Oftentimes, marketers want to turn on ads to see if they will convert sales or grow their email lists, but don’t take time to think about the long-term impact or strategy.

I want to show you how to use Pinterest search ads with a traffic campaign and only pay when people click on your ads.

To achieve this we must first breakdown campaign objectives, billing types and how to use only the search placement.

Pinterest Search Ads: Send More Targeted Traffic to Your Site for Cheaper

Choosing a Campaign Objective

Consideration (formerly traffic) vs Conversion: which do I choose?

If you want to run ads that you only pay for when someone clicks on your ad then you need to choose a consideration campaign.

Let’s talk about the difference between the two objectives so you know for next time.

Consideration Objective

Goal: Traffic 
Billing: Pay per click

Conversion Objective

Goal: Leads or sales
Billing: Pay per impression

What does this mean?

Simply put, consideration campaigns only charge you when someone clicks. In conversion campaigns, you are billed when someone sees your ads. Whether they click or not, you get charged.

In this particular post I want you to choose consideration for your objective. Using a consideration objective lets you test your campaign in search. You can see whether it’s cheaper for you to get clicks and conversions in the form of email list sign ups versus sales, for example.

You can and should still install your event codes on the appropriate pages so you can track the ROI (return on investment) for your campaigns.

This way, you can set up your consideration campaign to lead to a landing page where you collect emails or to a sales page to get some revenue.

Search vs Interest Targeting

So the most common targeting options within your Pinterest ads manager are search and interest.

You can use custom audience targeting as well, but we’re focusing on the first two.

Search Targeting

Search targeting gives you the ability to target keywords you know your audience is searching for. You should add search terms related to your offer, and the algorithm will place your ads in those searches.

Depending on the competition and auction pressure, your placement may be at the top of search or could be placed further down.

This is where choosing automated bidding can really be beneficial so you aren’t beat out at auction.

Interest Targeting

Interest targeting is where you choose interests in your ads manager that are associated with your ads. Pinterest will place your ads alongside those interests.

If you’re choosing interests alone you don’t have to use the search placement, but you certainly can if you’d like.

Pinterest always recommends to use “all” on placements but stick with me… we’re strategizing getting cheaper clicks.

What are Pinterest Search Ads?

Pinterest search ads are where you place your ad in search results only.

You can get really targeted with your keyword research and only use keywords related to your content, or you can go a little more broad and use what I like to call parallel keywords.

I like to use search terms that aren’t necessarily related to my offer knowing my potential audience is also searching for those and will see my ad.

How many keywords should I use?

I personally use 150-300 keywords when I use a search only targeting strategy, and after a week or more I go in and archive and add more as needed.

This amount of keywords will allow you to really broaden that search out and spread your wings wide.

I start off my brainstorm by thinking of all the ways I can show up in a search, whether it’s directly related to the offer or not. I jot those ideas down and start using the search bar inside my ads manager to see what comes up.

Other places to find keywords:

Pinterest search bar
Pinterest trends

Types of Keywords to Use

There are several variations of keywords you can use in the ads manager to define how you want to show up in the search results.

Broad Match

Broad match simply means using a term and allowing the algorithm to match it in a more broad way.

For example, here is what your broad keywords will look like:

• chicken soup noodle
• chicken stew
• noodle soup
• soup chicken noodle
• noodle soup recipes
• soup recipe noodle

Your search results would also show in results for searches like “recipes for chicken soup” as well as your defined keywords. It would not likely show up in search results for “kitchen renovations” if you didn’t use that term explicitly.

Phrase Match

Phrase match means you input your terms inside of “quotation marks” to further define what you want Pinterest to do with your ads.

For example, your phrase match keywords would instead look like this:

• “chicken soup noodle”
• “chicken stew”
• “noodle soup”
• “soup chicken noodle”
• “noodle soup recipes”
• “soup recipe noodle”

Your search results would include the phrase in the EXACT keyword, including misspelled words and variations very close to them. So you would show up in a search result for “chicken noodle soup recipe” with the phrase “chicken noodle soup” included. You would not show up in a search for “chicken recipes grilled” because you didn’t include that phrase in your targeting.

Exact Match 

Exact match is exactly what you think it is… it uses exact phrases. I typically don’t start with exact match keywords, but use those as an optimization technique later.

Exact match keywords use the square brackets around each word.

For example, your exact match keywords would look like this:

• [chicken soup noodle]
• [chicken stew]
• [noodle soup]
• [soup chicken noodle]
• [noodle soup recipes]
• [soup recipe noodle]

You will not show up in search results for ANY other phrases when you use exact keywords, unless you have it in your keyword targeting. If you input [chicken noodle] you will show up in that search term but would not show up in a search for “chicken noodle soup” if you didn’t include it.

Negative Match

Negative match keywords are used to exclude your ads from certain search terms. For example, if you were targeting chicken noodle soup search terms but you didn’t want to show up in vegan soup searches you would use a -[keyword] in front of your terms.

