Pinterest Ads: 10 Simple Steps to Pin Like a Pro

As PPC platforms go, Pinterest is highly targeted, affordable, and 89% of users visit with the intent to purchase. Here’s how to get their attention with well-thought-out Pinterest Ads.

Whether they’re looking for home decor ideas, time-saving life hacks, or fun activities to keep the little ones entertained, Pinterest is where people go to be inspired.

If you want to promote your new products or services to 400 million active monthly users, Pinterest Ads could be a fantastic option for your business.

Why Pinterest? It’s highly targeted, extremely affordable compared to other pay-per-click (PPC) platforms, and uses images and videos to appeal to prospective customers.

Best of all, many Pinterest users are actively looking to buy. According to the platform, 89% of users (or Pinners) use the site with the intention of making a purchase.

New to Pinterest marketing? Keep reading to learn how Pinterest Ads work and how to add them to your marketing strategy. We’ll also share our expert insights and show you how to create amazing ads that drive clicks and conversions.

What are Pinterest Ads?

A Pinterest Ad is a targeted post (or “Pin”) that you pay to place on Pinterest users’ home feeds, category feeds, and search results.

Pinterest Ads are often referred to as “Promoted Pins”.

Like other PPC platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you pay when someone clicks on your ad. However, some campaign types use cost-per-view or cost-per-impressions instead.

How to use Pinterest Ads Manager: A step-by-step guide

You manage your Pinterest Ads using Pinterest Ads Manager. The first step to getting started on Pinterest Ads Manager is to convert your Pinterest account to a business account.

Having a Pinterest Business Account doesn’t just let you run ads, but comes with lots of additional features too. For example, you can collaborate with other businesses and influencers, as well as view detailed metrics to see how your boards and pins are doing.

To get started on Pinterest Ads Manager, give your ad account a name and select the country where your ads will appear. You can have up to 50 ad accounts per business account if you want your ads to run across different countries.

When your ad account is set up, decide whether you want to use automatic bidding or manual bidding. While an automated campaign is easier to set up and manage, a manual campaign will give you more control.

Next, choose a campaign objective based on the action you want people to take:

• Brand awareness (optimizes for impressions)
• Video views (optimizes for views)
• Video completion (optimizes for views)
• Consideration (optimizes for clicks)
• Conversions (optimizes for conversions)
• Catalog sales (you have the option to optimize for clicks or conversions)

Next, you’ll determine your budget, who you want to target, the run dates of your campaign, and the pins you want to promote. You can create new pins specifically for your ad campaigns or promote existing organic pins — we’ll discuss this in more detail below.

Once everything looks good, it’s time to launch your ad.

Pinterest reviews all ads to ensure advertising guidelines are followed. This process can take up to 24 hours, so don’t panic if your ad doesn’t go live right away!

If you need a little extra help getting started on Pinterest Ads, Pinterest has lots of free short courses available. These include how to choose the best ad format, how to select the right campaign objective, and how the auction system works.

Top 10 tips for profitable Pinterest Ads

1. Prioritize your visuals
2. Determine the right ad format
3. Know your budget
4. Drill down with targeting
5. Utilize your best-performing pins
6. Get verified
7. Don’t forget your copy
8. Prioritize the post-click experience
9. Get inspired by Pinterest Trends
10. A/B test your ads

While it’s easy to get started on Pinterest Ads, it’s essential to spend time optimizing your ads so they stand out and deliver the best results.

We asked our paid social experts, as well as some in-house marketers smashing the game on Pinterest Ads, to share their knowledge.

1. Prioritize your visuals

Much like Instagram, Pinterest is all about the visuals. If your images aren’t high-quality and engaging, you risk getting lost in the shuffle.

Here’s how to make your images stand out in a sea of Pins:

• Understand your target audience and the images that will evoke an emotion in them
• Use vertical images, as these look best on mobile devices. Use a 2:3 aspect ratio where possible. For example, if your images are 1000 pixels wide, they should be 1500 pixels high
• Avoid stock images – stick to your own unique photos and graphics
• Update your images regularly – people like to see fresh, new ad content

Pinterest adds a faint black or white overlay to ads to help them stand out if a user is in light or dark mode. You need to bear this in mind when creating your ad imagery.

With Pin images, it pays to think outside the box. “One way to create pins that stand out is user-generated content,” says Sam Browne, founder of Findaband. “By using photos, reviews and testimonials from happy customers, we build trust and credibility – essential when encouraging new customers to check out our services.”

Looking for additional inspiration? Pinterest Ads has an ads repository you can access to see what your competitors are advertising and what their ads look like. Although at the moment you can only view ads intended for countries in the EU.

2. Determine the right ad format

There are currently ten Pinterest ad formats. Let’s look at what they are and why you might use them:

3. Know your budget

It’s vital to know how much you want to spend on your Pinterest Ad campaigns so you don’t burn through your budget.

The good news is that you can set a spending limit to manage your budget, and you can pause campaigns, ad groups, or ads at any time.

Here are some of our tips for keeping your overall ad spend and cost-per-click (CPC) as low as possible:

• Use targeting to focus on the right audience – those most likely to convert on your ads – we’ll talk about targeting in more detail later
• Focus on relevant keywords with low competition
• Regularly check your metrics to see which ads drive the most clicks and conversions

Check out some more hints and tips for lowering CPC.

