The Complete Guide to Advertising on Pinterest

The Complete Guide to Advertising on Pinterest: As we head into 2016 social media marketing still remains a priority for most marketers with many of them taking a ‘where’ should we spend money on social rather than ‘why should we spend money on social’ approach.
Like most marketing channels, social media marketing is evolving and those who don’t evolve with it will almost certainly get left behind, much like they did when social media first appeared on the radar.
You may have heard the buzz about Pinterest Marketing. It’s something every brand should consider and take very seriously.

The reason?

Well it’s much different to other social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and even Snapchat.
While primarily a social media community, Pinterest has evolved itself and now finds itself delicately balanced between social’ and ‘marketplace’. In fact, what we could be saying (and the stats certainly suggest so) is the very first commerce company born out of social.
Successful corporates companies like Ebay and Amazon did ‘commerce’ first… ‘social’ second. They used social to build a community around their brand to drive sales and 99% of every other retail company followed. Pinterest though, have done the opposite, building a huge ‘social’ following around ‘commerce’ and could very well be the next EBay or Amazon.
Here are some very powerful stats that demonstrate just why advertising on Pinterest is going to be huge in 2016:
*It’s responsible for over 41% of ALL social media referral traffic
*The average shopping cart size of a Pinterest user is $170
* 90% of pinners use Pinterest to plan or make a purchase
* The average houshold income of a Pinterest user is over $100k
Perhaps another reason why advertising on Pinterest is growing in popularity is because of the lifetime value of pins. Unlike content on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, pins remain popular for users taking advantage of Pinterests ‘search’ feature. This ensures that exposure of your pin isn’t limited to appearing just once in someone’s feed.
So now we know that advertising on Pinterest should be at the top of your priority list in 2016, just what different ways can brands do this?

1) Promoted Pins

Promoted pins, Pinterest’s very own advertising platform was rolled out fully in 2015 – a big show of intent of the direction Pinterest is heading in over the next few years. Originally, promoted pins were rolled out slowly to selected brands and individuals, then there was an application process – now everyone (within the United States) can take advantage of them.
Similar to Google Adwords or Facebook ads the idea is that you can pay to have your regular pins shown to a particular and very well defined target audience.
You can learn more about Promoted Pins and get started with a campaign here:

2) Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Influencer marketing is an increasingly popular form of marketing for brands and marketers who are quickly realizing that consumers are growing tired of intrusive display ads. The focus of an influencer campaign is placed on individuals with an influencer in one or multiple topics who have already established high levels of trust with their followers.
For brands, teaming up with an influencer offers a more native, seamlessly integrated advertising experience that delivers ROI while maintaining brand integrity. Studies show that 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 33% trust ads, suggesting ‘influence marketing’ is a highly effective method of stimulating awareness and conversation.
More studies reveal that this type of ‘word of mouth’ marketing generates two times as many sales as paid ads. What’s even more impressive is that customers acquired through influencer marketing have a 37% retention rate.
If you’d like to explore an Influencer Marketing campaign with Vizified ‘get in touch’!

Step by Step Guide for Advertising on Pinterest

before we head straight into the ‘how to’ let’s take a quick look at the history of Pinterest’s Promoted Pins in hope that it demonstrates context. Right now, Pinterest offers two different different forms of Promoted Pins.
Reservation style Promoted Pins
Originally this version of promoted pin was tested by handpicked partners and retailers such as Gap and Target. Reports in AdAge suggest that the required campaign budget for these types of campaigns is at least one million dollars and is measured on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis .
One of the great advantages of these reservation style promoted pins is that they can actually be seen within a user’s board.
For example, if Hershey wanted to display one of their new chocolate bars, they would simply create a pin and that pin may then show up in Pinterest boards about ‘chocolates, chocolatiering and more.
Reservation style promoted pins unfortunately aren’t available to brands or partners outside of the U.S. Basically Pinterest are saying that this form of advertising is only available to those who have been established as a ‘Pinterest advertising partner’ with an existing relationship with Pinterest.

