Looking to increase the effectiveness of your Pinterest ads?
Good news. You’re in the right place.
Pinterest advertising can deliver exceptional results for e-commerce brands. If you want to maximise performance, it helps to follow some Pinterest ads best practices to keep you on the right track.
We’ve pulled together some proven strategies and expert advice to help you make the most of your Pinterest budget. Shall we get started?
Boost E-Commerce ROI: Download Our Free CPA & ROAS Calculator
As a specialist Pinterest ads agency we can help you with your campaigns just get in touch for a free consultation.
What are Pinterest ads?
Pinterest may be known as a social media platform, but it’s also a visual search engine.
The platform works like a giant vision board, with users constantly sharing and posting content through ‘pins’ – visual bookmarks that can be saved for easy access.
Pins can be collated by both users and brands to create ‘boards’ that house all of this saved content. Boards can then be organised into different themes, like DIY or recipes.
Pinterest advertising works in exactly the same way.
Advertisers can run promoted pins (which are essentially paid ads) to target audiences across the platform. They can also create their own boards to promote products, and since Pinterest is a search engine, SEO can be utilised to increase traffic and sales.
Why should I advertise on Pinterest?
Pinterest has a few features that make it unique in the world of social media advertising.
1. The platform is highly visual
Pinterest places a massive emphasis on bold visuals, and user feeds are packed with high-quality images.
Although this means that you’ll need some top-notch creative assets, it also means that your products have the perfect chance to shine.
Users are constantly engaging with visual assets on Pinterest, actively clicking and saving different pieces of content.
If you can make your products stand out, and combine images with compelling ad copy, you have an excellent opportunity to generate new customers and drive sales.
2. The audience is ideal for advertisers
The Pinterest audience is extremely receptive to advertising, as most users are actively seeking out inspiration and new products to try.
In fact, 97% of the top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, meaning users are looking for new products without a specific brand name in mind. Hint – that’s where you come in.
Plus, the Pinterest audience isn’t just keen on browsing new products. They’re also ready to purchase them.
46% of users claim that they’ve discovered a new brand or product on the platform, while Pinterest shoppers also spend 50% more on average when compared to other social channels.
Pinterest users are clearly willing to discover new brands on the platform. You just need to target the right shoppers and deliver the right messaging.
3. Analytics are easily accessible
Clear and accurate campaign analytics are key to making effective optimisations.
Fortunately, Pinterest makes it easy for advertisers to monitor their reports.
Through the Analytics Dashboard, marketers can instantly check core metrics such as:
- Impressions
- Audience reach
- Promoted Pin taps/clicks
- Video views
- Promoted Pin saves
- Outbound link clicks
Since advertisers can quickly access these figures, they can make speedy adjustments to campaigns to focus on the best-performing assets and audiences.
This is crucial to running a profitable and cost-efficient Pinterest ad campaign.
What audiences are available on Pinterest?
There are three primary audience targeting tactics available on Pinterest.
Audience targeting
Pinterest offers advertisers the ability to build standard audience segments from basic demographic information (e.g. age, location, gender).
But audience targeting can be enhanced by layering on additional data.
By implementing a Pinterest tag advertisers can create highly effective retargeting segments based on site visitors.
Brands can also upload customer email lists to match them against existing Pinterest accounts, and target active users who have previously engaged with pins or profiles.
Lookalike Audiences can also be generated based on these custom audiences. This can be an efficient way to increase the reach of segments that are performing well.
Interest targeting
Interest Targeting allows you to target users based on their content engagement.
Advertisers can target an enormous number of different content categories. You can be as broad or as selective as you’d like with Interest targeting.
However, to improve ad relevance and performance you should try and focus on specific areas of interest that are relevant to your business.
If you’re selling men’s running trainers, you’ll probably have more success in the ‘men’s running trainers’ category as opposed to a generic ‘fitness’ category. It’s all about balancing relevancy with scale.
Keyword targeting
Since Pinterest is ultimately a search engine, you can use Keyword Targeting to run Promoted Pins against search terms.
You can choose to target specific product keywords, broader phrases, or a combination of the two.
Marketers can also focus on exact keyword matches if they want to keep targeting tight. Alternatively, they can widen the parameters with partial matches to increase reach.
If you’re keen to avoid appearing against irrelevant content, you can also block negative keywords to refine your targeting even further.
6 best practices for high-ROI Pinterest ads
You’re now familiar with the fundamentals of Pinterest advertising.
So it’s time to explore some proven best practices that will take your campaigns to the next level, optimise your ad spend and increase your ROI.