4. Drill down with targeting

Targeting your Pinterest Ads means your ads are more likely to appear in front of the people who are interested in your products and services.

A great starting point is to build an ideal client persona so you understand what your ideal customer likes and dislikes, as well as what their hobbies and interests are.

Here are the different ways you can target prospective customers on Pinterest Ads.

• Audiences – Combines your own data with Pinterest’s to reach those who have previously made a purchase on your site or have engaged with your Pinterest content in the past
• Actalike audience – Targets new people who have similar habits or interests to one of your existing audience segments
• Demographics – Allows you to reach users by location, device, gender, age, or language
• Interests – Targets users who have created boards, engaged with Pins, or have shown interest in a relevant topic
• Keywords – Enables you to reach people searching for a specific topic on Pinterest. You can also use negative keywords to exclude particular words and phrases
• Placements – Choose if you want your ads shown in the Pinterest home feed, search results, or related pins
• Expanded – Pinterest populates additional interests and keywords based on the ones you’ve already chosen, along with your ad content and audience

While it can take time to target your Pinterest ads just right, the results are worth it. “We used Pinterest Ads granular targeting features to hone in on our target audience, focusing on those who pinned certain content and browsed certain boards,” says James Wilkinson, CEO and co-founder of Balance One Supplements. “As a result, our click-through rates increased by 25%.”

5. Utilize your best-performing pins

One of the easiest, cost-effective ways to see success on Pinterest Ads is to turn your most successful organic Pins into Pinterest Ads. For example, you can turn a product pin that gets lots of clicks, comments, and shares, into an ad so more people can see it.

As you know your organic Pins already drive clicks and engagement, you increase the chances of your Pinterest Ads getting results. Plus, it’s easy to repurpose existing Pins into ads, saving time and resources.

“We’re big fans of promoting our top-performing pins”, says Peter Hoopis, President of Hoopis Pickleball. “This helps us reach more people and spend less per click. Plus, Pinterest’s algorithm recognizes the strong performance of these pins and shows them to more relevant users – meaning more engagement and conversions.”

6. Get verified

If you run an ecommerce brand, you can apply for Pinterest’s Verified Merchant Program.

This adds a verification check symbol to your account, adds a “Shop” tab to your profile page, and lets you add prices to your pins.

It’s a great way to show that your brand is reliable and credible, establishing trust with prospective customers and helping your ads stand out from the crowd.

To apply you need a Pinterest account that is at least three months old, and your products, product catalog, and website must meet Pinterest’s merchant guidelines.

7. Don’t forget your copy

While high-quality images and videos are integral to your Pinterest Ads, it’s important to think about your copy too. Your title and description help your ads show to the relevant people, tell them more about your product or service, and entice them to click on your ad.

Your Pin title can be up to 100 characters long, with the first 40 showing in feeds, depending on the device. We recommend optimizing your title for your chosen keyword where it feels natural to do so.

While your description doesn’t appear in the home feed or search feed, it helps Pinterest determine who to show your ad to. This means it’s crucial to make your description as detailed as possible to ensure your Pinterest Ad appears in front of the right people.

8. Prioritize the post-click experience

When your Pinterest Ad drives customers to your website, you need to ensure the page it takes them to is engaging, navigable, and branded the same way as your Pin.

Over half of PPC ads point to a homepage rather than a bespoke landing page, which is a wasted opportunity. Taking the time to build customized landing pages for your ad campaigns can lead to higher conversion rates.

Don’t forget to add the Pinterest Tag to your website. This helps you track conversions and see which ads are the most effective. You can also use the tag if you want to run a retargeting campaign.

Find out more about building brilliant landing pages.

9. Get inspired by Pinterest Trends

It can often be hard to find ideas for ads that stop the scroll. Pinterest Trends is a valuable tool for identifying which keywords people use and what content is gaining momentum.

You can also view the top trends specific to your own users and followers, helping you see what your target audience is most interested in.

10. A/B test your ads

Pinterest is a fast-moving social media platform. This means you regularly need to monitor and tweak your ads to ensure you get optimal results.

A/B testing is a great way to do this. This is when you run two nearly identical versions of an ad, with one thing changed, for example, a different image. You can then see which version of the advert does the best and apply the changes to the rest of your ads moving forward.

“Try various ad formats, colors, imagery, and messaging when you start your campaign,” says Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches. “Track performance and use Pinterest analytics to pinpoint the ad that generates the most clicks. You can then use this ad as a blueprint for future campaigns.”

The takeaway

According to Hootsuite, people aren’t confident about advertising on Pinterest. However in our opinion, this is because Pinterest isn’t as well-known an advertising platform as platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Pinterest Ads is hard to beat if you want a visual-centric platform that is highly targeted, has low levels of competition, and high purchase-intent levels.

You can gain access to a fresh cohort of future customers by being mindful of your content, setting the right budget, and leveraging the proper ad format,

And, of course, if you need support setting up and managing your Pinterest Ads, our team is here to help.

Want to get the most out of your paid social ads? Check out our articles on best practices for social media ads on X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

This article has been updated and was originally published in July 2020.