Considering paid Pinterest advertising? This post is for you! Today I’m diving into key points you need to know about Pinterest advertising: who might benefit, how do they work, and how long before I see that crucial ROI? Let’s dive right in.
Ahhh the age-old question, “Do Promoted Pins work?”. Before answering that question, I want to make sure we’re starting on the same page.
When I say Promoted Pins, I’m referring to Pinterest ads. I think when people hear the word “promoted” they mistake it for hitting the “promote” button on Pins.
Yeah, hitting that promote button is in fact NOT the same as running a Promoted Pin campaign. A Promoted Pin campaign is where you’ve set up a campaign, ad groups, have specific targeting, etc.
I wanted to make that really clear before diving into this week’s content!
If you need some other references, you can check out this post where I go deeper into what a Pinterest campaign is, and what it means!
Now that we know what constitutes a Promoted Pin campaign, let me also just say this. People, especially marketers, use Promoted Pins and Pinterest ads interchangeably. It’s two ways to say “investing in paid advertising on Pinterest”!
For today though, I’ll refer to them as Pinterest ads.
Now back to the real question, do Pinterest ads work, and what do we really need to know about them?
Let’s begin to answer this question by talking about who might be investing in Pinterest ads. This will help you understand how your unique audience impacts whether your campaign will be successful or not.
B2B vs. B2C Audiences: How This Impacts Your Pinterest Advertising
Whether you’re investing in an organic Pinterest strategy or in Pinterest ads, it’s super important to really know your audience. AKA if Pinterest is where your ideal audience is hanging out.
Because Pinterest is such a huge platform, there aren’t many businesses that do NOT benefit from using Pinterest organically.
An example of a business that might have more challenges with growth would be brick-and-mortar businesses, such as a dentist's office or law firm. In those cases, their marketing time, budget, and efforts might be used in other ways.
Now, back to your audience and Pinterest ads. Depending on your business, you are either “B2B” or “B2C” with your audience or customers. B2B means “business to business”, and B2C means “business to consumer”.
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C you can have success running paid ads on Pinterest. However, I do always mention something to business owners when I get on discovery calls for Pinterest ads. From my experience, I do see B2B marketing as more challenging and expensive on Pinterest.
Let me explain further with a quick example of each abbreviation:
B2B: This would be me selling products such as the Idea Pin Starter Kit to other business owners and marketing my Done-For-You services.
B2C: TpT sellers selling their printable and digital resources to classroom teachers.
I’ve had experience and success running paid ads for both business structures, but as I said earlier, you should go into advertising knowing that B2B can be more challenging.
I’ve had faster results with my B2C clients, whereas with my B2B, it took more months of testing and tweaking the campaigns to be as profitable.
Both B2B and B2C offer unique benefits and operate differently. After all, there are a lot of pieces that go into running successful campaigns on Pinterest. If you’re wondering about some of the prerequisites you need to have in place in order to run a successful campaign, I recommend checking out this blog post!
The iOS Update and How This Impacts Pinterest
Ahhh the Apple iOS 14 update of April 2021. A day that will live in infamy for marketers, business owners, and everyone in between. This past spring, Apple made privacy updates, which required apps to get permission before tracking their data. Basically, they ask users if they’d like to opt out of being tracked.
Naturally, many people started opting out of being tracked and it made it much more difficult to understand our advertising analytics. Not only that, but we also started seeing long delays in our reporting dashboard.
During that time I was also running FB ads + Pinterest ads for the same clients. I noticed that this update impacted my Facebook ads differently than the Pinterest ads. I think that this is in part due to the fact that people use the Facebook and Pinterest platforms very differently.
Unlike Facebook, Pinterest is a search engine. So we have the ability to target people by their interests and keywords they are searching for on the platform. Pinterest also understands what you’re interested in because you’re searching for it, saving it, engaging with it, etc.
Once again, this was based on my own experience and what I was seeing for my clients.
I mention this because many people have felt the impact of the tracking updates within their FB ads. Perhaps you were curious to know how this could affect Pinterest if you’re brand new to Pinterest advertising.
How Pinterest Advertising is Changing
Pinterest advertising is continually evolving for the better! The ads dash in some ways is quite clunky, but there have been so many changes just in this past year.
Here are a few that come to mind:
- Traffic campaigns changed to Consideration campaigns. The same type of campaign, new name!
- The ability to set the budget at the campaign level for both Consideration and Conversion campaigns.
- Now you have the ability to map keywords to users by either selecting users with long-term interests or with current search and planning intent.
One change that will be coming up in 2022 is the ability to run paid ads to your Idea Pins!
This will be really interesting to see because Pinterest has been pushing heavily for content creators to make Idea Pins. There have been some who dive right in and others who are slow to start (mainly because they aren’t linkable), but I’m excited to see how it will pan out when we’re able to run ads to our Idea Pins.
If you can’t tell, I could probably talk about Pinterest and advertising on the platform all day.
But let’s look at my last point on what you need to know before investing in Pinterest ads.
Pinterest Advertising Expectations and Your Investment
Similar to marketing on Pinterest using an organic strategy, Pinterest ads take time. I know, I know, it’s hard when we feel impatient and we just want results right away.
When business owners come to me about getting started on Pinterest and marketing their business organically, I like to share realistic expectations. It can take 6-12 months to start to see results on Pinterest; since it’s a search engine, it just comes with the territory.
Now, on the other hand, Pinterest ads are definitely faster! Depending on the type of campaign you’re running, they can take anywhere from 7-10 days to 14-21 to optimize. In comparison to paid advertising on other platforms though, this might seem like a long time.
PRO TIP: you don’t have to be marketing your business organically on Pinterest consistently in order to run Pinterest Ads. The only prerequisite is a Pinterest business account. Organic and paid marketing does not have to be done in tandem.
In regards to time and monetary investment, it’s important to not only note how long one campaign takes to optimize, but how long it takes to see an ROI (return on investment).
When you’re getting started with advertising on Pinterest, give yourself at least three months to see your ROI.
I say this because the first month you’re learning so much about your audience, keywords, interests, etc. There are also SO many parameters that you can test and tweak to enhance the performance.
So in the first month, when you’re really learning about what’s working and what’s not, I would expect to either break even or even lose money. The second month, I would plan on breaking even or to start seeing some profit. The third month will be when I would definitely expect to see a good ROI.
Now, is it impossible to see an ROI during the first month running ads? No! You absolutely can see an ROI in the first month, however, I think it’s important to have realistic expectations.
On that note about expectations: just because your business and your funnel converted well on other platforms, remember Pinterest is different, which is why it’s important to give it some time.
Yup, time even for ads!
Next Steps for Promoted Ads…
I hope this was helpful if you’re interested in running Pinterest Ads! Be sure to leave a comment below with any thoughts or questions!
Just a quick recap to close:
- If your business is B2B or B2C it can impact your ads performance since it impacts your audience and their behavior.
- We have unique information and targeting abilities with Pinterest since it is a search engine.
- Pinterest advertising is continually evolving! If you're not quite ready to start advertising yet, by the time you are ready you might even be able to run an ad to your Idea Pins!
- Pinterest ads take time. Go in with realistic expectations. Hopefully, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how well your ads do the first month!
Wondering what to do next? You can download my Promoted Pin Essential Guide below! Everything you need to dive deeper into getting started with Pinterest ads!