Ads on Pinterest is a fantastic tool to help you promote your business, primarily if you sell via e-commerce. The platform is a visual content search engine and a great place to get some inspiration, increase traffic to your website and acquire new customers. So how can you use a Pinterest Ad campaign for business? Add the Pinterest Save Button to your website and set up a Pinterest Ad campaign.

Pinterest will recommend your pins at the top of relevant searches or home feed if you regularly post great content. But if you’re like most of us, you don’t have time to create all those images yourself. This is where paid Ads can help you.

Nowadays, more than 200 million active users use Pinterest every month, so investing in some advertising on this platform is worth it. If you’re considering whether or not to set up a Pinterest campaign for your brand, here are some tips to help you get started: 

Use one pin per Ad campaign or Ad groups

Most people use the same regular pin for each campaign and multiple keywords. This is fine if you want to test which keywords work best, but it will not help you get more shares or likes. You need to create one pin for each keyword and then use those pins in multiple campaigns or Ad types. This way, you can see which pins perform better in the search results than others and start putting more effort into those pins.

Group campaigns by keywords and themes

You should create groups of closely related keywords and have similar Ads targeting those keywords. For example, you can have one campaign for “best dog food,” another for “dog food nutrition”, and then another for “organic dog food.” This way, you can quickly analyze which group of keywords performs better than others and optimize your campaigns based on this information.

Remember that creativity is a more powerful lever than keywords.

You should know what keywords to use when setting up a campaign — but don’t forget about Ad creative, which can be an even more powerful tool for driving results. That’s because Pinterest is a visual search engine, and much of the traffic on the site happen organically rather than in response to specific searches. (For example, pins with the word “summer” in their descriptions get 20% more clicks during summer months.)

Know how the keyword algorithm works

Pinterest uses a hybrid algorithm when matching search terms with pins. The first step is an exact match — if someone types in “gardening,” the system looks for pins with the word “gardening” in the pin description or on the page linked from the pin. If no exact matches are found, it moves on to a broad match, which looks for similar terms like “garden.” You can use this knowledge to your advantage by ensuring your pin descriptions include all relevant keywords, including synonyms and plurals. 

Use a vertical aspect ratio in your pins.

Pins with vertical images have the highest engagement rate on Pinterest, and you can use a 1:3 ratio to give your Ad the most excellent chance of being seen and clicked. A good example is this one from Bombas Socks, which has a 1:2.7 ratio.

As you can see in the image below, they’ve used a tall, thin image that takes up most of the page but doesn’t go beyond it. This gives them a high-quality image that’s easy to read.

Repurpose best organic pins for advertising

Pinterest recommends using organic pins as Ads first because it’ll probably do well with paid promotion if you have content that works well organically. So before you create new Ads specifically for Pinterest, use analytics tools to see which organic pins are already doing well, then repurpose them as Ads to maximize their effectiveness.

Leverage interest targets in your Pinterest Ad campaign

The best thing about Pinterest Ads is that they can be targeted to specific interests, which provides marketers with a way to reach more relevant audiences than other platforms allow. If you’re just getting started with Pinterest, use existing data from your most successful campaigns on different channels to help inform your targeting strategy for this new platform. This could include information about your audience’s demographic makeup, behaviors, and interests — all of which can be used to create personas that inform your targeting plan.

Separate mobile & desktop by campaign

Due to device differences, it’s important to keep mobile and desktop Ads separate. For example, people tend to search for things they consider buying later on their phone and purchase those items on their desktop or tablet. As a result, we recommend keeping your mobile and desktop campaigns separate so you can adjust bids accordingly and measure performance across devices in your Ads Manager.

Consider a shallower conversion metric.

The beauty of Pinterest, as a marketing tool, is that it allows you to go beyond just generating sales and start building brand awareness and positive sentiment. This makes introducing a product or service to an entirely new target audience is especially useful. If you’re using Pinterest as a hub for your content marketing efforts, consider using the Pin It button on your blog posts and other content. You can then measure success with metrics like clicks or follows rather than conversions.

You can retarget on Pinterest.

Pinterest allows you to retarget audiences who have previously visited your website or interacted with your pins. This means that if someone has visited your site but left without making a purchase, you can continue to remind them about why they should have made that purchase in the first place. This is a unique tool for marketers because it allows you to reach out to people who already have some interest in what you have. 

Utilize different types of Pinterest Ad campaigns

Choose from three distinct types of campaigns: Awareness, Traffic, and Engagement campaigns — each designed to help you meet specific goals. When you create an Ad campaign on Pinterest, it will automatically be set to Awareness. To choose a different type of campaign, click inside the Campaign Type field.

Set up Rich Pins in your Ads on Pinterest

Rich Pins include extra information on the Pin itself from your website, so people can learn more about your products and services before clicking through to your site. Your business must already have Rich Pins enabled for them to appear in your Promoted Pins.

Conclusion

Whether you want to set up a shopping Ad, a carousel Ad like on social media, or promote Pinterest offers, hiring a Pinterest Ads Manager will be much more cost-efficient as they know how to leverage the platform for the best results.