“Pinteresting” Ads to Build Awareness and Drive Sales

Are you an online seller…

• Of women’s fashion and accessories?
• Of arts and crafts products that make for the perfect DIY holiday gift?
• Of products for newly engaged couples planning their wedding?
• Of food products or accessories that can serve as inspiration for dinner?
• Of travel goods or resources that can help someone going on vacation?
• Of a certain lifestyle and that can enhanced through visual?
• Of feel good aerobic activity and fitness?
• Of Games and Entertainment products for kids?

LOOKING TO CONNECT WITH AN AUDIENCE THAT IS 85% FEMALE?

If you said YES to any of the above then you should be on Pinterest right now!

In Pinterest’s own words they are “the visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.” But I would like to expand upon that definition because since its debut six years ago, Pinterest has grown from a digital corkboard to become the search engine for people seeking to discover, curate, save and collect Pins of items they love and eventually want to buy.

A sneak peek into my Pinterest 🙂

As of September 2015, Pinterest reached the monumental KPI of having over 100 million active users on their platform of over 176 million registered users.

It was revealed that:

• over half of US women between the ages of 18-54 have signed up for Pinterest
• male users grew 133% last year
• the fastest growing Pinterest markets last year were the UK, Japan, France, Germany and Brazil
• Pinterest generated $25 million in 2014 with revenue between $125-137.5 million in 2015

So what does all of this mean to YOU?

As a business owner, it means that Pinterest is slowly adding monetization into its platform and quickly becoming a viable platform FOR YOU to add into your marketing mix.

In the chart below, 75% of active Pinterest users said that they bought something or visited a brand, retail or media website after browsing on Pinterest.

With ad formats that blend into the visual search engine experience, it’s time for you to get Pinning or increase your marketing presence on Pinterest!

So where does one start? With Pins, of course!!

The Lowe’s “Build It!” board features DIY home improvement projects and gets thousands of repins.

Pins

What do you offer that your customers like best? Talk to them and find out what they really care about and check your web analytics so that you can tailor your Pins to meet their needs… and then start pinning! Create a few boards centered around specific topics and include beautiful images and quotes. You want to be authentic in showing what inspires you and your brand, not just posting Pins pushing your products. If you’re a newbie to Pinning read StoreYa’s post on Pinterest Tools to Start Using Today to learn the ins and outs of pinmaking, board creation/curation and Marketing Tips for Pinterest to create a winning Pinterest strategy for your business!

Promoted Pins

Take your pinning and Pinterest presence up a notch with “Promoted Pins” – the non-intrusive way of getting your products and content in front of more people in the most relevant places on Pinterest. When you are looking to create and drive awareness, your Pin should give Pinners a reason to consider your posted idea and to click and take a specific action. You want to tastefully brand your products using compelling and novel images, text overlays, detailed descriptions, and the right vertical aspect ratio.

Adore Me, an e-commerce lingerie retailer, joined Pinterest because they were looking for new ways to engage with millennial women. They wanted to increase their reach so they started using Promoted Pins. With their successful campaign, they learned that people prefer Pins with no faces, a compelling image and a clear and detailed description that explains Adore Me’s subscription model.

Once you get your Pins on point, you will use the Pinterest Ads Manager in your Business Account to manage your campaign and your goals.

 There are two options you choose from to determine how your Pins get delivered and how you get charged – either cost-per-engagement (CPE) or cost-per-action (CPA):

1. If you want to Boost Engagement (CPE) you will get charged for each engagement (closeup, repin, click) on your Pin and you will be able to track your audience’s signals of intent.

2. If you want to Get Traffic to Your Website (CPA) you will get charged for clicks (actions) to your website.

From here you can also manage your budget, the start and end dates of the campaign and promote the same Pin with different interest and/or keyword targeting.

Both options include conversion tracking for up to four different types of actions on your site. This is extremely important in helping you understand how your Promoted Pins are performing. Be sure to keep a close eye on the summary dashboard to learn exactly what your campaign is doing for your business.

Cinematic Pins

Now that you have the handle on Promoted Pins, let’s add video elements into them to make “Cinematic Pins.” Cinematic pins are a made-for-mobile ad format that allows your brand to be seen in motion. As the user scrolls through their feed the motion starts and it stops only when the scrolling stops! Check out the video below to see how cinematic pins work!

Buyable Pins

As pinners discover and get inspired by your brand, continue their journey and convert them to your customers. Better than just advertising your product, create “Buyable Pins” that allow users to make purchases on mobile and tablet devices without ever leaving the Pinterest platform. A pinned item with a blue price means that the item is buyable and users can visit The Pinterest Shop to find all Buyable Pins. Pinterest incentivizes you as a merchant to Promote Pins because you get to keep 100% of the sales revenue from Buyable Pins!

Buyable Pins are only available to select U.S. retailers and businesses using commerce platforms such as Shopify, Demandware, BigCommerce, IBM Commerce and Magento. The pins have a mobile-friendly design and support checkout mechanisms like Apple Pay.

Lucky for you, StoreYa gives you the option to integrate your Pinterest account into your Facebook shop!

The Pin Factory and “Pinstitutes”

If you are looking for help from the Pinterest team, the company has a page called “The Pin Factory”. Here you can find examples from companies that have used the platform to Build Awareness, Drive Engagement and Increase Clicks. Pinterest hosts marketers and advertising executives who spend a minimum ad amount (figure not revealed) to help them create Pins and provide more sophisticated performance and engagement analytics for Promoted Pins.  Also, if you are located in San Francisco or New York, Pinterest hold “Pinstitutes” which are several-day events to help educate executives from large brands and tease new ad formats.

And that’s it! Now you know all the tools that are available to you when it comes to advertising on Pinterest! With its high level of user engagement, see if you can increase your conversion rate with a new Pinning habit for your Business!

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