Looking to make the most of Pinterest ads but not sure where to start? Look no further!
More inspirational than social, Pinterest acts as a visual search engine where ideas are shared between users. Whether they are looking for home decor inspiration, travel ideas or fashion tips, Pinterest has thousands of visual aids to help people see what is right for them.
Users are then able to build and organise their own pinboards based on topics of interest, encouraging them to take action in their hobbies with aesthetic photos and guides. Think of the Instagram explore page but with way more organisation and structure. This opens many doors for brands looking to reach this highly motivated audience.
Pinterest is a platform on the rise of advertisers. While January 2020 had an advertising reach of 169 million, January 2022 had a reach of 226 million. A large part of this increase is down to their dedication to expanding countries within their ad targeting portfolio. While the US accounts for 86 million members of the ad audiences, countries such as Brazil, France, Germany and the UK are seeing increasing amounts of users.
On top of that, shopping engagement has risen 20% quarter over quarter. They are continually launching new ad formats and features that draw in consumers in a variety of engaging ways. Keep reading to see how you can take advantage of this visual search engine to drive brand exposure and grow your eCommerce efforts.
Why we love Pinterest Ads
It has a unique platform purpose
Pinterest is a very unique platform. When people log on to their account, they are looking to find ideas, new products and new brands rather than friends to connect with or entertainment. This translates to a much higher purchase intent from platform users.
When users log in to their account to search “home decor”, it is more likely than not that they will be in the market for relevant home decor. This is where Pinterest Ads come in. Relevant ads are shown throughout the topic explore page as well as a separate shopping tab. Additionally, now that Pinterest knows that the user is interested in home decor, relevant ads can be shown on their homepage to keep your brand at the forefront of their mind.
Pinners have money to spend and love spending it
Time to throw some key stats about Pinterest user habits at you – Pinterest users spend twice as much shopping every month compared to non-pinners (smell that bacon). On top of that, people who use Pinterest weekly are 40% more likely to say they love shopping and 75% more likely to say they’re always shopping. So why wouldn’t you want to put your ads out there in front of a highly engaged audience that spends more than other platform users and would love to see your products?
Users are open to new brands and ideas
Now that we have established that people on Pinterest love spending money, we should also recognise that they are open to new brands. In fact, people on Pinterest are 66% more likely to be open to new brands while shopping and 64% of pinners say that Pinterest is where they go to find a product or service they can trust. So next time they are searching for home decor inspiration, makeup ideas or healthy lifestyle advice, be sure to introduce your brand to them.
Costs are lower than other similar platforms
So you have a unique platform used by people who want to visualise products and ideas and an audience who loves to shop new brands. But I can hear you asking “how much is this going to cost me”. I’ll stop you right there… Pinterest is actually cheaper than many other platforms.
If you are on a tight budget and want more control, you can use manual CPCs or you can use automatic based on your entered bid strategy to use Pinterest automation to get you the placements you want.
One thing to keep in mind is that your costs will vary greatly depending upon your campaign goal as well as how much competition you are dealing with. If you are selling premium furniture on popular Pinterest searches, your CPCs will likely be higher than that of more niche products that are on less popular searches.
Targeting Options
How do you reach these highly engaged audiences? Start by thinking about the strategy you would like to use – you will likely use multiple!
Remarketing
Pinterest does have remarketing capabilities where you can retarget based on customer lists, people who have engaged with content on Pinterest and site visitors. This is a great way to reach an audience who is already familiar with your brand but you would like to re-engage them in order to encourage them to convert.
Actalikes
On the prospecting side, there are so many options for finding new customers. One way of targeting new audiences that we have found to be successful is the use of Actalikes. Actalike audience targeting targets users who behave similarly to your customers and feeds them ads. Use your existing customer list and Pinterest audience optimisation software to get your ads out in front of audiences who share key attributes and interests with past converts.
Interests and Keywords
The other major form of targeting through Pinterest is based on interests and keywords. Through interest-based targeting, you pick topics related to your brand so you can reach people who have engaged with those same topics. Let’s say that you own a home decor store and are looking to reach relevant audiences through Pinterest using topics and interests. Pinterest has so many topics to choose from but some are more relevant than others.
You can get even more specific in your topics than just home decor though if you want to get really niche. There are so many options for you to select from so your ads only appear on topics that will actually be relevant to your business and bring in audiences most likely to convert.
There is also the option to target specific keywords if you want to have even more control and specificity in your targeting. For keyword targeting, you can choose relevant keywords in order to increase impressions in search results and relevant pins.
To top it all off, always be sure to layer in relevant demographics. This allows you to select the gender, age, location, language and even device to refine your audiences. If you are doing home decor ads, your audience is likely a homeowner and over the age of 18 so your targeting should reflect that. Same with location – if you can only ship to or service specific areas, you should only be targeting those areas.
