Pinterest is popular and well-established. Here’s how to get into it with ads.

Or maybe you already have Facebook marketing tools, Instagram or a Google Ads campaign in your strategy. But did you know there are strong reasons to advertise on Pinterest too?

Pinterest is very user friendly and well targeted and Pinterest is a shopping site so Pinterest ads typically go directly to purchase. Let’s get more detail about the advertising possibilities of Pinterest and how a Pinterest campaign will work for your digital marketing plan.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a visual social media network, in which people search pictures and videos of the things they are interested in. They can save photos they find engaging on topical digital bulletin boards if they’re drawn to them. Saved images or videos are pins.

All the images and videos are from blogs and most Pinterest ads point to e-commerce stores. Those can be saved to these Pinterest boards for the photos or visited to the websites to read more. Users see each other’s boards and pins and follow each other if they like the other’s pins.

These are some of the top searched categories on Pinterest:

• Food and drink
• Home and décor
• Travel
• Health and fitness
• Women’s fashion
• Hair and beauty
• DIY and crafts
• Entertainment
• Weddings
• Holidays and events

What are promoted pins?

If you look around Pinterest you will find many kinds of pins like friend’s pins or recommended pins.

Promotion pins are another pin. They’re paid Pinterest ads that are aimed at certain people, areas, keywords, platforms, etc. so brands can have visibility, traffic to their blogs and make sales.

So, what’s the other advertising for Pinterest?

Besides promoted pins, Pinterest has also added ads.

• Idea pins: Idea pins are small videos or a series of up to 20 graphics/images to illustrate something. They’re more like Instagram Stories, but have more features to turn your followers into customers: user tagging, stickers, topic hashtags and detail pages. An idea ad can have a paid sponsorship if the creator has an advertiser as a “business partner.” The brand will then promote the Idea pin.
• Try-on-product pins: These pins, with the help of AR, let users try on makeup and accessories through their phone camera. You will need a uploaded product catalog, a Pinterest business account (it is free) and a Pinterest account manager to use this pin type.
• Collection ads: A perfect match for fashion, home décor and beauty online stores, collection ads are a large featured video or image and three additional images. With the click of an ad, you can have as many as 24 images shown on the ad detail page, and expose a prospect to your products. Pinterest can make this ad using related products from your uploaded product catalog.
• Carousel ads: Identical to pins, you can swipe through five images per ad. All images are saved to their board if the user pins your ad. They can feature related objects or one object used or worn differently.
• Shopping ads: These ads crawl your catalog and show one image to those who Pinterest determines are most interested in that product. A lot of e-commerce platforms like Shopify hook directly into this functionality.
• Product-loaded pins: These pins fetch and render product-specific data from your site like prices, stock numbers, name and description. They live feed to your website. Another nice thing is this pin appears in the Shop section of Pinterest search results, making your products available to more people. You will need some rich meta tags to your website for this to work.

The do’s of advertising on Pinterest

Follow the following strategies to get the most out of your Pinterest advertising budget.

Continually adjust your campaigns.

Pinterest is a visual platform and you don’t know what photos are going to work for your audience unless you try out a few. So when your campaigns are up and running, don’t just stop. Try new versions – new images, photos with or without captions, new keywords, bids high or low, new users.

Someday you’ll get to that place where you’re getting exactly what you want.

Make use of CTAs (calls to action) in the description.

On Pinterest, you can use direct CTAs in the description of a pin – “Sign up today” or “Download the free guide” will do. But don’t get too “salesy” or your pin won’t be clicked. Pinners go to Pinterest for nice pictures and ideas, not to be bombarded with ads.

Add relevant keywords.

You can attach 150 keywords to a promoted pin from Pinterest, but you don’t have to. The consensus suggests 30 to 50 keywords and of course, keywords relevant to your pin and the page that visitors will be redirected to once clicked. Important Keywords Will Impact Your Click-through Rate and Conversion Rate and Waste Your Ad Money.

