Advertising Your Shopify Store On Pinterest: Best Practices
When you’re launching social marketing for your Shopify store, Pinterest isn’t necessarily the first platform you’ll think of for advertising - as the 14th largest social network you might pass over it. But it’s worth considering with 445 million monthly active users, is your Shopify business missing a trick by not using Pinterest advertising?
One of the key aspects of Pinterest as a social channel which is hugely important for ecommerce businesses, is the way in which users consume content on the platform.
People tend to log in to Pinterest for less time than other social channels like TikTok and Meta platforms, but when they do log in, they do so in an engaged frame of mind. 85% of users say they use the platform to plan new projects and 8 out of 10 users say the platform makes them feel positive.
Given that there are nearly 5 billion searches on the platform every month, and 75% of weekly Pinterest users claim they’re ‘always shopping’, if your brand is in the right sphere, marketing on the platform could be an extremely lucrative tactic.
As users tend to use the platform to plan projects and ‘self improve’, ecommerce businesses with products that work well in those areas tend to perform very well - for example, spaces like home decorating or homeware products, or brands focused on health and wellness like nutrition, food, drink, skincare and fitness. And of course, brands focused on creativity and self expression such as fashion and makeup.
So if your brand fits into any of the key categories for the platform: self improvement, learning new skills, wellbeing, decorating, creativity or self expression, read on to find out how to set up your organic and paid advertising for the platform.
Benefits of Pinterest Advertising For Shopify Stores
1. Showcase Your Products
An effective way to showcase your products in a more visually appealing way. By using high-quality images and videos on Pinterest you can help attract more attention to your brand and drive more traffic to your Shopify store.
2. High Purchase Intent
Pinterest users often use the platform to seek inspiration for a product they want to purchase and will create boards for their future buying decisions. This means Pinterest has a higher purchase intent which allows Shopify merchants to target these users and increase their conversion chances.
3. Targeted Audience
Pinterest’s detailed targeting options allow you to reach the right audience based on interests, keywords, demographics, and even specific life events like weddings or home renovations. Pinterest's audience is predominantly women, but it has growing male and younger user segments, giving you flexibility to tailor ads to your target market.
4. Shoppable Pins
Pinterest allows for shoppable pins, where users can click directly on a product within the pin and be taken to the Shopify store to complete the purchase. This reduces the friction in the buyer's journey, making it easier to turn interest into a sale.
How Do I Set Up an Organic Pinterest Profile for My Shopify Business?
It’s quite simple.
- Go to https://www.pinterest.co.uk/business/create/
- Enter your email address, create a password and enter your age
- Click Create account
- Fill in the fields to Build your profile, then click Next
- Fill in the fields to Describe your business, then click Next
- Select whether you want to run ads, then click Next
- Select where you'd like to start or click the x icon
- go to your new Pinterest business account
Then you’re ready to start building your account!
How Do I Market My Shopify Store Organically on Pinterest?
Organic marketing on Pinterest is somewhat similar to other social platforms, in that you share ‘Pins’ (instead of posts) to your ‘created’ feed, which will also appear in your followers’ feeds when they’re browsing the platform.
However, one of the unique features of the platform is that you can created ‘saved boards’ of both your own pins and pins from other users, meaning Pinterest is a great platform with which to create a community around your Shopify brand, both by interacting with and saving pins of users and creators who share content in the same space as your business, and by sharing your own pins for them to use on their inspiration boards.
account featured @maryannrizzo
When creating pins for your business, it’s important to remember a few key tips:
- Pinterest is a visual first platform, so make sure the images you use are well put together and appealing
- Make sure you add pins that are tailored to your desired audience demographic, focusing on content that will interest them and which they’ll be encouraged to share/save
- Keep titles short and to the point, and add more information via image overlay text if needed
- Test Idea Pins which allow for a multi-page format featuring up to 20 pages of videos, images and text in a single Pin - use to showcase step-by-step guides, recipes, and ‘how to’ articles
- Use Rich Pins which automatically sync data from your Shopify website to your pins - you can choose from“Product”, “Article”, “App”, and “Recipe”. (Product Pins are especially helpful for ecommerce Shopify stores)
- Test video content in Pins. Since the release of TikTok and its ensuing popularity, video content used across all social platforms tends to result in additional views and engagement
Can I Advertise My Shopify Business on Pinterest?
Well, the platform itself claims: ‘Pinterest is the only platform where ads are additive.’ This basically means that instead of being somewhat interruptive to a user’s social experience, ads on the platform help its users - once they’ve discovered a new creative idea and expressed interest in it, ads are then there to help them with the products or tools they need to bring that idea to fruition.
And this isn’t really just a clever claim from the platform - stats show that Pinterest ads can have a 2.3x more efficient cost per conversion, along with a 2x higher return on ad spend.
How Much Does It Cost To Advertise My Shopify Store On Pinterest?
