Speaker1: [00:00:02] Today, we are going to chat all about Pinterest advertising. I know, I know if you’ve been listening to my podcast up until now, you know, I made a huge pivot in 2020 and moved away from teaching Pinterest advertising. If you want to hear about my reasons why, you can listen to Episode four, I’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes. But here’s the thing. Since I dedicated four years of my business to teaching Pinterest ads and because not a lot and because not a lot of other people teach it, I still get a ton of questions about if Pinterest ads are worth it in my signature course, about how to create profitable digital products called the Empowered Business Lab. Many of my students use Pinterest advertising to drive traffic into their sales funnels. I have a very robust bonus course on Pinterest and Facebook ads inside of that program. Now, the two most popular questions I get asked from students about Pinterest advertising are, one, our Pinterest ads worth investing in. My students want to know what to expect when getting started with Pinterest ads. How long will it take for an ad to make back their investment? What do they need to know to get started? So are they worth investing in? That’s the first question. The second question students ask is, should I start with Facebook or Pinterest ads? So let’s answer these two questions today to get started.

Speaker1: [00:01:30] What do I mean when I say Pinterest ads or Pinterest advertising? When I talk about Pinterest advertising, I am talking about paying Pinterest money to promote your pin. This means Pinterest will show your pin more frequently, which will result in more clicks to your website and hopefully more conversions. And when I talk about conversions, I’m talking about getting someone’s email address because then you have the ability to follow up with them and form a relationship which will lead to the second type of conversion, a sale. Of course, ideally, you want to get a sale up front because that will also pay for your ad spend. Now, my thoughts on Pinterest ads have significantly evolved since I retired my Pinterest ads course, which was called Pin Practical Promotions, but I retired that at the end of twenty twenty. So let’s start with the first question. Our Pinterest ads worth investing in?  And when I say that I’m really talking about our Pinterest ads worth investing in now in twenty twenty one. Now in order to answer this I need to take you back a few years. I call this a Monica history lesson. My students are very familiar with my history lessons in twenty seventeen when I started teaching, Pinterest ads you could get started in twenty seventeen when I started teaching. Pinterest ads you could get started with a very low investment.

Speaker1: [00:02:56] This was because Pinterest ads were new and there was very little competition, meaning not a lot of people were paying to promote their pins. Therefore you could spend very little money and see a big payoff. Plus at the time Pinterest wasn’t publicly traded when they became publicly traded in April twenty nineteen on the New York Stock Exchange. This changed a lot. When a company becomes publicly traded, they are responsible for one thing. The bottom line profit. And report it to their shareholders because now the company is not just owned by their owners. Their owners become all of their shareholders, so they have to turn a profit for their shareholders. Advertising is the only way Pinterest makes money, and it’s required to report earnings to Wall Street. Now they need to keep their investors happy, which means they need brands willing to spend money on their platform. Brands spend money to promote their pins, which hopefully will lead the brands to making more sales and then putting more money back in Pinterest, keeping not only brands happy, but also Pinterest shareholders happy. Now, one way they did this was to rush conversion campaigns to market. So prior to going public in twenty nineteen, the only way to optimize a Pinterest advertising campaign was for the click. However, a good marketer will tell you a click to your website means nothing if an action isn’t taken once they arrive.

Speaker1: [00:04:27] So the two main actions that I’ve already mentioned that most online businesses care about are collecting an email address for future follow up or getting an actual sale. Now, again, ideally, we want to get an actual sale right away so we can make back our ad spend. Now, Pinterest knew they needed a way for e-commerce brands to optimize based on the conversion, meaning a way for the brand to tell Pinterest, hey, these types of people are buying on our site. Find more people like them and display my add to that. This is what? Conversion campaigns do the algorithm optimizes to find more people to take the action in question. Now, e-commerce brands are willing to spend money on advertising because they can see a direct return on investment by making sales. And Pinterest knew they had to be more competitive with Facebook ads, which had had conversion campaigns for years. However, Pinterest needed better infrastructure. Their ad dashboard, the whole way that ads were set up, was still pretty much in its infancy stage when they went public. Still, even with these changes with going public and rushing conversion campaigns to market, I saw students within 30 days of spending about 10 to 15 dollars a day. They could see their Pinterest ads profitable. And this went on for about another year, year and a half, meaning when they became public in April 2019. My students, who are not spending a ton of money, they weren’t large brands, just small businesses could still get their ads profitable with 10 to 15 dollars a day within 30 days.

