How Mina Usui grew her Japan Weddings brand—and clientele—with Pinterest

Planning a wedding, especially a destination wedding, can feel like a full-time job. That’s why engaged couples are happy to turn to Mina Usui (@JapanWeddings), a Tokyo-based wedding planner and floral designer who specialises in creating cross-cultural wedding experiences.

Mina’s existing clients were thrilled with the events that she produced, and she knew that sharing her work through a visual medium could help more couples to find—and hire—her. With people already going to Pinterest for wedding planning inspo, she thought it would be the ideal place to help her designs get discovered.

The goal

As a bilingual wedding planner, Mina catered mostly to foreign clients whom she reached online. And as a busy small-business owner, Mina was hoping to connect with them as efficiently as possible. She was already sharing wedding content and details about her services on her blog, but getting the right people to find her content—without breaking the bank—proved to be a challenge.

Mina wanted to house her portfolio somewhere people could easily find it, to not only to increase awareness of her services, but to draw in potential new clients. She saw the potential in Pinterest—it could be a platform that could help her do it all, from reaching and bringing the right audience to her blog to showcasing her work.

The strategy

While Mina had been posting photos of weddings that she’d recently produced, she started creating Pins that aligned with her blog content and added a link back to the blog post in each one. Playing to Pinterest’s strength as a visual search engine, Mina also made sure to optimise all her Pins and include titles with relevant keywords to make sure that they would be shown to the right audience. This allowed her to create an easily discoverable portfolio that drove traffic back to her blog. 

Because most of Mina’s clients come from North America, she regularly checked US Pinterest Trends to find additional keywords that were most relevant to her audience. She then created content around these themes, and added the keywords to the title and description to help boost her Pins’ performance. 

Mina also curated boards. The collection of visuals showcased her aesthetic and the different styles of weddings that she creates, and even helped initial enquiries to go smoothly. Clients could browse the boards and understand Mina’s work ahead of time, and could often ‘make decisions without needing a sales pitch’, she said. But Pinterest’s role didn’t stop once a new client came in. Mina created group boards with wedding clients to develop their wedding aesthetic and shared group boards with wedding vendors to create mood boards together. 

The result

Mina’s business and Pinterest proved to be a perfect match. Turning her portfolio content into Pins helped her to reach more people, and drove her ideal audience to her site. Since building out her Pinterest account in 2022, Mina has seen an over 20x increase in enquiries from potential clients, with actual sales also rising to up to four times her pre-Pinterest levels. 

As of July 2024, 25–30% of her enquiries come from people who found her through Pinterest, with Pinterest driving four times as much traffic as Instagram. Pinterest has also helped Mina to reach luxury and larger clients and partners, she said, helping to grow her business to the next level.

‘Pinterest has made a significant contribution to my business, boosting my motivation to create and share content,’ said Mina. 

Tips to try

Get more out of your Pinterest content with these best practices.

Always add a link
People on Pinterest are looking for your great content—and want to know where they can find more info. Simply send them to your site or blog by adding a link to every Pin.

Keep on posting
A simple way to help your content be seen by more people on Pinterest? Post regularly. Keeping a steady stream of fresh content can engage your existing audience and help you to reach new people.

Teamwork makes the dream work
Boards are more than just a tool for curation—they can make collaboration easier, too. Try group boards to share ideas, plan events and curate an aesthetic with clients, colleagues or friends.