Pinterest Management Services Expert Reveals Why Investing in Promoted Pins Is Not Optional

Why You Need to Include Promoted Pins in Your Pinterest Marketing Strategy in 2019

If your business has been leveraging Pinterest marketing since it’s fruition you’ve most likely grown your traffic organically. But guess what? That is all about to change. As a Pinterest Management Services expert I can suspect that as Pinterest prepares for its IPO next month that they will tighten up their algorithm to limit organic reach and make it harder to rank high using free organic means. Pinterest will have no choice because they in it to make money now. They have to please their investors. They want to drive their stock price up. This is how all the insiders will cash out. You get this right?

What that means to you is you will have to invest in Pinterest ads (Promoted Pins). It is no longer an option. It must be part of your Pinterest marketing strategy in 2019 and beyond.

Advertising on Pinterest Gives Your Brand Instant Visibility

This is especially important to those who are just starting out on Pinterest. Competition is becoming more and more fierce. Investing in ads is like saying to Pinterest “I’ll pay you if you put my products/content in front of my target audience right now”.

If you don’t invest in Promoted Pins you have to let your content bake for some unknown amount of time so that it shows up high on Pinterest’s search engine (Assuming you optimized your content correctly). Bottom line, pay to get found right away or don’t pay and hope and pray your content will rank high in search eventually. (Unless you use an expert service like ours).

I’ll dig deeper in a bit to help you decipher how to find your competition on Pinterest and what to look for. But first, let me give you an overview of the type of ads available to you.

4 Types of Pinterest Ads

1) If your goal is to build awareness for your business choose “Brand awareness”. I’m not too keen on brand awareness; I don’t think it’s the best use of your marketing dollars. Traffic is what we focus on most of the time as shown below on #3.

2) If you want to get more eyeballs on your videos choose “Video views”.

3) If you want to drive more traffic to your site choose “Traffic”. This is typically what we do most in our Pinterest account management services. At the end of the day you want people going to your website or blog.

4) If you want Pinterest users to install your app, choose “App install”.

You can also target the right audience for your business. You can choose audiences, interests, keywords, or expanded targeting—or any combination of these. So what do they actually mean?

1) Audience targeting

This allows you to reach Pinterest users based on information you know about them, information that Pinterest has about them or a combination of both.
You can target people on your customer lists, re-target people who have visited your site or engaged with your ads or create actalikes from people who behave similarly.

2) Interest targeting

This allows you to reach Pinterest users based on the boards they have create and pins they’ve engaged with (saved or clicked).

3) Keyword targeting

This allows you reach Pinterest users based on the keywords they are using when they’re searching for pins on Pinterest.

4) Expanded targeting

This allows you to find new Pinterest users to reach based on the content of your ad and what Pinterest knows about people on Pinterest.

8 Smart Reasons Why You Need to Spy on Your Competition

Now, let’s go over who your competition is on Pinterest. Speaking as a Pinterest Management Services expert I think it is vital that you make the time to do this so you learn what’s driving traffic them. Watching your competition closely is important so:

you learn how new trends are embraced by the consumers you’re all fighting to keep
you see how what types of content are working so you can do more of that, but better
you anticipate shifts in the market
you spot new trends
you learn new tactics
you determine what to charge for your products and/or services
you stay on the cutting edge of what’s working within your niche
you keep getting better and better. Competition brings out the best in us!

How to spy on your competition and what to look for:

1. Make a list of your top 5 competitors.

You can do this two ways:

a) Go on Google and search via their company name. When you have found their website go to their home page and look for their social icons which are typically on the bottom of the page or above the fold somewhere. Above the fold means where the content is positioned in the upper half of a web page without scrolling down the page.

b) Or failing option “a” above go on Pinterest and type in their business name in the search box, then click “People” to the right of the search box.

Don’t be surprised if you don’t find them under “People” because if they have not properly optimized their Pinterest profile they won’t show up.

2) Observe what people are pinning from their website.

You can do this two ways. Let’s say you sell natural skin care products and one of your competitors is Pure Fiji.

Go to your browser and type https://www.pinterest.com/source/purefiji.com/

Look at which images people are saving the most. Once you’ve identified them save them to your secret board. Ask yourself:

a. Why do you think this image received a ton of engagement? What can you learn? Is it because of the type of image? For example, is it an infographic, a checklist, does it have great text overlay, etc.

b. What can you do similar but better?

c. Is the topic evergreen or does it address people’s goals or concerns right now?

3) Use BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo will reveal what people are sharing the most. It shows your competitor’s top content in the past 24 hours and up to five years or a specific range.

4) Sign up to receive their emails

You can sign up to receive their emails or use a tool like Mailcharts. This tool can give you insight into your competitors’ email marketing, from the frequency of email sends, their subject line tactics, and more.

5) Subscribe to their blog

6) Follow them on social media

7) Shop on their site and then abandon it and see what happens

8) Purchase a product

How was your experience from the beginning up to the moment you receive the product. This will allow you to really experience their customer service. If you dislike the product and would like to return it, what was your experience?

Just as Pinterest is constantly evolving so are your competitors. It’s vital that you keep an eye on your competition every six months – it’s not something you do once and think voila I’m done. By doing a regular competitive analysis you will have a better understanding of your market over time, and learn from them too. Remember…none of us knows it all.