clock 5min read

December 21, 2023

By Lori Sharabani

Pinterest Ads for Beginners – Best Practices

Content Marketing Marketing Social Media

Pinterest is a popular site for creators and influencers. Unsurprisingly, advertisers are set on promoting their products and services on the platform. With 356 million active monthly users (89 million in the United States), Pinterest is growing endlessly.

If you’re considering using Pinterest advertising, it’s important to know the tips and tricks of the site to maximize the profit of your ad. This will also help you reach the greatest amount of your target audience possible.

Like any other type of marketing, Pinterest advertising has its advantages and disadvantages. We’ll highlight some of the ways using Pinterest’s best practices can help boost your sales and traffic. Additionally, we will discuss the site’s many tools for advertisers, like the Pinterest business manager.

Why is Pinterest Suddenly Getting Popular Among Advertisers?

Advertisers are drawn to any popular site, app, or page that attracts a great amount of internet traffic and has a sizable following/number of users. As discussed, Pinterest has a vast number of users, and a lot of them are social buyers who use Pinterest to inform their purchases.

Since Pinterest is a site for exploration, discovery, and inspiration, people often make and save things to their Pinterest boards that they’re interested in purchasing or at least learning more about. That is one of Pinterest’s advantages; it’s image-based, so you can show off your products.

In 2020 alone, the number of social buyers on Pinterest increased thirty percent, and it is expected to grow another 16.4% by the end of 2022. In fact, the number of social buyers on Pinterest will increase to 15.1 million people and gain another million by 2023. This means in 2023, Pinterest social buyers will make up a solid fifteen percent of the total US social buyers. With extreme competition from Meta, Instagram, Tastemade, and huge retailers like Amazon, Pinterest is holding its own with new e-commerce ideas.

Source: eMarketer

Buyable and product pins allow Pinterest users to go directly to the e-store that sells the items they like and provide sellers with a way to automatically connect their goods to inspiration, creativity, and advertising pins. With this feature, advertisers can include direct links in ads for the site.

Are Pinterest Ads Worth It?

The short answer is it depends on your marketing goal and your industry. Nowdays, Pinterest ads are best for e-commerce businesses and for those working on building brand awareness, boosting engagement, and driving web traffic. If you know your audience and are sure that they’re on Pinterest, your advertisements should reach them just based on their search activity.

Remember that Pinterest is a discovery channel, which means people go there to mainly find products and inspiration. Lifestyle, home improvement, inspirational, and seasonal content are all extremely popular on Pinterest, so it’s best for advertisers to touch on these areas of interest.

Home improvement, DIY projects, and fashion and beauty content are also highly favored on Pinterest. If you have an e-commerce business and your product is in one of these categories, Pinterest business manager will have specific tips and tricks to help improve your ads.

What do Pinterest Ads Look Like?

Pinterest ads are designed to look like regular pins to encourage consumers to click on and interact with them. Frequently, product pins or buyable pins will be attached to the ad so that one click or swipe up takes you to the website.

Sometimes Pinterest ads are done in the site’s color scheme of white and red, but they can also be created and promoted in your brand’s color scheme or fonts. In addition, Pinterest ads can often be slides, collages, or even small videos like regular pins.

The ad will have “Promoted by” and the brand name written underneath it. If consumers are using a smartphone, the advertisement can take them directly to the product in the app if they have it downloaded.

What are the Pros and Cons of Pinterest Advertising?

We’ve included two important ones here to help you decide if Pinterest advertising is right for you. First, we recommend researching advertising stats for your specific business category before signing up.

Advertising on Pinterest is Cheap

Advertising with Pinterest is relatively cheap compared to Google, Facebook and LinkedIn ads, with three common pay models:

1. Cost-per-click (CPC) – you pay every time someone clicks your ad link. That’s around 10 cents to 1.5 dollars per click.

2. Cost-per-mile (CPM) – you pay for every one thousand impressions (views) on your pin. That’s approximate $2-$5 per one thousand impressions. On platforms like Facebook Ads, on average you will pay $5-$15, Google Ads $8-$20, and LinkedIn Ads can go $50 and above.

3. Cost-per-engagement (CPE) – you pay every time someone engages with your ad. That’s about 10 cents to 1.5 dollars per engagement.

Pinterest Requires An Account

A significant disadvantage to advertising your business on Pinterest is that it requires its users to have an email-based account. This means that consumers outside of Pinterest will not be able to access your ad or promoted pin, limiting the amount of impact your advertisement can have.

Pinterest for B2B vs. B2C – Different Approach

Pinterest can be used for any type of marketing, and like most social media sites, it’s used for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing. Below we’ve outlined what we know about using Pinterest for B2B or B2C marketing and if one is better.

Pinterest for B2B

When using business-to-business advertising on Pinterest, it’s important to know your way around and learn to speak the language of the platform. What do pins look like? What is the content format? What boards are?

Think about what industries are most popular on the site. Pinterest is favorable to the home decor, cooking, and beauty industries, so advertising to these types of businesses will yield better results.

When marketing to other businesses on Pinterest, remember that images and videos are what the site is all about. Utilizing pinned images from your other posts, links to images on your website, and creative marketing copy will easily help users choose your business.

Pinterest for B2C

The business-to-consumer marketing approach probably has the upper hand when it comes to advertising your product on Pinterest. Eighty percent of weekly pinners say they have discovered a new brand or product through using Pinterest.

Pinterest’s primary demographic is women (sixty percent of their users), who often do online shopping for other male family members or children. Knowing your target audience on Pinterest is vital.

Source: Statista

The interest in Pinterest Ads is quickly growing in the marketing world. Learn how to make them work for you.

How Do I Get Started?

So how can you get started? Whether you’re a small business looking to increase your traffic, or a large business trying to attract a new audience, Pinterest has the tools for you. With their goal-orientated advertisement options and helpful analytics, it’s easy to run your first ad campaign.

Pinterest Business Manager

Pinterest ad manager is the portal through which you can watch, edit and track all the promotions and advertisements for your Pinterest business account. It allows you to start new campaigns, study the strength of your ads, and strategize your budget and schedule.

Goals, Targeting, Demographics

Through Pinterest business manager, you can set goals for different campaigns or preset your goals to stay the same regardless of your audience. It also provides you with information about your target audience and strategies to reach new or existing customers and demographics.

The goals of your business depend on the product you sell and the demographic you’re trying to sell it to, but Pinterest makes it simple. Building awareness, driving traffic, and getting conversions are the three goals available to Pinterest business users.

Creatives Best Practices

Best practices for creatives on Pinterest include:

Utilizing the five dimensions of inspiration.
Creating videos with a lifestyle focus and an innovative call to action.
Advertising multiple products in one pin to increase your clickthrough rate (CTR).

Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest analytics allows you to monitor and understand how your advertisements are doing while giving you insights into what your customers and target audience are interested in. Pinterest analytics shows you the organic, paid, and earned engagement for all of your pins.

It also allows you to see how people who have saved your pin have interacted with it and if it led to a sale. Most importantly, analytics shows you which of your pins and promoted content are doing well and which possibly need to be adjusted to ensure success.

To Conclude

The interest in Pinterest ads is quickly growing in the business world. With a high amount of monthly users, a wide variety of content, and different types of clientele, almost any business can benefit from utilizing Pinterest for advertising.

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