For example, your negative match keywords would look like this:

• -[vegan soup recipes]
• -[plant based soup]
• -[non meat soup]

You want to remove keywords from your search if you know they are interfering with your results. There are a lot of double meanings in the english language that you will run into, and this is where negative keywords are beneficial.

Why choose search only ads?

Choosing search placement only will allow you to define your targeting to only the people you want to see your ad and then only pay for those who actually click it.

This helps to really only pay for the people you think will be interested in your content or offer and weed out the rest.

Sure, someone who is searching for beef stew would likely be interested in your chicken noodle soup recipe, but then again we only want to pay for people who chicken recipes right now.

You can really test out your keywords and how profitable and impactful they are to your overall strategy by using a keyword search campaign.

Automatic vs Custom Bids

When you are putting your campaign together and thinking through your budget and bidding strategy, you have to consider whether you want to have automatic or custom bids.

Automatic Bids

An automatic bid strategy allows the algorithm to serve your ads at the lowest possible cost per click. I have found that automated bidding on consideration campaigns works really well.

This is the oldest and most seasoned part of the ad platform on Pinterest.

Custom Bids

You set your bid to the maximum you want to pay for your clicks and the algorithm does it’s best to serve. Keep in mind that the auction pressure and competition could be higher than you pick, leaving your custom bid too low to serve.

Updates to Consideration (formerly traffic) Campaign Billing in 2021

First things first: this campaign type was recently renamed, so if you’re reading older articles or watching older videos then you may notice the name “traffic campaigns.”

The objective remains the same, but they are now named Consideration campaigns.

The name change also rolled out a change in how consideration campaigns are billed.

So Pinterest instituted what is referred to as “campaign budget optimization” which puts your budget at the campaign level instead of the ad group level.

This allows the platform to optimize your budget across all ad groups based on performance of those ads.

I personally really like this change to consideration campaigns because it means I can test more ad groups with the same budget.

In an ideal world, the algorithm would spend the most money towards your best performing ad groups.

Pinterest Search Ad Walkthrough

I never like to assume someone can take what I’m talking about and just do it, so I’m going to show you how to set this up.

Open your Pinterest account and hover over ads > create ad.

Give your campaign a name, input your budget in the box and click “launch.”

Note: I would not use a lifetime budget. Instead opt for a daily budget and pay close attention to your ads. This allows the algorithm to optimize better.

On the next screen you will now be in the ad group level.

Give your ad group a name then click “choose your own” in the targeting details section.

When you click “choose your own” in that targeting details section, you will unlock the next section.

This is where you can start inputting the keywords you want to target.

Click into your keyword section and click keywords right next to interest to actually open the keyword targeting section.

Input your search terms into the box on the left and move to the next section for demographics.

I always leave this open and don’t make changes here. Instead, I use these to optimize my campaign later on.

Once you have made your choices here, move to the ad placement section on the next screen.

This is where you will select “search” so you only show up in search results.

Once you have done this move to the next section where you select the ads that you want to run.

Choose your images. If you need to verify they are going the right destination then click “review ads” and it will look like this:

On this screen you can change the ad name, destination URL and add a layer of additional tracking if you wish.

That’s it… click launch and they will be approved and turned on or thrown back into pending for you to make corrections.

Optimizing Your Search Campaigns

My ads aren’t getting many clicks or impressions

If you notice you aren’t getting many clicks or impressions, you likely need to increase your bid.

My clickthrough rate is really low

Anything below .54% is likely not going to perform very well in the algorithm, so aim to get your CTR above .54%. You can do this by adding new creatives to your ad groups.

My keywords aren’t spending

Not all of your keywords are going to spend. You can archive any that aren’t spending after a week or so and add more.

Wrap Up

The goal with this campaign type is to put ads in front of a highly targeted and relevant audience and not pay for anything or anyone that isn’t interested.

If you have a lower budget, then this might be the perfect strategy for you to test ads, your content and overall audience using ads.

We help our clients to run ads all the time but perhaps you’re just in a place that you want to test these yourself first. 

Click over to watch our playlist on YouTube all about Pinterest Ads so you can make the most of your budget right away.

The post Pinterest Search Ads: Send More Targeted Traffic to Your Site for Cheaper appeared first on Jessica Stansberry.

What if My Pinterest Ads Aren’t Working? How to Set Up and Read Your Data

Before we can troubleshoot why your Pinterest ads aren’t working, it’s important to understand what data you should track and how to find it. You also need to understand what the metrics that Pinterest shows you actually mean!

What KPIs should I track for Pinterest Ads?

KPI stands for “key performance indicator.” Or, a performance metric that helps you understand if you’re meeting your business goals.

When I’m running Pinterest ads, I like to track metrics for signups, sales, and a few others as my key performance indicators.

In the agency for my clients, we track the following metrics as our KPIs (don’t worry, we’re going to define them!):

ROAS
CTR
Outbound Clicks
Pin Clicks
CPM
CPA
Conversions

But what do each of these mean? Let’s define them.

ROAS

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is how much money you made back as a result of your ads. We measure ROAS for all of our digital and physical sales. (We usually always want to make our money back on our ads, so it’s an important metric.)

