Using Pinterest marketing to drive traffic to your Amazon listings ⎜ Matt Parker ⎜ EP 168

Ryan Cramer: What's up, everyone? Welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm your host, Ryan Cramer and this is Crossover Commerce presented by PingPong Payments, the leading global payments provider helping sellers keep more of their hard earned money. Hey, everyone. Welcome once again to another episode of Crossover Commerce. Once again, I'm back as your host. I'm Ryan Cramer and this is my corner of the internet. This is Crossover Commerce episode 168 of this wonderful mess that I like to call a podcast, if you believe it or not. I call it my corner of the internet because they bring the best and the brightest in the Amazon eCommerce space and beyond I'm going to call it. I need to add that caveat because there's so many really cool things going on in this space that tie back to eCommerce and Amazon, quite frankly. But before we get started, I know everyone's excited to get started on our topic today, but before we get started, do you need to go ahead and give a shout- out, of course, every episode. We want to give a shout- out quickly to our presenting sponsor, PingPong Payments. PingPong Payments, not a ping pong paddle company, not something that you just... a currency in terms of table tennis or anything like that. This is amazing company that has helping cross- border payment solutions all over the world whether you're paying your VA, your supplier, your manufacturer in different countries. You know that it is a pain to get an invoice and have to pay in localized currency, the turnaround time is a headache. You need to get your products to your warehouse quickly and effectively, and that's where PingPong comes into play. Go ahead and you use PingPong for free, and it's easy to pay in localized currency, but then also if you're obviously selling internationally as well, we can help you go ahead and convert those funds at a very low cost. Amazon, full of fees as everyone knows, PingPong helps you mitigate those fees and take those savings and apply to your bottom line whether it's advertising, put in more inventory, just going ahead and ping yourself out. Why not use a service that is going to help you put more money to your bottom line? That's what this is all about in entrepreneurship. So go ahead and check out for free PingPong Payments. You can go to usa. pingpongx. com/ podcast where all of the former guests and podcast episodes are available on video as well as audio, but then also you can sign up for free, go ahead and let them know that Crossover Commerce sent to you or just myself, Ryan Cramer with Crossover Commerce. Sign up today. That being said, thank you again, PingPong Payments. This is episode 168 of Crossover Commerce. As I mentioned in our quick introduction, guys, as I've been doing this for almost a year now, the amazing people I get to meet on this podcasts is quite extraordinary. All over the world people are fortunate enough to put a pause in what they're doing for the day, hop on their cameras, hop on their microphones and really just honestly talk with me and to our audience as well as the listener out there. If you have questions, they're going to answer those for you, but that's the beauty of this podcast and what it's bloomed into. So, if this is your first time, this is a live interactive audience. If you have questions, you can feel free to go ahead and put those in the comment section below. But also if you're listening to us on your favorite podcast destination, you can also go ahead and share and then tag our guests as well into it and they can answer your questions, just make sure you tag the podcast or our guest. Easy to find and you'll be able to figure out at the end of the episode, how to get in touch with them. But we normally bring on anyone, again, from logistics to advertising, marketing, copywriting, you name it, we're going to be talking with those people. This week has been fantastic so far, I'm excited today because we haven't touched on this topic before on our podcast and we're going to be talking all things Pinterest. Pinterest is a social media platform, if you're not familiar, you should be. Pinterest is one of those social media sites, obviously, with boards and content ideas and creations, and lots of different inspirational ideas. But as the product has evolved, they've become advertising platforms but also ways to drive traffic to, get this, to your website or Amazon listing. That being said, there's lots of different ways, people have lots of different ideas of how to drive traffic to your Amazon listing, to your storefronts, and this is one of those ways that actually enhances that visibility and doesn't get dinged when you're driving traffic to your listing. That being said, it's been around, there's been lots of ideas around this topic. I'm really excited, you can put a pin in this one, for lack of a better term, to make sure that you come back to it and make sure you refer to other solutions and ideas that we're going to be talking about on this podcast today. But I brought on the one and only Matt Parker of Pinformative, believe it or not. Matt has actually been in the eCommerce game for 15 years. He'll say himself, he's been locked away in a closet and they just recently released him. But I'm excited to talk with him today about his background and development in multiple seven figure eCommerce brands, qualified multimedia programmer as well, and he is the co- founder of the Pinformative Group as well. So without further ado, I don't need to talk about him much but I'll let him give his background here just shortly, welcome to Crossover Commerce, Matt Parker of Pinformative. Matt, welcome to Crossover Commerce.

Matt Parker: Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me on the show, I really appreciate it.

Ryan Cramer: I love it.

Matt Parker: As you know, I've just been discussing this with Ryan, I'm in a coffee house in between Manchester and Birmingham, just come back from the IRX which is a big exhibit in the UK. So it's kind of like I've just found a local wifi. Ryan actually asked me where I was, I was like," I've no idea," so I apologize if anything ad hoc happens around me, I can't control that, but we got there, we got there.

Ryan Cramer: No, that's okay. Well, mate, we appreciate you were able just to pull off to the side of the road. And you say you're in between Birmingham and Manchester.

Matt Parker: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah, obviously, I know where that kind of area is but you got the great opportunity to talk with big commerce and the engineering team over there so that was really cool, I couldn't be mad at you for that. So thanks for just hopping on and, well, we'll dive right into it. So Pinformative is solely just based around Pinterest and I'm not really sure, honestly, why a lot more people are talking about... you hear them talk about Facebook, Instagram, how you're driving traffic to Amazon but no one really likes to talk, or wants to talk about Pinterest so that's why I'm really intrigued about today. Give me that background of how you got to where we are today and co- founding the group. And then also why this is your passion.

