Get More From Your Pinterest Ads

While many businesses ignore Pinterest, it’s a great place to build awareness and drive long-term sales. And while some marketers think “no one uses Pinterest,” it’s actually the fourth-most-popular social media platform in the U.S., ahead of Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter and WhatsApp. Recent research revealed that about 34% of Americans use Pinterest.

Pinterest is already a well-recognized advertising venue for home decor, DIY, cooking, crafts, fashion, books, movies, personal care, fitness, travel, photography, blogging, marketing, and apps. However, almost any type of business can see results with promoted pins if they understand best practices.

Let’s start by reviewing nomenclature. Every social media platform likes to use their own language, and Pinterest is no exception In Pinterest-speak, posts are called pins, and ads are called promoted pins. If you want to run ads/promote pins, you’ll need to create a business account. To make your content easier to find, you’ll want to group your pins by category. This is called “creating a board.”

A Word About Budgets and Timing

You pay for exposure on Pinterest. More money = more exposure. While you can start advertising for just a few bucks, getting results from a small spend is difficult. Cup O Content recommends spending $50 or more for a short campaign. While some research shows that businesses can earn $2 in profit for every $1 spent, sales returns can be slow and tend to build over time. Cup O Content recommends committing to at least three months of advertising before you make definitive decisions about Pinterest’s effectiveness for your business.

Creating Better Pins

Before creating pins and promoting them, it’s smart to spend some time on Pinterest. Make a note of the types of pins that do well. Examine your feed to see how you notice some pins and tend to ignore others. And as you’re doing your homework, keep these best practices in mind;

1. Include a Logo

Pinterest recommends clear branding on your image. Cup O Content has found this to be a sound recommendation to increase click-through rates.

2. Zoom in on One Compelling Feature

While some brands like to show panoramic scenes, we’ve found that close-ups work better. For example, when promoting an article about horses, a close-up of a horse’s soft brown eyes worked better than a gorgeous photo of horses in a paddock. When promoting a book, the pin of the cover outperformed a variety of more complicated images.

3. Don’t Skimp on Words

You can include headlines in your images. Unlike Facebook, Pinterest doesn't penalize you for text on images. And while only a few words show in previews, we’ve found that long descriptions work better than short ones. Romance your product and tell them enough to convince them to take action.

4. Include Hashtags

Some marketers leave hashtags off of ads, thinking that they are not needed on promoted images. However, since you are promoting a pin, your pin lives on even after your promotion is completed. (If you don’t want it to live on, you can delete it.) If your pin remains on your account, that means that you can get thousands of views, even after your budget is complete. Hashtags are a great way to help people find your pin and will increase your viewership significantly after the ad has stopped running.

Additionally, people can “save” your ad to their own boards. Once they do this, it can be shared again. In this scenario, hashtags continue to increase searchability.

5. Test and Learn

A continual analysis will help you understand what works best for you. We encourage you to create a variety of pins and test their performance. As you monitor their performance, you can discontinue promotions on underperforming pins and assign more funds to your best-performing pins. While every campaign is different, common measures of success can include;