Make Your Promoted Pins Stand Out on Pinterest with These Best Practices

Pinterest has carved out a unique niche within the social media universe by way of its elegant design and emphasis on visual content. One of the most significant moves the social media giant has made in recent months is the introduction of Promoted Pins, a pay-per-click advertising program that enables businesses to purchase prime placements in Pinterest’s category feeds and search results. The genius of Promoted Pins is that they assume the same appearance as regular pins, giving advertisers an unobtrusive way to reach their target audience with relevant items that match their interests. If you’ve been contemplating using Promoted Pins for your business, below are some solid best practices to keep in mind in order to get the most out of your campaigns.

1. Make Your Pins Informative and Helpful

A notable common thread among many high-performing pins is that they offer helpful and useful information to potential prospects. This could be in the form of a detailed product description or a soft call to action that provides a hint as to what the user will discover should they click through to your website, like a how-to guide or a checklist. Make sure if you’re running a specific limited-time promotion, to include the start and end dates in the text of your pin.

2. Provide Multiple Product Images

The tastes and preferences of your audience can vary greatly, so it’s always a good idea to include several different product images in your Promoted Pin. For example, if you’re advertising handbags, you might want to include images of several different styles and sizes, or multiple colors of a particular popular handbag. This will appeal to a broader range of people at first glance, and drive more traffic versus showing only one product.

3. Include Your Brand or Logo in Your Promoted Pin

Incorporating your logo into your pin image will reinforce your brand in the minds of your audience, and also provide you with the potential to gain additional exposure as users repin your Promoted Pin. Pinterest also allows businesses to use their corporate logo as their profile image, which will add consistency to the overall look of your Pin.

4. Ensure a Proper Aspect Ratio for Your Pins

Your Promoted Pins should be vertically oriented, with your image aspect ratio set anywhere between 2:3 to 1:3.5, and the minimum width of your image should be 600 pixels. Be sure to keep your image proportions correct, because if they’re too tall, there’s a chance that they could get cut off in user feeds.

5. Use Text Overlays in Your Images

Text overlays are immensely popular on Pinterest, and for good reason: They catch the eye and draw the user’s attention to the overall image. Adding a simply designed text overlay to your Promoted Pin is a great way to help your pin stand out, and can even be an effective method to introduce a soft call to action.

6. Steer Clear of Mentioning Specific Prices or Hard Calls to Action

Pinterest doesn’t allow you to display product prices (except if you’re using Product Rich Pins), although you can mention any percentage discounts that may be available on your site. Also avoid any hard or overt calls to action–in other words, no “Click here” or “Buy now” type of language. This actually provides an advantage in terms of helping your Promoted Pins come across in an unobtrusive manner; in other words, avoiding overly salesy language will keep your pins from appearing desperate or even spammy.

7. Broaden Your Keyword Terms to Broaden Your Reach

When setting up your promoted pins campaign, it’s recommended that you choose a minimum of 30 keywords/keyphrases in order to further expand your reach. Think creatively when it comes to keyword selection, but be sure to keep them relevant to the main theme of your product offering.

Including broad terms can sometimes garner surprising results in terms of increasing traffic to your pins, but this isn’t to say that specific keywords should be avoided either just because there’s more competition for those terms. The optimal approach would be to include a mix of specific and broad terms, and then track your CTR and conversion data to see what’s producing the best results.

In addition, if your impressions are drying up, it may not always be because of ineffective keywords; you may need to bump up your CPC bids a little in order to compete with other businesses in the same space. Just remember that Pinterest allows you to retain complete control of your daily ad spend, so you won’t have to worry about overshooting your budget.

Promoted Pins are still a very new innovation in the online advertising space, so the field is practically wide open for experimentation. Using the tips listed above in your Pinterest advertising campaigns will boost your visibility and help your Promoted Pins stand out from the crowd.