One of the questions I get all the time, from my clients and in my Facebook group, is how to calculate your Pinterest ROI. I knew I would need to do some research to answer this question, since data and analytics are not my strong suit.

Meet Layne, SPM’s Data Analyst

In order to get the information we needed, I hired Layne Booth, who is now our data analyst here at Simple Pin. Layne helps successful female entrepreneurs capture and analyze vital business metrics so that they can make data-driven decisions to help increase their profits. She is a self-proclaimed “data-wrangler” and uses that data to help us make decisions that yield more profit for our business.

Before Layne started working for me, all she knew about Pinterest was that it existed. It was super fun educating her on what was important about Pinterest and then having her educate me on using the data I had already been pulling to make good business decisions.

If you’re interested in digging a little deeper into your KPI’s, go listen to episode 87, which is all about Pinterest KPIs. KPI’s, or key performance indicators, are a great way to figure out where your income is coming from. Be sure to grab the free download we provide in that episode to help calculate your KPI’s.

Our goal at Simple Pin is to drive traffic to your site. You can then convert that traffic any way you want.

Pinterest ROI

What is ROI?

ROI is “return on investment.” (For example, if you spend $10 and make $100, you had a $90 return on your $10 investment). Layne jokes that:

It’s only important to look into ROI if you want to be a business that is making money!

You want to position yourself in a way that generates profit for your business.

Knowing your ROI allows you to see where you need to spend more or less time in your business. You can look at what you’re getting back on your investment in your business and see if it’s what you want it to be.

I fly quite a lot and several of my most recent trips have been all the way to the east coast (I live in Portland). I get really tired in the small space and can’t focus on work, so I was challenged to start paying for first class, where I would have more room to rest and work.

I didn’t fly first clsas during my last flight, which was five hours long. I ended up getting stuck by the window… next to a dog (which had awful breath). If I had invested that $125 to get into first class,

I would have been able to get at least three hours of work done and would have actually made more money than the first class fee. The ROI at that moment would have been so much greater if I would have chosen to fly first class.

One of the key things we want you to take away from this episode is this: don’t just invest in whatever is the latest craze or whatever everyone else is finding huge success in. If you want to chase something down that someone else is doing, ask them to share some numbers with you. That way you will know if it’s actually worth it for you to spend the time and money on it.

ROI and Pinterest

When Layne first started working for me, we found that the value Simple Pin management service brings to our clients is really driving traffic from Pinterest. We wanted to see how many sessions on the client’s site were Pinterest-led. If it was 1,000 sessions, what value was driven back to the client?

This looks different for every client. Just because you have someone land on your page,