Webinar Recap: How to Capitalize on This Holiday Season Using Pinterest

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Pinterest has a significant impact on how buyers plan for the holiday season. From pinning gift-giving wish lists to exploring how they want their home to look for holiday parties, Pinterest users turn to the platform as their main hub to find products they love. With over 300 million monthly active users, Pinterest is the spot for brands to attract new customers this holiday season.

In a recent Adlucent and Pinterest co-hosted webinar, we dove into 2019 consumer expectations, as well as how to capitalize on the holiday customer journey, set cross-channel goals, and optimize your account structure. Below are some key takeaways and social media best practices to guide you along while watching the webinar.

“Visual is critical for inspiring a purchase journey.”

– Tweet this.

Why is Pinterest a Critical Channel to Invest in this Season?

Pinterest is where users come to express their personality. Or, in other words, “It’s about yourself, not your selfie.” Pinners go on the platform to get inspiration for a variety of things like outfits, home decor, and recipes. This user behavior translates into more broad search terms like “fall outfits.” Compared to Google searches, where customers would be more inclined to seek out a specific clothing brand, 97% of searches on Pinterest are unbranded. This presents a great opportunity for brands to influence pinners at the beginning of their purchase journey. Pinterest turns buyer uncertainty into buyer potential, which makes it the channel to be on this holiday season.

Mind-Blowing Fact:

There are over 200 billion pins and four billion boards that exist on Pinterest, which is growing every day.

Where Do Ads on Pinterest Show?

There are three “surfaces” Pinterest users come across while on the platform and where they are exposed to promoted ads – homefeed, search, and related section.

Homefeed: Populated with pins that revolve around a pinner’s interests and everything that is currently inspiring them.

Search: Pins shown based on a user’s specific search. If a pinner is looking for places to travel, and you’re a luggage brand, this is where your ad would be relevant.

Related Pins: Brings content to the pinner based on interactions with prior pins.

What do ads on Pinterest look like?

Each “surface” can display different sized ad canvases to cater to what you are promoting this season. Your brand can take charge of the Pinterest real estate to engage potential customers through the use of:

• Static Pins – 2:3 ratio
• App Promotion Pins – 2:3 ratio
• Carousel Pins (5 different images in one pin) – 2:3 / 1:1 ratios
• Standard Video Pins – 1:1 / 9:16 / 2:3 ratios
• Max Width Pins – 1:1 / 16:9

Pinterest Ads Best Practices

This holiday season, your brand can gift potential buyers everything they have on their holiday wishlist, but how? To attract customers, you need to know how they approach holiday planning.

Pinners Plan Early

It may seem unbelievable, but pinners start planning for the holidays as early as September! 54% of pinners start their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving, so brands should take advantage by advertising to users on Pinterest sooner than later to influence their purchases.

Pinners are Mobile First

80% of pinners use the platform on their mobile devices. For these users, scrolling through their Pinterest feed has become the new window shopping. With 65% of shoppers who use Pinterest for holiday planning also reporting buying their items in-store, the platform has the power to drive sales both on- and offline.

Optimize Your Pinterest Account Structure

For any program to be successful, you need to have a healthy account structure behind it.

Source: Pinterest Business

Step 1: Define Your Pinterest Goals

• Understand your goals for all the holiday moments. Are you trying to drive traffic or get a lift in sales? Both? Clearly define what your brand wants to focus on.
• Start technical integration and administrative account steps early to prevent any delays in launching for the holidays.
• Build out creative that will appeal to and inspire your audience to engage with your content. Learn how to repurpose your creative here.
• Measure accurately and holistically. Implement the Pinterest pixel tag properly to track performance on- and offline. Get in touch with your Pinterest Partner or agency to get an accurate media-mix model.
• Launch one month before you push other digital channels to generate demand ahead of peak shopping periods.

Source: Pinterest Business

Step 2: Campaign Hygiene

• Define the product categories or products you want to promote and theme your campaigns around them, i.e. Woodworking, Gardening & Home, and Tools & Machinery.

• Align ad group targeting with your creative, keeping your ad groups built around tight themes.
• “Interests” should speak to what the ad groups represent.
• Minimum of 20 keywords per ad group, but no more than 75, because you can decrease relevancy and increase cost.
• Evenly allocate budget across all ad groups at the start of the program. Analyze what ad groups are performing the best and over the next month, and then adjust your budget to maximize performance.

Step 3: Measure Your Success

• Don’t view channels in silos. Invest in marketing analytics tool or a marketing analyst to understand exactly how channels interact with each other.
• Consider moving away from a last-click attribution model. The customer journey interacts with multiple touch points during the customer journey. Consider a linear or U-shaped model.
• Implement brand and conversion lift studies to prove the profitability of Pinterest and clearly understand your customers’ journey.
• Understand how Pinterest influences offline and online sales through the use of marketing analytics.

In Summary

• Use Pinterest to spark inspiration in your customers. Visual is critical to the Pinterest journey. Show customers what they want and need for this holiday season.
• Plan your media mix early to ensure that you have a presence across all of your channels.
• Implementing Pinterest pixel, uploading first-party audiences, and setting up account best practices will position your brand for success so you can reach your goals.
• Secure your holiday sales with accurate measurement and data-driven decisions.

Watch the Full Webinar

Get more insights into how you can pin down your holiday plan this season by filling out the form below!

Are you looking for an agency to partner with to build out your Pinterest strategy? We would love to help!

Webinar Speakers:

Amada Schosid, Partner Manager @ Retail – Pinterest

Cameron Flores, Social Lead – Adlucent

Victoria Flores

Victoria Flores is a Demand Generation Manager at Adlucent. She has a background in content marketing, SEO, and graphic design. Her passion for creative marketing allows her to develop unique and effective solutions to drive demand. You can find her out on the Texas trails or bouldering when she is not at her desk.