If you heard about spending money on Pinterest ads in 2015, people might laugh at you. Now, the game is changed. Pinterest sought to take itself next to major social media platforms for advertising, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. And to be honest, it’s going quite well.

Each year, its marketing strategy is bringing millions more users to the platform. All of them are searching for something and saving and repinning pins. Along the way, they are discovering new brands.

That brand could be yours. But first, I need to convince you to advertise on Pinterest.

Let’s learn why you should use Pinterest Ads.

What is Pinterest Advertising?

It follows a pay-for-placement system. To reach out to an audience, you can post an image, a caption, and a link and get displayed in users’ home feeds.

Why Use Pinterest Ads?

The platform offers you to advertise in front of over 459 million monthly users. This number is quite big and will take your products in front of a lot of people, but it doesn’t compete with Facebook or Instagram.

There’s more to it than these numbers. Pinterest users are 47% more likely to be introduced to new brands than users on other social platforms.

Pinterest is different than other social media. For example, on Instagram, people just see content other people posted. On the other hand, people have the opportunity to save content for later (Pins).

These people go back and decide to purchase later. Stats prove it. 93% of users plan purchases with Pinterest, and 87% actually make a purchase because of something they saw on the platform.

We have another major difference between Pinterest and other social networks. It’s the way content is displayed. People have a number of ways to view pins, including:

• Visiting a profile
• Performing a search
• In relevant categories
• On their home feed if they follow you or if your pins are relevant to their interests

You have another advantage of Pinterest. If someone saves a Promoted Pin, other people see it in their feeds as well. This grows the reach of your products, increases engagement, and drives additional sales.

On other platforms, once your campaign ends, the ad ends as well. However, this is not the case on Pinterest. Your promoted Pins last forever. This way, your product or service will keep appearing in front of users. Advertisers actually receive an average of 20% more clicks in the month after launching a Promoted Pin campaign.

Pinterest provides solutions for different goals, including:

• Awareness: Let people know about your brand or product.
• Consideration: Pinterest allows you to drive traffic to your content both on and off-platform.
• Conversions: What do you like the most: online sales, signups, and subscriptions? Drive actions according to your choice.
• Offline sales: You have the opportunity to increase in-store purchases.

Not only, that but you also get:

• 3x more efficient cost per conversion than ads on social media.
• And 2x higher return on ad spends for retail brands, compared to social media.

Pinterest Advertising Best Practices

Consider Your Target Audience

First, make sure that you understand your audience. Start with demographics, like location, gender, language, and device.

You can then choose relevant keywords. This is important because it determines what searches your pin appears in.

The platform lets you use 150 keywords per Promoted Pin but go with 20-30 keywords only. Also, don’t include similar types of keywords. Use a mixture of specific and general keywords to increase diversity and visibility.

Another way to target your audience is to select different interests. This lets your Pinterest ad reach people’s feeds. People see promoted Pins on the basis of what kind of content they interact with. Selecting different interests will give them a highly personalized advertising experience.

Actalike Audiences

I recently talked about the Facebook Lookalike audience. Pinterest offers a similar feature called Actalike audience targeting. However, Pinterest is better in the sense that it only requires an audience size of 100 users to create the audience. Compared to Facebook’s bigger requirement, this number is small.

This audience also acts like your pre-existing audience. This way, you get personalized targeting for new people who have more chances of converting.

Optimize Your Image

What comes to your mind when you think of Pinterest? A bunch of images, right? So use  high-resolution, non-pixelated images. Low-quality images will ruin your persona because Pinterest is a highly visual platform.

Pinterest Ads Image Optimization

I recommend that you make your Pinterest ad taller than it is wide. This will help it stand out and attract more attention and engagement in users’ newsfeeds. Use the aspect ratio of 1:3:5.

Use Rich Pins

Dynamic content increases traffic to your website or post-click landing page. They sync with your site so that your users will have the updated information. For example, if the price of the product changes on your site, the same change will show in the rich pin as well.

You can choose from these six types of rich pins :

Product pins: Include pricing, availability, and purchasing details.

Recipe Pins: Display required ingredients, serving information, and cooking times.

Article Pins: Feature an article title, description, date of publication, and author.

Place pins: Include a map, address, and phone number (ideal for local businesses).

Movie pins: Display ratings, prominent actors’ names, and reviews.

App pins: Feature install buttons (currently available to iOS apps only).

Choose Your CTA Wisely

Finally, include a call to action to encourage your audience to take the next step. Here’s a good example:

“Join today and get your first book free!”

What’s your opinion on using Pinterest Ads? Let me know in the comments below.