Everything you need to know about Pinterest Promoted Pins

Pinterest recently announced an exciting development to their visual discovery platform – the ability to promote pins. It’s only in beta testing phase at the moment and is currently only available to U.S. based businesses (on an application basis), but looks set to be rolled out to all Pinterest business account holders in the near future.

Why create a Pinterest account?

Pinterest can be a powerful tool for businesses – the visual platform is a great way to showcase your brand, your products and your brand values. Pinterest currently has a user base of over 70million with users spending an average of 14.2 minutes per visit – it may not match the statistics of Facebook and Twitter but its image-led, simple to navigate platform, means users are likely to engage and share your content.

If you haven’t already got a Pinterest business account, check out Pinterest Success Stories and see how the platform can help you engage with your customers and generate new leads.

Why promote your pins?

Promoting your pins will help draw and engage a wider audience and help you to promote your brand/business. Promoted pins are also a good way to drive traffic to your site when there are specific events in your marketing timeline (i.e. sales/promotions).

There are rules to obey when promoting pins: Pinterest states there can be no promotional information or calls to actions, no price listings (which are available using non promoted pins) and no deceptive content. Promoted pins must also lead to a relevant landing page which includes no sign-up requests. Pinterest takes a similar route to Instagram with its promoted pin service – promoted pins must be authentic, fit with your brand and create a consistent user experience at the same time.

How do promoted pins work?

You’re probably already familiar with Pay per Click (PPC) campaigns and ads on other social platforms – Pinterest doesn’t stray too far from what’s already available, so getting to grips with the new feature will be a simple process for most businesses.

Pinterest promoted pins run on a Cost per Click (CPC) basis, meaning you only pay when someone clicks through from your promoted pin to your website. Just as with Facebook and Google Adwords, you can set your daily budget, duration and define your audience.

To get started, pick a pin to promote – either upload a new pin, or choose one of your pre-existing pins. It might be a good idea to choose a pin which has already gained a lot of traffic/engagement organically. If you’re picking a new pin, check which pins you already have that have been doing well organically and note down the key features. This way, you won’t be off target and will have more of a chance of your promoted pin being well received.

After you’ve selected your pin, it’s time to choose some keywords to reach people in search results. Getting this right is crucial to the success of your promoted pin. You’ll need to do a bit of legwork at this stage; using Google Adwords Keyword Planner is a good place to start. You should also be searching for related keywords through Pinterest and testing your keywords in the search bar. Double check that every keyword you assign is relevant and related to your promoted pin – when you promote, you want your pin to appear as if it would organically.

The next options will walk you through audience and devices, functions you should already be familiar with. It’s useful to note that you may not be targeting the same audience that you target using other social platforms, so make sure you do your research before selecting the same audience and demographics you usually use.

Tips and tricks for maximising impact

Use Pinterest Analytics to review and track the performance of your promoted pins regularly. You should be tracking engagements, impressions, re-pins, Click through Rate (CTR) and spend on a regular basis to ensure you’re hitting your goals and targets. Pinterest Analytics allows you to discover:

• What Pins and boards from your profile people love most
• What people like to save from your website
• Who your Pinterest audience is, including their gender, location and other interests
• What devices people use when they’re Pinning your stuff
• How adding the Pin It button to your website leads to referral traffic from Pinterest

Split testing is an important step in ensuring your promoted content is hitting the right targets. You should apply the same principles to promoted pins. You should be reviewing and testing different images for the same offer/promotion and different keywords and audiences. If you’re new to Pinterest, this is a good way to assess what your audience is interested in and how best to engage with them.

Pinterest has a number of plugins and widgets which can help drive traffic to your website from your Pinterest page and vice versa.

Using the Pinterest Goodies page you can download a whole host of buttons and extensions which make it simpler for you and your audience to interact with your Pinterest page. From installing a Pinterest tab on your Facebook page to including a Pin It button on your site, the more visible you make your Pinterest site, the higher your engagements will be.

Ensure you connect your Facebook and Twitter profiles to your Pinterest account too. Ensure you only post select pins to your other accounts, to avoid overloading your newsfeed.

It’s important to remember that although Pinterest may have a smaller user-base than other social networks, at the moment there will be less competition from others. Pinterest is also unique in its audience, so through using the promoted pins service you may be opening up your business, brand or product to a whole new (profitable) audience.

If you need any help with promoted pins or managing your Pinterest account, dowload our eBook, Perfect your Pinterest Profile or call us and see how we can help.

Download a full free Guide to Perfecting your Pinterest Profile here.

http://www.ph-creative.com/perfect-your-pinterest-profile

Don’t forget, you can always head over to Twitter and drop us a line using #AskPh – we answer your questions every Friday! Tweet @phcreative or @bryan_phc