How to start advertising on Pinterest: A Pinterest Ads Guide
A Pinterest Ads Guide
Learn how you can set up your first Pinterest Ad.
Let’s talk Pinterest Ads! You probably have heard of Pinterest Advertisement and you may have asked yourself how Pinterest Ads can help you. In a nutshell, it can help you can raise awareness of your brand. Increase your sales. Gain more website traffic for your blog or service.
WHAT WILL YOU LEARN:
What are Pinterest Ads and why are they important?
How can Pinterest ads increase your sales and bookings?
How do you create a Business account?
What’s the difference between a regular Pin and a promoted Pin?
Different types of Pinterest Ads.
How do you set up a Pinterest campaign?
What are Pinterest Ads and why are they important?
Let’s start at the beginning. You’ve got a product or a service, and you’re well adapted to using a number of different platforms to share and market yourself and your brand. However, increasing your network is becoming a bit of an obstacle – perhaps the increase in your followers has started to slow down, or you’re noticing that no new customers seem to be visiting your profile or website. That’s where Pinterest ads come in, by getting your content in front of loads more people in the form of Promoted Pins – often showing up far more often as users browse across the site, often in response to a related search or Pin they may have recently viewed.
After all, Pinterest has over 291 million active users who log in and use the platform every single month. Why wouldn’t you want to do all you can to unlock your full potential?
Advertising on Pinterest works by using different campaigns, which you can create and manage from one central location – the Pinterest Ads Manager. And don’t worry if you’ve never used it before, because later in this blog post we’ll be sharing exactly what to do and how to use Pinterest Ads Manager for the maximum benefit.
How do you create a Business account?
You may think it doesn’t matter what kind of account you’re using so long as you have an active userbase. In fact, in previous posts, we have said that opting for a personal account is a good way to start building the foundations of a Pinterest profile – and you can always upgrade at a later date! Well when it comes to advertising on Pinterest, it does matter. Because you can’t start with advertising without a business account.
Setting up a Pinterest business account is super easy, and enables you to be able to access a whole bank of additional features, for example, analytics and – most importantly – a Pinterest Ads account.
Head over to your settings and click on account settings. Scroll down and click on turn in to a business account. And voila you are done!
TIP: Make sure you keep your business and personal accounts separate, with their own profile images and content styles. It’ll help you ensure a professional feel and a consistent level of content quality.
What’s the difference between a regular Pin and a promoted Pin?
What makes a great Pinterest marketing campaign? Of course, as a visual platform, the quality of the image is paramount to any Pin’s success, but have you thought about the size and shape of your image? An exploration into Pinterest’s best practice shows that users prefer vertical images that stand out as they scroll down – a fact worth keeping in mind when it comes to designing your Pinterest Ad campaign.
Make sure your brand is at the forefront of every Pin you post, by putting your product or service in the center and always including your brand logo. I cannot stress enough how many Pinterest images I see where the product being sold is hidden among a screen of other items. You may think the other items complement your product, but actually all they are doing is hiding it.
And finally, content quality. Good Pinterest marketing always relies on the content behind each Pin image, whether it’s some context, some valuable content such as a recipe or guide, or examples of how others have used your services or products in the past.
Here is a simple CHECKLIST of what your pin needs to have.
A clear photo of your product or service.
A brand logo or website mention.
A clear call to action. (what are you selling/ why should a pinner click on your pin).
Keyword and hashtags rich description.
What are the different types of Pinterest Ads and how do they work.
The first and most obvious form of Pinterest advertising is Promoted Pins – appearing in the home feed of users who have been identified via your targeted advertising. By that I simply mean that these users are part of the demographic base you know to be your target audience, whether they’re young females, older males, or anywhere in between. Once a user decides to share a Promoted Pin, the promoted label is removed and every subsequent interaction is considered as organic traffic – essentially meaning that once you’ve given the Pin an initial boost of marketing help, anything that comes after is free!
One-tap Pinterest ads are another feature that has been created alongside the age of customer demand, as users continue to want everything at the touch of a button. Well, that’s exactly what this does. When a user taps on your ad on Pinterest, they will be taken directly to your landing page. It’s as simple as that.
Promoted carousels, however, take a little more getting used to; enabling you to select between two and five of your best Pins for users to swipe through – all inside the space of just one single Pinterest ad. By selecting this style of advertising, not only are you stuffing more product into the eyes of your potential customers, but you are also providing them options and covering more bases when it comes to what they might be looking for. Each Pin you choose to include in the carousel gets its own image, description and landing page, so ensuring you select content that will prove valuable to a variety of different users is easy.