1. Focus on quality creative assets
Pinterest advertising is all about visually appealing content.
The feed is packed with high-quality photography, so your promoted pins need to stand out to grab attention and drive clicks.
But that doesn’t mean you need a bottomless production budget.
With the right lighting, a decent phone camera and smart product shots, your assets can shine on the Pinterest feed.
Keep your products at the centre of the ads so that consumers instantly understand what you’re selling. If you can demonstrate key product benefits through these visuals, even better!
Below are two examples of Pinterest ads that combine bold and eye-catching visuals with an impactful text overlay:
Combine clear and striking imagery with compelling ad copy, and you’ll have some highly effective Pinterest ads at your disposal.
2. Experiment with different Pinterest ad types
One of the biggest benefits of Pinterest advertising is the wide range of ad formats available on the platform.
This allows brands to deliver against multiple objectives (e.g. brand awareness, app install, video ads views) and keep their Pinterest ad campaigns fresh and engaging.
Standard pins (i.e. Image Pins and Video Pins) can effectively boost brand awareness and drive reach across the platform.
However, more creative formats are also available, and these placements can deliver sky-high levels of engagement.
Carousel ads can display a range of different products in a single format, while Collection ads make it easy for users to explore, save, and purchase your products.
3. Utilise Pinterest Shopping ads
Pinterest Shopping ads can be a hugely powerful tool for e commerce advertisers.
This ad format allows you to set up a product catalogue that automatically populates ads with different products and items.
It’s like taking your online store and instantly transforming it into Pinterest ads. Neat.
You can target customers with relevant products based on their interests and behaviours, but you can also utilise Dynamic Retargeting to reach users who have visited your landing page or abandoned their cart.
4. Diversify your Pinterest content
Building a strong brand presence on the Pinterest platform is key to success, and promoted product pins are just one part of an effective advertising strategy.
If you can create an engaging and genuinely interesting brand profile, users will naturally start to interact with your content and regular pins more regularly.
Post different types of content to your Pinterest page to keep things fresh. Product shots are great, but ‘how to’ content and UGC can also drive super-high levels of engagement.
It’s also important to arrange your profile content into boards. If your pins are organised into neat categories (e.g. ‘how to’ content, product types) then users will find it easier to discover relevant content in a Pinterest search.
By maintaining an active profile, using relevant keywords and encouraging regular engagement, you’ll also improve your Pinterest SEO and increase your visibility in search results.
5. Take advantage of smart targeting
While basic Pinterest audience targeting can still deliver strong returns, more advanced strategies can enhance your performance.
Retargeting website visitors (using a Pinterest tag) can be a very profitable tactic, enabling you to reach warm prospects who are already close to converting.
Keyword targeting can also help you to run highly relevant ads. It just requires some experimentation to understand which keywords are delivering the best returns.
Try testing out different targeting tactics to understand how you can improve the efficiency of your Pinterest advertising.
6. Optimise performance regularly
Optimising your Pinterest campaigns is crucial to increasing conversions, reducing acquisition costs and investing budget efficiently.
Before you launch a new Pinterest advertising campaign, it’s important to set a clear objective that aligns with your business goals.
You can then identify the assets, audiences and formats that are delivering optimal returns.
Implementing a Pinterest tag is vital to making impactful optimisations. The tag allows you to track website visitors, monitor conversions and enhance your audience targeting.
It’s also important to closely monitor the reporting dashboard to track results in real-time and make the right adjustments.
Getting started with Pinterest ads
Ready to start delivering mountains of conversions through Pinterest advertising?
Luckily, launching a new campaign through the ads manager is simple.
All you need to do is create a Pinterest Business Account. Once you’ve entered some personal details and selected relevant content categories, you’ll be live on the platform.
To set up a campaign, hit Ads at the top of the screen, and then Create Ad. Choose your desired objective, and then fill out some additional details (audience, budget, schedule, etc).
Select ‘Continue’ and then set up your Ad Groups.
Once this is all complete, you’ll be good to go. Just take a look at the Pinterest Help Centre if you need any further info.
Useful resources for Pinterest advertising
Below are some handy Pinterest resources and guides. Add these to your bookmarks for future reference! You’ll thank us later.
Pinterest Analytics: Tips & Tricks to Optimise Performance
If you can follow these best practices throughout your next Pinterest campaign, you’ll be on the right track for some jaw-dropping results.
Just stay focused on creating high-quality visuals, refining your targeting and making effective optimisations.
You’ll be running exceptionally profitable promoted pins before you know it.
