Is Pinterest Advertising The Next PPC Channel For Your Business?
Are you crushing it on Google Ads? Getting a great return on Facebook? Or perhaps you want to find new channels to promote your brand? Then let me turn your attention to Pinterest Advertising!
If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, you can think of it as a platform of ‘ideas’ where users browse and search for inspiration on products and topics through visual ‘pins’. There are more than 300 million people that depend on Pinterest for new ideas with 83% of weekly Pinners making purchases based on Pins they saw from brands.
Whether you’re a big or small brand, based in Australia or internationally, Pinterest advertising can work for you for a range of marketing goals such as brand awareness or sales growth.
Pinterest works in all stages of the buyer’s journey including brand awareness, consideration, and purchase. The combination of both keyword and interest targeting allows you to get your products and ideas in front of the right people, at the right time. Essentially, you can combine both the search aspects of search engine marketing (Google or Bing Ads for example) with the audience targeting of social ads.
MEASURABILITY
One of our favourite things about PPC is the ability to track valuable conversions from our campaigns, keywords, and ads (among other variables). Pinterest Ads is no different! In fact, it’s a similar set up to Facebook in that you install a ‘basecode’ to your website and then create additional events in either Google Tag Manager or the backend of your website.
Currently, there are only 9 standard events available for Pinterest reporting but they cover the majority of key conversions that most businesses would require. These are:
- Checkout (Purchase transaction)
- Add to cart
- Page visit
- Sign up
- Watch video
- Lead
- Search
- View category pages
- User-defined events
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES
You can choose your campaign objective based on your marketing goals. Do you want to build brand awareness? Increase traffic to your website? Or drive sales at the end of the user’s buying cycle? Pinterest has objectives for each stage!
Here’s how Pinterest recommends selecting your objective based on your goals, aligning with general marketing:
Build AwarenessDrive ConsiderationGet ConversionsBrand awareness
Video views
Traffic
App installs
Conversions
Catalog sales
TARGETING
There are three main targeting options available on Pinterest, these are audience targeting, keyword targeting, and interest targeting. Secondly, there are two placements that you optimise for, one being ‘search’ and the other being ‘browse’.
Audience Targeting
Can Pinterest do remarketing? Yes, it can! You can set up audiences similar to other platforms and you can also customise these based on the actions of users — such as anyone who has added to cart or viewed specific content (providing tracking has been set up). You can also upload customer lists as well using a CSV file.
Keyword Targeting
This targeting method allows you to reach people when they search for a specific idea on Pinterest. Similar to Google & Bing, there are different match types available: broad match, phrase match, and exact match. You also have the option of adding negative phrase and exact match keywords to further refine your traffic.
Interest Targeting
This is where you can have fun! The idea here is to pick topics related to your brand so that you reach users based on what they are engaging with. Interest targeting is great for browse placement as users browse their home feeds for inspiration.
AD FORMATS
There are currently four different ad formats that you can choose from, and we’d recommend split testing these variations where applicable within your campaigns.
Promoted Pin
This is your basic static single image Pin that you’ll likely be most familiar with.
Promoted Video Pin
Utilise engaging video content within your campaigns with varying lengths and sizes.
Promoted Carousels
Use multiple images and creating a compelling story for users to swipe through.
Promoted App Pins
These pins allow users to download your app straight from Pinterest, without leaving the platform.
HOW TO GET STARTED
Firstly, you’ll need your own Pinterest account for your business. Once you’ve set that up, you’ll be able to create your business manager account where the ads are managed, along with reporting and analytics.
Similar to other PPC channels, the budget is really dependant on your goals. However, you don’t need a hefty budget — a minimum of $10/day is effective in driving website traffic.
Waiting are you waiting for? Get started with Pinterest today! Feel free to reach out to us if you’d like help!
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Written by Gabrielle Behm-Pike
Originally published on our website: Vine Street Digital