Promoted Video pins are, again, much the same as the original favorite – the promoted pin. Inputted and marketed in exactly the same way, these videos start playing automatically as soon as at least half of the video window is on screen, meaning that as a form of Pinterest advertising they certainly attract the attention of the browser effectively. Whether or not the content is of any value or interest is up to you…
Now we move onto the slightly more complex style of Pinterest ads. When it comes to Pinterest marketing, or marketing across any platform, ensuring the content is tailored to the device it’s being viewed on is important, and app pins is one way that Pinterest has tailored itself towards the smartphone market. In short, Promoted app pins look just like a generic promoted pin, but instead of driving traffic to websites, link directly to the iTunes or Google Play Store apps and their subsequent install buttons. And, if you’ve done a good enough job of promoting your product or services through the Pin itself, that user may well download your app and start to engage.
Buyable Pins are a growing trend not only on Pinterest but also on Facebook and Instagram, as brands and organizations are increasingly turning to in-app purchases as a way of capturing their customers interest in the social platform itself. These are a great way of making your Pinterest advertising immediate, promoting a sense of desire for the user to buy the app immediately, by not only showing them how great the product could look in their own home life, but also by making the act of purchase as easy as possible. Often the best way to display these kinds of Pins is to advertise 5 or 6 different products in every one pin; picking and choosing complementary products that will inspire the user to want to “create the look”.
(In case you were wondering, the marketing goal behind that particularly technique very much lies in the Sales arena!)
How do you set up a Pinterest campaign?
As promised, now that we’ve explored the different styles of Pinterest Ads available to you, and have hopefully convinced you as to why they are all such fantastic options to try out, it’s time to guide you through exactly how to use the Ads Manager.
• Firstly, make sure you’re on the right URL – as.pinterest.com. Once on there, Click “Ads” and “Create Ad”.
Pinterest Ads Manager will bring you back to the questions we started this blog post with – what is the goal of your advert? By now you will hopefully have an idea of what your purpose is in creating an ad, but it’s worth remembering that this isn’t just a fruitless decision made on a whim. In fact, this will let you optimize your advert in different ways, depending on what the goal you chose is. For example, if you’re hoping to raise your brand awareness then Pinterest will guide you towards features that boost your reach while increasing sales and conversions will optimize your checkout and customer journey features. So give it some thought – if you’re a small business just starting out, perhaps focussing on brand awareness and site traffic is a better option than jumping in at the deep end and pushing for increased numbers of sales.
• Decide if you want to launch your campaign immediately or if you want to wait a while for a specific event.
Maybe you’re setting up ads in advance of a new product launch? Maybe it’s an ad tailored to a specific national holiday? Whatever the purpose of your ad is, give thought to when it should be launched. Even the time of day you post it can impact the success of your Pinterest ad!
• Name the Ad group.
Keeping all your promoted pins in one place makes it easier for you to manage your budgets. After all, Pinterest advertising is not free, and the fees can easily stack up if you aren’t keeping track of your spend on a regular basis.
• Consider targeting your Pinterest advertising.
Targeting options range from audience demographics to keywords that they are searching; locations through to specific interests. However, you choose to narrow down your advertising audience, make sure each Pinterest ad is reaching the people who are most likely to show an interest. And select keywords that your ideal client will be searching on in Pinterest.
Selecting a date and choose a budget.
Select when you would like to start your campaign. You can also make edit the end date later if you notice that your campaign is doing great. End dates are especially good for when you are running a promotion for a specific time.
Choose a budget for your campaign and select lifetime if you want to spread your budget evenly. Select your cost per click. Ask yourself how much you would like to pay for a click. You can start with 0,10 and if this doesn’t generate enough clicks you can always set it up higher.
Below the budget you can find Pacing. Accelerated means that your pins will be pushed more and standard is on a normal pace. If you have sale for instance then the accelerated option would be good. Note that your budget will be spending much quicker.
Select your Pins.
Select multiple pins that you have created for this ad campaign. Over time you can see which pins are performing best. And remove the pins that aren’t generating enough clicks.
Double-check your Pinterest ad before setting it to go live!
And finally…
Make sure you get your billing info right.
If you don’t, the details of your promoted Pin won’t be saved and you’ll have to start all over again from scratch.
We’ve covered an awful lot of content here, from reasons why Promoted Pins and Pinterest advertising are great features, through to how to create your own basic set of advertising campaigns. With so many different options available to you, it can be quite overwhelming – that’s where I come in. My Pinterest management packages vary across different levels of support, providing guidance from a full overhaul through to simply enhancing your existing strategy. Whatever kind of support you need, get in touch today and let’s start your journey to becoming a truly successful Pinterest pro