Pinterest Opens Promoted Pins to Small-and-Medium Sized Businesses

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By Vlad Vidaeff

Promoted posts are an essential part of a company’s social media strategy on a variety of platforms.  Facebook’s algorithm has pressured brands to promote their posts to reach a large number of segments.  Other prime time players, including Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn also offer robust advertising platforms.  Until now, Promoted Pins on Pinterest were limited to large corporations such as Macy’s and Walgreens.  Small-and-medium sized businesses rejoice, Pinterest has announced that it has opened up Promoted Pins to all businesses on the network.  This blog will discuss the advertising options available to businesses, with a focus on small-and-medium sized companies.  The advantages of Promoted Pins will also be analyzed.

Given the unique nature of how content is shared on Pinterest, the social media network is pushing the incremental impressions and engagements that resurface again and again as one of the main benefits of using Promoted Pins.  Before delving deeper into the main benefits of advertising on Pinterest, let’s first take a look at the options at your disposal.  One of your options is interest targeting.  Pinterest is offering a selection of more than 420 interests that ensure that there are several that match up with your company’s products or services.  Pinterest previously offered only 30 interests so this is a substantial increase.  One of the unique aspects of Pinterest is that Pinners discover ideas early in the purchase and decision making process.  This is particularly powerful as it gives brands the opportunity to increase their brand awareness before consumers have set their minds on a particular company.

Keyword targeting is another option that allows brands to reach Pinners while they are looking for new ideas.  As many Pinners use Pinterest for inspiration, you can focus on those key keywords which are most applicable to your brand.  Previously, keyword targeting only focused on basic demographics such as location and gender.  With a more advanced system, you can now reach Pinners who are in the consideration phase of their purchase decision with ease.

The final option is customer database targeting.  If you have a list of at least 100 current customers, this method of targeting allows you to reach these important customers while they are looking for new ideas.  This option follows in the footsteps of Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn which allow brands to upload customers’ e-mails for targeting purposes.

Various targeting options would not mean much without analytics to judge the success of your campaigns.  With enhanced conversion tracking, you can track and optimize the performance of your Promoted Pins against your revenue goals.  Some of the metrics you can track include page visits, sign ups, checkouts on your website, and custom conversions.  After testing the new offerings from the beta version of the enhanced advertising platform, Pinterest has reported that advertisers have received an average of 20% more free clicks in the month following the launch of Promoted Pins campaigns.  Given the unique manner in which content is shared on Pinterest, with Repins and saves of Pins on Pinterest occurring many months and even years after the Pin is originally pinned, advertising campaigns can have a long shelf life.  While the audience reach may not be as impressive as Facebook, younger generations are increasingly attracted to visual platforms.  Like Instagram and Snapchat, Pinterest is a visual social media platform.  With shareability as its key benefit, small-and-medium sized businesses should consider advertising on Pinterest.  The REFUGE Group serves multiple clients who are small-and-medium sized businesses.  If you would like to learn more about our paid advertising options on Pinterest and other platforms, please e-mail us at [email protected] or give us a call at 713-528-0200.

Tiffany

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