Pinterest Ad Formats
So you have decided Pinterest is the right platform for your business and you know how to target your audience but you are now asking yourself what you should be doing to make your ads stand out. Lucky for you, Pinterest has a lovely variety of ad formats for you to choose from and test.
Standard Pins
These are the most classic of the Pinterest ad formats but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still great for showcasing your brand. They are the most popular type of ad on Pinterest currently by allowing you to showcase your products and content in vertical, square or video formats.
In the Pinterest feed, a “Promoted by” label appears under your content but that disappears after it is pinned. Once pinned and the label has disappeared, the post becomes organic and can be shared at no extra cost. When a user clicks on your pin, they are led to your website or landing page immediately, leaving the platform.
Here are a few best practices for standard pins:
- Put your product front and centre, making it the focus of the ad. Pinners are very visual, so it is important to showcase what you want them to buy rather than abstract images that don’t display the brand.
- Include your logo but keep it subtle. You want people to know who you are even when it becomes an organic post. Be sure to avoid the lower right corner though – that often gets covered by product icons.
- Add text overlay using clear titles, calls to action and branding.
- If you are going for a video, best to keep it under 15 seconds so it can catch the attention of pinners as they scroll.
Carousels
A carousel is a pin with multiple images that showcase different features of a product, advertise multiple products at once, or tell your brand story in chapters. People will see the carousel in their feed, just like standard pins, but they will have the opportunity to swipe through different cards directly in the feed.
The best practices are very similar to that of standard ads – be sure to showcase your product or brand directly and utilise logo and text overlays. One key best practice for carousels though is that you should tell a story as the target audience swipes through. Be sure to make each card flow into the next and be worth swiping for instead of adding cards just for the sake of it.
Collection Ads
Collection ads are where we start to get a bit more unique with ad formats. They are mobile only, but that is okay because 82% of pinners are mobile anyway.
They are very similar to collection ads on Facebook, making them perfect for eCommerce where you can pull images and products directly from your product catalogue. Collection ads consist of a featured asset followed by three supporting assets. If a user taps your ad, they will be taken to a full-screen, in-platform experience where they can see up to 24 secondary creative assets including products from your feed.
If the user then clicks on the main image or secondary assets through the collection ad, they will then go to the destination URL, leaving the full-screen interactive experience.
If you opt for awareness, consideration or conversion objective and want to manually add in content, you will be able to individually select the secondary creative show one at a time. This provides you with more control over the order of content and allows you to curate the content yourself rather than having Pinterest generate dynamic ads.
If you opt to use a catalogue sales objective and sync your collection ad to your product feed, the order of the products shown will change dynamically in order to showcase the creative most relevant to the individual user closer to the top. Prices will be shown in the ad in the top left corner followed by the title below so users are familiar with your products and pricing before even leaving Pinterest.
Shopping Pins
Shopping ads are the other format in line with catalogue sales objectives in which you can promote your products through your product feed. This single image ad format will show your product across feeds and relevant searches.
Pinterest will use the product data from your feed to show the most relevant products to the audiences you’ve set up or you could use broad targeting and allow Pinterest to optimise towards the audiences it believes will be the most relevant. We would also recommend using this ad format for remarketing in order to dynamically show products that the already engaged user has viewed or expressed an interest in.
In terms of product groups, we would recommend starting out broad with an “all products” catalogue and then gradually breaking down into additional campaigns and ad groups based on initial performance insights.
Idea Pins
Ideas pins offer great opportunities to showcase your brand and products. They appear as multiple videos, images and text options in a single pin, similar to Instagram stories but they don’t disappear after 24 hours.
These are great for how-to videos or demonstrations on using your products and have shown higher engagement rates than more traditional awareness formats in early testing.
We would recommend you start with a video to stand out in the Pinterest feed and use text overlay since most people will be watching without their audio on. From there, use the slides to tell a story, give a step-by-step guide and generate a how-to that really shows off your personality. In the text box below, include details of what was done in the video so people can recreate it using your products and ideas.
Try On Pins
This last format is slowly being rolled out and should be available for use soon – try on product pins!
This combines your content with a virtual fitting room experience so people can see if your products work for them using augmented reality through Pinterest Lens. This is generally seen for makeup brands as it allows users to visualise how they would look using your products.
This is not available in all countries and you will need a Pinterest Business account, an uploaded product catalogue and a Pinterest account manager. Currently only available by application but keep an eye out for a full launch soon!
Conclusion
Whether they are seeking for fashion advice, home design ideas, or travel suggestions, Pinterest users want to be inspired. Users are 66% more likely to be open to trying new products while purchasing, and 64% of pinners say they use Pinterest to find reliable goods and services. So be sure to offer your brand to them the next time they look for ideas for home décor, beauty, or healthy lifestyles.
As always, feel free to ask any questions down below, and we’ll try our best to respond. We’d be interested in hearing your opinions on Pinterest, how you use the platform, and any Paid Media queries you may have. We also have a guide to ad specifications and successful ad examples you might want to check out!
