This is the 2nd article in our mini-series on Pinterest for Ecommerce Business. 

Read the previous article here: How To Sell On Pinterest

For many of our clients who are new to selling on Pinterest, when it comes to advertising on Pinterest, often they aren't aware that there are actually quite a few different ad types to choose from.

If you are creating and running your Pinterest ads yourself, rather than using an agency to support you, it’s important you pick the right Ad type for your goals.

What Are the Benefits of Advertising on Pinterest?

There are plenty of benefits to advertising on Pinterest but no matter what the benefits, spending on Advertising should always be about ROI - your Return on Investment.

Pinterest is a fast-growing app with nearly half a billion users, making it a fantastic place to promote your brand and products. It’s a fresh, vibrant, modern community that is constantly receiving updates and platform fixes. It’s also a great place for people to go shopping, so it is proving to be an amazing place to increase brand exposure and encourage sales.

The Types of Ads

Promoted Pins

This is the easiest type of ad to run. You pick an existing Pin you’ve already created and you promote it. It’s nice and simple, no fuss involved. But useful, right?  Got a popular blog post, make it a pin and promote it!  Have an upcoming sale? Create a pin and promote it. 

When a user clicks a standard Pin, they open the Pin detail page. With Promoted Pins, they’re immediately taken directly to the URL you specify - which for savvy ecommerce store owners should be a full product landing page, tailored for sales conversions.

Pinterest Carousel Ads

You can probably guess what these are. Carousel ads are the norm in social media - a revolving set of images that can be browsed. Scroll through the carousel to enjoy a collection of product images and use the sequence in the carousel to both educate and entice your shopper into your brand universe. They work just as well here on Pinterest.

You can have 2-5 images per carousel and you can tell it’s a Pinterest carousel ad because it has the small dots underneath the image, indicating there are several images to browse.

Pinterest Collection Ads

A collection ad consists of one large, featured video or image and 3 supporting images. It's a grouped arrangement or "collection".  The benefit of these ads is the users ability to explore deeper into your product range.  If a user taps your ad, you can then show up to 24 supporting images on the ad detail page, taking your potential customer "deeper into your store". 

Collection ads display to mobile users only, which is 82% of all users. Pinterest can automatically create these ads for you too!  How great is that!

Shopping Ads

You’ve got to love shopping ads for how easy they are to use. They work similarly to Collection Pins and they pull data from your uploaded Pinterest product catalogue.

Lots of platforms like Shopify or Woocommerce offer you a direct shopping integration with the Pinterest site to help you create your Pinterest Product Catalogue, which will save you a lot of time and data management heart-ache!

It is also important to remember that ads of this type only features one video or photo.

The reason we like Shopping Ads so much for our Navigate The Noise clients is that you can also set up your own targeting and advanced audience retargeting options.  Meaning you are more likely to get a better ROI, because you can be very specific about WHO you are targeting. 

The Idea Pins

One of the newer options which are available are "Idea pins".  This engaging new format according to Pinterest apparently receives 9 times more comments than regular Pins. 

These are sometimes referred to as story pins, and are small video segments, or a collection that are used for educational purposes.

We use these with our clients to help them share their brand story in an interesting and engaging way. Perhaps you want to demo your product in a video or have sustainability values you want to educate your audience about.  Or you might even have a behind the scenes "how it's made" type story to tell.  These Idea pins are great for this. 

They are designed to appeal to as many people as possible in this way. You typically find them as product demonstrations or short videos explaining how to use something. 

Try-On Product Pins

One of the very latest Pin types to hit the Pinterest community is the "Try-on product pins" and we LOVE these for the retail theatre they can help create.

These are fun little pins which work in a pretty unique way - they combine one of your existing pins with augmented reality capabilities of modern technology to make a virtual fitting room.

Perfect for eCommerce fashion brands and also for beauty products that need to showcase "how to wear".  It's also a clever way to up-level your customers shopping experience.  

As you can imagine this opens up a fair few doors for both business users and your customer base alike.  It's proving to be very popular among accessory and beauty brands because it allows them to show users what the product might look like on them without having to commit - just like you would in a real store and great for those sales!

Product Rich Pins (Ok not strictly Advertising but still work a look)

Another clever, but technically not advertising format, to use are the Product Rich Pins. They’re a lot like the rich pins we talked about in our previous article on "How To Sell On Pinterest" but require a bit of code to be added to your website.

I really like these types of Pins because Product Rich Pins show up in a special section on Pinterest, within the search results: the Shop tab. This helps users who are in shopping mode, quickly identify and navigate straight to your products. 

There are three types of Rich Pins you can create: Product, Recipe and Article, but as an eCommerce store owner most of you are likely to focus on Product Rich Pins.

A product rich pin will show you stock availability, price, and show off the title and description you’ve already got on your website. Plus, if the information on your website - like your prices - happens to change, the pin automatically updates.

Make It Happen In Your Business

Pinterest is an exciting option to boost your advertising strategy and connect with more of your target audience.  If you are in fashion, beauty, wedding, gardening, home or fitness - this is an essential platform for you. 

Your customers are already on Pinterest to find new ideas and inspiration, so why not get an Ad for YOUR products in front on them! 

Next Steps

• If you would like our help in creating, managing or scaling your Pinterest account for your brand, please contact us to discuss our monthly eCommerce Growth Packages.
• Start with a basic promoted pin to get the hang of the Pinterest Ads Manager toolset.
• When you are ready to move onto more advanced Pin Ads, make sure your product catalogue is set up and pulling the correct data through.  Then we recommend trying Shopping Ads as the next priority. 
• Always review your Ad analytics frequently to check performance and best use of your advertising budget.

Read The Next Article In This Mini-Series On Pinterest

How To Sell On Pinterest: Guide For Ecommerce Business Owners

How Much Do Pinterest Ads Cost?