Matt Parker: Yeah, sure. So basically, I've... well, back in Manchester, we've got our own warehouse and we've got six eCommerce stores. I mean, my background being ultimately a programmer is that I was faced with a problem when I started doing this of having 400,000 ASINs which some people feel pretty sick about when they hear that. So I decided to autonomize and program something in WooComm, so that's been working for a while. But then I looked at a problem with Amazon with high PPC ratios and I spoke to a couple of friends of mine in the industry down in London. And then I joined a few groups on the Facebook channels and I saw Marie O'Shea, who's also a co- founder the Pinformative Group, I saw her shouting out about it's not sent free evergreen traffic. So I was thinking to myself, hold on a second, let's have a look at this, let's dig deep into this Pinterest platform. Now, a lot of people see this as an aesthetically pleasing platform, beautiful images, a lot of artists are on there, Etsy crew are on there. But when I dug deeper, I was like this is a really intricate and sophisticated algorithm and it's got a lot of potential to build up momentum and through flow traffic to anywhere. So that's kind of how we, we started up the Pinformative Group. I was like I can see real potential with this with affiliated traffic. And the other thing is, I think there's a misconception or a misunderstanding out there at the moment that a lot of people think that Pinterest is kind of this alternative platform and that's it. But it's not, it's kind of like a hybrid that has so many, it's got so many... What's the word? So many opportunities with it that I was like this is crazy, there's so many things we could do, you've got your viral pins... You can probably see I'm getting excited as inaudible I'm like this is an opensource playground for me. And so I'm trying to utilize that traffic and so we're building software and we're going for a big start because I thought nobody's listening to this, but this is really exciting stuff right here. So that was it really. So the Pinformative Group was founded and here I am, traveling around.

Ryan Cramer: It's amazing because you guys have already... the group didn't start but too long ago, and now has thousands of users. I think a lot of people see the value in it besides just sending traffic. I personally, honestly, we were talking pre-show about this, just hearing from different minds in the space how we're able to drive traffic itself to any sort of listing, not just marketing. But when it comes to just traffic in general, not all of it is weighted the same, right? Amazon will reward certain types of traffic, whether it be from Google, whether it be from organic, whether it be from PPC, or just DSP, obviously I'm saying lots of acronyms, but for some reason they're actually rewarding Pinterest more than these other channels. Is there a reason behind that? Or can you maybe kind of allude to what's... maybe as a coder or the background programmer, why Amazon rewards more of that?

Matt Parker: Because they're not a silly company. They're seeing the potential. Well, it's as simple as that. I mean, if you think from their point of view from the... That's why when I spoke to, obviously, Danny McMillan about the A9 Algorithm, these guys aren't stupid, they're building really sophisticated software. So what they've done is they've looked around and seen Shopify, BigCommerce, even Etsy affiliation with Pinterest and they've gone," Hold on a second, there's a market out there, we want a piece of that. How do we incentivize that?" So their way of doing that is, okay, here's 10% because they're giving 10% off an affiliate traffic with Amazon Associates, and that's why. Why wouldn't they? I mean, it's like saying," Okay, well, we're Amazon, we've got all the sales in the world." They haven't. I can see things on a broad scope. One thing I didn't mention, I'm part of the eBay development team and I've worked on personalized, their development feature recently in US and the UK, so I'm seeing things from a broader scope. I just dropped that on you, I've never told many people that, but I work with the eBay development team. Because they pulling me in and I'm working with different people, engineers know me around the world. I don't want to sound egoistical but that's the truth, and we kind of get on and we've worked for each other for 10 years. I've just been in the background, just watching things unfold with your Snapchat, TikTok out there... encoders... Multimedia's my background so I'm seeing loads of different things blowing up and potential and moving imagery. It's just like we're going back to the 2000s only you've got that bootstrap blog kind of approach so now there's a really powerful opportunity to drive traffic. I keep going back to Pinterest, but the opportunity's there to drive traffic to Amazon and they're rewarding it because they know that that can come. It's just quite straightforward really.

Ryan Cramer: Great. Well, I was going to say, Matt, before we go further, what are the ways before... Again, this is something that it's popped up, obviously, with lots of different people, Lisa... Good Lord, I can't even read today. Kinski said, as friend of the show, it's crazy how much Pinterest has travel changed over the years. It was an early user and it's strange that you don't hear more brands talk about leveraging Pinterest in their strategies. And obviously, I'm excited to talk with Matt today as well so thanks, Lisa, for tuning in. And then we have a couple other just shouts. Thanks, Wasim, for hopping on again and watching today. I'm curious, Matt, at the very basics, how are people able to just create pins? Is it just organic going into the platform, almost creating a separate listing and then creating... Because I'm not an avid user so I don't have any content out there to drive traffic to my podcast, for example. Maybe I should and I think maybe I will look into this a little bit more. But is this something crosstalk. Yup. I was going to say maybe I should, right? Maybe podcast episodes will be rewarded. Where do you start? Is it just as simple as creating a listing and then directing people to a website or URL or Amazon listing? Is that as simple as that?

Matt Parker: It is quite simple, actually, if you want to go down that route of just doing single pins from Amazon. So the first thing you need to do is, obviously, sign up with Pinterest and then you activate a business account which is quite straightforward. Once you've done that and you've got the link, then what you can do... Because you know about tokens, et cetera, so you it's already that connection there when you go into the Amazon platform. I'm getting a bit technical there, but basically set up your business hub, go back to Amazon, sign into Amazon and then what you can do is go to your product page itself, so just the URL. On the right hand side underneath the buy box, you'll see you've got your Pinterest logo. Just underneath the buy box, Pinterest logo and I think it's LinkedIn. No, sorry, Twitter. Few others. Click come the Pinterest logo and that will automatically create a pin on Pinterest if you log into the business hub. And that's it. That's pretty much it. I mean, you can obviously adapt the description. I don't think you can change the images, I think it takes the hero image, the main image and puts that in there. But it's pretty much that's it. And like you were saying then, I mean, if you with this, with the Crossover Commerce you could probably do 12- second video service pins because that's another thing that you can go into is service pins. And suddenly you've got that affiliated link to every single cast that you've got online. So it's crazy crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: Is that free, or is that almost like a paid ad? Is that a paid ad?

