How Do I Target Audiences On Pinterest? — Part 3

Published in

Inside Revenue

8 min readJul 13, 2018

The Advanced Guide

In the Intermediate guide to targeting on the Pinterest platform, I discussed how you can targeting different audiences to help you to hit your revenue targets. This article aids you in discovering how your efforts on the platform impact your overall bottom line. If you need a refresher on the topics discussed in this article, click here to read “How Do I Target Audiences On Pinterest? — Part 2 (The Intermediate Guide)”.

As with any social media marketing strategy, there are certain things one should be aware of in order to ensure that you are leveraging the platform for the best success possible. It is for this reason that I have put together this article, which will go over some tips for targeting on Pinterest.

“Without personality social media is not social.” — Glen Gilmore (Social Media Influencer) @GlenGilmore

What Should I Watch Out For For When Targeting Audiences On Pinterest?

In this article I will cover:

#1 Pinterest Targeting Tips For Promoted Pins

#2 Pinterest Campaign Best Practices When Using Targeting

So let’s move along…

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#1 Pinterest Targeting Tips For Promoted Pins

Tips On Using Interest Targeting
If you plan to use Interests in your targeting strategy, you should always choose a more detailed option (like pet accessories) rather than the overarching theme (for example pets). This will help you reach a more specific group of people.

You should also pair it with another one of the targeting options mentioned below. In my experience, using interest targeting alone, is too broad of a targeting method and you may end up spending more money on reaching people who aren’t as enthusiastic about what you’re selling.

Tips For Keyword Research
Pinterest recommends you use their Keywords section (which you can find in the ad set up) to choose keywords to be used in the keyword targeting strategy. You can see an example of this in the image below.

Another option is to use the search bar as below:

Notice that in the keyword tool, when you search “sandals” you are getting all general recommendations. However, in the search bar, you are seeing much more detailed results below it like “boho”, “strappy”, and “wedge”. This is how people actually look for sandals when their shopping online. Not by searching “sandals summer”. They’re not ready to buy yet if they’re using that term. They’re browsing — not even with the intention to purchase.

Another thing that I’ve noticed about the keyword tool, is that it often tries to target a gender. If I’m typing in “shoes” it will append “for women”. Pinterest learns what you like as you use the platform, so if you’re the one searching for “shoes” it probably knows whether you’re male or female already and will give you the most ideal results based on your search history. Keep in mind that there’s also an option to target a specific gender when you’re setting up a new ad. So, targeting “shoes for women” isn’t going to be as helpful.

You can also use the search results as a keyword research tool. When you want to target a topic, type it in and hit enter, then dig through the results. Sometimes there are some goodies hidden in there. Look at the image below. Just in this small section, you could have found 6 more keywords.

Try these methods of keyword research next time you’re working on a new campaign.

Tips On Using Audience Targeting
Use Visitor audiences to build a funnel: If you know there a few specific pages on your site that people look at before they buy something, set each page up as a Visitor audience URL and advertise to that audience again to push them further through the funnel.

Promote your email list: Push your email list to ensure growth. The bigger the email list, the better your chances of targeting email addresses of Pinterest users.

Tips On Choosing Location
Make sure you specify your location so you don’t waste money. You can choose more than one location.

Tips On Choosing Language
It’s important that you target people who speak the language your website is written in.

Tips On Choosing A Device
An example of when you might want to target a mobile device only would be for an online promotion. A few years ago, Domino’s did a promo on Twitter: users could tweet them a pizza emoji to place an order. This would been a GREAT campaign to target mobile devices. If you’re already on your phone, it’s pretty easy to switch apps and text a pizza emoji.

Tips On Choosing Gender
If your promotion, product or service isn’t specific to women or men, don’t exclude either. By the way, don’t think targeting men on Pinterest is a lost cause. Males now make up 40% of new sign ups. That’s an increase of 70% for male users compared to last year.

See how brands like Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros used audience targeting on Pinterest to promote a blockbuster teaser video by reading the success story here.

#2 Pinterest Campaign Best Practices When Using Targeting

While it is important to know how to use each audience targeting option correctly, how to use them effectively in terms of your actual campaigns, is another matter entirely. Therefore, I have compiled a few of the best practices you should be following when using targeting options in your campaigns to ensure increased chances of success.

Ensure You Set Up Your Audience Types Correctly

When it comes to visitor and engagement audience targeting, some marketers skip over the basics and set their campaigns up before they’ve read through all the steps, or assume that these audience targeting types will set themselves up automatically.

In terms of visitor targeting, it only works if you first install the Conversion Tracking code on your site. Before you run screaming from the terror that is “code,” let me assure you — it is very simple, especially if you use WordPress. The code, which you get at Ads > Conversion Tracking, just needs to go on every page of your site in the tag. If you install a plugin such as Insert Headers and Footers, it will take you all of thirty seconds. Naturally, it only begins collecting data on visitors the day it’s installed — so do before you set up your first visitor targeting campaign and get frustrated with its lack of performance.

In terms of engagement targeting, you can only use this option once you have confirmed your website domain, which many Pinners seem to forget about when setting up their brand’s Pinterest profile. Check your settings page, look for your website address and ensure that there is a check mark next to the domain that says “Site confirmed”.

Separate Your Audiences By Device

As digital marketers know, mobile user behavior can vary greatly, and that also applies on Pinterest. One major benefit to separating out placements by campaign is that you can manage the costs separately, as mobile will have cheaper CPCs. If you are targeting a specific audience, you should be actively monitoring which device this audience uses most in order to adjust your bidding strategies, and possibly separate your campaigns for this audience to include a mobile and desktop campaign.

Let the budgets flow independently between placements so that you can manage towards placements providing the highest ROI (return on investment).

REMEMBER to adjust your creatives for each targeted device!

Modify Your Campaign Budgets Based On Performance

You might say that this is common sense, however, many marketers only adjust campaign budgets or bidding strategies based on overall campaign performance. Whereas you should instead be focusing your resources on the best performing audience, rather than the overall campaign. If you have created adgroups for your audience within the same campaign and see that one audience is performing better than the others, don’t reduce or increase your overall campaign budget, simply shift budget from lower performing adgroups to the best performing one.

Ensure Your Creatives And Messaging Is Suited To The Targeted Audience

As with any marketing campaign, you need to ensure that what you are putting out there appeals to your audience. Different messaging or creative tactics may hold different levels of appeal to different targeted audiences, and even different call-t-actions appeal to them differently.

Therefore, before you launch your campaign, look at the audiences you are targeting and find the common traits between each audience’s profile to ensure that your messaging and creatives are tailored to meet their general wants and needs. For example, if you are targeting to existing customers, perhaps you want to emphasise a new product they may be interesting in, versus providing a more general message to a potentially new audience. You should always be looking at how you can tailor your campaigns to each audience you are targeting to achieve successful results.

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Targeting audiences on Pinterest is vital to any marketer’s efforts on the platform if they’re truly looking to achieve success. Knowing which social media platforms work for you and where to focus your energy is crucial to knowing your marketing strategy and building it to move forward. In saying this, many marketers assume that if their initial campaigns on Pinterest aren’t performing to their expected standard, that their brand shouldn’t be using the platform…take my advice, try tweaking your targeting strategies for your campaigns before you simply give up, you will find it makes all the difference

We are working to bring you guides on how to use Pinterest to further enhance your marketing strategy, so come back and visit our publication, Inside Revenue, for the release of these articles and more.