Do Pinterest Ads Really Work?
Do Pinterest ads really work? That’s a great question, and the short answer is yes, they do work. That’s why so many advertisers are taking their dollars to the platform.
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.
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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.
- Keywords ad group vs interests ad group
- The same targeting vs imagery is different in each ad group
- 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.