Matt Parker: Yeah, but not. But not. It's free. That's what I'm trying to say, it's like who doesn't want that? And then you've got... You see, what I've found with Pinterest, which is the most interesting part for me, is I believe what they've done from an ethical point of view is turned around and stepped back, looked at the eCommerce world and gone," How can we do things different? I've got an idea. Let's not work in ToS, terms of service. Let's give everyone freedom of ToS and see what happens." Because there's no ToS, you could do, for example, a service pin for hairdressing, top 10 hairdressing tips, whack your product on at the bottom, drive them to Amazon, drive them to Shopify. You've already engaged them in a blog. It's creative, it's a creative approach to advertising and that's what's coming back with this, which I find amazing. There's no rigid structure to it. So it's kind of offering people a more diversified way of approaching a client or customer or buyer. So from that angle, it's like you've got the advertising side but also you've got the buying side with buyable pins. Because not a lot of people know this, but Pinterest started off initially as a marketplace. So maybe at the beginning of 2009, they literally were selling things like eBay, Amazon, Etsy. However, people were leaving things in the car for maybe two weeks. So say you were in... I don't know. Say you were a skier and you bought the goggles and you got the gear, you got the jacket, but they would leave everything there. And they were like," Oh God, everyone's buying everything that they're interested in." Interested in and then they got interest. And then they were like," Oh, well, just like they're pinning these things." And that's how it evolved into a different way of buying where you just literally buy the whole outfit and whenever you inaudible. But think that's a Gen Z thing as well, it's up and coming. I think a lot of these guys are looking at a different way of buying because of Pinterest because you don't just buy on demand, you buying through an interest which is, again, is really direct marketing tactics as well.

Ryan Cramer: Right. And that's kind of why I see the differences. So like you had mentioned before, Facebook in itself is a social media platform, right? It's a platform that is social commerce, you're sharing with other people either thoughts, ideas. It's not really, and I've heard this... Maybe it's like Danny but I agree with it too, if it wasn't from him, it's a social media platform, it's not a buying platform. Pinterest is interesting because it's a creative and inspiration platform, or interest boards of this is what I like. It's literally building a profile for you of things I might be, like you said interested in, Matt. Is that just the natural way inaudible monetize it that way but it's a non- intrusive way to get in front of people, right? That's why it's so successful.

Matt Parker: I think with Pinterest because it started off as a marketplace and then everyone's looking it as inaudible platform. It's neither. I mean, in my eyes it's a hybrid. It's kind of like everything in one place. If you imagine a spider's web, I would say Pinterest is in the middle and you can rebound all these different traffic flows to anywhere on the web. So if you imagine Pinterest at the center, it can rebound that up to even YouTube. Gather that flow of momentum from that link, you could have a Google income there, something that's linked to Amazon. It's mind blowing, you could have... I did get told off this weekend because I was basically referring to these things as triangular methods, but somebody said that association with pyramids isn't good so I've started calling them circular flows. I got told off. crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: It's not as bad crosstalk-

Matt Parker: Which makes sense.

Ryan Cramer: Sounds better, mate.

Matt Parker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you can see, there's loads of creative ways that you can build up momentum and flow traffic to anywhere. And obviously, I think reading between lines, it's just my personal opinion, I think that Google maybe wanting to acquire Pinterest at some point, but I think they maybe let it go too far. Who knows? But I know that Google... Sorry, Pinterest boards rank highly on Google. crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: So you're talking about not just Amazon shopping but almost like Google shopping too. crosstalk-

Matt Parker: Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Cramer: ...you can start building out inaudible around your brand so that's one way... you can look at it that way. You can drive people who are willing and ready to purchase... So that's what I do not get. This doesn't make sense, and going back to everyone else. I'm not really sure... I'm going to turn that down real quick because there was a little bit of feedback, and put you on mute real quick. In terms of the people, why no one's talking about this, this seems like... Kind of comparing when we talk about launch strategies, right? And there's ways to drive traffic and there's ways to do it above board and not go against ToS. And Amazon's specifically says, obviously, you cannot manipulate, you see lots of bad reviews or unethical reviews, if your solicitation of reviews in that context, if it goes against the ToS you can literally get shut down. That's why Pinterest seems so unique to me because how you're building up a brand across the board, you can launch and drive traffic through Pinterest, you can run campaigns through there, and it's getting rewarded organically but also the intent to purchase is also there. So that's why it's really just hard to understand why... Because at a high level, more people are not talking about this as a legitimate way to source traffic. Is it just because it's not sexy, no one's really figured out the way to do it, there's no consistency? Or what are your thoughts and opinions on the matter?

Matt Parker: You tell me. You tell me. I mean, that's a very good question and one that I'm trying to answer. But from my point of view, I'm trying to niche down and do this and do it right. And that's why I started, obviously, with my background... Between me and you, I've had to get together more than 10 engineers in the last six weeks. I mean, it's been insane. But I've got these people I know who are qualified in what they do, and I said," Listen, this is going to be a big thing." And that's why I'm utilizing it because I'm going around speaking to people, but the problem is, the big problem from my point of view, looking at ecomm on a scope is that a lot of people are still in their own lanes and that's understandable. They've got their Amazon lane, your Etsy lane, your eBay lane, they're all still in their own lanes and they're focused on what they're doing. Not many people from what I've learned when I've spoken around the world, and I refer to a guy, I think you know him, James Dihardjo over at MerchantSprings in Australia, he's got over 100 channels. Yeah, he's a good guy and I deal with him. And he's pretty much said... We had a conversation, we do quite regular, and he said to me there's not many people like us, as in me and him, maybe yourself, who looks at this on the outside, like a global perspective of not just being in one lane but the whole of ecomm. And because I've been dealing with eBay and Amazon inaudible eCommerce, I kind of see things maybe from the unusual angle. I mean, I went to the IRX this weekend and, obviously, to sell sessions in London and people were talking about inaudible strategies and rebates, and I'm like," I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm a JavaScript PHP coder, that to me means nothing. All I do is I kind of build the momentum behind you guys, you do what you want with it." But then it works both ways, if they couldn't sell the stuff I wouldn't be building it. So I'm stepping forward to go," Right, let's get this done and see where it goes." So we're developing software and started an agency and... Oh, it's a bit crazy. It's tiring but I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it because like you said crosstalk. Yeah, it's like there's a field there and I'm playing football by myself at the moment but I guess more players might come in. But I'm very blessed, I've got these two seven- figure brands in the group as you've seen and we're getting... That's the other thing with the brands that we throw into the mix, it's all live data, you can see correlating graphs, you can see... Literally in the last seven days, I think Marie posted something, I put the data on inaudible two case study brands and it's like 170% up on Amazon. That's crazy. I mean, but the problem I've got is the internals in Manchester that are doing this to run the stuff out, they're dying. So I'm having staff up in the warehouse while I'm pushing the algorithm on the other side. So yeah, I don't know why. I don't know why. But I saw Danny McMillan recently and I was thinking," Well, if I think I'm pushing myself, he's just nuts." He's just off the spectrum, one hour a night sleeping. So I was like,"I feel a lot better about myself at the moment."

