What are Pinterest Ads?

Pinterest Ads are only available for business or commercial reasons. It’s a marketing powerhouse for e-commerce companies because users are proactively searching for things rather than reactively scrolling through a feed.

Pinterest allows people to search and discover ideas, content, and products/services using images and videos. Each image on Pinterest is called a Pin.

Promoted Pins blend into pin boards and search results. They appear as standard pins with a promoted button to differentiate them from standard Pins.

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks with over 250 million monthly active users. Boards and pins have a vast diversity of subjects.

It makes Pinterest a marketers’ dream of connecting with the right users. You can use real-world, and authentic photos create high-engagement pins.

Pinterest is a visual social sharing community and users visit it who ready to be inspired and seek out products to purchase.

Pinterest is a fantastic way to promote your brand and drive traffic to your business. Promoted Pins can take you to the next level.

Promoted Pins look exactly like regular pins, but it has additional capabilities to increase the number of views as well as the ability to target an exact audience.

Pinterest is a great place to get them in front of your customers if you sell products/services with great pictures and visually appealing.

There’s very little competition when it comes to placing ads. It means two things:-

#Your ad cost is going to be cheaper because there won’t be competition trying to reach the same audience driving up your ads.

#You are going to be able to break through the noise and head straight to the top of the feed as top search results, driving traffic and getting exposure to your business.

Who Should Use Pinterest Ads –

Pinterest ads should be considered if your business main target is women of any age.  Women make up the largest demographic of this platform’s user-base.

Pinterest Ads are more advanced than they used to be. The content on Pinterest serves a certain audience.

Here’s a quick test –

• Do you sell visually appealing niche products?
• Are you proud of your product photography?
• Are you already present on Pinterest and repined often?

If all three answers are positive, then you should try Pinterest Ads.

How to Make Successful Pinterest Ads –

There is broken down the process step-by-step before and during the Promoted Pins creation process:-

# Convert Your Pinterest Account to a Business Account – Standard accounts can’t run Promoted Pins. If you have a personal account, you can convert it to a business account. You can also create a new business account for your brand and then convert it.

# Find Your Keywords – Pinterest is like a search engine as it’s a social network. Audiences use the website to search for products from all over the web and you should target your ads with the right search terms.

You can use Pinterest Keyword Tool which is a free Pinterest keyword search tool. It gives popular search terms related to your products/services.

You can type your keyword into the Pinterest search box and your related search term will appear just below the search box like Google Search. You can select the best fit keywords to promote your products/services.

# Choose the Type of Pinterest Ads – It’s important to understand the type of Pinterest Ads you want to make before creating Promoted Pins. Pinterest have different types of Promoted Pins:-

##### Promoted Pins – It’s a common type of Promoted Pins and it functions the same as a standard Pin. It comes up in a user’s search feed.

In the business profile, you can promote your most viral pins. The bid gets lower when your organic reach is good. Your pins should have a call-to-action (CTA) and it’s best to motivate people to discover more ideas than to buy now.

Promoted Pins are native advertising units that look like user-generated pins. But these are boosted to reach more people.

Promoted pins are searchable and you can reach people who are searching for things related to your business. Promoted pins can be used to drive brand awareness, engagement or traffic to your website.

The Promoted Pins represent the standard ad format on Pinterest. The basis for this is a normal pin which you have already published. But promoted pins can be seen to your subscribers and unsubscribers.

# Video Promoted Pins – Pinterest video ads automatically play with the sound off when a user scrolls over it. Videos ads are popular on Pinterest and provide a massive return.

The promoted video pins serve advertising purposes. Video pins can improve both your search and your visibility.

A well-made video can attract a lot of attention and may be distributed by the community itself. It can be up to 30 minutes long and recommended duration is anywhere between 15 to 45 seconds.

It should consist of high-quality content and manages to speak to its target group. You can integrate a link into the video display to external websites.

# Cinematic Promoted Pins – It’s the latest addition to its ad platform. These are essentially Promoted Video Pins that scrub the video as you scroll up and down your feed. When you stop scrolling, the video stops scrubbing.

# Promoted App Pins – These ads are specialized ads for ads developers. These Pins look like any other but redirects to an app download versus a product page.

# One Tap Promoted Pins – When you tap or click on a standard Promoted Pin, you’re taken to a Pinterest page with more details about the products/services.

One Tap Promoted Pins skip this step and take the user to the advertiser’s website to learn about the product.