The cost to advertise your Shopify store on Pinterest depends on several factors, including your bidding strategy, keywords, types of ad, audience targeting, and the competition in your niche. Pinterest uses a pay-per-click (PPC) and pay-per-impression model, so the actual costs can vary based on your campaign goals and there is no set price for a Pinterest ad.
A WebFX survey found that Pinterest ads cost, on average:
Up to $0.10 per click Up to $2.00 per conversion Up to $1.50 per 1,000 impressions
How To Create Ads on Pinterest For My Shopify Business
- From your Pinterest organic business account, click Ads in the top left corner then select Overview to open the Ads Manager
- Click next to your name
- Click Create new ad account
- Enter a name for the ad account and select your country, then click Set up billing
- If prompted, read and accept the Advertising Agreement
- Add payment information for your new ad account
- Click Save
When you enter your business information in your ad account, it will appear in the address portion of your billing receipt.
This receipt may be used for tax purposes, so you should include any information that needs to be clearly indicated on the receipt.
IMPORTANT: If you select the wrong billing currency during setup or need to switch the account currency, you will need to create a new account in the correct country and/or currency. Therefore it’s important to properly review all the information you have submitted during the process to ensure it’s correct for your Shopify store.
Once you’ve set up your ad account, if you want to optimise for conversions on the platform and track user activity on your Shopify store, you’ll need to set up something called a Pinterest Tag (Pinterest’s answer to the Meta pixel). Discover more in our article which features instructions on how to track conversions with a Pinterest Tag.
Once you’ve set up your Pinterest tag, you can start running campaigns.
How Do I Effectively Set Up Campaigns to Promote My Shopify Store?
Pinterest as a platform offers many of the same key campaign optimisations as most other social platforms:
- Brand Awareness
- Video Views
- Traffic
- Conversions
- Catalogue sales
In order to drive conversions on the platform, it’s best to adopt a similar approach to other social platforms where you welcome new users to your brand in the awareness phase, then work to drive them to your Shopify store in the consideration phase, before finally working to generate sales in the purchase phase.
There are several different methods of defining your Shopify audience targeting on the platform.
- Interest-based audiences (people who have expressed an interest in specific topics)
- Demographics (age, gender, location)
- Keyword targeting (because Pinterest is used in a similar method to a search engine, targeting via search keywords in the same way you would do via Google Ads can be very beneficial)
- Organic engagers (either Any engagement action: Pinners who’ve performed any engagement action with your content, including Pin clicks, outbound clicks, saves, comments and video views.
- Optimised engagement actions: Pinners selected based on high intent actions (such as saves and outbound clicks).
- Website visitors (people who have visited your website and performed specific actions)
- Customer lists
- Actalike audiences (similar to Meta’s ‘Lookalike’ audience in which the platform finds audience members who share similar characteristics with the custom audience used as a baseline)
Pinterest Ad Types
Pinterest advertising also offers you the opportunity to test many different types of ads to determine which deliver the best results for your Shopify business at all levels of the funnel, including static pins and ads, video pins and ads, carousel pins and ads, collection pins and ads, Idea pins and ads, and Shopping ads.
To set up your campaign structures effectively, it’s usually best to deliver awareness and traffic campaigns to brand unaware audiences such as interest based and via keyword targeting, then moving on to refine audiences to high intent users like customer lists and website activity when optimising for conversions.
However, as previously discussed, due to the fact that Pinterest users typically approach the platform in a more engaged frame of mind, and are usually more driven with approaching new products and sourcing the tools they need to achieve their goals, it’s entirely possible to mix and match audience types at all levels of the consumer buying journey, such as testing conversion focused campaigns to colder audience members because they already likely have some level of interest and intent to buy.
Pinterest Ad Sizes
Pinterest has different ad sizes and formats, including standard pins, square pins, long pins, carousel pins, and Idea Pins:
Standard pins: The simplest type of ad, which is a single image or video that promotes an existing pin. The recommended aspect ratio is 2:3, or 1000 x 1500 pixels.
Square pins: Have a 1:1 aspect ratio and are 1000 x 1000 pixels.
Long pins:Have a 2:3 aspect ratio and are 1000 x 2100 pixels.
Carousel pins: Allow users to swipe through multiple images in a single pin, with a maximum of 2–5 images per carousel. The aspect ratio can be 1:1 or 2:3, and the maximum file size is 32 MB per image.
Video ads: The minimum video length is 4 seconds and the maximum is 15 minutes. The aspect ratio should be shorter than 1:2 but taller than 1.91:1, with Pinterest recommending a square (1:1) or vertical (2:3 or 9:16) aspect ratio.
Discuss Your Pinterest Marketing Needs With Our Expert Team
Check out this article for further information on marketing on Pinterest, and if you need support managing your organic and paid social media campaigns, get in touch. Our social media experts can help you reach (and expand) your audience across all major social platforms.
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