Ryan Cramer: Exactly. And that's the thing, we talked to Danny, he has his hands in everything. And he was telling me inaudible IRX as well. So I'm curious, Matt, so you said you're using a lot of these almost case studies if you will, is there anything that you can share? Like a brand that either wasn't... they're launching products or any sort of marketing, what are those things? If they're not part of Pinformative, obviously, that's a shame and they should, and you can find the link in the comment section, but if they haven't seen those case studies, what can you tell the people that you've seen with your brands that you're selling on Amazon... Correct, you're selling on Amazon, you're using Pinterest to drive traffic, what are those case studies and findings brings light to you? Just the amazing growth and opportunity in that regards.

Matt Parker: I mean, obviously, I'm under a few NDAs with the software so I don't want to give too much worry about that yet crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: Right. We don't want the background but what you can share, yeah, absolutely.

Matt Parker: Yeah, of course, of course. So if you think of it this way, say you've got pins on your boards on Pinterest. And when I say the boards rank high that means you've got... you could basically, for example, you could get AI blog and you can have unlimited pins from an AI blog. Literally as many pins as you want that'll be on there permanently forever. And what you could do is put links in there from Google on specific pins, but also you could put them on your Amazon store, your eBay store. If the board ranks up on Google, you've got that cross- marketing affiliated traffic flow. Somebody goes on your board, they're going to see Amazon, they're going to see eBay, it depends on what you want to push. So what we've been doing is we've been using board momentum in different areas to scale these things, and because Google associations... Sorry, because Amazon takes Google associations seriously now as well, then suddenly all your listings are going up and it's all because you posting on Pinterest on pins, put in the right way. If that makes sense to anybody? I'm trying to explain it as best as I can but... So basically you've got that links on your pins, on the boards, ranking on Google, but also affiliated with Amazon. So that's pushing everything up and Amazon goes," Thanks very much, we're enjoying this external non- masked Google URLs," and it pushes you up with the rankings and you sell more. And that's pretty much it really.

Ryan Cramer: Well, and I think that's the fascinating thing that's going on now is that Amazon is rewarding external traffic to its listings. But then also you want you want to be able to see where you can drive those traffics, right? You don't want to keyboard stuff or URL stuff. Amazon I know doesn't like that, but from Pinterest it's pretty easy to know where that traffic's coming from, right? There's data and analytics on the backend as well. So for a dummy like me, are you seeing like... just compare across the board to social media. Should people start putting more money into either Pinterest advertising? Or just putting more money into content creation on Pinterest to drive awareness to the brands? Is there one that you're starting to see go one way or another? Just take your spin putting into the ads and then maybe... or put into the content. Is there one that's outweighing the other right now in terms of conversion or success?

Matt Parker: It's the association between the image algorithm and the description. So if you're going to whack something on there, I was speaking to... Well, actually the sales sessions this time round in London, I was watching all the information about the image algorithm on Amazon. But with the Pinterest, it kind of takes saturation, vibrancy, all these different factors. Obviously, with inaudible multimedia background, I'm seeing these things and they're taking a lot of factors into consideration with the image. That's a big, big deal. So what I would say is, is that a lot of people are going for lifestyle imagery. It's not really the big hitter. The big hitter is having associative objects in your image with the keywords. So it's kind of having a balance between the two. Whereas some people are just putting beautiful images on of canvas, say a principal, and it's got no relevance to the text, it's just like," We've got a painting." Well, is it a Rembrandt? Is it a Picasso? What colors are in there? You are limited. You've got, I think it's 200 characters is the sweet spot. And then you've got another thing as well, which is cool. You got your Twitter hashtags, well, they carry a lot of weight as well so you can whack them in. I think it's up to 20 maximum you can have. So that's another thing you've got your hashtags, which is cross bordering with SM platforms all over the place, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook. So it's just like... it's mind- bending really.

Ryan Cramer: I agree. I mean, it's really crazy in terms of that regards. Is there such thing as a Pinterest influencer? I'm really curious.

Matt Parker: Yeah. crosstalk. Well, I hope I'm not one. I may be coming across as one but crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: I know. Maybe we're going to create this whole new genre and this whole new wave right now where you guys are going to do it at Pinformative. So yeah, I'm curious because you hear TikTok influencer, you hear Instagram influencer. Those are great because of eyeballs, right? I think influencer comes with potential scalability and followers. With Pinterest, I know it's a little bit different because you can follow boards, you can follow specific boards. You can follow specific people but it's not really the forefront of," Hey, follow me, follow my boards," or anything like that. It's really hard. I personally wouldn't know if you said name one or five Pinterest board influencers. I'd be like," I got nothing for you."

Matt Parker: You know what? I'll be honest-

Ryan Cramer: I would think more brands to be honest with you.

