Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… you’ve probably considered putting some of your budget behind your posts on these platforms before. But, have you thought about Pinterest paid advertising?
Why Advertise on Pinterest?
Pinterest says people use their platform to look for ideas, to discover, save and do. The site states ‘your pins help people understand what your brand stands for and how it can fit into their lives.’ Plus ‘Pinterest ads help you reach people while they actively decide what to do or buy next.’ This is very much apparent when you take into consideration Pinterest’s user engagement statistics:
- Posts on Pinterest reach more than 200 million people each month
- 93 per cent of pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases
- 50 per cent of people have made a purchase after seeing a promoted pin
- 67 per cent say they have discovered a new brand or product from business content on Pinterest.
Our 5 Top Tips For Promoted Pinterest Pins
Every social media platform is different and never stop trying to remind you of why and how different they are from their competitors – especially when it comes to spending money on promoted adverts on their platform. There is a huge amount of advice out in the ether regarding paid social on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but what about their scrapbook-esque relative, Pinterest?
Here we will take you through our five top tips for promoted Pinterest pins and how to use them to make the absolute most of your paid social budget.
1. Run A/B Tests Of Your Campaigns
Just as you’d test your search or display ads, it’s important to run A/B tests of your Pinterest ads. We would recommend doing this at campaign level with one pin per campaign. Why? Well, when there are multiple promoted pins in a campaign, one usually commands the majority of spend and impressions anyway.
By testing one pin per campaign you will ensure clarity in the test, which will result in a more in-depth, and reportable, understanding of the results of the test. Hopefully, this should prevent confusion regarding the results.
2. Invest In The Creative
An image is worth a thousand words and on a visual platform like Pinterest, the cliched phrase rings true. Investing in creative content is much more powerful than keywords and should absolutely be prioritised. Whilst keywords are still important (as they are on any social media platform), it is paramount to optimise your captions efficiently, making sure the beautiful and eye-catching imagery you have curated for your Pinterest channel takes centre stage. Like Instagram, Pinterest is an inspirational platform and you need to capitalise on the ability of good content to influence consumers aspirations. So invest, invest, invest!
3. Let Organic Pins Inform Your Promotions
Get a leg up on your Pinterest advertising campaigns by using Pinterest Analytics to find which organic pins are currently receiving the highest number of clicks, repins, and likes, then promote these. It sounds so simple, and almost like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many brands decide a message or campaign of content and push it regardless of the response. Paid for social media content, especially on platforms like Pinterest, should be reactionary and a collaboration between brand and consumer. Users of social media platforms are already weary of brand presences’ online and pushing content they are not reacting to – never mind reacting badly to – will only hurt your reputation.
Alternatively, take a closer look at your best performing pins and ask yourself a few questions – are there commonalities? Are the results of these pins in particular forming into a trend? If so, you could capitalise on these learnings and use them to inform the hypothesis behind your next paid campaign.
4. Consider Your Timing
Like with every social media platform, campaign, paid for post, you want to ensure you are having the maximum impact on the maximum amount of traffic. With this in mind, it makes sense to optimise the success of your campaign by aligning it with popular user times, social events, and significant days in the calendar, such as Christmas or Valentine’s Day.
Saturdays have excellent reach, as do late weekday evenings between 8pm and 11pm, so make sure you use this to your advantage and make the most of a 9pm promotion. However, these timings are an indicator of traffic and possible reach. You need to evaluate who your target audience on Pinterest is, what time they generally use the platform, and test so you know exactly when your paid for pins will be most successful and garner the most engagement.
5. Retarget Users Who Engage
If a user engages with your paid for pin but doesn’t purchase something, then don’t worry as you can always retarget users who engage with your content: you haven’t lost them, this is rather the beginning of their customer journey with you. Pinterest Marketing API Partners have retargeting in some ad platforms. So, make sure to add conversion tags on your site and to upload your CRM list into the API to maximise the opportunities available.
By making your retargetting seamless and getting an engaged – but reluctant to spend – user to your website, you are one step closer to sealing the deal and with any luck (and a lot of hard work on your part) will end up with one happy, engaged, and purchasing customer!
Learn More About Pinterest Promoted Pins
Whether you’d like to expand your knowledge of Pinterest advertising opportunities or the wider PPC industry, sign up to attend one of our digital marketing conferences in London.