Auction based Promoted Pins

For the smaller brands who don’t have the luxury of allocating million dollar budgets to a Pinterest advertising campaign do not worry! Auction based Promoted Pins is a bidding type format that means the more you allocate to a campaign the better position your promoted pin will appear on Pinterest.
Similar to other advertising networks such as Facebook and Google this type of ads are CPC (cost per click) based. An advantage is that you don’t get charged unless someone clicks on your ad. The disadvantage is that if you have competitors also willing to spend money on ads then the cost per click could become expensive.

Step 1: Register for a Business Account

In order to take advantage of Promoted Pins you first need to register your Pinterest profile as a business. Head over to https://business.pinterest.com/ and simply complete some additional information. Within 24 hours you’ll be switched from a personal acoount to a business account.

Step 2: Join the Waiting List to Get Approved

Pinterest still have a verification process for new advertisers. Sometimes, you can get started right away with promoted pins, other times you have to join the waiting list. If you do just head over to:
https://business.pinterest.com/en/promoted-pins-waitlist
Joining the waiting list will ensure that you’ll be at the top of the pile when it comes to getting verified.

Step 3: Create your ‘Promoted Pin’

In order to promote a pin you have to actually create pin from your account or profile and add it to one of your boards. You cannot create a pin specifically for the purpose of promoting it, the reason for this is probably down to Pinterest wanting the best ‘organic’ ad experience for their users.
Before you create your pin, you should review Pinterest’s Rules for Advertising to ensure you are not in violation and have your pins removed.
Once you’re up to speed on the rules then you’re good to go! Choosing the right pin for your campaign is super important. If you’ve already been registered as a business then you’ll have access to analytics. It may be a good idea to take a look at some of your best performing pins and use that one to promote.
If you’re creating a new pin from scratch then it may be a case of trial and error, optimizing pins to see which performs best over time.

Step 4: Keyword Research

Like Google Adwords, keywords are one of the most important factors in a successful promoted pin campaign. Above everything else the goal here is to make sure that your keywords reflect what your customers are searching for.
Pinterest offer some guess-timated search volume numbers for ‘weekly search terms’ but only for terms that have a volume of over 5000.
The challenge when deciding which search terms to use is that the more targeted (by city, gender, age etc.) the less volume will be displayed.
However, you might also find that some of your pins will actually show up in other related category feeds. A search term for ‘office lamp’ for example the pin may be displayed in the ‘technology’ category as well as the ‘home decor’ category.

Step 5: Choose Your Target Audience

This is the fun part of setting up your Promoted Pin campaign and if you nail it then you can almost certainly reap the rewards. The targeting options are pretty comprehensive. You can target specific cities in the U.S right down to the age, gender and device used. As mentioned, the more detailed you get with your targeting the more your your search term volume will reduce.

Step 6: Show them the Money!

This isn’t the fun part but is equally important! Be too tight with the purse strings and your ads might not even appear at all… be too generous and you could end up paying high rates on very competitive search terms.
The focus here is CPC and how much you want to bid on a single click. Right now Pinterest’s Promoted Pins platform is in it’s infancy stage and much like Google adwords in the early days, there is a real opportunity to benefit from low CPC’s before the competition arrives and drives up the prices.
So, keep your CPC as low as possible for now and monitor over time. If you’re not getting the clicks you want then you can always tweak the CPC budget by just a couple of points that could make the difference.
Don’t forget:

• The more budget you allocate to your ‘promoted pin’ the better positioned it will be
• Use UTM tracker to measure conversions
• Make sure your destination url is right (You cannot link back to a ‘sign-up page’)

Step 7: Create Your Promoted Pin Pinterest Campaign

Again, much like Facebook Ads or Google Adwords, your ‘Promoted Pin’ must be assigned to a specific campaign. So if you’re doing a ‘Black Friday’ sale campaign then you should create a campaign ‘Black Friday Campaign’. You can have an endless number of Promoted Pins within each campaign and you can even have multiple campaigns running simultaneously.
Once you’ve setup your campaign you can then assign the duration to it (how long you want the campaign to run) along with a daily or maximum budget. There are no limits to durations or budgets, so be careful to make sure you don’t leave a campaign running with a high budget level.