Matt Parker: Well, with the IRX today, well, I mentioned it to you, I was meeting with an engineer from BigCommerce and I saw this lady and she's speaking to me, she's like," Have you ever watched any the influencers?" Honestly, everything that I do comes from me, I've not seen one. Marie has, I don't really, it's not my bag. I'm just the guy who's trying to build an engine that does things. But yeah, I think it's going to be... well, it's going to rise up, isn't it, let's be honest. I mean, if this goes the way that I calculated within two years, maybe two billion people on this. I mean, you can't really shy away from that. And the idea of Pinterest is interest so you've got associated people. Does that mean that, for example, yourself, if you put a service pin on there, will you be crossing over with other people who are doing podcasts with the same interest? Thought about that. It's kind of creating this whole eco system of difference from anywhere that I can see. And I think it's going in a way that is pretty cool because like I say, the ToS side of things they're not really stopping anybody. They are shadowing people which is kind of their idea of saying a sin bin. Not quite suspension, but not quite... it's not a good place to be. But yeah, all I can see is that you're going to get a lot of people... Oh, that's another thing. Sorry, my mind's going off now with buyable pins-

Ryan Cramer: No, it's fine, this is all good stuff. Everyone's commenting, and again, keep the questions coming if you guys are having questions, we have so many things that are just fascinating. They're like," This is great, this is fascinating. I want to know more about this and that." So I'll keep you on track, keep going.

Matt Parker: Yeah, so another thing to factor in is viral pins. Now, viral pins is using same principal and algorithm as TikTok and Snapchat. But the thing is with TikTok and Snapchat, I mean, I've got a cousin, I think he's got 2.5 million followers, he's got an agent, he's only about 12. It's like crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: He's 12 years old and he has an agent?

Matt Parker: About 2.5 million followers, yeah, something like that. Jayden. He'll be kicking me-

Ryan Cramer: God bless him. My God. crosstalk business, man.

Matt Parker: We've got a weird family. My brother's professional DJ, I've got a cousin with 2. 5 million TikTok followers and I'm doing this. But it's great because I have this insight of different markets. My sister, she's on TikTok, she's got 170,000 followers and her boyfriend's got quarter of a million. It's like I don't know where I'm meeting these people, but it's interesting because I'm getting feedback. So the thing is with, when I spoke to my sister, is that if you imagine this, so with TikTok and Snapchat you've got one viewport. So what I mean is you've got one, obviously, one mobile phone viewport. But the crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: Right. So yeah, people have talked about that, right? It's like a funnel or where you're getting your information from. TikTok is literally a fire hose, it's only one stream, you can't go on off ways. You can't go and search different trending topics, you can't do all these different options. So it's hard to really know where your eyeballs are going to go for TikTok. That's why it's so interesting because it's literally just a swipe feature and it's a waterfall, it continues to flow.

Matt Parker: Yeah, exactly. And if you imagine this on boards, so you've got the way it looks at it with giraffe pins, which are the three to two ratio pins, which is what you... it's a perfect viewport for any mobile phone. You could have up to... Well, you could have unlimited amount... Well, it actually would be a problem, you've got to be careful of this, that you end up with 20 viral pins pushing traffic unlimitedly to anywhere you want to go. Suddenly, you've not got the stock flow, so you've got to be careful. This is why with the seven- figure case studies, the two brands, I've got to be very careful, we could actually pull the trigger and go really high. There's no ads on there at the moment and I think next month we'll be hitting about a million traffic flow for free, with probably 5, 000 engagements which converted could end up at$ 10 a pop, I don't know, five grand a month of free traffic which is just crazy. So you've got the opportunity to get viral pins, which we all know what happens on TikTok. Suddenly somebody in the garage is doing 20,000 orders and can't get the stock flow. So these are all things that can happen on Pinterest and this is why I'm saying, imagine going back to the spider diagram, in the center is Pinterest, it's got all these algorithmic flows going on, APIs working in unison. From a technical angle it's fantastic. I mean, they've got a lot of the... Well, it's probably the cleverest image algorithm on Earth that I can see because if you imagine they're funneling in all this traffic from different ways and functionalities, how they're balancing that is massive. Because I know they floated in 2019, I think it was, so obviously the money's coming in from somewhere and they're starting to inject that into more of a shopable, buyable marketplace now with buyable pins. And another thing is with buyable pins, when I talked to BigCommerce today, you can click on buy now, stock again isn't controlled by Pinterest, it's pulled in on APIs from anywhere, which makes me wonder has Amazon kicked off Shopify recently because they might have freedom then to do the buyable pin option. Maybe, I don't know.

Ryan Cramer: Stay tuned, folks. We'll have to circle back when that happens. That's interesting too because, yeah, I know with the integration with Shopify and TikTok, right? That was intriguing to me. I know a lot of brands are talking about, obviously, that's the influencer play of just buy an app instead of having to go off either app or to keep redirecting, you want to kind of streamline that integration. That is interesting that you would think that because Amazon rewards so much in Pinterest because it's continuing to grow, right? The audience, it's not wavering, it's not like Snapchat or Facebook where the user rate is just either flat or continues to trend down and it's only a certain demographic. Pinterest is it scales across multiple different generations, both male and female, it doesn't matter in terms of monetary status or anything like that. It encapsulates the best of everything. I mean, I have a Pinterest thing and I only do it because my wife saves anything from craft ideas to recipes, and I'm like," What we making for dinner?"" Oh, it's on my Pinterest board." And so I log in, look at it all, I go," Man, there's so many different shopping apps and..." This is me, the marketer always noticing, I'm like," This is interesting how this is followed by... this person is followed by 100,000 people." And it looks like even not just copy- based but it's just all new traffic under blog and, shoot, it's something from like 2012 or something crazy like that but years ago and the content inaudible is still finding it nowadays. There's buyable integrations into whatever they're using, whether it's on their website and they're serving ads to you, or anything like that. So it's almost like this compounding nature of getting organic traffic, you can serve ads, you can get conversions and things like that. So actually, we had a question, Matt, I think you'd be the person to answer this. Is there any benefit of posting your pins through Pinterest directly versus posting on a schedule service like Hootsuite? Is there anything inaudible?

Matt Parker: Not really, no. I mean, you've got Tailwind as well, you can schedule them. Not really. I mean, you still doing the same functionality, so I'd say no, there's nothing crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: Still feels organic crosstalk-

Matt Parker: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: ...for another.