The only time you won’t typically track ROAS is if you’re running a lead generation campaign and aren’t selling anything behind your ads. For example, a Pinterest ad campaign to grow your email list using a freebie wouldn’t need to track ROAS.

If you read my post the 3 Types of Pinterest Ads to Run, you know I talk about running tripwire ads where you can make your ad spend back right away with a small product sale.

Return on ad spend is not always the goal of running Pinterest ads, so whether or not you care about this metric will depend upon your campaign goals.

CTR

Click through rate (CTR) tells you the percentage of people who saw your ad and actually clicked through to it.

You need your CTR to be high enough for the algorithm to optimize and deliver your ads to the right people. More on this later.

Outbound Clicks

This is a new metric introduced by Pinterest in January of 2021.

Outbound clicks are how many people clicked through your ad to your landing page from Pinterest.

Pin Clicks

This metric was formerly known as “link clicks” and has now been redefined as “pin clicks.” Pin clicks measure how many people clicked your pin on the platform and engaged with it, but didn’t click through your ad and leave the platform.

This typically doesn’t happen on mobile because ads are one tap. So, if you click on an ad on the Pinterest mobile app, it zaps you right to the landing page.

CPM

CPM is cost per thousand impressions. This is a billing metric used in conversion campaigns that tells you how much your ad spend is to get 1,000 impressions on your ad.

CPA

CPA is cost per acquisition, which tells you how much you’re paying to acquire the sale or lead (depending on the goal of your campaign).

Conversions

Conversions are how many people actually converted as a result of your ads. Again, what a “conversion” means will be defined by which type of campaign you’re running.

What attribution window should I use?

The next thing you should be aware of is your attribution window.

What is an attribution window?

An attribution window is the timeframe that Pinterest attributes conversions to your ad campaign.

So, a 30/30/30 attribution window would track conversions up to 30 days after they click on your ad, 30 days after they engage with your ad, and 30 days after they view your ad.

Here are some other attribution windows you can use to optimize your ads on Pinterest.

Pinterest recommends that your ad campaign’s attribution window should be a longer amount of time because Pinterest ads take longer to optimize. The more data you can give the algorithm over a longer period of time, the better your ads can perform.

Google analytics measures attribution in a 1/1/1 window, so if you’re comparing your conversions in your Pinterest ads manager to your Google analytics, they won’t match up. Know that, when you’re reviewing your results, they may vary based on how and where you’re tracking those stats.

Alright, now that we know what all these metrics mean, we can dive into setting up your reports and troubleshooting when your Pinterest ads aren't working.

How to Setup Your Ads Reporting Inside Your Ads Manager

Before you can track data from your ads campaign, you will want to set up your ads reporting inside your dashboard.

The metrics I mentioned above are just a handful of the things I track, so let me show you where to find those metrics in your ads manager.

Navigate to the reporting tab inside your dashboard and look for the pencil to the right of the table where your campaigns are listed.

Click the pencil icon on the table and you’ll see a list of different metrics you can add to your table or remove from your current selection.

Click the pencil icon and click into details.

I like to remove the following metrics from the table:

• Pin description
• Creative type
• Ad format
• Product group ad format

Go back to the main selection when you click the pencil and click “schedule, budgets and bids.”

I like to remove the following:

• Ad group budget type
• Ad group budget strategy type
• Ad group start date/time
• Ad group end date/time

Navigate into overall performance. I like to remove the following:

• Gross impressions
• Gross Pin clicks
• Result
• Cost per result

In this same menu I like to add the following: 

• Frequency

Navigate back to your menu and click into engagement total and remove everything except for the following:

• Pin clicks
• CTR
• CPC
• Saves
• Outbound clicks

Navigate to your menu again and click into conversions > total and choose all of the following:

• Total CPA (Checkout)
• Total ROAS (Checkout)
• Total conversions (Checkout)
• Total order value (Checkout)

Navigate to your menu again and click into signups > total and choose the following:

• Total CPA (Signup)
• Total conversions (Signup)

If you want to track lead conversions or add to cart conversions you will choose the same exact metrics as signups.

So now that we have our table set up, it should look like this from your ad group level.

What Can I Do if My Pinterest Ads Aren’t Working?

Once you are seeing the results filter into your ads manager, you will want to review the metrics that are important to your overall goals for the campaign.

You will want to first take a look at your data and ask the following questions:

• Is my campaign spending the budget I set?
• Is each ad group spending the budget I set?
• What is my click through rate per image?

I like to look at these three metrics first. These metrics tell me if my campaign is being delivered based on the targeting that I chose.

If my campaign or ad groups aren’t spending, then I know I have to dig deeper and find out why.

Let’s troubleshoot some common issues you might see with your Pinterest Ads:

My CTR is low so my ads aren’t spending.

Typically, if your campaign isn’t spending, then your click-through rate is too low. Your imagery click-through rate needs to be .54% or higher for the algorithm to deliver. So first up is to get new imagery inside of your ad groups to get that CTR up.

In this situation, if you have your campaign set to custom bidding, you may need to switch to automatic bidding or raise your bid. You could be getting outbid in the auction.