# Promote Your Pin – Now you know the products/services to promote with a keyword in mind and created with all of the materials to turn into a public Pin.

Create Pinterest Ads Campaign –

You can create a new Pinterest ads campaign. You can roll newly created Pin into a Promoted Pin.

# Create a Promoted Pin – Login to your Pinterest business account and click the Ads Click Create ad from the drop-down menu. You may ask to choose your currency for the first time using Pinterest Ads.

# Create Your Campaign – You can create Pinterest ads campaign. Every field is self-explanatory on this page. You can link multiple ads to each campaign.

• • • Campaign Objective – You can choose your campaign’s objective so that Pinterest can accurately style and target your campaign.
    • Campaign Details – You can input your campaign name and daily and lifetime spend limits.
    • Campaign Placement – You can place your Pinterest Ads in search results (home feed and suggested Pins) or both. You must select both for maximum reach.

# Target Your Pinterest Ads – You can target your ad to your audience. There is the number of targeting options on this page and it’s important to know these options mean.

It’ll accurately target your ads to a profitable audience and achieve maximum return on investment (ROI).

• • • Ad Group Name – You can give a name to your ad group for internal tracking.
    • Budget – You can choose when to start and end your ad campaign.
    • Target Audience – You can create a target audience for your ad.
    • Interest – You can select the user interest to target. You should be specific to put your ads in front of the right audience.
    • Keywords – You can use Pinterest Keyword Planner. You can use it to find keywords to add to your campaign.
    • Locations – You can choose countries and cities to target your ads.
    • Languages – You can select languages to target your ads.
    • Devices – You should choose a type of devices to display your ads.
    • Gender – You can select the genders to target your ads.
    • Maximum CPC Bid – You can select the maximum amount of money to spend per desired engagement (click or impression) with your Promoted Pin. Pinterest uses the second-price auction model for CPC bids to charge you as much as it takes to beat the next highest bidder.

Types of Pinterest Ads Campaigns –

The type of Pinterest campaign depends on your company’s goals. You should make sure that a campaign has a clearly defined purpose before choosing your campaign.

Then choose the right campaign type that best suits your objectives. You can choose different types of ad campaigns:-

# Awareness Campaign – It’s best suited to those who want to increase the awareness of a particular brand. Pinterest Ads awareness campaigns are designed to get more eyeballs on your brand.

You can send the users to your website or landing page. But the bidding is cost-per-mile (CPM) for every thousand-page view.

# Traffic Campaign – It’ll take users to a different website in order to generate traffic and to make potential customers aware of the linked website.

Pinterest will try to get you as many clicks to your ad at the lowest cost possible and driving traffic to your website or landing page. You will only pay cost-per-click (CPC) every time the link is clicked.

# Engagement Campaign – It’ll aim to increase user interaction. Pinterest Ads engagement campaign is geared to get interaction and engagement with your content.

The user should be encouraged to click more often and to view more products. You want your users to repin or click on your promoted pins. You get charges cost-per-action (CPA) incurred for each action performed by users.

# App Install Campaign – You can run this type of campaign to get more installs for your app. You can choose to pay by install or by click.

When you pay for installs, the Pinterest algorithm adjusts your bid daily based on the likelihood of install. When you pay for clicks, the ad is optimized for clicks traffic like a normal CPC campaign.

Targeting Capabilities of Pinterest Ads –

Users can be targeted based on location, language, device and gender criteria. Interest, keyword and audience criteria can be used to target audiences:-

# Interest Targeting – It’s used to reach people based on their affinity for specific things. Your promoted pin will be served to users in their home and category feeds.

It’s similar to creating a saves audience and picking various interests to target.

# Keyword Targeting – It’s used to reach people based on what they are proactively searching on Pinterest. It’s a strength for Pinterest as it’s one of the few social platforms that have search targeting.

Your promoted pin will be served to users in relevant search results and related pins.

# Audience Targeting – It’s used to reach people who have visited your websites such as a specific list of people, people who have engaged with pins associated with your website, or people whose behavior resembles that of an existing audience.

Audience behavior tracking outside of Pinterest is made possible through the use of pixels which involves programming a small snippet of code on the backend of your website.

You can create a targeted audience for your pin to reach. You can sort out your audience in different ways as:-

• • Interests
  • Keywords
  • Locations
  • Languages
  • Devices
  • Gender

How Much Does Pinterest Advertising Cost –

Pinterest advertising via promoted pins is based on a bid system which is similar to Facebook and Twitter. You can compete for audience share with other advertisers who are using similar targeting.