Use targeted audiences.

While Pinterest doesn’t have the most powerful targeting like other social platforms, it will show you pins to people according to their location, device, gender, and language. Learn from these different audiences and send your pins to the right users at the right time. You’ll also be able to show up to the people most likely to convert, with the keywords you’ve configured.

Bid aggressively.

As you only pay for clicks, a little more bidding early in the game to see your reward is good since you only pay for clicks. You’ll start with more conversions and it may make your ad more useful even if you lower the bid. Play around with a few things to increase clicks and conversions.

The don’ts of advertising on Pinterest

Beyond Pinterest advertising best practices, here are things you don’t want to do when advertising on Pinterest.

Don’t include CTAs in the image.

Direct CTAs are okay in the description but not in the image. But you can have a “soft” CTA to overlay over the image. For instance, you might put “Do one more thing on your list” or “Making today count.” This is where you should watch out as if you get it too direct, Pinterest won’t accept your pin.

Don’t use a “hard wall” landing page.

If you want users to click on a landing page where they will convert, you can, but Pinterest won’t approve your pin. According to the site’s policy, Pinterest ‘loves the fact that people can click on a pin and access what they’re looking for without having to submit their details’. Rather, direct them to a blog post where the landing page is not hard to find.

Don’t add horizontal images.

Pinterest almost guarantees that if you put up a horizontal or landscape image it won’t get viewed. Vertically long photos are best for the platform design so the longer the better. Make it so users don’t need to scroll all the way down. Upload bright, vivid photos that tell a user what’s coming if they click.

Don’t use redirect links.

If Pinterest sees you redirecting people to another page, your pin may be blocked. You want the user experience to be fluid and intuitive and when a user clicks, redirects halt that flow. See the URL before placing your ad, and have an easy link to the destination you want consumers to go.

Don’t use hashtags.

While hashtags are permissible on Pinterest, Pinterest doesn’t love hashtags in ads. They’re spammy, and because you can keyword your campaigns, you shouldn’t even need hashtags. Pinterest will let you have a few so there shouldn’t be an issue if you want to include your company hashtag or promote one in your campaign.

Benefits of advertising on Pinterest

Pinterest also comes with some distinct advantages for companies using Pinterest as part of a marketing strategy.

• It’s all about discovery. If Facebook’s mission is socialization, and X (ex-Twitter) is only for quick remarking, Pinterest is designed for humans to explore new products and thoughts. A visual index and an electronic bulletin board, in one. This is why the users are more open to ads than other social media users.
• Users are curious. People search Google using the name of a company or brand. On the contrary, almost all Pinterest searches are unbranded according to Hootsuite. It means more space for the smaller and lesser brands to create attention and interest on a fairly level playing field.
• It’s cost-effective. Pinterest ads have twice the ROI as other digital platforms, Pinterest stated. AdRoll estimated that Pinterest was an average cost per click: 10 cents to $1.50 vs. $5.26 for LinkedIn, 20 cents to $2 for Instagram, and $1 on TikTok. Facebook was lower, 44 cents, but Pinterest more than makes up for it.
• It has millions of followers. There are over 498 million monthly Pinterest users and more than 38 percent of them reside in the US alone, Statista revealed. If you have women, you will probably encounter them on Pinterest because they are 76.2 percent of Pinterest users according to Statista and the highest rate (28.5 percent of the users) are 25-34-year-old women.

How Pinterest Can Be a Powerful Strategy For Your Campaign?

Pinterest might not be the most popular advertising social media platform, but it’s really growing and could be an untapped market for brands who want to tap into new audiences. Pinterest’s audience will only continue to rise as the platform expands, adds more features and improves its tools for advertisers and users.

Pinterest advertising can be a subtle art with some design skills and knowledge about its audience, but with the right Pinterest advertising tactics and strategies you will be able to send qualified leads to your website.