Pinterest promoted pins have been available in the US and Canada for a while now and in April 2016, they hit our shores here in the UK. They are a form of pay per click advertising in a similar mould to promoted posts on Facebook and whilst they are fairly new and competition for UK advertisers is relatively low, they can be a form of advertising that is cost effective and provides a good return on investment.
In this post, we show you how to create and target Pinterest Promoted Pins.
Points To Note
To use Pinterest promoted pins you must have a Pinterest Business Account based in the UK or the USA. You can target pinners in the UK, Canada, and the USA.
Promoted pins are managed at ads.pinterest.com
To create a promoted pin, the pin must already exist on a board in your business profile.
Step 1 – Create Your Ad
Log in to your Pinterest account and visit ads.pinterest.com
Click the + sign in the top right and choose create ad
Step 2 – Choose The Goal For Your Campaign
If you choose “Boost Engagement” you will be charged for each engagement with your ad.
If you choose ‘Get traffic to your website’ you will only be charged per click-through to your site.
You don’t need to pick your pin at this stage you can do so later.
Step 3 – Campaign Details
If you have an overall budget in mind, divide this by the number of days you are running the ad for to get your daily budget.
When you have completed the above details , click the “pick a pin” button. 
Once you click on the pick a pin button you will be taken to your boards. The pin you wish to promote must be on a public board. If your campaign is to drive traffic to your website the pin must link to a website. Make sure you have a suitable landing page on your website.
You can filter your pins to choose the ones that are already performing the best. These are likely to make the best performing adverts.
Step 4 – Target Your Advertising
Now you have to name your advert so that you can track its performance, enter the URL for the landing page on your website and target your advert based on interests and relevant keywords.
The more precisely you can target your advertising the more successful it will be for achieving your aims. It is just as well, therefore, that as well as targeting by interest and keyword, you can also restrict your advert to certain geographical regions, languages, the device used and gender.
Step 5 – Set Your Budget
This step is closely linked to the targeting of your ad. The more narrowly defined your audience, the less you will have to bid for each click on your advert. You can see this in action by changing the targeting options and you will see the range of bids from competitors (competing for the same audience) vary. You should enter the maximum amount that you are willing to bid for each click.
High overall budget + High CPC Bid = lots of impressions and hopefully lots of clicks
High overall budget + Low CPC Bid = you might be outbid by competitors to get in front of key customers and your competitors’ adverts will be seen more often than yours
Low overall budget + High CPC Bid = low number of impressions and a short running campaign
Low overall budget + Low CPC Bid = your advert is not likely to be seen by many people
Step 6 – Business Details
Confirm your business details and be sure to enter the VAT number if your business is VAT registered.
Step 7 – Payment Details
After confirming that you agree to abide by Pinterest’s advertising terms and conditions, you will be prompted to enter your payment details and you will be charged for each click on your advert.
Once you have created your advertising campaign your promoted pin will be submitted for approval by Pinterest and this can take up to 24 Hours.
If you edit the campaign and change the targeting or the promoted pin’s description, your ad will be submitted for review again and this can take a further 24 hours.
Step 8 – Measure Success
As with any advertising, you must measure the success of your promoted pins or you will never know whether it is money well spent. Pinterest provides a range of analytics for your adverts and we will look at these in the next blog post in this series on Pinterest Promoted Pins.
Pinterest Promoted Pin Example
We are running a promoted pin campaign on Pinterest during May to win £200 of vouchers towards E-Learning courses. You can find out more and enter here.
Have you tried Pinterest advertising yet? Let us know how you get on.
You can see how we got on and what we learned from advertising on Pinterest here.