Pinterest is definitely the quiet achiever of social media, and while Facebook remains the undisputed gorilla, Pinterest has nailed it’s niche and has legions of fans who regularly use and a remarkably high conversion rate from pin to transaction. After a lot of speculation, Pinterest has introduced a suite of promotional products that integrate organically with its existing content so businesses can promote their pins to their existing and new audience. Features include a bulk editor, so you can add a lot of pins at once, and more forms of targeting.

Promoted Pins are just like regular pins, only you pay to have them seen by more people. They perform just as well as, if not better than, organic pins as they have a greater reach. One of the innovations in the Promoted Pins is a deep selection of demographics to target when choosing where to orient your pin. There are 420 categories to build your profile customer, so for instance instead of targeting someone interested in craft, you can be as specific as the type of craft. Pinterest also added keyword targeting, so you can combine interest and keyword targeting. It’s a great way to find a specific audience when you promote a product or blog post.

Pinterest is also introducing customer targeting, similar to Facebook, which allows you to upload your email addresses. This is called matching, so if you have a store with a newsletter that’s already driving traffic, you’ll be able to upload that list to Pinterest and send Promoted Pins to that specific audience, and further cultivate your brand with warm prospects.

The Promoted Pins show up in a feed based on your interests and activity on Pinterest. They also take some off-site data, collected for Pinterest’s ad partners. In the home feed, users will see ‘suggested for you’ or ‘sponsored by’ pins. If the user doesn’t want to see something, they can tap the X beside it and click on Hide this Pin. Pinterest uses this as a feedback tool to make sure you see relevant, promoted pins in the future.

Promoted Pins are simply about greater visibility. For companies that have small advertising budgets, the Promoted Pins Program gives them an opportunity to put as much or as little as they want into their marketing. The program works on a pay-per-repin model. This means that companies only have to pay if their Promoted Pins are repinned by someone else.

Additionally, advertisers can specify just how much money they want to spend on individual pins. This allows them to control their budget closely and never spend more than what they are able to. As Pinterest is a culture of pinning, it is natural to do that with any sort of pin, so user behaviour doesn’t change when the pin is promoted, but the value proposition for your business does.

The program is new enough that additional features are still expected and it is anticipated that a variety of advertising options will be available to businesses through this service, much like Facebook and LinkedIn offer. 

Pinterest gives advertisers tools to help make the most of their marketing campaigns. This includes an analytics dashboard that tracks Promoted Pins with the most repins. It helps advertisers find out of the methods they are using are working for them, and for now, it is one of the most useful tools offered with the program.