6 steps to setting up a Pinterest advertising campaign
You know that Pinterest could drive serious traffic to your website from around the globe… but you’re wondering about whether Promoted Pins could work for your business.
But you can’t afford to throw spaghetti at the wall and hope it sticks.
You need a solid strategy so I’m here to take you through 6 steps to setting up your Pinterest advertising campaign
Why Promoted Pins?
Pinterest has over 325 million active users BUT has far less competition than any other ad platform.
By becoming an early adopter on this relatively new, HUGE platform and spending your money on promoted pins, you could get top of search results!
Because no matter how many times Pinterest changes their algorithm, adds or removes a new feature …they will always favour paid content - because they’re first and foremost a business!
With so much focus on Facebook and Instagram ads - Pinterest often gets overlooked (and I can say that I’m a Facebook and Instagram Advertising Pro too!) But by boosting a pin’s visibility you can increase traffic to your website, email list sign-ups, brand awareness, and sales.
And the stats don’t lie - 1 out of every 2 Pinterest users have purchased directly from a Pinterest ad... and advertisers make an average of $2 profit for every $1 they spend on promoted pins.
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Step 1 - Getting your Business ready for Ads
Make sure your account and website are ready for you to start advertising.
Step 2 - What is your objective?
If your main objective for promoted pins is to drive visitors to take action then you should be considering Traffic, Conversions or Catalogue Sales.
Traffic Objective
Most people who run promoted pins are used to paying for clicks using traffic campaigns and track the conversions in the ads dashboard
By using a Traffic campaign objective, you are paying for the initial click to your site. Traffic campaigns can often be much less expensive than conversions.
Promoted pins are designed to push your pinout to thousands of people in order to optimize it for clicks. Thousands of people are viewing your pins — that’s called an impression.
Utilizing a traffic campaign allows you to build brand awareness and page views to your website, but you are only paying for the click.
Conversion Objective
A conversion campaign allows you to optimize for a specific action you want your Pinterest visitor to take. The two most common conversions are email signups or purchases.
With conversion campaigns, you place a bid on how much you want to pay for the conversion and you pay Pinterest based on the conversion, instead of the click as with a Traffic campaign.
For example, you can bid £1 per email address signup and might end up paying Pinterest £0.56 per email address signup regardless of how many clicks the ad received.
Catalogue Campaigns
Pinterest shopping campaigns fall under conversions as catalogues. Here, retailers can promote their products.
“With Shopping Ads, businesses can seamlessly turn their product catalogue into visual, actionable ads. Since Shopping Ads pull automatically from an existing product feed, they’re especially useful for brands that want to scale their Pinterest advertising.” (Pinterest)
Step 3 - Your Target audience
It’s super important to get your head around your target audience to get more bang for your buck! Choose 2-3 ‘Interests’ if you can find any that closely matches the type of pin you are promoting.
Step 4 - Your Pinterest ad creative
Your creative (image) and text overlay should make it super obvious what your pin is about.
Make sure people know what they are clicking on so that you only pay for relevant clicks. You want people to click on your Pin and get off Pinterest onto your site ASAP.
Leverage text overlays on your pin images to explain what your content is about and present them with a call to action that entices them to click.
Step 5 - Keywords
Keywords are the backbone of a campaign! They tell Pinterest what your ad is about and help pins show up in relevant search results, related pins and home feed. Think about how your ideal customers search for your solution and use the new Trends tab to see what’s current e.g. ‘Working from home’ or ‘Christmas Gifts’. This will inform you about what type of keywords you'll want to use in your campaign.
Step 6 - Test
It’s all about continuously testing new audiences and creative so here are a few examples of split tests you might run with your ad groups:
A warm vs a cold audience Broad Match vs. Phrase match Different pin creative