Do Pinterest Promoted Pins Really Work?

 

My Pinterest Experiment

* August 9, 2016 – this post has been updated to reflect the changes in my Promoted Pins campaigns and the results I’ve gotten.

I was beyond excited when I launched my new Pinterest strategy ebook “How I Grew My Pinterest Account to over 10,000 Followers.”

Not only was this ebook a great opportunity to share with everyone the steps I use to grow my Pinterest account, it was also a cool way for me to increase my email list. And as you know, as small business owners, one our greatest assets is our marketing lists.

As I was working through my marketing campaign with my social sites, I decided to add creating a Promoted Pin in Pinterest into the marketing mix. I was approved for Promoted Pins when they first launched the program plus I was curious to test this out and see how the whole thing worked.

I’ve done a few Facebook Promoted Posts { and worked through all those hoops just to figure out how to get my image approved! } so how hard could this be? I did a little research and found this step-by-step guide from my Visual Branding blogger friend Andrea ‘Dre’ Beltram, How to Use Pinterest Promoted Pins to Grow Your List.

I used her steps to walk through the process and honestly, it was ten times easier than setting up a Promoted Post or using the Power Editor in Facebook! But that didn’t surprise me – Pinterest’s appeal has always been because it’s so simple and it’s easy to understand how to use the social program.

How Does this Promoted Pins Stuff Work?

Yeah, I had a lot of questions too.

Even though Dre was pretty detailed in her blog post about how she grew her list { and even included some screen grabs so you can see her real numbers! }, I had a few more things to ask her about how she used Promoted Pins to grow her list to over 3,000 qualified potential customers.

If you want to know how to set this thing up right, hop over to Dre’s post and follow her steps on how to get more people to see your Promoted Pins. She does such a great job of explaining the process that I wanted to use my post to go deeper into how the whole program works and how you can grow your pin’s reach.

Instead of me just blogging a list of things to do, I’ll share with you the Pinterest conversations we had and then I’ll throw in some of my experience and the added research I did about Promoted Pins.

1. How long did it take for your pin to go from pending to running?

Dre: It usually takes a day to two for my promoted pins to get approved. In fact, every time it’s taken longer the pin has ended up being denied, which they let me know, including why, via an email.

For me: My pin got accepted immediately and went from pending to what they call ‘running’ in 24 hours. BUT for the first time I ran a campaign, it took almost 5 days before my data in the Promoted Pins dashboard to show up.

I had to send a message to Pinterest’s Help section to kick this thing into action. Within a few hours of them responding to me, I saw something get processed through my bank { from the credit card number I set up with the Promoted Pin } and an hour after that, my data showed up in the dashboard.

2.  Was this your first promoted pin or have you had any of your pins get turned down for a campaign? IF so, why didn’t they accept the pin?

Dre: I had the first couple pins I submitted get denied.

The reason they gave me was:

• The link directed them to a real landing page, not a blog post.
• There was a date associated with the mini course I was promoting {since pins last for years they don’t want anything with an end date}.
• The image, pin & blog post had the verbiage ‘free’ in them.
• Apparently the term ‘badass’ is considered sexy explicit by Pinterest, so my Badass Solopreneur Society is a no go for them.

For me: I followed Dre’s guidelines so my pin was accepted immediately. In my research about which pins get rejected, I found these items that will get your pin turned down by Pinterest:

• Promotional copy like ‘50% off,’ ‘2 for the price of 1,’ ‘discount sale’ or ‘limited offer’
• Posting the actual price IN the image itself
• Using excessive symbols or hashtags in your pin description

3. Pinterest says that we should use 30 key words but that’s an awful lot of words! How did you come up with your key words? And do you recommend a specific amount of key words – like where was that point where you knew your campaign was just flowing?

Dre: I’ve done a lot of testing on keywords and more of them doesn’t seem to do anything but help … as long as they are applicable.

I did searches on Pinterest to find the most applicable keywords for my services and content that are already being searched and added those. After a few weeks it was easy to see which ones were performing and which weren’t.

After a month of steady running of my pin, I’ll go back in and delete the keywords that haven’t gotten any clicks and add new ones I discovered.