My CTR is high enough but I’m not getting conversions

You will want to look at your targeting options to see if they are delivering. If you look at your table and the interests that you’ve chosen aren’t performing well on CTR, impressions, clicks, etc., then you may want to remove those interests and add others.

All of my metrics look good, but I’m not getting the conversions I want or at the price I want them

If you aren’t seeing the conversions you want at the price you want, you may need to look at your landing pages to be sure that they correspond appropriately with your ads. The images and the promise you’re making on your Pinterest ads needs to be what you’re proposing on the landing page.

It’s so important to have cohesion between your landing page and the ad you’re running. If a potential customer clicks your ad expecting one thing and gets another, then they likey won’t convert.

You will also want to look at your imagery to be sure it’s not confusing what you want them to do. Make your call to action clear!

I’m not getting sales, but my metrics look good

If your metrics look good but you aren’t getting sales, you may need to adjust your attribution window to be sure you are seeing sales in your ads manager. If you have a wide attribution window but you’re not seeing sales at all, you may need to evaluate your pricing. Is the product you’re advertising overpriced?

If you believe your pricing is good and you’ve had sales at that price point before, then you may need to evaluate your audience. Are you targeting the right people?

If your ads are converting on Facebook but not Pinterest, it might be the landing page itself. I have noticed at times that certain clients' ads don’t perform as well on Pinterest as they do elsewhere based on the landing page. Our method of selling on Pinterest vs Facebook is different because buyer intent on either platform is different. Their reason for using the platform is inherently different.

So take a look at your funnel itself if all of your numbers look good but you still aren’t getting the conversions you want.

What if my keywords aren’t working for my campaign?

Sometimes when you choose to promote an interest and keyword based campaign together, you will notice your keywords won’t spend. The majority of the budget may be spent on interests, so if your keywords aren’t spending and your interests aren’t bringing the results you want, then make sure you are evaluating and removing those interests from your targeted audience.

Wrap Up

Those are the most common questions that arise when Pinterest ad campaigns aren’t converting. So if you're wondering what to do if your Pinterest ads aren't working now, you can go out and fix them!

If you have additional issues that come up and you want to learn more about ads, or just to connect, follow me on YouTube and reach out!

The post What if My Pinterest Ads Aren’t Working? How to Set Up and Read Your Data appeared first on Jessica Stansberry.

If you’re newer to running ads on any platform, it could be a mystery! So I wanted to bring you a guide to 3 types of Pinterest ads you can run.

If you’re confused about how to use Pinterest ads, go back and read my previous posts!

Pinterest Ads: A Complete Guide for Getting Started will help you to get started with running ads.

Do Pinterest Ads really work will help you to understand this ads platform where you will learn about ad costs, customer journey and more.

3 Types of Pinterest Ads to Run

Once you’re ready to start running ads, these ideas will help you to jumpstart that first campaign.

By far, my favorite ad campaign strategy is “Freebie to Tripwire” ads.

Freebie to Tripwire Funnels

This is by far my favorite way to run promoted pins on Pinterest. When it comes to setting up a Pinterest ad campaign, most people think about lead generation ads.

Freebie to tripwire funnels are a great way to turn your cold freebie seekers into customers faster than you normal!

Get the Digital Product Blueprint

What is a tripwire?

I call these products “tripwires,” but they are also labeled splinter offers or small offers.

Generally, a tripwire is a low-priced product placed right after a free lead magnet that is closely tied to the freebie. It will encourage the person signing up for your freebie to take one step further in their journey to solve their problem.

For example, my freebie on my website is a Pinterest Strategy Guide and my tripwire is my Pinterest System. It’s a paid product that helps the freebie seeker take the next step in their marketing journey.

How do tripwire funnels work?

Great question! A tripwire funnel is set up using three main pages.

Page 1: Freebie

Your first page is going to be your lead magnet that you give away for free. This page will poke at the pain that your ideal client has and position your free offer as step one in the solution.

Oftentimes this page could include swipe files, how to guides, strategy guides like mine, checklists, mini courses, etc.

Ultimately you want your freebie to relate to your high ticket offer you will sell later in your funnel.

Page 2: Tripwire Sales Page

Then, page 2 is your tripwire sales page. This page generally sells your product at a lower price for a short amount of time.

For example, on my tripwire page I sell my product for $17 for 30 minutes. Once that timer runs out the page redirects to the full-price sales page and they can’t get back to it.

The tripwire page is where the lead magnet redirects to after they hit the submit button on your form.

The last page of your funnel will be a thank you page, and this is only if they purchase the tripwire product.

If they buy the tripwire product, you can send them to a thank you page to let them know what they can expect next.

Alternatively you can also send them to an upsell page. The options are limitless, but I would encourage you to test this out.

Pros & Cons of Tripwire Funnels

Pros:

• You can turn your freebie seekers into buyers faster
• Make money back from of your funnel right away to cover ad spend
• Build trust, authority and credibility quickly

Cons:

• Running ads can cost money without profit right away
• Some people who click your ad will not like being presented with a product so quickly
• Upselling to another product for some people can be challenging later on

List Building Ads

While running a freebie to tripwire is a fun way to make your ad spend back, some people aren’t quite ready to build a product to sell. That is totally fine, and you can still run list building ads on Pinterest.

