What comes to your mind when you hear about social media marketing? It’s likely Facebook and Instagram as they’re two of the most valuable online marketing platforms available today. Digital marketers also run campaigns on Twitter, Google, YouTube and now even TikTok. Yet there’s one platform that flies under the radar even though it has incredible value to offer.
Pinterest marketing is something that every digital marketer should be looking at. Check out these stats:
- For starters, the image-focused social media network’s user base has been steadily growing, from 185 million users in 2017 to over 416 million in 2020.
- Women aged 25-34 make up over 30% of Pinterest’s ad audience.
- 82% of Pinterest users access the social network through a mobile device.
- Conversions are one of the most important metrics for a marketer. Pinterest marketing stats show that weekly conversions surged by 300% between January and August 2020.
Pinterest might have begun as a platform where users could seek inspiration for a new project but then forget about it once they were done. It has evolved into much more than that, particularly due to the pins feature, which has transformed Pinterest into a powerful marketing platform.
How Pinterest marketing can help you achieve a higher ROI
Pinterest presents marketers with a unique opportunity as the vast majority of the audience is already pre-qualified. People come to Pinterest when they start a new project and want to buy things for it. This increases the possibility of them converting if an ad catches their curiosity.
It’s also pertinent to note that 97% of Pinterest searches are unbranded. The audience is there to explore and find new brands. No wonder that 80% of weekly Pinners discover a new brand or product on the platform.
Neustar conducted a retail media study with five US retail brands in June 2019 and found that Pinterest ads deliver 2.3x more efficient cost per conversion compared to ads on other networks. The study also highlighted that retail brands achieve 2x higher return on ad spend.
A case study of watchmaker MVMT’s Pinterest marketing strategy provides good insight. The brand uploaded a product catalog just for Pinterest. It launched shopping ads and conversion campaigns to lower the cost per acquisition by 4x compared to their internal benchmark.
Best practices to get the most out of the Pinterest ad formats
There are five core Pinterest ad formats that marketers can utilize to reach their desired audience on the platform. Each format allows a description of up to 500 characters. Pinterest’s algorithms use the descriptions to determine the relevance for delivery. Focus on creating the right description that will help get your ad in front of the right audience.
- Standard Pins
The Standard Pins format is suited to high-quality vertical images that will appear in the audiences’ feeds and try to capture their attention. Pinterest recommends using a 2:3 aspect ratio as other ratios might cause Pinterest to truncate the image.
Always ensure that the image puts your product or service in the spotlight. Abstract images that don’t showcase the brand won’t do well with this Pinterest ad format.
- Video Pins
Video content tends to do very well on social media and that holds true for Pinterest as well. The best video ads are able to capture attention in the first few seconds. For this Pinterest ad format, it’s recommended that the video be between 6-15 seconds for optimum results.
An important detail to keep in mind is that most users will likely be watching videos with the audio disabled. Text overlay or captions are your best bet. Use them intelligently to better tell your story.
- Shopping Ads
Shopping Ads on Pinterest are very useful for marketers that want leads to purchase the product straight through Pinterest. Shopping ads can either be single-image ads that promote a product that’s relevant to people or multi-image ads that promote a group of relevant products.
Pinterest provides more control over these campaigns through the dynamic retargeting feature. It enables marketers to reach people on Pinterest that may have unpurchased items in their cart in order to try and convert them.
- Carousel
Carousel ads come in handy if you want to show the different features of a product or even to advertise multiple products at the same time. This Pinterest ad format can also be used to tell a brand story in chapters.
Carousel ads are displayed to users in their home feed much like any other pin. Each carousel can have 2-5 images with a recommended aspect ratio of 1:1 or 2:3.
- Collection ads
Collection ads are displayed in the Pinterest mobile feed. They are a combination of one main lifestyle image paired with three smaller secondary images. The main asset is the hero creative and the other images are the secondary creatives.
When a user taps into this format, that opens a fullscreen experience where they can see the hero creative in more detail as well as up to 24 secondary creatives.
Don’t forget to focus on the organic component
Marketers love organic reach since it confirms the audience’s interest in their brand and the fact that it doesn’t cost anything. That’s why brands invest so much time in delivering quality content through their Facebook or Instagram pages, for example.
Your Pinterest marketing strategy shouldn’t completely revolve around paid ads. There’s a lucrative organic component that must also be leveraged to get the best possible results from your campaigns.
Pinterest’s search feature is very powerful. By using the right keywords on pins for the brand’s Pinterest board, a lot of organic traffic can be captured. By regularly posting image and video pins, brands can tell a story and keep their audience engaged. User-generated content tends to perform well on Pinterest as well. Brands can repin it and use that in ads as well.
A well-rounded Pinterest marketing strategy will thus involve the use of both organic and paid pins to maximize results.