Matt Parker: I'm going to have to be really careful here because like I said I'm in a coffee house. I think the actual charge is going on my laptop which is embarrassing. I'm talking tech and I can't even plug my laptop in, what's that about? But I just thought I'd let you know that just in case for any reason things cut off but, yeah crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: If you go off, yeah, I was going to say if you need to go plug it in real quick then I can obviously chat. But yeah, no, I get you, you just give me a heads up before and we can endcap it for sure. The other question is, we talked about influencers earlier, a friend of the show, Francois said where would you find Pinterest board influencers?

Matt Parker: Okay, so you can find them on YouTube mostly, but it's getting hold of them, I mean, that's the problem. I mean, there is quite a few heard on YouTube but like anything, it's like me reaching out to, say someone like yourself, if you're busy, you're busy, what do you do? One thing I would say is if you get out there on Pinterest and start putting service pins on there, you can actually start advertising and see if you can get a hold of one. So there you go, why not put a free service out there-

Ryan Cramer: It's like following them around and say like," Hey, I want to work with you, person XYZ." Because I'm sure they're searching themselves quite a bit, right?

Matt Parker: Well, what better way than to get through to them on the interest that they're interested in which actually is influencing and they'll all be associated. That's what I was trying to say before, maybe if you put service pins on there, you'll find people associative that are actually in the genre that you're doing as well. So you'll find out, this is why it's interesting because you find people who have the common interest that you've got. But also for a marketing angle, you've got DSP Amazon, this is almost like that because you targeted people who've got the interest already there. So, that in itself is crazy because you've already done... Pinterest has done the legwork on the API, found those people and you can directly target them which is really powerful as you... well, you can hear it. You know what they're going to sell and what they're interested in already, let's just put it in front of them, hit them with the target. So there you go, yeah. Hope that answers that question.

Ryan Cramer: What's better a conversion rate? Are you converting more on desktop or mobile? Is it mainly mobile?

Matt Parker: Mainly responsive mobile, yeah, and tablet based. I don't know the stats, I've not it in front of me but we have gone through this. But yeah, it is mostly mobile because that's what... If you look again at the way that the three to two ratio pins are, they're built for mobile phones, like I say it's a viewport like that. So yeah, it's built for mobile but if you think from a desktop point of view, it's a marketplace. You've got your pins looking like a market in the way it's laid out. So that's why I'm saying they're hitting kind of everything really. From my point of view, from the coding point of view.

Ryan Cramer: Is there more of a wave of more video content that's being engaged with? Or is it mainly just like hero imaging and what's really going to stand out to... visually, is it more video content that's being engaged with? Or is it more that hero image or so?

Matt Parker: Videos are king. I mean, with algorithms at the moment videos are king. I mean, I think it's Penguin, is it, on Google? Penguin's algorithm, so that ranks that up, I think. I'm not high up with Google. But yeah, the thing is with video, you've got... This is why I was saying I was at sales sessions this weekend, I was saying you've got your keywords but also refresh your content. Works equally as well because every algorithm likes a bit of refreshed content thrown to the mix, and with videos you've got that going on constantly. I mean, like I said, going back 20 years I was working with Macromedia Suite... God, I feel old. Do you remember that? Do you remember the Macromedia before it was acquired by Adobe?

Ryan Cramer: I do.

Matt Parker: Well, I was working with ActionScript and Java and I was building animated sites. I worked with Hi- ReS! in London on the Soul website, Requiem for a Dream, all animated, crazy stuff, Type in Your Fears. And that's all been eroded by this blog- based industry. So this is why it's interesting it's coming back because all those videos have a lot of data in them. So that is refreshed and that's going on the algorithm so I'd say, yeah, if you can get on a video pin at the moment, I think the sweet spot's 12 seconds. 14, 14 seconds. But the thing is Marie shouted something out and I'm learning something off Marie because she's more in the content realm. She posted something recently about a Zoom connection on a Pinterest pin video. So we could be doing 12 seconds now and you could wipe that across on a video pin. I've not looked into that yet because I'm more, like I say, underneath doing the coding inside of things. But from that side of it, it makes sense that you'll be able to drop a Zoom interview at 12 seconds thin... Hello, Marie.

Ryan Cramer: There she is, yeah. Shout-out to Marie.

Matt Parker: She just couldn't help herself. I said her name and then she's there.

Ryan Cramer: She's always watching or listening. She's like Amazon or any others.

Matt Parker: Oh no, she's worse. I don't have a chance. I'm joking. Marie. You're always there in the background listening, I know you are. And crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: Marie, yeah, please don't be upset at us, Marie. Please forgive us.

Matt Parker: Oh no, she'll be upset at me, it's fine. No, the thing is though, Marie's got a point and these are the things that you can integrate with video because people just see video as a thing that you just record and put online and stream. No, no, no, there's all these feeds, Zoom, different ways... Obviously, TikTok has utilized that. So yeah, it's a fun playground basically, that's what I can see.

Ryan Cramer: There was another good question I thought came in, is there any type of content you would not suggest using pictures for? Obviously, I'm sure there's terms of service that would say don't put graphic imagery or inappropriate imagery or content on there?

Matt Parker: Yeah. Don't put duplication. So the image algorithm is pretty sophisticated and even if you put the same image on in a slightly different way, it can pretty easily pick that up as spam. They are quite hard on spam because obviously with it being a high... Basically, they endorse high content, so high quality content so images and videos that have a high definition, which makes me wonder how juice heavy the servers are but that's not my problem. But when you look at it from an image point of view, the algorithm will pick up on that, and it's always fresh and different is good. And vibrant. Vibrancy it picks up on as well in the algorithm. That's why from my point of view, when I've looked at some of the tests, it likes vectorized images over lifestyle, that's one thing I would say. It's got that sharp, crisp, clean, readable image. It also looks at it-

Ryan Cramer: Almost like the main image on a Amazon listing, it would be white background, just that image.

Matt Parker: Yeah. And that's where me and Marie had an indifference when we first started because she was like," Oh, you need the best images," and I was like,"No, no, no. You don't understand the algorithm. Let's have another chat." And then I kind of crosstalk and a bit smug mode but she's probably going... But no, it's not about winning.

