The recent announcement of paid search ads in Pinterest moves marketers and brands closer to the holy grail of online marketing – early discovery. Lack of awareness is still the biggest barrier to sales for all e-commerce consumer products. If they don’t know about you, they can’t shop for you.
Pinterest Search Ads Aid in the Discovery Process
Most Pinterest users don’t search the platform for specific products, brands, or even people. They search Pinterest for ideas that lead to purchases. The beautiful thing about Pinterest is the ability to reach potential customers much earlier in the buying cycle with inspiring ideas. With the new paid search ads in Pinterest you can ensure that your products show up in searches for ideas that relate to your products and the lifestyles they support.
Let’s look at an example
For the sake of demonstration, imagine that you are in charge of increasing sales of fashion sunglasses from your e-commerce eyeglasses site. The obvious choices are to place your Pinterest content in front of people searching for sunglasses. While this is a good choice, it’s still too narrow for discovery. The only pinners that will see your stylish sunglasses are those actively looking for sunglasses. What if you want to catch them earlier in the process and inspire them to purchase new sunglasses this season?
Personally, I don’t pin much on Pinterest, but I DO love searching through the images for cool new ideas. So, what terms would I possibly use that would surface images with sunglasses in them?
Check out a few of the results when I asked Pinterest for “Hot Summer Looks”
Lots of pins in this search feed feature all kinds of summer outfits with sunglasses included. The more people can see your product in context, the more they can picture themselves buying and using those products.
If I were in charge of increasing sales of fashion sunglasses, I would look for the ways people look for ideas and place images of my sunglasses on the happy faces of people, as part of outfits, as well as in lifestyle settings like sitting next to a cold beverage on a sunny cafe table. The more pinners see that same pair of fashionable shades in their feed, the more interested they are going to be to find out where to get them.
The new paid search ads offered by Pinterest help businesses put their products in the right place at the right time. According to Pinterest, “97% of top searches last year were non-branded, making Pinterest a great place to attract new customers. And, people on Pinterest start searching as much as three months before they purchase, so your business can reach them while they’re still deciding what to buy.”
Ginny Marvin reports for Marketing Land:
Michael Akkerman, head of marketing partnerships at Pinterest, said in a phone interview with Marketing Land, “Pinterest Search campaigns give marketers the opportunity to be there at the upper funnel decisioning point when users are initially looking to engage with products, services and brands.”
While advertisers can opt to use the keyword structure they have in search campaigns on other channels, Akkerman points out that Pinterest has insights into keyword use based on how users are saving Pins. “We are able to understand how people relate to an image based on how they are saving it and naming it different things, and we are able to show advertisers those keywords.”
For now, the Pinterest search ads are not a self-service option for businesses in the Pinterest marketplace. In order to create campaigns, place creative, manage the ads, and get reporting on the success of your campaigns, you will have to work with marketing performance software partner, Kenshoo.
According to the announcement published by on February 1st, “Kenshoo is the first partner to power Search Ads on Pinterest, enabling top brands to engage with the 150M consumers who use Pinterest to plan their purchases every month. Kenshoo’s agile marketing solutions and search expertise will enable advertisers to tap into this valued audience in a highly efficient and effective manner, optimizing search holistically from discovery to conversion.”
As a Kenshoo partner agency, Gruen is ready to explore the Pinterest search ads option with your business. Contact us today to learn more about how Pinterest search ads can help your business grow.