Step 8: Get Your Promoted Pin Approved!

You’re pretty much all set to go. All you have to do now is wait for Pinterest to approve your newly created Promoted Pin. Once it’s approved your campaign will be automatically launched (providing you’ve filled in your billing info) and you can track how well it’s performing via the analytics dashboard.
Remember to be constantly optimizing your Promoted Pins. Try and understand which search terms are generating the best clicks, which descriptions generate the best engagement and repins and so on.
A Step by Step Guide for Launching an Effective Influencer Campaign with Vizified
For brands who want a more organic way of reaching a new target audience where trust is already established, or for those who find promoted pins too competitive and expensive then a Pinterest Influencer campaign with Vizified might just be for you.
We represent the most influential pinners and creators on Pinterest and beyond. We’ve helped start-ups, agencies and large brands such as Ebay connect with trusted influencers to promote their products on Pinterest. With a combined reach of over 10 million Pinterest followers our influencers are perfectly positioned to help brands increase:

• Brand Awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement & Interaction

Step 1: Brand Briefing

Upon contacting Vizified via our contact form or email: hello@vizified.com, a member of our team will be in touch to arrange a time to discuss your campaign objectives, goals, KPI’s and the overall message you would like to convey about your brand. It’s important that Vizified understands your objectives in as much detail as possible. We often like to hear your company story, learn about the products in detail and get a complete feel for the culture and ethos of your brand that we can then convey to our influencers.

Step 2: Influencer Briefing

Once we have met with you, understood your campaign objectives and goals we then reach out to all of our influencers. First we provide them with a comprehensive brief and ask them if they would like to participate in your campaign. It’s important to remember that the key advantage to an influencer marketing campaign is empowering the influencer as much as possible. Vizified’s influencers knows what works and what doesn’t work with their audience. In order to deliver an effective campaign for brands, the level of trust cannot be compromised between influencer and their audience and for that reason, occasionally an influencer will not participate. This benefits all parties and ensures that the brand is receiving the most positive exposure possible.

Step 3: Product Samples & Graphics/Artwork Sent to Influencers

Many a time, brands have a physical product or graphics and imagery they would like to promote on Pinterest. Vizified works with the brand and arranges all product samples, artwork and imagery to be delivered to the influencer in time for them to create the necessary content they will be promoting to their followers.

Step 4: Content Creation

Influencers have 2 weeks from product samples being received to research, review promotional materials, product samples and artwork to create beautifully crafted and inspiring visual content, photo’s and imagery of your product or brand.
Pinterest is about imagery and even though a picture paints a thousand words, an engaging story and narrative in the form of pin descriptions that compliment the newly created visual content is an important factor of the success of a Vizified campaign.

Step 5: Content Review & Signoff

Once all influencers have created your brands content, the Vizified team carefully review to ensure optimal performance. Vizified has guidelines and best practises we pride ourselves on maintaining and our review process ensures influencer created content remains consistently high quality.

Step 6: Social Amplification

Once signed off by the Vizified team, our influencers will begin promoting your newly created branded content throughout the month to over 10 million followers on Pinterest and other social platforms, increasing brand awareness, engagement and traffic. Content is promoted based on the influencers understanding of peak performance times.

Step 7: Measuring and Reporting

Vizified tracks all shared content and measures engagement in the form of repins, likes, comments and clicks so you can measure the effectiveness of your campaign. We often find this is the perfect way to analyse and improve the next months campaign based on key findings. We’ll send you a detailed report on your first campaign and cross reference with any performance data you have available.
Remember, one of the key advantages of an influencer marketing is the 37% retention rate of consumers
acquired through an influencer campaign!

