Kate All (0:00)

Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Simple Pin Podcast. I'm your host, Kate All. Let's talk for a minute about volume versus conversion and how it relates to your Pinterest marketing. There are two types of people, two types of business owners in my community. Those who are looking for more traffic and those who are looking for more sales. Sometimes we have both, but more often than not, one of those goals wins out. Add to it the frustration of the Internet changing and you have a lot of people who are confused, overwhelmed and frustrated. But I would argue that that frustration isn't always about what's happening to us, what the Internet is doing to us. But it's a lack of a clear understanding of your business model, or I guess your desired business model and what your ultimate goal is. So the question I want to wrestle with today is what's the difference between volume and and conversion goals in the online business space, especially right now, can you achieve both, especially with Pinterest marketing? Stay tuned. You're listening to the Simple Pen podcast, Pinterest for business advice that goes down smooth and easy. Here's your host, Kate All. All right. If you are an online seller who is looking to make more sales with Pinterest, there has never been a better time. With Pinterest users rising above the 550 million monthly user mark, product listings showing prominently in Pinterest searches, and online businesses reporting amazing results, now is the time to go all in on Pinterest marketing. In order to make more sales. We have created a specific offer for you where we do all the heavy lifting, especially if you're at the beginning of your Pinterest marketing journey. We've created a service that will help you clean up or build your Pinterest account, help you nail your images, and consult with you about what the next best steps are when the foundation work is done. Also, we give you guidance on all the tech that you need to make sure you have your verified merchant set up and your catalog connected so that you are optimized for sales. If this is something that you're interested in or you have more questions, book a call with our team to talk about this E Commerce Kickstart package. We will listen to your business goals, help you decide if this is the next right step, and sign you up for our Ecommerce Kickstart if this is the next right step. So Simply go to simplepinmedia.com/kickstart. That's all one word to book your call. Again, that's simplepinmedia.com Kickstart all right, traffic or volume versus conversion? Let me tee up how this conversation happened. So I was meeting with my team and we were talking about some of the responses that we were getting from some of our clients. And we do this often. We really take every single bit of feedback we get from clients and we have conversations about it. We ask ourselves questions like, what can we learn from this? Do we need to change something? Is this a one off question or is this a communal question? And one of the questions that came up over and over was how can I get more traffic back with Pinterest? Now I want you to note that quarter 2 of the year is notoriously very low for traffic on Pinterest. Even Pinterest has said this. Q4 is the highest and Q3 is the second highest. And then we have Q1 and then Q2 is definitely the lowest. Actually Q1 and Q3 are kind of, I think, in a tie. But regardless, Q2 is always the time where we get questions about traffic. People are saying, my traffic is down, I don't know what's going on. Then you add the layer of AI and AI websites being spun up and now this exasperates an already low traffic time. So we got into this question about are these people a volume driven business model or conversion driven business model? And one of our clients during this time had sent us a message that said my traffic is down, but actually my sales are up and I care more about sales. So I'm pretty excited. So add all of this feedback from clients to the mix and I felt like I needed to do a podcast for people talking about these two different types of business models, how you can help and figure out if you are a volume versus conversion business model, and then how you really dig in to the metrics to help guide you or help you know, if you're doing it right or wrong. This is a podcast where I have a lot of thoughts, I have a lot of assumptions, so I'm sure there's things that people can poke holes in. But I wanted to start to talking about it because I think it's an important discussion to have. I think it's important to be aware of what our goals are in your business so that you can benchmark them in order to know if you're doing a good job or not, in order to look at the right Pinterest metrics to evaluate what's working and what's not working. And when you go into your Pinterest marketing and you think, I just want everything, give me all this stuff, then it's that age old phrase that says if you haven't set a goal, you are aiming. If you don't have, if you're not aiming for something, then you're aiming for nothing. That's the phrase that I was getting to. If you're not aiming for anything, then you're aiming for nothing. And I think sometimes we can get into that with business where we hear these stories of what other, what's working for other people. And our kind of our true north guide moves right into the left or east to west and, and we don't really know how to focus. So I want to distill this down into these two models of volume versus conversion. I'm going to define what I