes all the time. While this post isn’t evergreen, it will provide a good foundation.

When you log into your business account of Pinterest, the user interface will take you to the business hub. To see your boards and pins, click on your logo in the right-hand corner. This will take you to your profile page.

To see your boards, click on Saved.

Creating Boards

Now that you’re in your boards, we can start building them (remember, boards are ways to store and organize individual pins).

To help you think of board ideas, think of your shop and the products you carry. When you’re ready, click on the + sign and select “Board”.

You’ll have two options. The first is “Name.” Although it’s tempting to come up with something cute, stick to three or four descriptive words so customers can have a clear search.

Second, is a “Keep this board secret” option. We recommend keeping the board secret until you have enough pins in the board to go live. Then click “Done”. (Note, if you want to go live, click “Create” before “Done”.)

Now, we can get to Editing. To access this, click on the three dots next to the board name.

Name: is already completed.
Description: Explain your board in a conversational structure. Pinterest uses this to help with search criteria also.
Collaborators: This is an option if you’re doing an event, class, or project with another company.
Settings: Here you can make the board public or keep it secret. Personal boards should always be kept secret. We also recommend boards that don’t have anything to do with your business (ie recipes) should be kept secret. Remember, the goal is for visitors to shop your product.
Personalization: This is more for Pinterest; it doesn’t help with searches so it’s fine if you want to skip it.
Action: Enables you to delete your board. This action can’t be undone.

There are three other dots while in your board, but we won’t get into the nitty gritty of those in this post.

Other Tips

If you need to the edit the details of the board, click on the pencil in the lower right-hand corner of the board in the “Saved” page we went through at the beginning.

You can also organize boards on your page so customers can find certain products easier.

Finally, you have an option to separate boards. For example, if you have a board on precuts, you can have a section for jelly rolls, and a section for precuts. Once these sections get too hefty however, consider creating separate boards.

Stay tuned next week for our final installment of Pinterest for Business.

Inspiration for this post came from “Are you Pinterested in Increased Sales?” by Kate Colleran, Joanne Hillestad, and Kris Poor.