With the explosion of Social Media over the last few years it has become more and more difficult to reach your target audience simply by posting to your page and trusting organic reach to do the rest. Today you must include at least some paid advertising to get your message out and seen by potential customers.
This week we conclude our look at each of the top 5 Social Media channels and the paid advertising opportunities each has to offer. Our discussion this month focuses on one of the newer and more visual Social Networks.
At just over 100 million active users, Pinterest is the smallest of the top 5 Social Networks. When Pinterest started 5 years ago it quickly became the fast growing social network ever. Although that growth plateaued a couple of years ago, it remains an important network for jewelers to consider having in their marketing mix. 85% of Pinterest users are female and fashion remains one of the top viewed topics on the network.
To be able to create paid ads on Pinterest you must have a Business Account. For the first several years of its existence Pinterest only allowed personal accounts and encouraged businesses to set-up a personal account in their business name. If you are still using a personal account for your jewelry store, you first must convert it to a business account before you can begin using paid ads.
Paid Ads can only be created from existing Pins on one of your Boards. Any content you have pinned to your business profile can be turned into a Promoted Pin. You can create a number of different ad campaigns to keep all your Promoted Pins organized.
Targeting
Being able to have your paid ads seen by only a specific targeted audience is one of the main advantages of Social Advertising and Pinterest is no different. While not nearly as extensive or advanced as Facebook, Pinterest does allow you to target your audience by demographic categories and user’s interest.
Pinterest tracks all the activities on its network and stores that information in its database. Whenever a user clicks, likes, or repins a Pin, Pinterest records that the user is interested in the subject. Then, when an advertiser selects a particular interest, Pinterest will search that information to find users that have shown an interest in the area and will only show the ad to those people. In addition, jewelers can target consumers in their geographical area, as well as by age and gender.
Ad Objectives & Budgeting
There are 2 different Ad Objectives that you can choose on Pinterest. While both are Promoted Pins and use pins you already have on one of your boards, the ad objectives will determine how you are charged for the ads and to some extent who Pinterest will show your ads to.
Engagement Campaigns
The first Ad objective is Engagement Campaigns designed to boost engagement with your pins. With this objective you get charged for each engagement (close up, repin, click) on your Pin.
This is the most common Ad Objective for brick-n-mortar stores that are interested in driving traffic into their store. With these ads you can easily build excitement about a new product, the services you offer, or an event you are holding.
Traffic Campaigns
The second Ad Objective is Traffic Campaigns designed to drive traffic to your website. With this objective you get charged for clicks to your website.
This Ad Objective is mostly used by online retailers to drive traffic to their store’s webpages. However, brick-n-mortar stores can effectively use these ads if they have built a strong website that then drives traffic off the internet and into their store. Never link an ad to your home page, causing the customer to try and find what they are looking for. All ad links should always send traffic to a specific page on your website that relates to the content of your ad.
Daily vs. Lifetime Budgets
With either Ad Objective you can set a Daily or Lifetime Budget.
The Daily Budget is the most common. Here you set how much you want to spend each day for your campaign and it runs continuously until you stop it. Each of the Ads in the campaign draw from the campaign budget. You can add new promoted pins to the campaign and stop under performing ones.
A Lifetime Budget is ideally used for a promotion with a fixed end date such as a special sale or holiday promotion. Here you set how much you want to spend for the entire campaign and set a time for the campaign to end. This way you can advertise right up to the beginning of an event or holiday and don’t have to remember to go to Pinterest to shut down the campaign.
What You Need to Know
While other Social Networks require images with a landscape format (wider than tall) and limit the size of your images, Pinterest places no such restrictions on your images. Any image that you have pinned to one of your boards can be turned into an ad. Portrait formatted images (taller than wide) will be randomly cropped on other networks. However, on Pinterest they are recommended and the full image will be displayed. Long vertical images are suited to the design of the Pinterest platform, and they will take up more space in the users newsfeed becoming more visible to them.
Regardless of the size or shape of your image, the most important aspect to remember is that your image needs to catch the reader’s attention, help convey your marketing message, and cause them to want to take action to purchase your products or services.
Pinterest does not allow ads with Price or Discounts (Free, Half Off, etc.) written on the image. You may include these in the description of the Ad, but not on the image.
Pinterest does allow 1 hashtag in your description, but Pinterest is not a huge fan of them. Besides hashtags look spammy and detract from well written ad copy, so it is best to just avoid them while writing your ads.
Having a well-placed promoted pin optimized for visibility, can help you connect with consumers in your area and will make your advertising more Pinteresting!
I hope you have enjoyed our look at the top 5 Social Media Networks and have discovered the advantages of adding Social Paid Advertising to your marketing mix. For more information on Paid Social Media Advertising Campaigns, Step-By-Step Directions, and Templates for your Ads go to: FeetThruTheDoorMarketing.com
Brad Simon is co-owner of Internet 4 Jewelers and Feet Thru The Door Marketing. They provide Affordable Full-Service Social Media Management and Social Ad Campaign Management exclusively for retail jewelry stores as well as Online Educational Programs for local retail stores. For more information you can contact Brad at 864-680-4416 or Brad@Internet4Jewelers.com.