think volume means and what I think conversion means and if there's an opportunity actually to do both. So let's start with volume. Volume model businesses are primarily monetized through affiliates and ads. The more eyeballs, the better. There are really great creators in this space who are creating blog content, video content, podcast content. The more you can create to kind of connect with people, to bring them in, the more you're driven by volume. More is better. We're always searching for more. I would even argue that people on Instagram are searching for more and more and more. But when we drill it down to how you're making money, most often it's through affiliates and ads or maybe even like sponsorships for those who are doing video or podcast. This. There's also a negative side to this model is this is where we get into the clickbait people. You get people creating, you know, fake websites. It's been happening with Google for years and years and years, which is why Google was really clamping down on spammy websites or things that had a ton of ads. They would try to get you to click over just to go to the website and then they could get some type of ad revenue. Now we see this with some AI websites being created that it's not a real creator, it's not even really great content, if content at all, if you can call it that. And the goal is just to make as much money as you can off of ads. Those who have a volume based business model are always going to need more traffic. They're going to rely on it. But with SEO changing with aio, which is artificial intelligence optimization being added into the mix, it means that people who are looking for your content are getting answers in places where they don't have to click. And a volume based model is dependent on the click right algorithms are changing, traffic is less and less. I actually saw this on a really great LinkedIn post where they were talking about Semrush, kind of sounding the alarm about SEO and how it's going to be harder to target. And he was essentially saying, if a company that built their whole model on SEO is saying things are changing rapidly, it's time for us to pay attention. So a volume model will always be a game of more, more and more. If that's the model that people want to choose, I'm not throwing shade on it, but what I'm saying is that it's going to get tougher and tougher to figure out how to get more eyeballs. And if some people are driven to this, like some people love it. They love the game of figuring out how to get more traffic. They love the game of how to gamify a system in order to get more people, More people, more people. I would also argue that some of these people aren't necessarily interested in long term relationships. So repeat users, they're just interested in more. Now that's not everybody, but it's a lot of them, right? So that's the volume model. More is better. Now let's talk about the conversion model. This is where people are looking to convert to an email subscriber or convert to a sale. Those are kind of the most too common. And so yes, they need volume, but they're not looking at that as the top line number. Here's an example. Let's say a volume driven business model. They are only driven by volume, right? But a conversion based model says I want 100 clicks, right? Because I know every 100 clicks that I get, I will convert 10 people. So for sure I want 200 because then I'm going to convert 20. But I also want to look at if I'm converting 10 already, how can I convert it to 15, how can I convert it to 20? So they're always looking at these stats and saying, how can I make my conversion better? What do people need? Do they need more answers? Do they need a different type of format for me to communicate the information? Do they need a, I guess a text in order to follow up? I will note here, we just did a podcast series with four podcasts that were talking about conversions. And in one of those we talked with Shalisha from Banyan Agency about this whole idea of conversions with email marketing and text marketing and things like that, because that was where the magic happened. And she gave some really great tips. So I'm gonna Link to that below. But I'm saying these types of people are not just looking at the 100 on the top, but they're looking at the 10 on the bottom and saying how can I get it to 15, how can I get it to 20? It changes what you're looking at. So volume is going to look at how many outbound clicks am I getting, how many clicks am I getting in Google Analytics to my website, how many clicks am I getting off of Instagram? They're going to be looking at those type of metrics, whereas somebody who's conversion based is looking at how many sales am I getting, how many leads am I getting to my email list, what am I getting that lead from, what's the type of content that is trending or working or whatever it is. So I wanted to distinguish those two because it helps frame up for you what your goals are. And I'm not saying that one is better over the other. Not at all. If you are a volume based type of business and that's what you're driven towards, you are going to look for strategies and you're going to look for things that are going to get you that goal of more, more and more. If you're a conversion based business, you're going to look for teaching or education that is going to talk about funnels, that is going to talk about how to convert traffic, is going to talk about anything that's going to essentially bring them into your community. Again, both are good. But what I like about narrowing