A general list building ad is usually positioned with a free lead magnet and a simple thank you page behind it.

You nurture the people who sign up for your freebie in email and use that as an opportunity to get to know you and your business.

You can use list building ads as a way to generate leads before a launch as well.

What types of lead magnets work on Pinterest?

This is a question I get frequently and it really depends on your niche, your audience, and their pain points.

However, I have seen swipe files, editorial calendars, checklists, planner pages, mini courses and more used as lead magnets.

My suggestion? Ask your audience what they need help with, then combine that with what you think they need. Most often I have found that what someone thinks they need and what they actually need are different. That’s why I use a tripwire funnel like I mentioned above.

Your first step is to start researching on the platform to see what else is out there that’s similar to your product. But remember that your audience is not necessarily someone else’s audience.

What works for them may not work for you.

List Building Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Directly impacts your business goals
• Builds your email list without distraction
• Improve brand awareness Builds credibility and trust in their inbox
• Helps to sell products later on

Cons:

• List-building landing pages aren’t generally found unless you link to them directly
• It can be costly to run ads to your landing pages & optimize the landing page without gaining lead
• It can also be costly to run list building ads if you’re not selling anything to recoup your investment

Straight to Sales Page

If you have a product or service that you want to sell, you can always run ads straight to a sales page. This strategy is most often used in open/closed cart launch strategies, but I also use this with clients to promote their paid programs.

Depending on the price point and audience you may very well notice straight to sales page converts well for you.

An example of straight to sales page ads that I have used is running ads during one of my client’s membership open carts.

We list-build with a tripwire funnel all year, but several times throughout the year we open cart to their membership.

When that happens, our ad destination changes to the enrollment page for her membership.

You can promote your SLO (self-liquidating offers) on Pinterest all of the time, too. I really love doing this for clients to recoup their investment into my services and their ad spend.

We run ads to their products priced between $27-$97 all the time, without any gates in front of them.

You can sell products on autopilot by using a straight to sales page method as long as your sales page converts.

Straight to Sales Page Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Buyers who are ready to buy can do so without distraction
• Sales pages are often very informative & can cut down the time to nurture to a sale
• Sales pages with testimonials can improve brand loyalty and trust
• Pixel visitors & retarget them later

Cons:

• Some people may not be ready to buy, but you paid for them to see your page anyways
• It can take time to optimize a sales page to convert to sales
• It can also be costly to run sales page ads if you’re not sure if your product is proven to sell in the market

Wrap Up

Running any type of ads on any platform comes with a bit of risk. Yes, you can lose money, but you will never know if you don’t try. Ads strategies will vary depending on your business, audience, offers, price points and more. These are 3 ads you can run on Pinterest are options to get your wheels turning and see what you can really do with Pinterest ads.

Gather the data and use it to your advantage when running ads. If all else fails, return to Do Pinterest Ads really work? to read more about how you can improve your targeting.

If you want to see my tripwire funnel in action, feel free to grab my free Pinterest Strategy Guide by clicking here.

The post 3 Types of Pinterest Ads to Run appeared first on Jessica Stansberry.

If you take some time to just browse your smart feed on Pinterest, you may notice some heavy hitters like Porsche, Smirnoff, Native, Bissell, Pampers and many others running ads on the platform. 

There are many advertisers that don’t even sell anything online who run ads on Pinterest, like Kelloggs.

Depending on your product, its promise, and your target market, you could really benefit from using Pinterest ads to drive traffic & sales to your website or shop.

So let’s break down what it takes to make Pinterest ads really work.

Do Pinterest Ads Really Work?

To get Pinterest ads to work there are a few things you need to know. Aside from reading through the Ultimate Guide to Pinterest Ads and getting everything you need in place, we have a few more items to cover.

50% of users have made a purchase after seeing a promoted pin on Pinterest. This tells us that pinners are interested in the ads they’re seeing and buying those products and services.

How much does it cost to advertise on Pinterest?

Pinterest advertising cost will vary depending on what you’re advertising, the timeframe when you turn your ads on, and how much your product costs.

It’s going to cost you more to run ads as the price of your product increases. This is especially true for physical products.

You should always know the cost it takes to acquire a customer as well as how long it takes for them to convert before you start creating ads. If you go into running ads on any platform without knowing this information, you probably won’t see the results you’d like.

Get the Digital Product Blueprint

What to Focus on to Make Sure Your Pinterest Ads Convert

Understanding what to focus on to create a Pinterest ad that converts will help give you the confidence to run ads without wondering if what you’re doing is right or wrong.

So let’s break down the 10 things I think are important when diving into Pinterest advertising.

Understand Your Audience Journey

Getting to know your audience and the journey they take between knowing they have a problem and buying a product to fix it will help your ads. This process is called the buyer journey, and knowing this information can inform your ad campaigns from top to bottom.

For example, let’s say you sell planners (like Jessica) and one of the things your audience has difficulty with is time management. They become aware they have a problem when they can’t seem to manage their time & reach their goals.

