Embracing the underdog of ads: How to master the art of Pinterest

With Meta and Google dominating the online paid ads world, it’s no surprise other clever advertising tools are falling under most businesses’ radar. The underdog starting to show up more, especially for female lifestyle brands, is Pinterest, writes digital advertising expert and founder of Cali Social, Lauren Swidenbank.

From user-generated content (UGC), to targeting capabilities and overall visual aesthetics, Pinterest has unlimited potential for most eCommerce products and lifestyle services.

Teamwork makes the dream work

I’ve been there, completely tempted to put all my eggs in one advertising platform’s basket. But this limits your reach and leaves you open to technology fails. Just look at brands that solely relied on Facebook’s data tracking, and then boom, they were hit with Apple’s iOS 14 update.

Lesson learnt – look at advertising like teamwork. Don’t put your resources into just one platform.

Say hey to Pinterest, your new best friend for data collection. Pinterest ads are targeted to consumers based on the data collected from their pins and searches. This narrows down a user’s aesthetic and lifestyle, targeting ads to them they’re likely to enjoy.

Don’t believe me yet? Pinterest has a 2x higher return rate on ad cost than other comparable platforms.

With it’s visual-based feed and unique search functionality, Pinterest is the place to show off your brand.

And it’s also a prime driver direct to your website. So get ready to see a boost in eCommerce traffic, folks.

Am I the right match for Pinterest? 

If your brand is one that’s visually beautiful, then you can ‘swipe right’ on Pinterest (AKA you’re a match for Pinterest).

This visual-driven platform is ideal for brands prominent in fashion, beauty, cosmetic services, furniture, food, travel, and technology worlds.

And it’s especially suited for premium female-focused brands.

According to Pinterest’s 2022 trend report, over 45 per cent of US Pinterest’s regular users earned over $100,000 per year, and 60 per cent were female. And it’s more than likely we’re seeing a similar trend here in Australia.

The report also says 80 percent are likely to discover new brands weekly.

So what does this mean? This demographic is using the platform as a source of inspiration, discovery and are leaning toward aesthetic and luxurious brands.

5 tips to set up your business Pinterest account

With so many new ways to experience the platform in 2022, from Try-On Product Pins, Idea Pins (similar to a ‘Story’) to Collection ads – here’s my top tips to get the most bang for your buck with your Pinterest advertising strategy:

1. Keep it pretty

On Pinterest, you’ll be competing with a sea of other brands and images that can easily overshadow your content.

Make sure your images are high-res, aesthetic and unique. Get creative, adventurous and have fun with your imagery.

2. Consistency is key

You don’t want to look like a ritzy décor brand one minute, and a Kmart flat pack the next. Your ad can’t catfish what you actually offer.

If you haven’t already, create a branding kit for all visuals, including colours, fonts and key messaging.

When someone mentions your brand in a room, you instantly want people to have a consistent visual in their minds.

3. Shake it up

Take advantage of Pinterest’s ad campaign set up, (which is very similar to Facebook Ads Manager) to have a collection of circulating ads.

Here you can test which content type, call to action, visuals and targeting is working best.

Keep your audience on the edge of their seats, with differing content types (no one likes seeing a million mirror selfies of the same model).

4. Don’t let them be the one that got away

Like Facebook, you can stalk – I mean target – your audience to be people who’ve visited your website, customer list, or are existing Pinterest audiences.

Even better, you can add keywords linked with your brand, product, or a timely event like ‘Mother’s Day’ for gift products..

Pinterest keywords work in a similar way to Google ads (where you can use keyword ‘match types’ to target broad, phrase, and exact match types).

For example, an ‘exact’ match keyword such as ‘linen shirt’ would only show to people who are specifically searching for a linen shirt. Whereas if you had a ‘broad’ match keyword for the same ‘linen shirt’, your ad could show to people looking for ‘linen styling’, ‘shirt’, or ‘what to wear with a shirt’ and will reach a larger, broader audience.

Other ways to grab that conversion are to set your campaign goals to purchases, video views, shares, website visits or pins.

And be sure to use popular yet simple call-to-action copy like, ‘Re-pin me’, ‘Buy now’, ‘Say hey’, and ‘Learn more’.

5. Get relatable – AKA integrate user-generated-content (UGC)

Step up your ‘realness’ by getting your community involved in content creation – this is what we call user-generated content.

Millennials and Gen Z love to snap a selfie and share their experiences online, spending five hours plus daily doing so. This is your window to jump in!

There’s a few ways to get started – from content such as ‘outfit of the day”, or ‘how I style my bedroom’,  to ‘3 different looks with this shirt’ – so it’s both aesthetic and educational/informative.

Social proof is also important. We use social proof (in particular, testimonials) for one of our clients – Miss April’s Pinterest ads strategy (see below)

Incentives can be used – for example the audience’s chance to be featured on the brand’s account, or for 5 per cent off their next purchase.

Or, you could bring in the big guns, with an agency like ours, Cali Social, to create a content brief, scour talent and manage deliverables with paid content creators, for a strategic approach.

Remember, don’t forget about the rest

As I said earlier, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Your Pinterest strategy must also support your paid Facebook, Instagram and/or Google advertising approaches.

With Pinterest being an incredible search-engine-like channel, make sure you have your other retargeting advertising channels like Facebook optimised to those who’ve visited, so you can nurture and convert that relationship.

Let’s do this 

So with 2022 being a fresh and already eventful year, there’s no time like the present to embrace this new beautiful channel for your ads strategy.

I know we’ll be investing a load of creative juices and financially-savvy minds to get our clients seeing the best returns using this channel too.

The conversions will be flowing in faster than you can say Pinterest!

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