down to what type of business model you are is now you can benchmark what it is that's important to you when it comes to Pinterest marketing. So let me bring that element in. If you are using Pinterest for your business and you are volume driven, there is probably no doubt that you're pretty frustrated right now. You feel like traffic is less. You feel like with the AI takeover of these AI sites, it is taking some of your content. I have seen it in some people's analytics. It is very frustrating because you are a volume model and this is cutting into your volume. So you need to figure out ways to get in front of more people. Now if you are the conversion based model, some things that you are going to look at is you're going to look at people who are talking about how to get more people on your email list, what type of content to create, what, what types of images are trending that get people to click, that tend to lead to people getting on your email list or signing up for your freebie or an offer that you have, you're going to be interrogating not just what happens on Pinterest, but what happens when they get to your website and kind of following that funnel down. People are a conversion based model, often also go towards ads. They will pay money because they know exactly what it is they're looking for. For this is especially true for E commerce. So if people know that they're making money from Pinterest, that's where we get the term like roas return on ad spend. If they're getting 10% return on ad spend, even 1x2x3x return on ad spend, that's great because they are actually fulfilling the goal of converting people where they want to convert them. So I share all this with you to first begin the conversation or I guess begin this kind of. If you've never thought about it before, maybe that's where I should go with this. If you've never thought about the business model that you have and distinguishing it between volume and conversion, I think this is a good place to start. I think this is a good place to identify what you have and what you want. If you are still wrestling with it and you're like, well, I think I want volume, but I also think I want conversion. There's a model for that too. In fact, that's like the Costco model. I was joking with somebody today that the Costco model of selling liquor specifically is a high volume with a very low profit margin, which is like 10%. Right? Like they're kind of, they want volume, they want to sell a massive amount of liquor, but that's what makes them money. Right. They definitely need people to purchase, so they need the conversion, but they need the volume too as well. So I think the two can coexist. And granted this is a, you know, brick and mortar type of store, but it gets your ideas going. So that's what I want to leave you with today. I hope that I've communicated clearly. I wrote up these notes. It's been something that's been percolating in my brain for a while. And sometimes when you go to communicate, there's things in your head that like you are thinking about, you know, you want to say, but they don't always come out through the mouth. So there's more that you want to have, more conversation that you want to have around this topic. I would love to have it with you because I think we are at a crossroads where those who are on the traffic model, you definitely need to get some good strategies and some good systems set up to go into the next couple of years, especially with AI. And those who are on the conversion model need to get really laser focused. I would encourage you to go back and listen to those podcasts as to what it is you're going to be focused on to help convert people and to help get them to say yes. In fact, even in one of the podcasts I did with Dama Jew, which is in one of those, we talked about strategically putting buttons in your emails or strategically placing things on your page. There's a lot of things you can do to elevate your conversions. There you go. There's my random thoughts, the things that I'm mulling on these days, things that I'm processing based on clients and just kind of trying to figure out where we're going. I'll share with you that my business model is primarily a conversion model model, but I am also looking at some volume and that is more awareness. I want to bring more awareness to people who don't know me about who Simple Pin is and what we talk about. And I primarily do that through YouTube, Pinterest and Google. But I'm not as driven in that top line number as I am that bottom one. So I'm not every month chasing I want a thousand sessions, 2000 sessions, 3000 or you know, whatever it is. I'm looking at how many email subscribers we're getting per month. I'm looking at how many sales we're getting. I'm looking at how many discovery calls we're booking. I'm looking at how many clients are coming in the door. That is where my brain is the majority of the time. I hope this gave you something to think about. If you'd love to share more of your thoughts with me, you can always email us. Hello simplepinmedia.com if you're on YouTube you can just comment down below here the video and if you are listening on the podcast app, go ahead and just email us. Hello simplepinmedia.com we are on Instagram do answer dms so you can do that there as well. Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast and I'll be back next week talking about how to troubleshoot and we're going to do a three part series about troubleshooting your images, your keyword and your content. Alrighty. Thanks so much for listening.