Interview: inspiration and discovery at the heart of Pinterest’s strategy

Pinterest is a visual discovery engine and our users have a very different mindset than on social networks. They don’t come to Pinterest to interact socially with their friends and family or to follow people, they come to prepare a personal project and to be inspired in their daily life. Our mission is to help everyone create the life they love.

In fact, when they come to Pinterest, they are actively considering what to buy next, they are open to brands and they are looking for ideas. They have not yet decided from whom they want to buy, and what exactly they want to buy, but they have the intention to take a decision. They plan, for special occasions, or seasonal moments such as the end of the year holidays, or life moments such as a birth, a move to a new house which would both result in buying new furniture. Their mindset is to shop for options and ultimately make a decision. This is very unique.

It’s crucial for businesses to be clear with their goals on Pinterest. Do they want to drive traffic, brand preference or increase sales?

If they have a sales objective, I would recommend to implement an advertising solution with a specific focus on measurement by choosing the right measurement partner. Businesses sometimes focus solely on the last click rather than on the entire journey, and this is the key to better perform on Pinterest, and looking at the marketing touchpoints of consumers from the full path to purchase is key to driving growth.

Also, we are implementing new shopping features that will help retailers upload their entire product catalogs on Pinterest in order to turn products into shoppable Product Pins and promote them through dedicated shoppings ads. These tools already exist in English speaking countries and we will be launching them soon in other international markets.

On Pinterest, advertisers have access to a variety of ad formats matching their business objectives.

Our basic format is Promoted Pin which has a single featured image and we also have Promoted Video Pin which is ideal to capture people’s attention and tell a strong visual story.

Our Promoted Carousel contains multiple images that Pinners can swipe through which allows businesses to tell a deeper story on a product or on their brand.

In addition, we have developed Shopping Ads, an ad format which allows businesses to amplify their products from their online catalog with ads and show consumers how the product fits into their lives.

The first thing businesses should do is create a business account, which will allow them to set up the “Pinterest tag”, an essential tool to track their activity from their ads campaigns. Having a business profile is also important to have access to Pinterest Analytics, in order to understand their activity on the platform and define their strategy.

Then, ahead of implementing their first ad campaign, we recommend that they think about the criteria, the targeting, the format of the ad, and of course measurement. Pinterest offers different options in terms of targeting and format according to their campaign objectives.

If you would like to know more about Pinterest, come to the 7th edition of Lengow Day on October 1st to attend Amy Vener’s lecture “Inspired Shopping: You’ll know it when you see it”.

Register here

To learn more about the Lengow Day 2019 news, visit the event’s website, our blog and our social networks: Twitter (by following the hashtag #LengowDay) and our LinkedIn group.