Speaker1: [00:06:06] That’s not bad. Now, I’m going to link to the article in the show, notes that I wrote in 2019 after I read their one hundred and eighty four page initial public offering and distilled it down into a very digestible format for my students. That will help you understand what was going on at the time. If you’re interested in how public, how being publicly traded impacted Pinterest. But back to the question at hand here, are Pinterest ads worth it now in twenty twenty one? So I started really noticing a negative shift with new Pinterest advertising accounts being able to gain traction in the second half of twenty twenty. That’s how I knew the writing was on the wall, that if I wanted to teach entry level Pinterest ad students, they need to start spending more money. Right. So here I am running a course where students come in and they’re not, they’re not making a ton of money in their business and they’re not really sure how Pinterest ads are going to benefit them. And it got to a point where I had to say, hey, in order to be successful here, you’re going to have to spend more money than you used to have to spend to see results.

Speaker1: [00:07:17] Now, the problem was most of my ad students showed up at the sales funnel. In other words, their conversion. The problem was most of my ad students showed up with the sales funnel, in other words, their conversion mechanism for making a sale that wasn’t tested and they weren’t even sure if it converted. This is why I decided to pivot with the Empowered Business Lab to teach how to create an amazing digital product and the optimized conversion mechanism, otherwise known as the sales funnel, to sell that digital product. Now, given all of this, this is my advice for small businesses and advertisers wanting to use Pinterest ads in twenty wenty one. Be prepared to spend at least five hundred dollars just to collect data in the first month. Optimizing your Pinterest ad campaign is only as good as the data you collect. Remember, this is because advertising optimizes based on the data it receives from your website for Pinterest. This means the data that is collected using a piece of code you install on your website known as the Pinterest tag data is not free. We are no longer in times where you could spend little to nothing on Pinterest and see results if you have a converting funnel and that’s only if you have a converting funnel. Those times are gone in the second month. Be prepared to spend at least five hundred dollars again to see if you can get your ad campaign to break even with your ad spend.

Speaker1: [00:08:50] This means you put five hundred dollars in and expect to see five hundred dollars back from people converting in your sales funnel. In other words, they’re buying something from you. Now plan to see a profit around month three. This is a realistic time frame for small businesses looking to not spend a ton of money out of the gate to optimize their ad campaigns. So in total, we’re talking about expecting to spend about 1500 dollars before your campaign is truly optimized and you’re really starting to see a substantial profit. Now, let’s talk about the second question. Pinterest versus Facebook ads. Which one should you start with? Now, let me briefly explain the difference between Pinterest and Facebook ads. And when I say Facebook ads, I’m always referring to Facebook and Instagram. You set up Instagram ads at the same time and in the same platform that you set up Facebook ads, which is in your business manager, and then you would navigate to your ads manager. OK, now people come to Pinterest to search for solutions to the problems they’re proactively looking for. The topic you are pinning about this often puts your users, Pinterest users, in a more action taker mentality, since the topic is already top of mind. Now, Facebook ads are interrupters. You don’t go to Facebook to search for the best farmhouse decorations.

