If you’re not taking advantage of Pinterest ads to market your brand, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity to build your audience and boost sales. It’s the perfect place to reach people already interested in your content (and your products, too).

People search Pinterest daily to learn, shop, and plan. Most importantly, they’re prepared to take action. They’re searching because they already want to purchase a product, read a blog post, etc. 

Targeted ads present your content to people who are already interested and itching to take action. It’s the perfect addition to any social media marketing strategy. 

Why Should You Use Pinterest For Ads?

Pinterest Ads are similar to regular Pins but with a little bit more spice. What is more? These ads receive extra attention in Pinterest’s search results which means more eyes on your brand. 

Whereas most social media platforms are used to connect people with other people, Pinterest is a visual discovery engine where people flock to shop for products, plan projects, and even research a specific area of interest. Pinterest feeds are bursting with Pins linking out to websites, sharing infographics, shoppable products, and a whole lot more. 

It is reported that 97% of top Pinterest searches are unbranded. This means users are open to new ideas and products. They are there for inspiration. And you are there to inspire them. Pinterest ads are the perfect way to find your target audience and show them the exact product or service they’re searching for before they make up their mind. 

Jonas Paul Eyewear is a great example of a company successfully using Pinterest ads to boost sales. They used interest targeting and inspiring creative to achieve a 65% increase in order value. After their campaign concluded, they found that 90% of their website traffic came from Pinterest. They knew there was an audience of Pinterest users looking to purchase glasses, and they harnessed Pinterest ads to find and monetize this audience. You can do the same thing!

How to Use Pinterest’s Goal-driven Ad Platform to Further Your Business and Brand Goals

The results you want from your ad will depend on your business goals. For example, you might want to drive a certain amount of traffic to your website, get a certain number of sales, or boost your Pin’s exposure.

The first step to launching successful Pinterest ads is to think about what results you’re trying to achieve using social media for your business. Do you want to build a community, get more reach, or drive sales?

Pinterest has a goal-driven ad platform. When you create an ad on Pinterest, you’ll be prompted to choose one of these three campaign objectives:

• Build Awareness: Help more people discover your brand OR get more video views

• Drive Consideration: Get more clicks for your Pinterest ad

• Get Conversions: Drive people to take actions on your website OR promote your product inventory with shopping ads

Campaigns are the highest level of Pinterest’s Campaign structure. You must create a Campaign before you start advertising on Pinterest since they house ads and ad groups. Once you do this, you can edit or duplicate your Campaign. 

Ad groups not only house your collection of ads but are where you can choose where your ads display on Pinterest. In addition are where you set your budget, bid, run dates, and ad targeting and allows you to tackle different regions, product/service lines, and audiences. 

Notice how these objectives mimic the sales funnel? You can attack every stage of the sales funnel by running an ad for each campaign objective simultaneously. 

How to Create a Pinterest Ad 

To create a Pinterest ad, you’ll need to have a business account on the platform. Additionally, you’ll need a place to direct users such as a website where you house your products and services.   

The first step to creating an ad on Pinterest is choosing your objective. Once you’ve got that down, it’s time to target your ads to your defined target audience. If you have buyer personas, now’s the time to pull them out for reference. 

Here are the targeting categories Pinterest provides:

• Interests 

• Keywords

• Demographics

• Placements

• Expanded targeting options (audience targeting/retargeting)

Interests: Best practices are to select three key interests that will resonate with your target audience. 

Keywords: Not sure which keywords are performing best in your industry? Pinterest’s keyword tool can help you discover keywords based on common Pinterest searches. The keywords might seem broader than their search engine alternatives, but they are powerful targeting tools when used in conjunction with interests. 

Demographics: As for demographics, Pinterest recommends users avoid limiting their demographics unless their product or service has demographic constraints such as an age limit. 

Placements: You can create Pinterest ads in a variety of formats. Format availability depends on the brand objective you choose.

• Static Ads - this ad is best for showing off your brand or products with one featured image.

• Video Ads - best for how-to’s and telling stories about your brand (they’re great for driving sales, too).

• App Install Ads - best for driving app downloads using the easy install button.

• Carousel Ads - use this for multiple products or when you need to show off multiple features. Each card in the carousel will show a different product or feature.

• Shopping ads - best for showing off your product’s selling points. 

• Collections Ads - this format combines a large hero asset with three secondary assets to provide an immersive ad experience that shows off multiple products to familiarize the consumer with your brand.

• Idea Pins - great for story-telling with video, voiceover, images, and text. 

Audience Targeting: For expanded targeting options, you’ll need to create the audience before you apply it to your campaign. You can choose from four audience types: 

• Website Visitors - this option retargets your website visitors

• Engagement Audience - the audience engaged with your Pins

• Customer List - this option lets you upload and target your lead list

• Actalike Targeting - users who behave similarly to your existing audience lists

Once you’ve set up your campaign and ad group, it’s time to select the Pins you want to promote. You can choose between promoting existing Pins or creating new Pins just for your ads. If using existing Pins, they must be saved on one of your boards to be promoted. You can promote your Pins in a new campaign or an existing one.

The more Pinterest ads you post, the better you’ll understand your target audience and how they behave on the platform. Studying your analytics and ad performance will help you create even better ads with targeted content that resonates strongly with your Pinterest audience. 

So, what are you waiting for? The sooner you start, the sooner you can achieve (and exceed)  your brand goals.