Everything you need to know about Marketing on Pinterest

Pinners are planners. That’s the tagline most often used by Pinterest marketing experts. But more importantly, Pinterest users have the highest buying intent and the highest disposable income of all social platforms. 35.5m pinners engage with fashion content, and 83% of weekly fashion pinners have made a purchase based on seeing pins from brands. What’s more, Pinterest is becoming a tool increasingly used by B2B companies. 

Most often known as the platform people use to plan weddings, home decor and outfits, over the years, Pinterest’s focus has shifted to a platform with endless amounts of content and numerous advertising tools that make it super easy for all kinds of brands to achieve their goals. 

Platform basics  

Pinterest works like a search engine

The first thing to note for businesses looking to post organic and paid content on Pinterest is that it works like a search engine. This means that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques that are usually saved for websites can come in really handy here. 

Consider what your target customer might be searching for on Pinterest to find a product like yours. Use these search terms as keywords in your pin title and description—but keep them relevant. Keyword stuffing is damaging to the SEO of any website, so avoid it here too. 

Suppose people land on your pin after searching for cosy kitchen inspiration, but your pin focuses on skincare. In that case, you’re going to annoy platform users which is going to damage sentiment towards your brand. If you’re using keywords in your pin title and description, ensure they’re absolutely relevant to your content. 

Your pin description should be between 6 and 50 characters and include your brand name. Your pin title should be between 6 and 40 characters. Neither your pin description nor your title should include hashtags. 

Use Pinterest audience insights 

You can also make use of audience insights, to ensure your pins are seen by the right people. In Pinterest ads manager, you can go to the audience insights section and see the other topics and trends your audience is interested in. If there’s a relevant way for you to incorporate keywords from these other trends into your pin title and description, go for it. 

Pinterest Predicts 

Pinterest Predicts is a yearly report from Pinterest outlining the trends that will dominate the year ahead. 

“This is a not-yet-trending report—a window into the future, from the place where people go to plan it.” - Pinterest

Making use of this report is highly recommended for all businesses. If there’s a trend you think is relevant to your business, jump on it. 8 out of 10 of Pinterest’s predictions for 2021 came true, so it’s likely that by aligning yourself with the trend early, your efforts will pay off. More people will land on your products if you’re using relevant keywords in your title and description that align with that trend. 

As we mentioned in the intro, Pinterest has long been associated with fashion and home decor, but B2B brand Sage has become a real Pinterest success story, all because they jumped on a Pinterest Predicts trend. 

In Sage’s case, the trend that resonated most with them was ‘bet on yourself’. This trend showed that people would likely be tapping into their entrepreneurial spirit in the year ahead. Plus, business orientated topics, which had previously been absent from Pinterest, would be more searchable. Phrases like ‘podcast design’, ‘accounting basics’ and ‘branding your business’ became a lot more popular and as a consequence, Sage worked with Pinterest to build the ‘Back Yourself’ campaign. 

The campaign was extremely successful for Sage, starting out with a brand awareness focus, but quickly transitioning into conversions when users began purchasing off the back of their free trial with the Sage software. 

With Sage as an example, it’s clear that jumping on relevant Pinterest Predicts trends can be great for the success of your brand campaigns—anything from fashion to B2B and Software as a Service (SaaS).   

Make use of your organic Pinterest tools before running ads 

If you decide to begin running ads on Pinterest, it’s important that you keep up a regular organic posting schedule. The reason for this is that when people click through to your profile from one of your ads, they should be met with a profile that looks trustworthy and can clearly be identified as yours. By keeping up your organic content, you maintain your brand for anyone visiting your profile who is curious about your brand. So, ensure that if you do run ads, you don’t allow your organic content to fall by the wayside. It’s worth noting that when you do create an ad on Pinterest, unlike on Facebook and Instagram, it will be discoverable in platform search results as well as on your organic Pinterest boards.

Technical tips for pin creatives 

Sprout Social’s always-up-to-date social media image sizes guide includes accurate sizes and specifications for Pins as well as Pinterest profile images and boards.  

Add more than one pin per ad set 

If you’re used to Facebook and Instagram ads, you’ll know that adding more than one ad per ad set allows the platform algorithm to optimise ad delivery based on the most successful creative—the same goes for Pinterest. Ensure you have a minimum of two pins per ad set to allow the algorithm to do its thing. 

Ensure your pins are accessible 

Your pins should be able to be viewed by everyone on the platform, regardless of ability. If you’re using video pins, ensure they can be played without sound. If there’s dialogue in your video, you need to have captions to ensure hearing impaired people, and those watching with the sound off, can understand your content. 

For people who are visually impaired and using screen readers, you should also make sure that you’re adding alt text to your pins. The alt text describes the image or video so that screen readers can relay the information to users. This ensures that your pins are accessible to everyone using the platform and you’re not limiting your audience.

Use text overlay

Use text overlay to provide additional content on your pin. You should make sure that it’s positive and inspirational to reflect the style and purpose of the Pinterest platform. This is an important step as Pinterest ads using pins with text overlay are favoured by the algorithm. 

Pinterest ad for a previous AD client Pagazzi Lighting

Follow the platform style 

It’s important to have a brand style, but in order for your ad and organic content to be successful on Pinterest, you should also try to follow the Pinterest style. In doing this, you’re giving users what they expect when they land on the platform, by making pins that are;

• Visually appealing 

• Relevant 

• Positive 

• Original 

• Actionable 

Copyright Pinterest

Pinterest ad formats available 

If you’re a marketer used to the ad tools available on Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest offers a number of ad formats and audience tools that are extremely similar; 

Objectives

• Video Views 

• Traffic 

• Conversions

As with Facebook, the objective an ad takes ensures that the ad is served to the platform users most likely to take that desired action. For example, conversion pins are served to those who have previously purchased something similar on the platform, or who have exhibited behaviour that indicates they’d be likely to buy something from your site. 

Audience Tools

• Custom audiences (e.g. video viewers, website page visitors, website purchasers and customer lists) 

• Lookalike Audiences (called Actalike on Pinterest)

Pinterest specific ad objectives

Pinterest also has a few ad objectives unique to the platform. 

• Idea Pins: Pinterest Idea Pins are multi-page video Pins. They’re a bit like Instagram stories in that they get pinned to the top of your Pinterest profile, but they don’t disappear after 24 hours. You can’t add links to Idea pins on Pinterest.

• Shopping Pins: Product Pins are enriched with metadata and formatted to let people on Pinterest know that they're shoppable. They contain pricing info, availability, product titles and descriptions. Your product Pins pull from your Pinterest Catalogue or directly from your website. The metadata from your site indicates to pinners that the pin is shoppable.

Pinterest is quickly becoming a vital tool in any digital marketing strategy. It’s important to test organically whether your content and your product are suited to the platform before running ads. But with the abundance of predicted trends each year, there looks to be more opportunity for brands which might have previously steered clear of this platform. 

What’s more, Pinterest’s advertising tools are constantly evolving, with their catalogue API being a brand new string in their bow. As a platform, Pinterest is one to watch, and certainly one that can bring success for brands who make best use of its tools. 

We previously worked with Pagazzi Lighting on their Pinterest strategy, which you can read about in our case study.  

Need help with your digital marketing strategy? Interested in trying out Pinterest? Our team of experts have helped companies across the world to achieve their goals. Get in touch or follow us on Linkedin and Twitter.