Your ideal customer goes to Pinterest, searches for “how to manage my time better,” and they find your ad.

This would be considered the awareness phase in the buyer journey, where the pinner knows they have a problem but doesn’t know what they need to solve it yet.

Creating content for the top of the funnel, or entry point, will bring you new leads. Then, presenting the next phase of their journey in the middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel as other ads will help drive conversions.

Know their journey and place ads in front of them at each phase.

Understand Your Offer & How it Works on Pinterest

Just because your offer and funnel pages work like gangbusters on Facebook ads does not mean they will work on Pinterest the same way.

You have to remember that Pinterest users are not the same as Facebook users. The reason they are on each platform differs. Pinterest users are typically searching for solutions or inspiration, whereas Facebook users are there to be entertained and catch up with their community.

This may explain the reason that users are buying your offers without thinking about them on Facebook, but take longer to convert on Pinterest. That doesn’t mean that every audience will always take longer to convert on Pinterest, but it’s something to consider.

Understand the Algorithm & How it Delivers

Knowing how the algorithm works will help you greatly to optimize your ads on Pinterest.

Pinterest delivers on the auction floor based on bid first. So if your bid is lower than your competitor, your ads will be placed after theirs.

Once they place ads based on bid, they continue to place ads based on CTR (click-through rate). If your CTR is low, then your ads won’t be placed as often, if at all.

A low CTR harms your overall campaign health.

Make Sure Your Budget & Bid are High Enough

Bidding too low and having a small budget decrease your chances of delivery. Low cost, low budget ads are possible on Pinterest, but you need to keep in mind that the time of year, competition and audience size all factor into the cost.

You want to be competitive at auction so that your ads are shown to the correct people. So, knowing how much it normally costs you to attain a customer and structuring your budget and bid accordingly is crucial to ad performance.

Create Attractive Images

I suppose it would be impolite to say creating ugly images will likely harm your delivery. But the truth is, people need to stop their scroll long enough to click your ad and take action.

Make sure you are creating images that are helping to stop that scroll. Feature your product or promise in a way that makes people want to take a look!

To make sure your ad is visually interesting, you can do your research before creating your ads. Look at what others on the platform are doing, and then make your ads stand out against that.

If everyone in the search results for your keywords are using blue imagery, then make yours yellow or pink. If everyone is using square images, use long images.

Do your research, and when you have your ads running rely on that CTR to tell you which image is performing the best.

Test Your Targeting

Test targeting in different ad groups before deciding which one to focus on is the winning combination. You should never put all your eggs in one basket, or you’ll be hard-pressed to know which targeting factor is working! Or, your ads may just not deliver at all.

Here are a few options you can do to test your campaign targeting. You will test these at the ad group level.

1. Keywords ad group vs interests ad group
2. The same targeting vs imagery is different in each ad group
3. Cold ad group vs warm ad group

Create Cohesion Between Landing Page & Ad Imagery

This is important because a pinner doesn’t want to see one promise then hit a landing page that speaks to a totally different promise. The same goes for how your pin looks. 

Make sure there is cohesion between your ad imagery and the landing page they will hit when they click over. Don’t give your audience whiplash.

Use a Strong Call to Action

Passive language isn’t going to garner passive income. You need to use a strong call to action on your pins and landing pages to get that conversion you desire.

If you aren’t telling your audience what they need to do, then they won’t do it. We as humans innately like being told what to do… don’t leave them guessing or they will leave and never return.

Ensure A Frictionless Experience for Signup & Checkout

If you are running ads to your website, but your website has pop ups happening everywhere and is riddled with ads, you may lose those people.

Make sure you are running ads to landing pages that have all the noise removed. You should have a single goal when that person lands on your page.

If that goal is to get someone to sign up for your email list, then that is your call to action. Then, remove the noise.

If that goal is to buy a product, then again, remove all the other noise!

Make sure your site loads fast too. This is so crucial! No one likes a slow loading site.

When you are wondering if Pinterest ads really work, these are factors you need to take into consideration.

Nothing is worse than spending money and seeing no return. Track your data, watch the numbers and take purposeful action.

Grab my Pinterest Ads Checklist to get started running Pinterest ads today!

The post Do Pinterest Ads Really Work? appeared first on Jessica Stansberry.

Pinterest Ads: A Complete Guide for Getting Started

Are you ready to jump into Pinterest ads like a boss?

What are Pinterest ads?

Pinterest ads, aka promoted pins, are image-based ads. They integrate so well into the feed that you may not even notice them while you’re scrolling.

1 in 2 people buy after seeing a Pinterest ad. Because these ads integrate into the feed so well, pinners have said that they actually add to the experience on the platform.

Why Promote Pins?

“Why promote pins” is a question I hear quite often because Pinterest has long been known for its organic growth. Some marketers are even worried if they start promoting pins they will have to spend money forever on Pinterest to see growth. 

While I can’t speak to that for certain, I haven’t seen it to be true in my four years of running a Pinterest agency.