Ryan Cramer: In this case, yeah, the data doesn't lie too so you got to say... So A/ B testing, is that possible to do as well through Pinterest of whether content or if you want to drop listings too, like let's say a coffee mug. Let's talk about, obviously you were talking like has Batman logo on it so you can talk about it's Halloween- based so maybe... Or I should say because around Halloween at the end of the month, say like Batman- themed, whatever. So you can kind of shift that towards almost like a change of keywords around so you want to get your product towards that, and then have your consistency, right? You don't want to do that as much on Amazon but is this something where you can ebb and flow different keywords and target it and change out copy consistently where it still enhances or talks about Christmas gifts, or Batman fan gifts, or coffee drinkers, or anything like that. Can you start to utilize keywords to your benefit and start testing with either seasonality or whatever you're trying to target?

Matt Parker: Of course you can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sorry about this, I might have to just try and see if I can plug my laptop into a different plug. It's the actual plug that's not working for some reason. This is what happens when you travel between places.

Ryan Cramer: It's blown a fuse. No, we've blown a fuse. It's okay, it's probably the power of pulling from this podcast. Yeah, if you need you can plug it in real quick, Matt, I can crosstalk-

Matt Parker: Give us a second.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah, just go ahead. So again, I'll reset really quick the podcast as Matt finds a quick plug- in, if you will. So everyone, again, this is Crossover Commerce episode 16... I'm inaudible. We're going to guess it again. It's 160... I got you, Matt, so you're not bad. 168. So again, we're talking about Pinterest and that's the fascinating thing about everything that we're talking about today is that a lot of people like to talk about Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, which again has been the consistent nature of, hey, you can drive traffic, you can actually drive lots of different ad types, target specific people and drive it to your Amazon listing. No longer is Amazon really rewarding those more as much as they used to. And then, obviously, that's where we have Matt back. Did we find a plug that works now?

Matt Parker: It's not quite working so it may cut off at some point. What I'll do is I'll just keep speaking if that's okay and maybe if cuts off crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: Yeah, keep speaking and then we'll come back to it later.

Matt Parker: We've done 45 minutes nearly so that's not too bad. We've got away with it.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah, that's not bad whatsoever. So we were just recapping too, Amazon's now rewarding this, there's so many different creative ways to drive traffic from Pinterest to it, creating evergreen content, creating stuff that's searchable, trending as well. Is that just something that people... If you had to say, why do you think people haven't created a software to help people either drive traffic in general through Pinterest? Is there a service or agency or anything like that? You said you're developing software so why hasn't something like that already existed? Because you do it for Facebook all over the place, there's agencies galore, why hasn't a software been built for that?

Matt Parker: Because it's a misunderstood platform. That's what I believe. I think it's misunderstood because there's so many, like I said, there's so much intricacy to the way that it works, it's not just a case of... If you look at Amazon and eBay, okay, the A9 Algorithm is really, like Danny was saying it's 3D and it is. But it's more, I wouldn't say rigid, but it's more channeled in the way that you can use it. Whereas this is so big and vast, it's like how do we funnel that? How do we channel that? So I would say that people probably approached it, looked at it and gone," I'm not even going to tackle that," because there's so many creative ways of funneling traffic. But I thought to myself... Well, I just thought, Marie might vouch for me with this and Daniel, he's the other partner in the Group. They know I'm kind of like Doc from Back to the Future, I'm a bit of a crazy guy. Throw me in a room, I love blowing stuff up. So from my point of view, I thought how can I streamline this? And I think I found a way. I think I found a way. That's all I can say on that, unfortunately. I can't say anymore, but I think I found a way.

Ryan Cramer: No, it's fine. No, the tease is real and I appreciate that. So Matt, before, we either run out of power or we come to the top of our podcast, I'm really curious too... If people had to start looking at the next two years or so, and we're hearing a lot more of Facebook, obviously, it's really difficult, it's really cost costly. We're talking about social driving traffic multiple different ways to your listings, whether it be just in eCommerce in general, or on Amazon even more specifically. We had a look at either Pinterest in one hand or TikTok in the other, if you really had to bet on one, can you make your case for either one that both are going to be effective? Or do you honestly think that one outweighs crosstalk-

Matt Parker: Pinterest. Pinterest. I mean, the thing is if you look at TikTok, how long is it going to go for before the top spot is going to cost you how much money to hit the front viewer first? You've got one viewport, you're restricted with your viewport. So, I mean, you've only got one screen with one advert. Pinterest is unlimited. So this is why I think that Pinterest ultimately will win scalability. I mean, if you think about TikTok, you've not got any other options other than to scale out and do what Pinterest is doing. So how far will that go with TikTok where it's going to cost you a fortune to be able to hit the front viewer first time round? Could you be talking millions to make billions? I don't know. You get a big hitter in like Microsoft, something like that, bang, we need that first view because we're going to make this much money. Or an influencer that's got heavy weight. Can you see what I'm saying? It's already restricting my view from a technical angle going, well, okay, you've got one screen at a time. How much you're going to pay for that one screen? That's why I think that Pinterest crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: You almost instantly make that... I was going to say you almost instantly make that tiered approach of that funnel if you will of, hey, the most important ones are going to go first and it's going to become a pecking order if it's just that single stream. Unless they diversify which again, who knows when that would come, I'm assuming it will down the road, to break it out. But you never know.

