How to reach brides through Pinterest advertising
This week, our digital expert Karolina Sykut talks us through the importance of social advertising on Pinterest to drive brand awareness, and explains how to effectively reach your bridal target market.
There’s no doubt about it – if you’re in the wedding industry, Pinterest should be one of the networks that you focus on the most. In January 2021, Hootsuite reported that 85% of Pinners say they use Pinterest to plan new projects, a significant percentage. People usually come to the platform when they are in the very early stages of a project or purchase decision, particularly relevant to the wedding industry.
Did you know that once people start planning their wedding, 27% of Pinners will plan several times a day?! Moreover, Pinterest’s self-service advertising tools identified the female audience at 77.1% and the male audience at 14.5%: this means you have a great chance of reaching your highly engaged target group with not only organic, but also paid Pin advertising.
Starting on a new platform may be a dauting experience, so here are the steps you should take before kicking off with your very first Pinterest campaign:
Once you have created a business profile, have your Pinterest Tags installed and working, have defined a clear campaign goal and have your creative assets ready to go, head to the Pinterest Ads Manager at ads.pinterest.com. Click on “Ads” in the top left corner of your browser, and select “Create ad”.
Step 1 – Select your campaign goal
There are four different goal options available in Pinterest Ads Manager—pick the one that fits your campaign the best. For example, if you want to build awareness for your business, opt for Brand Awareness. If you want to get more eyes on your videos and help people discover your brand, choose Video Views. If you want to drive more clicks to your site and encourage people to take actions on your site, pick Traffic. If you want to encourage people to install your app, select App Install. As with any campaign, it’s important to make sure that your Pins and goal work together. Don’t forget, it’s essential to pick the right goal, as it will determine what actions Pinners take after they interact with your ads and even afterwards, when they land on your website!
Step 2 – Set up your budget limit
Give your campaign a name and, if you’d like, enter a daily or lifetime spend limit. A daily spend limit specifies a max amount you’d like to spend per day, while a lifetime spend limit specifies a max amount you’d like spend over the course of your ad campaign. Both ensure that you always stay within your advertising budget, but remember, you will be setting up your actual budget later on.
Step 3 – Set up your audience via ad groups
Ad groups organise all of your ads for a specific campaign in one convenient place—making it easier for you to control your budgets and test different targeting options. You can think of each ad group as a different audience you’re trying to reach. To get started, group similar Pins together into an ad group, making sure that the same targeting can be applied to each. If you feel that this is not the case, consider breaking your Pins out into separate ad groups.
To reach the right people, you need to have the right targeting. In addition to gender, location, language, device, and placement, you can also target your ads by using audiences, interests, keywords, or expanded targeting—or any combination of these. Keywords are important – make sure to include at least 40, starting with: wedding ideas, wedding, wedding outfits ideas, best wedding dress…
You can also use Audience targeting, which allows you to target people from your first-party data sources: customer lists, Pinterest Tag, Pinterest profile engagers etc. You can also create ‘actalikes’ (similar to Facebook’s lookalikes) from people who demonstrated similar behaviours to your best customers.
Step 4 – Set up campaign flight dates, budget and bid
After you have your ad groups and targeting sets, select the date you want to start your campaign. For non-seasonal campaigns, Pinterest recommends running your campaign continuously, as Pinners are always looking for new inspiration.
Next, add your budget. Select “Daily budget” if you have a specific amount you want to spend per ad group, per day. Select “Lifetime budget” if you want us to use your budget evenly over the dates you’ve selected.
Step 5 – Select your promoted Pins
You’re almost there! Add the Pins that you want to promote. You can either create a new Pin, or select an existing Pin that you’d like to use as your ad.
If creating a new Pin, make sure to follow Pinterest’s creative best practices, including:
- High quality, vertical images that will stand out in people’s feeds.
- Avoid using abstract images or lifestyle imagery that doesn’t showcase your brand.
- Put a logo on every Pin you make, but keep it subtle. Avoid the lower-right corner, since that spot gets covered up by Pinterest product icons.
- Add text overlay to make it stand out, but keep it concise for readability on mobile.
Once you’ve selected your Pins, toggle to the “Selected” tab to add additional details, such as Promoted Pin name, and a destination URL.
Remember, that the landing page should reflect the content in the ad so that the experience from ad to website is seamless.
Now, give your Pin one last look and then press the “Launch” button in the lower right corner. Once submitted, your Pin will be reviewed by Pinterest to make sure it follows all their advertising standards - this should take no more than 24 hours. And you’re all set!
If you would like to get some more advice on Pinterest advertising for your bridal business, you can email Karolina at thesocialkarolina@gmail.com.