My current campaigns all have about 35-50 keywords, most of which are variations of the main topic or more specific variations. For instance for my branding guide I target ‘branding, branding inspiration & branding for bloggers’.

I keep a file with all the best keywords I’ve found and copy and paste those into all new promoted pins I create. Then I delete any that aren’t applicable and add other ones that are. It’s all about testing and tweaking.

For me: I use anywhere from 20 – 30 key words for each campaign that I’ve run. If you get stuck with what to use, Pinterest gives us some guidance in the key word section. You can type in a generic term like marketing and Pinterest will offer up suggested key word phrases like marketing ideas, marketing plan and marketing digital.

By adding in these specific key words into your campaign, it allows Pinterest to pull your pin into the home and category feeds when someone is searching for that phrase.

I also wanted to share this Promoted Pin nugget with you: when you’re ready to tweak your campaign, go to the Promoted Pin dashboard and click on the specific pin campaign name.

Then when you see the image of the pin next to campaign name, click on the image and you’ll see the details of the keywords that you’re using. This is the section that Dre was talking about where she monitors her keywords.

Next, look for a link in the top right called “Edit Promoted Pin.” That link will take you another screen where you’ll be able to add keywords, delete the ones that aren’t working or change your target audience specs.

4.  You’ve suggested that I tweak the campaign – how often did you tweak the campaign? And what elements did you change, the keywords, did you change the copy, etc?

Dre: I monitor my new pins daily until they gain momentum. I look through my campaigns once a week after they’ve are rocking and rolling. I usually only tweak the keywords, although I have added more info in the descriptions on a few occasions, just expanding on what they can expect when they click.

Me: I rarely ever change my copy on the pin description on my campaigns but I do make some changes to the key word sections.

When I’m running a campaign, I usually check into the Edit Promoted Pin section at least once a month for the first few months. Those first few months will give you some idea of what key words connect with pinners and what phrases are not being searched for. I delete the ones that aren’t working and add in a few more based on Pinterest’s suggestions.

5. Would you say that your results came in drips and drops or did you hit a point where it started to flow and your list grew exponentially? If it just hit the flow, how long was your campaign running before you got into the daily flow?

Dre: My pins hit a groove petty quickly, it took maybe a week or so. After that they’d start producing pretty steady clicks and conversions on a daily basis.

There are definitely days that are a little slower but for the most part my sign ups have consistently grown week after week, even on my original pin that was approved in April. That one still brings in AT LEAST 125 new signups a week.

For me: I’m totally going to agree with Dre on this one! It took me about a week before it clicked and my list is growing every day. Just look at these numbers after only two weeks of running the campaign:

• UPDATE – My list continues to grow and this pin has now been pinned to over 10,000 boards. It not only grows my email list but this one pin, this one piece of content has introduced me to clients who have signed up for my coaching programs. Take a look at this updated screenshot a year later with the same campaign:

 

6. Last question – and something for a bit of fun! – when you’re not pinning for your business, what are your two favorite things that you like to pin?

Dre: Being a night owl I get some serious late night snack cravings, so it’s not uncommon for me to be in bed pinning away an endless supply of new yummy recipes.

Once the snack shame starts to set in, I start pinning workout routines. It’s a vicious cycle of the fun pinning kind. 😉

———–

So there you go folks … the details about how Promoted Pins work and how you can tweak your campaign.

I can honestly say that my Pinterest strategy ebook Promoted Pin is not just growing my website traffic but it’s filling up my email list with more qualified people.

It was easy. The results came pretty quickly. In two weeks, I saw results!  From this point on, Promoted Pins will always be a part of any marketing campaign I run to promote my business.

 

More details about my Pinterest loving friend Dre and how you can connect with her:

Andrea ‘Dre’ Beltrami is a straight shooting, wine guzzling, sassy California girl who in 2012 traded in her miserable day job for her lifelong dream of self-employment. Over the last two years Dre has helped solopreneurs and small business entrepreneurs from around the world create a vision for their voice.

She helps entrepreneurial badasses create branding and visual strategies that propel their online success. To learn how to create an instantly recognizable brand that conveys your passion, purpose, personality and voice head over to TheBrandedSolopreneur.com and join her Badass Solopreneur Society today. It’s your right to be heard and she can help you do just that!