Episode 81: Promoted Pins
In this show I talk to Alisa Meredith, who is an expert and speaker on Pinterest and is, to my mind, the world authority on Pinterest’s advertising platform, Promoted Pins.
What are promoted Pins in Pinterest and how are they different from normal Pins?
They are the way Pinterest serves up advertising. It is hard to tell the difference from normal pins. They have “promoted by” underneath them. They appear in search, the smartfeed and also in topics. They are currently only available in the US, the UK and Canada.
Why should self-published authors think of using Promoted Pins to promote their books?
It’s hard to use Pinterest for making direct sales. You are better off, in Alisa’s opinion to promote your blog posts and look for e-mail sign-ups rather than trying to sell books directly. If you sell direct in the U.S you can use Pinterest Buyable Pins if you use Shopify to sell your books. But in Alisa’s mind Pinterest isn’t yet a platform that people use to buy from directly.
There are three kinds of campaigns you can run for Promoted Pins:
- An awareness campaign where you pay for each time someone views your Pin.
- An engagement campaign where you pay for repins, likes and close-ups of your Pin.
- A traffic campaign where you pay for clicks to your website.
Alisa only uses traffic pins as they seem to be much cheaper than the other campaign types.
What targeting options are available for Promoted Pins?
The option that has been around for longest is Keyword Targeting. You can also target by interests and gender. Alisa points out that even though some people consider Pinterest to be a platform that mostly women use, relatively more men buy on Pinterest than women, and that even the “Unspecified” section has customers in. A recent important addition is that you can now target by your e-mail list and website audience in a similar way to Facebook and Twitter. Additionally you can also create an audience of people who have engaged with a Pin that points to your website. Pinterest also has “act-a-like” audiences where you can find people who are similar to an audience you have specified in terms of how they behave on Pinterest.
How much should people be bidding for Promoted Pins?
Alisa never bids what they suggest, she always goes much lower. She recommends going for Keyword Targeting for Traffic. She starts in the region of 25 cents and then raises her bid over time depending on what happens. What she likes about Promoted Pins though is that you get a lot for free. Any repins and the clicks from those don’t count towards your clicks. She has seen cases where she has paid 10 cents for a campaign and seen over 4000 impression and 17 repins.
What exciting things are being developed by Pinterest in terms of Promoted Pins?
App Install Pins are coming for iOS (they aren’t available to everyone yet). Another thing coming is One-tap Promoted Pins, where you don’t even get an enlarged Pin when you tap on it, it will take you directly to the website. Alisa is worried these will get too many accidental clicks though. Another big area that is coming is promoted video pins. Alisa likes the idea though doesn’t like the fact that you have to use the Awareness Type of Promoted Pin with Video Pins, which she has found to be very expensive.
How can people find out about you?
Her blog is at alisameredith.com where she writes about Pinterest and Promoted Pins in general. She has an eBook available to buy there and also free materials available. On Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram she is alisammeredith (That’s with an extra m in the middle).
If you liked this show then you might like Using Instagram to Market Books with Jenn Herman, Using Google for Business with Martin Shervington and Twitter Chats with Madalyn Sklar.