• You can set a maximum bid amount for every 1K impressions served for awareness campaign (CPM).
• You can set a maximum bid amount for each click (CPC) for engagement and traffic campaigns.

How to Measure the Performance of Promoted Pins –

Pinterest’s built-in analytics tools can track the impact of promoted pins. Pinterest can provide data on impressions, clicks, repins, and click-through-rate (CTR) for any given data range.

For remarketing, more advanced conversion metrics are available.

The metrics for Promoted Pins can be compared to metrics for organic Pins. Monitoring engagement on your Promoted Pins can also help you learn important insights about your audience.

Promoted Pins can be a powerful marketing tool if your business is focused on awareness and sales leads. It’s not a plug and plays channel and content quality does matter on Pinterest.

 #5 Tips to Run a Successful Pinterest Ads Campaign –

# Adjust Your Campaign – A great feature within the Pinterest promoted pins is the ability to adjust your campaign.

You can change it if you see that something isn’t working. You should find images that draw the reader’s attention. The images should be of high quality with vertical images.

Colorful images always work better. You should change up your creative ideas and explore the split testing options that allows you to run different images within the same campaign.

# Use The Correct Keywords – Pinterest users are always looking for different things that stand out. Your ads will not be approved if you target irrelevant keywords.

You can go for very specific, broad, and general terms when coming up with keywords. It allows you to widely capturing all of the potential audience.

# Include A Call-To-Action – You are not allowed to include a CTA on your image but you can include in the pin description. Pinterest doesn’t allow for direct Buy Now options but you can add text that says Sign Up or Download.

# Do Not Include Hashtags – Pinterest users frown upon this strategy and it looks spammy. Pinterest is all about the imagery and creative nature of the pins that you are promoting. Colorful and unique perform well.

Tips to Create Successful Pinterest Ads –

Pinterest’s integrated e-commerce marketing tools show how to leverage it. You can set up your advertising campaign with specifying goals, objectives and target audiences.

# Maximize Your Description – Your pin’s visual layout will be the first thing that catches the audiences’ attention.

The description adds context that helps the users decide whether or not they should click on the pin. It’s important for your promoted pin description to explain the value of your product.

Pinterest allows about 50 characters in the main description before users have to click on the pin to read the rest of the description.

Pinterest is a visually driven platform and you can set up a visual and a description to make more powerful.

# Specify Landing Pages to Increase Conversion Rate – A pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns means that you should be sending users directly to the content to see after they click on your pin.

It’s a basic rule for e-commerce sales that better work for a consumer to purchase. A landing page should match the pin.

A user should be directed to the pages of products, the product description page, or content. Otherwise, the user will become disinterested and click away.

# Right Visual and Colors – Pinterest is a visual website and design of the promoted pins is an important factor in a user click the pin.

• • Images with multiple dominant colors have more repins
  • Select saturated and brightness, because very light and dark images are not repined
  • Red toned images perform higher than blue toned images
  • You can include text on the image of a pin, but it should be minimal and the color should contrast with the rest of the image
  • Create a pin that consists of several images, but not more than four images per pin

# Layout Matters – The way your pin stands out amongst a user’s Pinterest feed is an important factor for the success of your Pinterest ads campaign.

Pins come in a variety of sizes. The recommended size for a portrait orientation ratio of 2:3 with an image sized at 1000X1500 pixels. It’ll give users a high-resolution image.

# Consider Video Ads – Video advertising has become a popular factor in social media strategy. Pinterest is only available with an auto-play feature for promoted pins. If you can offer value to pinner’s, you’ll automatically stand out.

Pinterest Ads DO’s and Don’ts –

Pinterest ads are very shady and there are certain best practices to ensure that your ads reach your desired audience successfully and received maximum engagement.

You should follow the Do’s and Don’ts while running your Pinterest ad campaign:-

Do’s –

• Do constantly track and optimize your Pinterest ads
• Do include a clear CTA in the description of the Pin that you’re promoting
• Do use keyword in your target and in your Pin Descriptions

Don’ts –

• Don’t include a CTA in your visual Pin
• Don’t use horizontal images
• Don’t use any type of redirect links

Conclusion – Pinterest may not have the biggest user-base of all the social networks, but it shouldn’t be overlooked. Pinterest Ads (Promoted Pins) can help you reach millions of new potential customers that you wouldn’t have been able to reach before. Pinterest ads are designed for businesses that want to reach potential customers through this visual content.