Today is the tenth and final post in the ten-part Pinterest Marketing series. If you’ve missed any of the posts in this series you can find them here:

Is Pinterest the Right Platform for Your Business?

Why Pinterest is a Great Way to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

How to Create a Perfect Pin

6 Pinterest Strategies That Increase Engagement

How to Keep Your Pinterest Boards Organized and Relevant

How to Build Relationships on Pinterest

Use Pinterest Group Boards to Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Access Pinterest Analytics To Boost Your Blog Traffic

Are You Pinning at the Most Effective Times?

Today we’re going to be considering the possibility of using promoted Pins to get your content in front of more potential readers, and customers. As with other social media platforms, Pinterest offers businesses the opportunity to promote their content through a paid option. If you have an advertising budget for your blog, business, or online store, you may wonder if it’s worth splashing out on Pinterest ads.

Pinterest is known for potentially being a great source of free traffic. However, paying to promote your Pins could allow you to reach segments of your audience you otherwise wouldn’t. Read on to discover everything you need to know about promoted Pins so that you can make an informed decision about whether to invest some of your advertising budget on Pinterest.

Disclosure: Links in this post (and anywhere on The Savvy Solopreneur) may be affiliate links. Find out what that means here.

About Promoted Pins

Paid advertising on Pinterest, though the use of promoted Pins, runs on CPC advertising. CPC stands for “cost per click”, and this model means that you pay only when people click on your Pin. This type of advertising lets you expand the reach from your current audience to those who don’t follow your account. You can use contextual criteria and audience demographics to target your advertising in order to improve your chances of being seen by those most interested in what you have to offer.

Promoted Pins are fairly easy to set up. You select one Pin at a time to promote. Then you choose the factors that are important to you in your advertising. Set your goals, choose your demographics and allot a budget. Investing in promoted Pins can put you ahead of the competition by allowing your brand to be seen by more individuals who may then be converted to customers.

Getting Started and Setting Up

First of all you’ll need to sign up for promoted Pins. Registering is easy.  Start by choosing a Pin to promote. Set up only one Pin at a time to begin with. The reason for this is that Pinterest structures their ads to show the most popular Pins first. By selecting multiple Pins, you could be knocking your own paid post out of the way.

Select a Pin that is well-formatted with beautiful images, and that has already shown itself to perform well. Pinterest doesn’t allow ads to have a call to action or other promotional wording, so be sure to edit your Pin before submitting if you’ve added a call to action. There is a review process by Pinterest that can take about a week, so you don’t want to delay your promotion any more by submitting a Pin that might get rejected.

Determine Your Budget

Bidding is involved in Pinterest advertising. This means you’ll need to choose the most you’re willing to spend per click. Remember, you’ll only pay when users click through to your intended target. You also need to set a maximum budget for each promoted Pin campaign. This way you’ll be sure not to overspend. The minimum bid per Pin is five cents, but you can set your campaign budget as high or low as you’d like.

Decide on the Details

Finally, you’ll want to decide on details like the click-through destination, keywords and targeted users. You’ll also need to track your campaign’s progress. You can send users to a page on your website for a certain product or promotion. You can also have the destination be your email list signup page, as long as users are able to click away should they choose.

Be as strategic as possible in order to get the most from your advertising dollar. You don’t want to simply send folks to your website homepage, unless there’s a specific call to action for them to take there.

Choose the keywords you’re targeting next. Which keywords would your ideal customer use to search for what you are offering? You can enter keywords one at a time or import a list. Then add the target demographics that are important to you, such as geographic location, age range and gender. Remember to choose your parameters based on your campaign goal. Nothing should be randomly chosen when it comes to marketing and promotion. Monitor your progress through your Pinterest analytics dashboard.

These are the basics when it comes to using promoted Pins wisely. You’ll need to engage in testing, then tweaking, in order to find your best strategy. Pinterest advertising may be just the push your blog, website or online store needs to reach that hidden audience.

Need more information on Pinterest marketing? I absolutely love the Pindepth Advanced online course, which is where I learned everything I needed to know about using Pinterest for business. It includes four hours of video training, actionable workbooks, a private Facebook group, and a ton of bonuses (including two bonus courses, Content That Converts and The Subscriber Rush). Plus, you get lifetime access (I’ve been through the course twice already). Every time Pinterest rolls out something new, more information is added to the course, so you’re constantly updated. Check out the details here.

I’d love you to connect with me on Pinterest. And just click here if you’d like to get a free printable workbook and other goodies to help you run your online biz, along with other free tips and tools.