Key Facts for Advertising on Pinterest

By now, whether it be through Pinterest Promoted Ads, a Pinterest Influencer campaign with Vizified or a combination of both you’ve already invested a lot of time in increasing your brand awareness, traffic and engagement.
 
So, now is the ideal opportunity to remind you just why you’ve invested in advertising on Pinterest and why you should look at advertising on Pinterest being an investment in ‘search engine marketing’ not just ‘social media marketing’.

High Intent to Buy

• Pinterest users have 9 percent higher incomes than the average person, signalling a string ‘intent to buy’.
• 38% of Pinterest users have purchased something after seeing it on Pinterest
• Of the 38%, 43% are moms and 53% are daily users

High level of interaction?

Pinterest users, while having more money are difficult to reach through traditional advertising.
They use Pinterest:

• as a replacement for magazines
• Instead of browsing e-commerce sites
• Instead of using other social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
• as a preference over watching TV
• as a replacement for Google or other search engines
• instead of browsing physical catalogs

Pinners Activity

• 75% of Pinterest’s users activity is on mobile devices and tablets.
• Of this mobile activity, 30% of users use Pinterest ‘in-store’ to help guide their purchase

How Open Are Pinterest Users to Ads?

Actually, believe it or not Pinterest users are pretty cool when it comes down to branded marketing on Pinterest:

• 83% say they would rather follow their favorite brand over their favorite celebrity
• 73% of active Pinterest users are neutral to positive to seeing Promoted Pins in their feed.
• 7% of users said they have no issues with ‘Promoted Pins’.

What Are The Worst Things About ‘Promoted Ads?

• 18 percent of pinners believe promoted ads are just out of place
• 5% are uncomfortable with the sales/marketing aspect of Promoted Pins
• 16% worry that promoted pins served wouldn’t be relevant to them
• 11% of pinners don’t like content that feels forced on them

Where Do Pinners Go After Clicking on a Pin?

• 2% click through to news sites
• 3% click through to magazine sites
• 7% go to stores or shopping sites
• 8% go to other photo sharing or social sites
• 18% go to brand or product sites
• 54% click through to a blog

What Are Some of the Most Popular Categories on Pinterest?

• Food & Drink
• DIY and Craft
• Home Decor
• Holidays & Events
• Fashion

Who Are The Most Popular Brands on Pinterest?

Etsy

Starbucks

Target

Ralph Lauren

Walmart

Crayola

Demographics of Pinterest Users

• 18-39 is the main demographic of Pinterest users
• 36% of active users are parents with children under 17 living in the same household

Men On Pinterest

• 14% of male users are more likely to be single and living on their own.
• 16% of make users are more likely to own a home
• Men are 20% more likely than women to actually make a purchase after seeing a product on Pinterest

Pinterest Marketing vs Influencer Marketing

As we’ve mentioned previously in this post, one thing is for sure; a Pinterest marketing strategy should be a priority for those businesses and entrepreneurs planning to grow their business in 2016 and beyond.
We’ve already touched on the different ‘paid’ ways you can promote your brand on Pinterest: Promoted Pins or an Influencer marketing campaign.
But which one would work best for your brand and how do they compare against each other? Let’s take a look:

Influencer Marketing…

The shift to and rise of social media over the last 10 years empowered consumers to consider fellow consumers when making a purchase decision. Prior to the connectedness of social media, consumer looked to the brand to be informed about a product, now though, they look to their favourite personalities on social media, whether that be a YouTube star, Snapchatter or Instagrammer who are generating massive followings.
Influencer marketing has long been touted as the next big thing and the natural next stage in the evolution of social media marketing. It’s easy to see why, it opens up new channels to engage with consumers and offers endless opportunities for marketers looking to get in front of new targeted audience.
Partnering with social influencers and creating branded content allows for an amplification in marketing messages while leveraging the trust already established by the influencer and adding it to your brand.

