Pinterest Marketing For Business -The Complete Guide

Pinterest marketing has so many opportunities to offer to companies of all sizes, from all around the world. While most marketers think of Facebook and Instagram when it comes to social advertising, Pinterest has been proven to provide an excellent medium for product discovery and shopping.

According to Pinterest, 67% of people using their platform are looking to discover new brands and products and make purchases.

And here are some other impressive Pinterest stats:

• The platform currently registers 250 million active monthly users
• Pinterest is popular with millennials – 7 in 10 US millennial women use Pinterest.
• 68% of women in the US use Pinterest.
• 7 in 10 US moms and 1 in 3 dads.
• 55% of people who use Pinterest, use it to shop.
• Pinners are using their Pinterest mobile app to access the platform.

Pinterest is essentially a visual social platform. If we look carefully, we notice that Pinterest is even more than a social media network. It’s a visual search engine. The best search engine for images! And people are using it for inspiration and shopping.

If you’re interested in Pinterest for business, read this 5-minute article on how to kick-start your Pinterest account and promotion on this unique platform.

1. Set up your Pinterest business account

First thing: you need to set up a Pinterest for business account. There are two ways of working this out:

Create a new business account

Setting up a business account is quite simple with Pinterest. All you have to do is enter your company email, a password, then choose an industry field and your website.

You convert your personal account into a business account

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2. Create your profile

After you’ve set up the basics and you’re in, you need to create your business profile. Make sure it makes a great impression on visitors!

Claim your website, if you haven’t already

After you claim your website, your domain will be listed right under your logo on your profile page.

Choose a profile picture

Add a description of your business

As you can see, even some of the world’s biggest organizations have a Pinterest description. Everyone knows what NASA does, but when you read their description, it actually feels like a personal invitation to exploring the world.

So, make sure you write a nice description of your brand too!

Create feature boards to welcome visitors and introduce them to your business

These boards will be pinned at the top of your profile page and will be rotating to show visitors as much as possible about your business.

Create board covers to add more personality to your profile

The truth is, Pinterest profile pages look more or less the same, with some exceptions. That’s why, taking the time to create branded board covers could make a big difference. Here’s an example:

Find appealing titles for your boards

If you’re a words person and feel that words matter more, find some creative titles for your boards.

• Link your Instagram, Etsy and YouTube accounts to Pinterest, by claiming these accounts.
• While on Pinterest, you may want to run promotional ads campaigns. In this case, set up an advertiser account.

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3. Start Pinning

And once you’re done with the profile, start pinning! 

A. Start pinning images from your website and group them into boards.

Make sure you’re visible on Pinterest

As I’ve said before, Pinterest is a huge visual search engine. Your job is to make use of this search engine and get your products on board, by uploading high-quality pins.

I’ll tell you a secret: the more often you upload pins on Pinterest, the more visible you’ll be to people with interests in your field because Pinterest’s algorithm will keep your posts on top of the feed.

Increase your pins’ visibility with keywords in captions

Also, people are performing searches on Pinterest. You’ll want your pins to be easily discoverable. In order to make it in Pinterest’s search results, you need to have keyword optimized descriptions for each of your pins.

Let’s say you’re an interior design business in LA. You need to include keywords like “interior design LA”, “LA interior design company”, “Interior design service in LA”, “beautiful homes in LA”. You get the idea.

Link your pins to your website/YouTube channel/etc

You’ll also want people to visit your website/YouTube channel, not merely to see your product pictures. I assume you want to sell? Well then, make sure that each and every pin links to the corresponding product page, to a landing page or YouTube video, or whatever it is that you’re promoting.

B. Start pinning findings from around Pinterest to connect with others and to gain visibility on Pinterest.

Another action you should take is to pin relevant findings from around the platform and from around the web. This is both a way to connect with others and make yourself noticed, but also a method of staying active and providing your followers with field-related inspiration boards.

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4. Make your website pinnable: add a Pinterest Save button to your website

There’s another way you can get your images on Pinterest, without moving a finger. Pinterest provides you with a piece of code to install a Save button to your website which enables visitors to save images to their Pinterest boards. When someone hovers their mouse over a picture, the Save button will appear (just like in the screenshot above) and with a simple click, they can save that image (and link to your article) to their Pinterest boards.

Add the Pinterest Save button to your website using this code widget.

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5. Create a Pinterest ads campaign

(How to market your business on Pinterest)

And Pinterest marketing for business doesn’t end with a beautiful customized profile page. Just like all the other social platforms, Pinterest offers the possibility to run advertising campaigns inside the platform.

Let’s see what the steps of setting up a Pinterest advertising campaign are and what are the benefits. In other words, take notes cause you’ll learn how to advertise your business on Pinterest.

Get The Pinterest Tag

Before starting your Pinterest marketing campaign you need to install the Pinterest Tag to your website. This is actually a piece of code that you add to your website to be able to track specific information about your campaigns like what actions people take on your website after interacting with your Pinterest ad.

Types of actions you can track with the Pinterest Tag:

• Page visits
• Category views
• Searches
• When items are added to a cart
• Checkouts
• Signups

• Video views
• Lead gen activity
• Or, add an event for the purpose of audience targeting  

It will also keep a record of all types of interactions on Pinterest like clicks, close-ups or saved pins.

You can also use this information to measure return on ad spend and customize your audiences for your future Pinterest campaigns.

Set up a campaign on Pinterest

(How to do Pinterest ads)

Here is what you have to do:

1. Go to Pinterest Ads Manager

2. Click the Ads tab in the top left and then Create ad

3. Select a goal for your campaign

What is your objective? Do you want to increase your brand awareness? Or maybe to drive traffic to your website? Or would you like people to install your app?

