Pinterest Helping Ecommerce With Idea Ads And Other Tools
Last week, Pinterest announced the release of Idea Ads and the Paid Partnership Tool. These new tools add to Pinterest's 2022 minor changes that focus on creators, brands, and e-commerce. These changes now make Pinterest much more appealing for e-commerce sellers than they have been.
Traditionally, Pinterest has been a great traffic source for content creators and e-commerce sellers. Pinterest is a visual planning site. It's often referred to as a social media site, but there isn't much social communication happening. Therefore, sellers need to understand the basics of optimizing Pinterest content which we've covered in our Pinterest traffic domination workshop and our Pinterest optimization articles.
This article will focus specifically on features Pinterest has added in 2022. To encourage creators and brands to work together and take advantage of the growing popularity of combining smaller creator influencers and user-generated content.
Pinterest is a visual planning website. People go there to plan things. They get ideas from images and videos and then save them to boards. The word planning and visual planning infers. I'm not ready to buy yet.
Pinterest Ads For Ecommerce In 2022
Pinterest is very good for e-commerce and purchases, it takes a slightly different approach than the typical hard sell that most e-commerce sellers are used to with PPC. The typical funnel on Pinterest is 13 days to three weeks. In the past, hooking them with content, getting their email address, and leading them to the purchase with your email sequence worked great.
This method still works very well. However, with the introduction of idea pins and this year's algorithm changes, most businesses on Pinterest saw a drastic reduction in clicks, saves, and traffic. The changes rolled out are game-changing and should be part of your overall strategy. You want your potential audience to come into contact with multiple pieces of user-generated content, building trust with your brand across various platforms.
Idea Ads From Idea Pins
Pinterest's new idea ad is a promoted idea pin. Idea pins were formally story pins. Idea ads feature up to 20 video and image slides to tell a story and inspire your audience. Pinterest added the advertising feature to help businesses scale their content. You can now include a destination URL in your ad and promote the following of your business account.
The official explanation from Pinterest is, “Audiences can view a brand’s inspiring content, visit their site and follow step-by-step DIYs or demos, all within the ad.”
Creators can create and promote idea ads with a business through a paid partnership, or a business may make and promote their own idea ads. Pinterest has recently added the ability to edit and directly improve the images and videos within the platform. It also added the ability in the idea pin builder to save drafts. Using the ads manager, a business can access the idea pin builder and create idea ads.
How Do I Create Idea Ads On Pinterest?
Idea Ads Product Specs
Design
- Aspect ratio: Ads are rendered in a 9:16. There are no restrictions on image or video.
- File type:
- Image: .BMP, .JPEG, .PNG, .TIFF, .WEBP.
- Video: .MP4, .MOV, .M4V.
Text
- Pin Title: Up to 100 characters
Technical
- Max file size: Android and iOS: 16mb recommended.
- Video length: Videos should be between 1-60 seconds.
- Resolution: For full-bleed images and videos, or images and videos that extend to take up the entire screen, we recommend using 1080x1920 pixel size (9:16 ratio).
Idea Ads Using Paid Partnerships
Idea ads using paid partnerships are ads that include user-generated content that also indicate the paid partnership between the brand and the creator. Think of it as a way to show that the brand sponsors the user-generated content.
Your creator would create the idea pin and tag your business with the paid partnership tag. The company can then promote the idea pin as an idea ad with paid partnership and add their destination URL.
For Amazon sellers, you can add your Amazon attribution link and take advantage of the lower fees, and improved ranking Amazon offers through the program.
Pinterest will also now accept an Amazon affiliate link as the destination URL added at the ad creation level as the destination URL.
This allows businesses to quickly scale the content beyond their and the creator's followers. As users encounter the idea ad with paid partnership, they'll have the ability to follow, save the pin, or visit the destination URL.
Once the ad is published, it will appear with a profile image of the creator. The relationship between the creator and the advertiser is disclosed by the paid partnership label featured with the ad. On mobile, it is shown to creators' followers and relevant pinners.
How Do I Turn An Idea Pin Into An Idea Ad With Paid Partnership?
First, the creator must tag the business as a business partner. Pinterest will notify the company using the email associated with the Pinterest account. Once accepted, the brand can promote the idea pen adding the paid partnership using the Ads Manager or the Ads API.
Eligible idea pins will appear under the Paid Partnership tab within the Ad Selection page of the Ads Manager. If the idea pin already includes product tax mentions or affiliate links, they are not eligible for the promotion. Brands can preview their idea ads through the ad preview feature.
Creators cannot promote idea pins that include a paid partnership, only brand partners can promote these Idea Pins as Idea Ads with paid partnerships.
A few items to keep in mind are that Pinterest Ad campaigns do not provide a method for you to identify, manage, or communicate with potential creators. They use the label paid partnership. However, negotiating payment is up to you and the creator to decide off the platform.
Why Are Idea Pins With Paid Partnership Great For Ecommerce?
If I have to tell you why this is great for e-commerce, you've almost missed the ship, but it's not too late. If you've been reading my other articles lately, you would know I've focused on the value of influencer marketing, using advocates, ambassadors, and influencers as your viral marketing team, and how important user-generated content is to your success.
Simply put, your potential audience doesn't trust you. Studies show that consumers will believe a stranger's recommendation over branded content. Ads with user-generated content convert seven times better than ads without UGC. User-generated content functions as testimonials for your product and brand. These endorsements serve as Social proof is more powerful than any marketplace review.
The best way to use influencers and others to promote your product is through the use of passionate people that already use your product. The best way to identify previous buyers talking about your product online is by utilizing the best social listening tools.
If you read my article that I posted last week, TikTok Marketing, you may remember one of the examples that I used from this brand Farmers Dog. The example on the other platform was promoted user-generated content.
This image here is one of their promoted Pinterest Pins. It is not user-generated content, but it is promoted. My point is I don't know this company, yet since I looked at their site while writing the other article, Im seeing them everywhere due to remarketing.
If their remarketing contained user-generated content, all available studies show the conversions would be higher. You want to expose potential buyers to your brand, your unique selling proposition, valuable free content, etc.. A site visit, joining your email list, purchasing, following your profile are all satisfactory conversion goals.
Suppose you are new and don't have previous buyers yet. In that case, one method to find smaller influencers is to look for the influencers used by shoulder niche businesses. A shoulder niche is a business where you share the audience but do not compete. For example, you sell baseball gloves, and I sell baseball bats. We share the same audience.
Go to their profiles, look through their feeds, and see who is commenting the most and is they are using any influencers.
Identifying these people on Pinterest at the moment is still a little difficult. You can use something from our list of the best influencer marketing tools to evaluate profiles and followers and then check to see that they are on Pinterest as well. Another method on Pinterest would be to search your brand name or keyword phrase to see who is promoting it but is not a business.