Advantages:

1) It’s Social

70 percent of brands are expected to increase their social media spend in 2016. If you haven’t followed the same path, then you’re going to miss out. More and more startups have been launched off the back of a social media strategy alone (we even launched our first startup off the back of a Pinterest strategy). Those who still haven’t embraced social media will get left behind.

2) It’s Trusting

It’s no surprise that consumers are tired of paid ads. A study by the research firm Yankelovich says that the average American is exposed to over 5000 ads per day. 5000 ads per day!
Consumers are so used to seeing ads that it’s triggered a phenomenon known as ‘banner blindness’, where consumers automatically zone out of ads they are shown and skip onto TRUE, organic content from people they TRUST.
Word of mouth marketing delivers more than double the sales of paid marketing. Yep, that’s a big factor to consider when allocating your social and paid budgets this year.
90% of consumers trust peer recommendations over brand advertisements and that’s what purchase decisions are built on… trust. The other major benefit of word of mouth and influencer marketing is that customers acquired through this channel have a 37% retention rate.
Not only does influencer marketing get you more of an ROI but it’s more sustainable in the long run too.

3) It’s Powerful

Lord and Taylor, the popular fashion retailer recently asked 50 influencers to post photos of them wearing a particular dress on Instagram. They sold out of that particular dress within a week. This simple story is clear, by targeting 50 fashion influencers they effectively told the fashion community that this dress was HOT, HOT, HOT.
Lord and Taylors goal was primarily to increase sales. The ROI they actually received was far more than they anticipated and not only that, once they were able to re-stock the dress, they could then reuse the content created by those influencers for a second wave….organically.
Such an influencer campaign on Pinterest would perhaps have been even more valuable due to Pinterests lifetime value of a pin due to Pinterest’s search feature, heavily used by users with a high intent to buy.

4) It’s Growing

Influencer marketing is quickly becoming one of the hot topics among thought leaders and reporters alike. Just one quick look on Google trends demonstrates just how much ‘influencer marketing’ has grown (in search volume) over the last few years.

5) It’s Cheap

Right now, influencer marketing is so new and growing so fast that it’s not yet received the full adoption of the masses.
What does that mean?
It means ‘opportunity’. Officially, the term is recognized as ‘arbitrage’ and can be best explained as what happened when Facebook first launched there own advertising platform.
Early adopters of Facebook ads benefited with high ROI’s because of the low competition. As Facebook advertising became more popular, it was adopted by the marketing masses and actually drove the prices up by over 355% in 2014, effectively meaning the ride was over for many smaller companies.
Right now, opportunity is ‘ripe’ in influencer marketing. Influencer supply is high but marketing demand is still low, meaning you can now run an effective influencer campaign at a cost far below its true value.

6. Yes it’s Measurable!

Influencer marketing is more measurable than ever. Traditional marketers threw caution to the wind and invested in TV campaigns, Radio and print that could never deliver an accurate ROI report. even with an old school version of influencer marketing, Celebrity endorsements were still hard to measure.
Nowadays it’s completely different. Every like, comment, interaction can be measured easily and effectively. Performance data can be easily accessed, stored, analyzed and turned into valuable insights about your target market, your product, brand and overall performance.

Disadvantages:

1) It’s New

Influencer marketing is still new. Something ‘new’ comes hand in hand with ‘unknown’ and when the ‘unknown’ is present, ‘risk’ often reveals its ugly head! But, there was trepidation with social media within the marketing world, and look how many businesses and marketers were left behind then.

2) Lack of Control

Just like with any failed celebrity endorsement, empowering influencers to represent and talk about your brand comes with an element of risk. Sometimes things go wrong, that’s why the influencer recruitment process should not be taken lightly. The last thing you want is a loose cannon running around talking about your brand.
Be smart, invest time in getting to know the influencers you want to hire. Or use an influencer platform or agency like Vizified who already have working relationships with trusted, reliable and high quality influencers.