Speaker1: [00:10:11] However, Facebook knows so much about your online behavior, they are able to serve up relevant ads in your Facebook and Instagram feeds. How many times were you shopping for something and then close tab, and then find an ad for that product pop up on Facebook as soon as you open the app? That’s called retargeting. Retargeting is strong on Facebook because people use the app more often than they use the Pinterest app. So it’s kind of like Facebook follows you around the Internet. If your people are on Facebook, then reaching people who have left your website is pretty easy with Facebook and Instagram ads. Now, in terms of which platform to start with, Pinterest or Facebook, I have eight tips for you. These tips are from over five years of experience, running my own ads and spending tens of thousands over 100000 dollars easily and teaching. And this is really important. I have taught thousands of students how to run their own Pinterest ad campaigns. So I’ve seen a lot and I have a lot of data to go off of. And I have distilled this down to eight tips for you. The first tip is go where your audience is on Pinterest. It’s easy to see if your audience is there because you can search your topic and use the Pinterest trends tool. Two billion people are on Facebook, so the chances are your audience is there to.

Speaker1: [00:11:30] Now, the second tip is Facebook tends to be more expensive than Pinterest because there is more competition. However, if your audience is not on Pinterest, it’s a no brainer to choose Facebook. For example, if you are targeting other businesses, choose Facebook. Pinterest is a consumer platform, and I see way too many business coaches and course creators targeting other business owners thinking Pinterest is where they should be and it’s not. The third tip is do not run ads just for traffic to your website, that is a waste of money, only run ads to a high converting offer that is proven to make you money. Tip four, be prepared to spend five hundred dollars to gather data in the first month, regardless of which platform you choose. Tip five, if you are unwilling to commit to ads being a long term play in your business, don’t bother. This is not something you come in and out of and expect to see really great success with. Tip six, don’t expect for ads to be a magic pill. They take lots of patience and optimizing. Consider investing in an ad’s course or platform. If you really want to double down on making it work, we recommend Simple Pins Ad Society for Pinterest Ads and Brilliant Business Mom’s Facebook ads intensive for Facebook ads.

Speaker1: [00:12:58] And we will link to both of those in the show notes for you. Tip seven is if your offer is time-sensitive, Facebook is much easier to optimize in a shorter time frame. For example, Pinterest needs at least two weeks to optimize the campaign. So if you’re running a flash sale, don’t bother with Pinterest. If you’re running a three to five day flash sale, I always recommend my students go directly to Facebook for ads. And tip number eight is, in my opinion, Facebook ads are not something you can you can come and go from. If you really want to be successful with Facebook ads, you should be committed to running them year round. Keeping your Facebook pixel seasoned is so important. That’s that code that you will install on your website to track user behavior and conversions and it will report back to Facebook. Your pixel is only as good as the data you are feeding it. More data equals more conversions. This takes time and money. And when you are not consistently running ads on Facebook, you lose a lot of the power behind the data you’ve accumulated on your Facebook pixel. Truly, advertising is an amazing way to reach new audiences and therefore make more money by reaching new people. But before you are even ready to run ads, you need something to sell, right? That’s what I’ve been saying. So many people showed up to my Pinterest ads course with nothing to sell.

Speaker1: [00:14:21] And I would say, then why do you want to run ads? And that was meant because I really want my students to see success. And if you’re spending money, we all want to make money back, right? That’s just the way business works. You spend money to make money, so you can’t just run ads for traffic sake. So if you’re looking for something to sell. I can help. I teach how to create digital products, so if you are ready to take the leap into digital products, I’d love for you to join me. If you are ready to take the leap into digital products, I’d love for you to join me for free training I’ve put together called, Three Little Known Secrets to Picking The Perfect Digital Product to Sell Online, learn the best kept secrets when creating digital products and how to find the perfect one for your audience and business. Find out all the details and sign up at Empowered Business dot co. slash profit. I hope today’s episode was helpful for understanding what’s going on with Pinterest ads now in 2021. And also the differences between Facebook and Pinterest ads. If you are ready to run your own advertising campaigns and if you are ready to run your own advertising campaigns, I’m wishing you much success, until next week.