Matt Parker: Well, this is it. I mean, if you look at Pinterest, eventually they're going to start charging for ad. They're going to start charging more and more. That's what happens, that's what I saw with eBay and PayPal, when they schismed back in... was it 2015,'14? And then obviously PayPal eventually, they obviously were collaborating, they split off. And now Amazon, I think they... I won't say they venturing off, but I'm just saying I've seen too many things grow and sort of plateau, so to speak. I think inaudible grow and when they get to a certain point where they can't go anymore. And who knows, in 10 years you're talking about the same thing with Pinterest and something else comes along but with a different approach. So yeah, I would say scalability- wise Pinterest wins hands down. This is why I'm interested in it. I don't think it's even started, I think it's in its infancy and I think it's got way, way more to go. Literally ridiculous amount of traction to go on it. Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: I think that's a natural cap of our episode today and I'm afraid just to lose you and your battery life. But with that being said, Matt, inaudible. So, I mean, there's... We can do part twos and threes of this podcast and we're definitely going to have to do more of these in terms of more focused approach once you guys get up and going, especially with the software. Where do people get in touch with you? Or how do they engage with inaudible this content? Obviously, we said the Pinformative Group on Facebook, is there any other way to engage with you guys?

Matt Parker: Being the OCD perfectionist that I'm trying to be, and I'm trying to drop that a little bit at the moment, we're actually trying to create a multimedia- style website where it's interactive with all over. I'm coming from Macromedia background so I wanted to do something a bit different, so we've nearly done that. But at the moment there's not much on the website, you can just click through, see our live case study, there's 3, 000- plus followers, see live data, but we're getting to a point where the website's going to be launched. I mean, seven days, we're hopefully going to have the course, we're going to be doing a beginner intermediate course and that'll help. Because I know Marie says to me, I say something, she says," Not many people are going to understand what the hell you're talking about, Matt. Can we please try and make this more understandable for the audience?" Because I'll go off on one with technicalities and she says... So we're trying to make that more appealing for different markets, basically, so they understand it because we have got in there KDP, there's a chapter on KDP, and we've got merch, eBay, Etsy, Amazon. It's not just Amazon, we're trying to cover everything because that's what Pinterest is, it's a way to funnel traffic to all these different areas. So that's happening hopefully on the 20th because we've got all the other things that come with that with the... We're doing it ourselves, the educational portal. So not going through You2Me or Teachable or anything like that, we're doing it all ourselves because I like to make things difficult for myself. But it's coming. So yeah, just building, building, building and see where it goes. We're hoping with the software, the very latest end of the year, which isn't far off now which has come very quick this year. We're hoping that, obviously, the courses are coming next week and... Yeah, the agency... Well, I'm surprised, I thought it was a wild card in the room but it seems as though a lot of people are interested in this. So I'm just going with the flow and hopefully once we've got everything with the course in order, we're going to start. Because we are building quite a big team globally and that's a challenge as well. But people who know me and the interns, they know I don't do things by halves, I just go for it. If you don't jump you won't fly. That's the one.

Ryan Cramer: It's a good phrase. Well, hey, if you need a dummy like me to be a case study for either podcast or whatever, you know I'm in. So, anytime I can be of service or anything like that, you know where to find me. So I know we chat offline often so I'm really excited to see where this goes because I think the innovation part of it is what's really fascinating to me of-

Matt Parker: That's it.

Ryan Cramer: Right, exactly. And I think crosstalk-

Matt Parker: Innovation is the word. Innovation is the word. I've been saying this all along to Marie, I said," I love innovation, and I think that..." Because I've got the capability to do that, I'm not on marketer, I'm not great at selling, but the fact I can invent and do things. Because I come from a family, we've invented a couple of things, but I won't go into that today. But yeah, it's just, unfortunately, it's how I was born so why not have a crack of it?

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. We need to get back into that family, that history of all these different successes, man, because you're... That sounds fascinating to me too, that can be a show in all of itself, all the crosstalk-

Matt Parker: It could be more than a show, trust me. You don't want to know.

Ryan Cramer: That's awesome. Hey, we can start live... Yeah, it can be the next Keeping up with the Parker's, if you will, or something like that. So the Kardashians. Hey, here we are. Matt, thank you so much for stopping in the middle of nowhere in England and chatting with me today. And I'm sorry we ran out your battery on your computer but, hey, it is what it is and so was crosstalk-

Matt Parker: I really enjoyed it, Ryan. I've really enjoyed it and it's great to chat and I hope that people out there have learnt something more about Pinterest today and what it's potential is. And it's not just your flat base two dimensional thing that you see, there's a lot more underneath that's happening under the bonnet so I to speak. So yeah, brilliant.

Ryan Cramer: Hey, I'm all about it so we'll keep in touch and now for another show. Matt Parker of Pinformative, thanks for hopping on Crossover Commerce, man.

Matt Parker: Brilliant. Thank you. Cheers, Ryan. Thanks very inaudible.

Ryan Cramer: Thank you, man. Yeah, no problem. Thank you again, everyone else. And thanks to Matt and his team over at Pinformative for hopping on Crossover Commerce again. There's so much great content there that hopefully you also enjoyed watching us live or listening to us on your favorite podcast channel. Again, this is Crossover Commerce episode 168. Thanks again to Matt Parker just for hopping on and giving us some insight of why it's important to keep your options open, don't just go with the easy social media routes, do something that's going to... All right, it might take a little bit of time but the content generation and the what's being rewarded in terms of just... and rewarded for organic listings, something that is free and that will boost your content and people are ready to make those purchases. That's intriguing to me enough where I want to dive a little bit more into that in my own personal time and look at those case studies once again because I think that's something as fascinating as it is when people get pinched with their ad dollars or any sort of marketing by budget, this can be something that you can create really great content. It's evergreen, it's rewarded on Google, it's rewarded by Amazon, it's rewarded by lots of different platforms. And you notice, we made a couple different projections on here. We'll see what turns out and I'm excited to see the team where it comes in the end. So that being said, again thanks to everyone who was subscribing and also to listen to us live. Again, if you haven't watched Crossover Commerce before, make sure you give us thumbs up or share this episode. You can also search for us and find us on your favorite podcast destinations, but we go live on all of our social media sites on PingPong Payments, or you can just follow myself on social media, just search Ryan Cramer, you can find me. But that being said, give us a thumbs up or give us your review on your favorite podcast destination platform, and share this episode. It'll be available on the audio version here soon enough as well. That being said, again thanks, Matt. Thanks everyone else who was watching Crossover Commerce. We'll catch you guys next time on another episode. Again, I guess that would be 169. Well, take care, everyone. Have a great weekend.