3) Content Ownership

Some concerns have been raised around the ownership of the branded content created by an influencer. Any influencer campaign should be considered a ‘partnership’ and the key to any campaign is to empower the influencer as much as possible. That means placing trust in them. They know what works and doesn’t work with their audience and don’t forget the goal is to amplify your brand to the masses not to just create content for your brand.
If you need content created then use a 3rd party company or visit our extra services page to see how we can help you with your content creation needs.

4) Influencer management

A successful influencer marketing campaign requires at least 2 influencers to collaborate with. Sometimes, a larger budget can mean anywhere from 1-100 influencers are used to amplify your brand. Managing such a large amount of influencers can be a drain on time and resources.
We recommend minimizing potential ‘learning curves’ using a 3rd party influencer platform or agency like Vizified who already have relationships and have executed successful influencer campaigns multiple times

Summary:

Like every new marketing channel, it’s worth testing both, analysing the results and seeing which one works best for you. Fortunately, as well as our influencer campaign service, Vizified also offers promoted pin campaigns for those looking to outsource all of their Pinterest marketing plans. You can learn more about our Promoted Pin campaign services here

Pinterest Promoted Pins

During the testing phase of Pinterest’s Promoted Pins, the average Promoted Pin received 11 re-pins, meaning 30 additional people will see the pin due to Pinterests high virality level (mainly due to the repin button). Pinterest is growing and the careful rollout of their own advertising platform demonstrates that growth.
So what are the advantages and disadvantages of Promoted Pins?

Advantages:

1) Targeting

Such an ad platform couldn’t have been built, tested and rolled out successfully unless it had one thing… data. Like Facebook, Pinterest have taken the data and allowed marketers to take leverage it through highly targeted ad campaigns. Pinterest allows you to zero in on a specific audience based on location, gender, demographics, interests and pins they have recently shown interest in.
This targeting ability ensures that your Promoted Pin is seen by the right audience who are more likely to interact with the pin, visit your website and convert into a customer.

2) Awareness

One of the additional benefits of Promoted Pins is the extra attention and priority your paid pin is given. When you reserve premium inventory on Pinterest you get access to the best real estate in terms of pin placement and positioning. You also get access to more creative ad units that stand out from regular pins. Finally, the lifetime value of an ad is high due to users saving your Promoted Pin to their own personal boards.

3) Traffic

With such a high level of awareness and targeting it’s no surprise that one of the key advantages of a Promoted Pin campaign is the traffic it can send to your site. That’s the end goal after all right? Visitors to your site from Pinterest have already engaged with your brand or product, building up a level of trust essential in the purchase decision process. You can even set a ‘traffic’ specific campaign if traffic is your main focus.

Disadvantages:

1) Price Increase

Unfortunately, even though the launch of Promoted Pins is still very recent, the popular success stories mean more and more competition. Like similar ad platforms like Facebook and Google Adwords, Pinterest’s Promoted Pins pricing structure is based on the level of competition for certain keywords and target audiences.
Get in there now and you’ll benefit but in time prices will rise and bigger brands flexing their budget muscles drive up competition.

2) People still don’t like seeing ads

Yeah Promoted ads are native, they add a certain level of value and they integrate quite seamlessly into the user experience but, at the end of the day it’s an ad. People just don’t appreciate seeing ads anymore. Many users responded negatively to the launch of Promoted Pins and there are forums and websites dedicated to helping people not see ads in their Pinterest feeds.

3) Rules and Guidelines

Pinterest has some strict rules and guideline that have to be adhered to when creating a promoted pin campaign. This can limit brands when trying to achieve certain goals. For example, you cannot use specific call to actions such as “click to view” to encourage clicks to your site. Something to consider.

Conclusion

We created Vizified to help entrepreneurs, small businesses and large corporations plan, implement and execute an effective Pinterest marketing strategy. Our own personal success as an influencer combined with being recognized as Pinterest marketing pioneers allows us to achieve this.
Whether you want to launch an influencer campaign with our network of Pinterest influencers or you want assistance setting up a promoted pin campaign then we can help.