4. Define your audience

There are many ways to create an audience for your Pinterest campaign.

One way is to create a new audience group by selecting your preferred settings:

• Demographics (genders, ages) and locations.
• Interests – add interests related to what you’re selling and target people based on the pins they’ve interacted with and boards they’ve created.
• Keywords – use keywords to reach people searching for specific things.

Another way to create an audience is to either:

• Retarget people who have visited your website (you need to install the Tag Manager for this).
• Upload a list of customers.
• Target people who engaged with your pins.
• Target an actalike audience, meaning people who have similar behavior to people you’ve targeted in the past.

5. Set up your schedule, budget, and bid

6. Pick your pins

Pinterest ads formats

Pinterest offers many ad formats to fit any business goal and campaign settings. Before choosing a format, it’s better to have your goal clearly defined.

Standard Pins look just like regular Pins, except that they have been paid to reach more people across the platform. These ads appear alongside organic Pins and seem native ads. The only difference is that they reach more people. These ads are great to increase awareness, boost traffic and grow your sales. 

Standard pin ad format specifications:

• Aspect ratio 2:3
• File format: PNG or JPG
• Maximum file size: 10 MB
• Title characters: up to 100
• Description characters: up to 500

Video ads – Running video ads on Pinterest is possible. Videos are more appealing and have more time to tell a story.

Videos on Pinterest are autoplay and come in several formats: standard, vertical or max width, spanning both columns in people’s feeds.

Promoted videos are best for increasing brand awareness.

Promoted video ads on Pinterest specifications:

• Aspect ratio: 1:1, 2:3, 9:16
• File type: .mp4 or .mov
• Encoding: H.264
• Maximum file size: 2GB
• Video length: Minimum 4 seconds, maximum of 15 minutes
• Title characters: up to 100
• Description characters: up to 500

Promoted Carousels – Using Pinterest’s carousel ad format you can upload up to 5 cards to a single pin. Each card will have a specific image, title, description, link and landing page, which means you can showcase much more product

If you want to increase your brand awareness or to drive traffic to your website, this ad template is a great choice.

Promoted app pins – If you want to promote your app on Pinterest, that’s possible too. Pinterest promoted app pins will feature an install button so that people can download your app, without leaving the platform.

Pinterest promoted app pins specifications:

• Promoted app pins have the same specifications as standard pins or promoted videos.

And now, a quick recap: a few tricks to create appealing Pinterest ads:

• Keep your pins vertical. Pinterest recommends pins to be 2:3—or 1000 pixels wide by 1500 pixels high.
• Use eye-catching, high-quality images to make sure your pins stand out from the crowd.
• Optimize your copy
• And check out Pinterest’s 100 trends for 2019 to understand what people are searching for on Pinterest.

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Create Pinterest ads now

Create your Pinterest ads with our social media advertisement creator in minutes! Start with one of our beautiful ready-made templates and customize it to fully represent your brand!

Start from this

Start from this

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Landing pages for Pinterest ads

The whole idea of Pinterest is to provide a place where people can discover things, products, brands, ideas. Therefore, each pin will have a link directing people to its web source.

In other words, you must pay careful attention to the webpages you link your pins to.

Ideally, each pin should have a landing page that offers more information on the same topic, keeping the visual design closely similar. If you direct people to a page that has nothing to do with your pin, or to your website’s homepage, chances are, they will bounce back.

For example, if your pin features one of your products, the landing page should be that product’s page, where they can find out information such as product description, available sizes, price.

Review and optimize your Pinterest campaign with analytics

After your Pinterest campaign is over, what you need to do is to check the analytics reports.

Verifying your campaign’s results is a way to understand what went well and what went bad and to find ways to optimize your future campaigns in order to reach more people who could be interested in your product and buy.

Go to Pinterest’s Ads Manager and click Analytics – Overview. Then, select an objective you’d like to review from the right-hand-side dropdown menu. After you have selected the objective, you will be served an analytics report corresponding to that objective. You will see metrics like “Campaigns”, “Ad Groups”, “Ads”, and “Keywords”. Click on each of them to see various performance metrics of your campaign.

Here are a few things you may want to change:

• Target audience settings – change or expand locations, age groups, and interests.
• Increase your bid – check Pinterest’s bid guidance to see if your ad’s bid is competitive against other brands.
• Check your ad – make sure your image is high-quality, appealing and relevant. Also, consider writing another copy and description.

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6. Use buyable pins

(How to sell products on Pinterest)

You can even sell on Pinterest, without the user to ever leave the platform, using Shop The Look Pins.

People can buy things by simply adding them to their bag, and check out on Pinterest.

This option is available to businesses in the US and specific business accounts in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and the UK.

Shop the Look works across both mobile and desktop to allow users to make purchases, wherever they’re at.

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7. Use Rich Pins

With Rich Pins you can offer extra information directly in a pin and increase engagement.

Currently, there are 4 kinds of Rich Pins available on Pinterest:

• Product pins – include real-time pricing, availability and where to buy your product.
• Recipe pins – show ingredients, cooking time and serving sizes.
• App pins – show an Install button and the app can be downloaded without leaving Pinterest. This feature is currently available only for iOS apps.
• Article pins – showing the article’s title, author and description.

Learn how to apply for Rich Pins and make your website content Rich Pin-able.

Time to plan a Pinteresting advertising campaign

Now you’re all geared up to go! Follow these instructions to create a successful Pinterest advertising campaign.

Grab the Pinterest ad templates from Bannersnack and save yourself some precious time!

Illustration by Anita Molnar