In a two-part series, we are talking about all things Pinterest Ads. While organic Pinterest marketing is important, Pinterest ads are equally as important if that’s something you’re going to invest your money in. Now, Pinterest ads are not for everybody, but we want to give a glimpse of what success looks like when running ads on Pinterest and help you determine if ads are a good fit for your business. Joining us today is our Simple Pin Media Ads Director, Erin, who shares her success stories with Pinterest ads.
Let’s dive into our conversation on running successful ads on Pinterest.
Determining if Pinterest ads are right for your business
Before you consider running ads on Pinterest, there are several factors to think about to make sure ads are a good fit for you:
- How much money do you have to contribute to your ad spend?
- Do you have something valuable to offer your audience (a product, a course, an offer)?
- Are your products set up and ready to be sold?
- Is your website easy to navigate and user-friendly?
Once you have figured out if your budget allows for you to run Pinterest ads and you’ve answered “yes” to the other questions above, you are in a good place to start exploring ads on Pinterest. But before you launch your first ad, and ensure success with Pinterest advertising, there are several steps to complete.
Psst…if you’re ready to jump on Pinterest Ads to maximize Holiday Sales, we have a free training below. ⬇️⬇️
Preparing to run ads on Pinterest
First things first, you need to identify if you are the ideal candidate for running ads on Pinterest. The ideal candidate for Pinterest ads must have a valuable product or service to offer their audience. Layering your advertisement on Pinterest with ads on other platforms like Facebook, Google, or Instagram is a great idea. The majority of clients that we have at Simple Pin, run ads on other platforms as well. However, we do have several clients that only run ads on Pinterest and still find success. It truly is based on your business and what will work best for you.
MINDSET SHIFT FOR ADS
We like to remind our clients that there is a mindset shift that must happen before diving into Pinterest ads. Running ads on Pinterest is different than running ads on some of the other platforms. Erin believes that having the right mindset when approaching ads on Pinterest is even more important than the technical components. On Pinterest you are dealing with a much different audience than you find on any of the other platforms. Pinners are planners. They save things for the future, but they aren’t always ready to buy things.
When a pinner is planning for their new baby, they create a “baby” board, and their main goal at first is to gain inspiration. They’re saving pins, they’re searching, they’re using keywords (i.e. “baby nursery decor”, “baby nursery inspiration”). They are starting the process of planning on Pinterest, but they’re not necessarily buying right away. They’re trying to figure out what brands they like, and who to buy from before they are finally ready to make a purchase.
The process on Pinterest is a longer one, compared to other platforms. So before you begin running ads on Pinterest, you need to remember that it’s going to take longer to convert (you can expect to see results around the 8 – 12-week mark). However, they do convert! The carts are higher, and the orders are higher. Erin mentions that she rarely sees one of our ad clients have a smaller cart on Pinterest. The majority of our clients have bigger order values on Pinterest than any other platform. So Pinterest ads are definitely worth the investment if you are willing to dedicate the time and money to doing it right.
The importance of Auditing YOUR CUSTOMER JOURNEY
Once you are in the right mindset and are ready to make the investment, the next step is making sure your product or service is ready and active. Meaning it’s deliverable, it’s easy to buy or opt into, and you fully know and understand what you are selling. We recommend completing an audit of your customer journey.
Make sure your website is user-friendly, the organization makes sense to someone visiting for the first time, and the checkout process is smooth. In doing an overview and audit of your website, you are able to identify any areas that may hinder the process and take care of those things before actually launching ads. Having everything set up, in the beginning, is so important in limiting hiccups while you are running ads.
AD CAMPAIGN PREP
Another extremely important action step before launching ads doing the actual campaign prep. This looks like conducting keyword research, identifying your target audience, doing some copy development, and ad creation research. Without this research, there is no way to know how to target your campaign. If you work with our team, we will conduct additional research for these things, but having that preliminary research completed will help us know how to guide the process for you.
Here’s the thing about Pinterest ads, you can’t just assume that you turn on this beautiful ad and all of a sudden people will buy it. If they can’t check out, or they don’t understand where the buy button is, or they don’t understand your sales language, putting money on that is not going to solve the problem. You need to have everything in place, tied up in a pretty package before you launch your ads. The key to successful ads on Pinterest is making sure you do all the background work ahead of time so everything is easy to navigate for your buyer.
Related: Pinterest Ads Basics
Pinterest ads success stories
A client of ours that we’ve been managing for about five months has been receiving really great results since the beginning of having us help them run ads. Fortunately, for this client, we didn’t necessarily need that lead time that we discussed above, and we actually started getting over 100% return ad spend pretty quickly within the first couple of months.
This client reached out to Erin last week and shared that they received an order of $3,500 from Jessica Alba. Yes, the Jessica Alba! She had clicked on one of the ads we designed here at Simple Pin Media and ended up buying a $3,500 worth of merchandise from our client. So cool to know that there are celebrities and people out there who are resonating with the ads we create here and have deeper pockets than a lot of us to purchase products from our clients.
Obviously, that is a huge win for our team and our client, but we also have some great results that we’re getting right now for other clients. Recently, one of our clients is a hardware company, and they are getting about a little over a 3x return on ad spend. After a couple of months with this one campaign we’ve been running for another client, it has a 15x return on ad spend. We also have had a custom jewelry client who has been getting an amazing ad return right now as well. In fact, it isn’t even their big time of year for sales, so that has been another big win.
Learn more about working with our Pinterest Ads team.
Get your Pinterest ads ready for the holidays
These success stories are worth noting because it isn’t even the holiday season yet. Summer is typically not typically a busy time for shopping. Yet we are still seeing amazing results on Pinterest. With that said, if you are feeling ready to dive into the world of Pinterest advertising before the holiday season really begins, and if you’re ready to have success with Pinterest ads and potentially have a celebrity, purchase some of your products off Pinterest, we have a training coming up that you don’t want to miss! Maximize your ads on Pinterest this holiday season by joining us for our FREE Pinterest Holiday Ads Training. This training will give you an idea of how to prep your holiday ads, and is specifically for people who:
- Have experience (even if only a little bit) running ads on any kind of platform because there’s definitely some language we want to make sure you understand.
- Have evergreen products that have never specifically tried to advertise as holiday products OR have new products designed for holiday time.
This training is a really great way to take what you already know (keyword research, titles, ad copy, ad design) and use our tips to make it holiday-friendly on Pinterest. There are a lot of different things you can do to do your research and keywords to get them ready for the holidays. There is always a little more competition that takes place around the holiday season, so we really want to make sure you’re doing your best to get your holiday products seen. Whether it be stocking stuffers or Secret Santa gifts, get those keywords and extra pieces prepped now so you can run ads for the upcoming holiday season.
Next steps for running ads on Pinterest
We want to help Pinterest ads be a success for your business. If you are looking to learn more about Pinterest ads, we are currently looking to take on some more management clients, we have our Simple Pin Ad Society, and we have our FREE Holiday Ads Training.
Join us next week for the second part of this conversation where we are going to dive into what a Pinterest Ads manager can do for you.
More resources for you:
Pinterest Ads Basics (Youtube Video)
Pinterest Holiday Ads Training (FREE Training)
Join the Simple Pin Ads Society
Sign Up for a Pinterest Ads Discovery Call
Pinterest Advertising Spreadsheet (Simple Pin Product)