Promoted pins on Pinterest allow you to cut through the time it would take to get in front of your audience organically.

Who doesn’t like skipping the line? I know it’s not polite in most cases, but we’re not in grade school. If you have the budget and an offer people will love, then why not try it out?

Are Pinterest ads right for my business?

The next most common question I get in my agency is this one… How do I know if Pinterest ads are right for my business?

The answer is simple. 

Is your audience on Pinterest?

Are your competitors on Pinterest?

If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then you should consider Pinterest ads at some point in your marketing journey.

Get the Digital Product Blueprint

If you answer no to either one, then all you need to do is hop on the platform and search for the topics you create content around. Then, search for your competitors and see if they are on the platform as well. Especially if they are promoting pins!

The business niche is one caveat to this rule. If you’re in the business niche, you will want to take a look at your content and your audience and ask yourself if they are on Pinterest looking for you. In my case, I create content about Pinterest ads & organic marketing. While my beginner DIY audience is looking for me on Pinterest, my ideal clients are not. My clients are what pay my bills, so I put most of my time into the places where those people are hanging out.

This is not to say that Pinterest advertising won’t work for you if you’re in the business niche. I have run successful campaigns on Pinterest, and there are a lot of marketers running ads in those niches as well. But I want to encourage you to research before you pull that trigger and  bow out saying it doesn’t work for you.

What should I do before I start running Pinterest Ads?

Let’s get into the fun stuff, shall we? Before you ever start running ads on Pinterest, you need to do these things first. 

For the sake of this post, we are going to use Jessica’s Digital Product Blueprint as an example. I’m going to break this down into two phases of pre-work so let’s dive into the first.

Phase one setup:

Action Items:

1. Install your base code on your website
2. Create landing page for the digital product blueprint
3. Create thank you page for the blueprint
4. Install all relevant event codes
5. Connect your email service provider
6. Write your emails to deliver the freebie
7. Write nurture to sale emails (optional)

Now let’s break each of these steps down.

Step 1: Jessica would install the Pinterest base code on her entire site. This will track and pixel anyone who visits your site and give you the ability to target them via Pinterest.

Step 2: Jessica would create a landing page for the Digital Product Blueprint. On this page, you have one goal and that's to capture an email address.

Pro Tip: Poke at your audience's pain then show your product to be the solution. Show them the benefits of using the Digital Product Blueprint (or whatever your opt-in is) and tell them the transformation after they implement it.

Step 3: Connect your landing page to a custom thank you page to fire the event code for signups. Make sure to connect this thank you page to the landing page!

Pro Tip: Make a custom thank you page for each landing page in your business so you can track your ads.

Step 4: Install your signup event code on the thank you page so your analytics will show you when someone signs up via your ad on Pinterest.

Step 5: Connect your email service provider to your landing pages.

Step 6: Write your delivery email for the lead magnet.

Pro Tip: Don’t put the lead magnet on the thank you page. Make your audience go to their inbox and open your emails so it tells your email provider that you are important.

Step 7: I also like to add a sequence to nurture a sale here, but this step is not required if you don’t have anything to sell at the moment. At this point, we’re assuming you’re not selling anything right away but that you’re collecting emails.

Phase two setup:

Action items: 

1. Upload your email list to Pinterest
2. Create your warm audiences
3. Create pins for your ads

Step 1: Upload your email list to Pinterest. Depending on your phase in business, you may not have an email list just yet. If you don’t, skip this step for now.

Step 2: Next create warm audiences. You have several different options when it comes to creating audiences on Pinterest so I would start simple.

The most common audiences I create are website visitors and email lists, subscribers.

This allows me to create “actalike audiences” for both of those groups. Actalike audiences are groups of people who have similar habits as people who already visit my website or subscribe to my email list, meaning it’s likely that they’ll like my content, too!

Step 3: Now you need to create your pins for your ads. 

Pro Tip: Create a few variations where you feature stock imagery and mockup images with various calls to actions. Upload this imagery to your Pinterest account and optimize it.

The last thing you need to do is make sure your billing is set up in your settings and we can start creating your first ad.

What are the different types of ad campaigns on Pinterest?

There are various campaign types you can run on Pinterest. Depending on your business you may choose one or more of them to test out.

Pinterest Campaign Types:

• Brand Awareness
• Video Views
• Catalog Sales
• Traffic
• Conversions

I would say the majority of people reading this post will ignore the top three campaign types – and if your goal is to lead people to your website and convert them, then you should absolutely focus on the last two.

I always tell my clients to have at least 50 conversions on their event codes before starting a conversion ad. We want Pinterest to know who to serve our ads to and not take a lot of our money to figure it out. If you have built up conversions, Pinterest can figure out who will convert from your ads more easily.

In this case, if you don’t have 50 conversions in the last 7 days on your event codes, I would start a traffic-focused ad campaign and run people to your site until you have 50 events.

To see if you have the 50 conversion events you need to run a conversion ad, head into your ads manager on Pinterest and go to conversions. Next, click event history. This will show you how many events have fired in the last 24 hours.

How to Setup Your First Ad

Now, we are going to get into the action! We are going to create your first ad.

