People love visual, a continuous trend which is shown more and more in social media. Besides the popular visual platforms like Instagram and YouTube, Pinterest is in the rise too1. Pinterest is a platform which is all about finding inspiration and is a leader in visual technics like visual search. As a (eCommerce) company you have to be visible on Pinterest, and now you can advertise on it too! How? That’s what you’ll find out here.
Pinterest is an online platform where users can find inspiration for food, travel, clothing, home decor, and so on. As a digital pinboard, users can pin images and save these on their themed boards. When people are looking for inspiration they can find it in Pinterest by searching with keywords or using visual search. Visual search can be done with Pinterest Lens, with which Pinterest will show similar images or videos to the image a person was looking for.
Because people, mainly women, use Pinterest to find inspiration for a specific item or theme, the buying intention is a lot higher than other platforms. This makes Pinterest the perfect platform to show your products on as a source of inspiration, to let users buy your products easier and faster.
Source: Fingerspitz
Pinterest in the marketing
Recently you can advertise on Pinterest in the Netherlands (in the US you could already do this since 2015). This gives marketers the possibility to become visible in the awareness and consideration phase of customers. And it shows: 98% of the Pinners say they have tried/bought something they have seen on Pinterest, compared to 71% on other social networks2. With Pinterest Advertising, you get more brand awareness, lead more traffic to your website, and eventually get more conversions. For every marketing goal, Pinterest can be used.
Increase brand awareness
To become visible on Pinterest, it’s crucial to clearly show your products or the intention of the image, and provide the image/video with describing keywords. This way, your brand gains more visibility when people are searching for a specific or similar product on Pinterest.
With Pinterest Advertising, you can enhance your visibility even more, because your advertisements are shown to more people. Your ads will be shown in people’s feed when they are searching for specific keywords, themes or similar images.
More traffic
When you get seen by more people, Pinterest can also increase traffic to your Pinterest page, website or another online platform. Here your ‘Pinners’ can find more information about the product or convert.
You can also promote your app within Pinterest. Pinners will be sent directly to the app store and can install the app. They will get where you want them to go, without having to click too many times.
Increase conversions
You can also increase online and offline sales with Pinterest. Use Shopping Ads, for example, so you can send Pinners immediately to the right page of your website, where they can finish their purchase.
With Pinterest, you make it even easier to show off your products. Pinterest gives you the ability to upload your whole product catalog, and Pinterest will do the magic. This platform will get the product information and price out of your catalog, so the price will be changed in Pinterest when it is on your website. Pinterest will search which users will most likely meet your ads.
You can also tag several items with the Shop the Look format. When someone clicks one product inside the image, Pinterest will show similar products and ‘exact matches’ which can be bought in stores.
Another option is to connect Pinterest to your offline store. You can let your customers come to your store or showroom to get some inspiration and let them Pin interesting items directly to their Pinterest board, using a QR or NFC tag. Or let the Pinners show their Pinterest Board in your store to easily let see if an outfit fits them.
Targeting
When you want to get started with Pinterest Advertising it’s good to know that Pinterest offers multiple ways to target your campaigns. Pinterest targeting is based on keywords, interests or audience targeting.
Interests
You can focus your ads on users with a certain interest, like recipes or home decor. When targetting on interests, your ads will be shown in users home feed, where all images within their interests are shown. This way, those who are interested in that area or theme, will see your products. Which eventually increases visibility and brand awareness.
Keywords
Ads can be targetted on specific words people are searching with or can be shown with similar images. This way, you’ll be visible to those with an increased buying intention, so you have more chance they’ll actually buy something from you. Targetting on keywords enhances sales, traffic, and conversions.
Audience
Finally, you can choose to target your ads on those who are most likely to be receptive to your brand. You can target on who these people are (demographics), their interests, where they are located, and many more. This is probably the method most companies will recognize from advertising on other social networks. With this kind of targeting you show your ads to those who will probably appreciate it, so you increase your traffic and conversions.
Cases
With Pinterest, you can show everything you want, as long as you can show it visually. With the growth of visual platforms and the growing need of people finding inspiration, it is more important than ever to be visible on Pinterest. In the Netherlands, supermarket AH and hardware store KARWEI were the first ones to try Pinterest Advertising.
The AH started off by showing healthy recipes, perfectly responding to the resolutions most people have at the start of the year. They used Promoted Pins where people were sent to the website of AH where they could find the whole recipe and all the ingredients. They could add the ingredients to their shopping cart immediately and check-out. The results? 50% lower costs than other social media and their videos were viewed more and longer3.
Hardware and DIY store KARWEI showed their ads in another popular category on Pinterest: ‘home decor’ and ‘DIY’. Their ads showed inspiration for styling your house and videos that showed how to make things yourself (DIY). By focusing on the interests or people and on keywords that fit KARWEI, KARWEI has enlarged its target group and enhanced their visibility.
Tips
Want to get started with Pinterest or Pinterest Advertising? We would like to give you a few tips & tricks before getting started:
- Find out which format and which targeting method suits your brand, goal and target group
- 80% of all Pinners uses Pinterest on their phone4, so use vertical images and videos that stand out
- Use clear, descriptive keywords in your text. Pinterest lets you show your text as an overlay on your image/video, so you can tell an even better story
- Show your logo. Pinners don’t mind branded content, as long as it inspires them
- Show pins for special occasions like Christmas, and plan these carefully. Pinterest says that these pins get 10x more awareness and 22% more sales5
- Be consistent in Pins and the landing page you send Pinners to, so their online experience feels fluent.
