Are Pinterest Ads Right for Your Business? Understanding Promoted Pins

Written by Samantha Taylor

Have you heard about promoted pins and wondered if Pinterest ads are right for your business? Let’s dip in!

The number one benefit of using Pinterest ads is to drive more traffic to your website. With the right targeted traffic, Pinterest can help you increase sales, and you can achieve this at an even faster pace with the magic of Pinterest ads.

Pinterest ads, aka promoted pin campaigns, play a huge part in Pinterest marketing. They’re the main way that Pinterest makes its money, profiting through its massive advertising network, which includes promoted pins.

Promoted pins help your business to grow by increasing your reach and expanding your exposure. By leaving paid ads out of your Pinterest marketing strategy, you’re leaving money on the table!

What Exactly Are Promoted Pins?

Promoted pins are pins that appear in a user’s home feed. They have been paid to be shown to an intended targeted audience. Ads will be displayed either in a user’s home feed or in search results when they type in relevant keywords that relate to the ad.

Did you know that organic pins can take from 3-6 months to gain traction? With paid Pinterest ads, you can put your pins in front of your target audience a lot faster than through organic marketing.

Can Pinterest Ads Help My Business?

By driving traffic to your website, Pinterest ads can increase your page views to the target audience of your choosing. The great thing about Pinterest users is that many are ready to spend money, so if you have products or services to sell then your business can benefit from using promoted pins.

By advertising to a warm and active Pinterest audience, promoted pins can help increase check-out conversions and they’re also great for growing your email list and increasing brand awareness.

Will Pinterest Ads Work for My Niche?

Pinterest ads work well for a variety of different niches because they are closely targeted to a precise audience by using keywords. Before you get started with Pinterest, you can search for keywords in your niche and see if there is any interest.

95% of the top searches on Pinterest are unbranded. This means that Pinterest users are open to discovering new products, services, and ideas, ready to make a purchase or investment.

What Type of Campaign Should I Run?

First things first, you need to run a promoted pins traffic campaign to get a good idea of how your ideal audience interacts with your ads. By running this campaign you’ll also get an idea of your CPA, which stands for cost per action. Since the main purpose of this campaign is to drive users to your website, this is a helpful statistic. It helps with lead generation and sales production!

We recommend running a promoted pins campaign for at least four weeks. Pinterest is a considerably slower platform compared to Instagram and Facebook, so this allows your ad to “settle” on the platform.

Remember why Pinterest users are there in the first place. The users gather to the platform for inspiration to pin to their boards. These pins will help them to decide what to buy later. This is why it’s essential to run your ads for a longer time frame because people usually need to see something over and over again before making that decision to buy.

The Core Types of Ads on Pinterest:

Conversion Campaigns

This campaign focuses on website traffic and getting traffic to take a specific action such as email signups, product sign-ups, etc.

Awareness Campaigns

These ads are ideal when you’re trying to build your visibility and brand awareness.

Traffic Campaigns

The main goal of traffic campaigns is to get people to your website. They are good for lead generation and sales.

Why Use Promoted Pins Instead of Just Growing Organically?

While it’s important to have a strategy where you’re posting regular pins on the platform, promoted pins are much more closely targeted and will bring you faster results. Online shopping is on the rise and there are more people on the platform than ever before looking to purchase products and services. Now is your chance to use Pinterest ads to put those hungry audiences in front of your ideal audience as they prepare to buy.

Do Pinterest Ads Actually Work?

Pinterest ads drive traffic to your website or shop, which can lead to sales when marketed accurately! For website traffic to convert you need to understand your audience. The better you understand them, the better you’ll be able to deliver what they want and expect in the form of a strategic, attractive, and informative paid ad.

Getting to know your audience before creating Pinterest ads will help you out massively. What keywords are they using to search for the solution you’re offering?

How Can I Set Up Promoted Pins?

Putting together a promoted pins ad campaign is pretty straightforward. Go to the ads section of your Pinterest account and look for the promoted pins setting. Now you need to select the type of campaign you wish to promote and your daily spending.

Next, once you’re clear on your target audience and know their user behaviour, you can select targeted keywords. Pinterest will suggest similar keywords to help guide you throughout the set up. Now all that’s left to do is select your pin and launch your ad and you’re ready to go.

Pinterest ads are relatively easy to set up, especially compared to the Facebook ads manager. However, there is a massive amount of strategy that can go into a successful Pinterest ad campaign. If you need help integrating promoted pins into your social media marketing, we can help. Contact us today for a free marketing consultation to discuss what Pinterest strategy would be right for your business.

Special thanks to Samantha Taylor for writing this blog post!