For the Digital Product Blueprint Pinterest ad, we are going to set up a conversion campaign.

To start a conversion campaign, hover over the ads dropdown, choose “create ad,” and choose conversion. Then give your campaign a name. I prefer to name my ad the month + funnel I’m running traffic to.

For example, November Digital Product Blueprint.

Click “Continue” and you will be taken to the ad group level. Make sure to give your ad group a name. I prefer to use the targeting for my ad group names. For example, keywords + interests.

This is where you will add your audience targeting, define your budget, ad placement, optimization settings, and add your imagery.

We’re continuing to use the Digital Product Blueprint in this example. Let’s assume we are running this to cold traffic. In this case, I would choose the top 3-5 interests that my audience is actively searching on Pinterest. You can find those interests inside Audience Insights, filed under “engaged audience.”

Add those interests to your ad group and then you will add upward of 150 relevant keywords you want to target. I recommend using the keyword suggestion box inside the ads manager. I prefer to do my own research on the platform itself based on keywords I find within the suggestion box.

Once you have all of this information included in the ad group, scroll on down to the targeting options.

I prefer to leave all demographics as-is when I first start my ads so I can allow Pinterest plenty of room to deliver. If you restrict your ads too much, you won’t get the results you’re looking for. The algorithm needs room to go out and find your people. More on optimizations & demographics later.

Under the advanced options, I always use “all” for placement and keep the box checked for expanded targeting. These are things I will use to optimize ads later on.

Now it’s time to set your budget and bid.

For conversion campaigns, I prefer to start at $20 per day and use automatic bidding. This will allow the auction to place me up against my competitors. If you choose custom bidding and someone else is bidding higher than you, your ads may not be shown at all.

Lastly, you’re going to choose your Pinterest ads imagery. I usually add 3-5 pins in each ad group to give Pinterest plenty of room to deliver.

You may be wondering why we are leaving things so open for Pinterest to deliver. My answer to that is a pretty common one. The Pinterest algorithm is younger than Facebook and we need options. Pinterest will only show the winning images once it figures out what your audience likes and you can turn the others off.

Your last step is to hit launch and your ad will go into “pending approval” mode. They usually get approved quickly, so keep an eye out for them to go live.

What if my ads are rejected?

The most common reason an ad gets rejected is due to a thin landing page. Pinterest will say something along the lines of “your landing page isn’t quality and you need to fix it.” Usually, you can resubmit and it’s not a problem.

Another common reason your ad might get rejected is if your Pinterest image description does not include the fact that your landing page is gated. If you’re running ads to a lead magnet, always include this phrase…

“Enter your email address on the next page to download your free ______.”

If you get another rejection reason, then you may need to submit a ticket to the ads team.

What to track when you are looking at your data

Now we’re down to tracking the data for your ads. There are a few things you need to track when running ads on any platform, so let’s cover each of them.

• Spend
• CTR – click through rate
• CPC – cost per click
• ROAS – return on ad spend
• CPA – cost per action
• CPM – cost per 1000 impressions
• Frequency – how many times your ads are seen
• Signups – how many signups you got
• Checkout – how many purchases you got

That’s a long list of things to track, but these are my most important metrics.

Is Pinterest spending your daily budget? If not you may need to adjust your targeting.

Your click-through rate will tell you how well people are receiving your image when they see your ad.

I typically use cost per click when I run traffic campaigns, but it’s a good metric to track.

Return on ad spend tells me what I’m taking back from my ads. I spend $4 and make an $8 return on ad spend.

Cost per action tells you how much you paid per person to acquire them.

Cost per 1000 impressions tells you how much you’re spending to reach one thousand people. This is an important metric for conversion campaigns.

The frequency will tell you how often someone sees your ad and whether you need to put in new imagery. The higher the frequency, the more you run the risk of your ad cost being higher. I like to keep the frequency for conversion campaigns between 1-2.

Signups are how many people signed up from your ad.

Checkouts are how many people purchased from your ad.

These are the metrics you want to track so you know whether your ad is performing or not. If you’re spending money but not seeing sign-ups then you need to optimize your ads.

How do I optimize my Pinterest ads?

Depending on your ad performance, you will want to begin optimizing your ads around 14 days.

The first things you’re going to look for in your optimization will depend on your campaign setup. In this example we are using keywords & interests, all demographics, all placement & expanded interests.

1. If your ad imagery is below .50% CTR then you need to add new images
2. Remove any interests that are spending but not bringing returns
3. Remove any keywords that are spending and not bringing results
4. Remove genders that are spending but not returning results
5. Remove devices that aren’t performing

These are the first 5 optimizations that I do. I will optimize, then leave the ad alone for 2-3 days, and then come back to it. If my ad starts performing at that point, meaning it’s bringing leads at a healthy CPA, then I will increase the budget.

Running Pinterest ads leaves so much room to play – and you need to get started!

Want more Pinterest ads tips from Heather? Click here to join her Facebook community where she hangs out and chats on Pinterest all week.

The post Pinterest Ads: A Complete Guide for Getting Started appeared first on Jessica Stansberry.