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Monica Froese in purple plaid shirt looking at phone in kitchen

Episode 51: My Expert Pinterest Ad Strategy for Cracking Multiple 6-Figures in Digital Product Sales

If you have been following me for a while, you probably know that I used to educate business owners on how they can increase their sales through Pinterest advertising. 

After 4 years, I retired my signature course, Pin Practical Promotions, and shifted to helping women create digital product businesses. Even after the shift, however, I still get asked questions about promoted pins all the time. 

Pinterest ads are a very powerful marketing tool, so I was asked to speak about them at a summit called Growth Week for my friend Gemma. In this episode of the Empowered Business podcast, you’ll get to hear my presentation on how to use Pinterest promotions to increase your sales. 

The key is to outline a customer journey and create a Pinterest ads funnel that converts. In this episode, I am sharing all of my tips and strategies for building a promoted pins campaign that drives big results, no matter the price of your product.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

  • Why digital products are so profitable
  • Types of digital products that perform well on Pinterest
  • How search engines work and what a visual search engine is
  • The action taker mentality and the benefits to your business
  • The funnel process for Pinterest and the customer journey
  • Why ads are a long term investment for your business
  • The four-step framework for building a sales funnel 
  • Where and how to do your keyword research

 

Pinterest ads can be especially effective for digital products if your audience is on the platform. I hope this presentation motivated you to get started on your Pinterest ads journey so you can start reaping the benefits. 

If you are ready to start creating your digital products, check out my free live five-day training called Digital Product Dash Live. You’ll learn how to pick a digital product that will resonate with your audience, outline a customer journey, and build an offer your audience can’t refuse! Register now!

Head over to http://monicafroese.com/listen to listen to this episode and previous episodes on your favorite podcast platform!

Resources Mentioned:

 

Monica Froese  00:04

You’re listening to the Empowered business podcast. I’m your host, Monica Froese, a mom of two and your secret weapon to creating a six figure digital product business. I’m on a mission to help 1000 Women make $100,000 a year. That’s right $100 million towards financial independence for women. As an online business expert, I am teaching you everything I know, right here week after week. So you can join us on the journey to $100 million dollars. Sound good, then let’s jump in. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for any amount of time, you probably know that for four years, my main way of making money was through teaching Pinterest advertising. And at the end of 2020, I retired my signature course called pin practical promotions on that topic, and pivoted into helping women create digital product businesses. Except you probably can imagine, I still get asked a ton of questions about Pinterest ads, and specifically how Pinterest ads can be really powerful for selling digital products. So my friend Gemma asked me to put together a presentation before her growth week summit that took place in early November. And I want to play that presentation for you in audio format today on the podcast because I think this will really benefit so many people who have digital products whose audiences on Pinterest, and can really you can really benefit from understanding how to run Pinterest ads to your digital product sales funnels. So the name of the presentation is cracking multiple six figures in digital product sales using Pinterest ads, and it’s incredibly actionable. There’s some really great tips that I gave. So I’m going to go ahead and play this for you. And hopefully you’ll walk away being motivated to learn Pinterest ads for your digital products. So let’s start with the most basic question. What exactly is a digital product. So this is how I define it. A digital product is an asset you create once that you can sell over and over again, it’s highly profitable because the majority of the work is done one time. Now here is the key. A digital product is the solution to your customers number one problem. So most digital products can fit into one of four main categories ebooks, digital templates, such as spreadsheets, printables, and online digital courses. And this can also include elements like group coaching. Now in terms of talking about digital products with Pinterest, I don’t include memberships because memberships can be hard to sell directly from an ad because it’s a longer financial commitment that you’re asking. Now search engines are the backbone of how content gets found online, and guess what your digital product is going to be sold on the internet. And you must understand how to make sure it gets found by your ideal customer. So let’s talk about how a search engine works. Visitors come to search for a problem. Search results represent the solution. So think of it like this keywords equal the problem what people put into the search bar, that is the problem they are having search results give inspiration through visual text or audio depending on which search engine you’re using. And then once they click through the website content equals the solution, you’re presenting the solution on your website to the search result. So people who use search engines just search for a solution to their problem are actively searching to find solutions. So this puts them in what I call an action taker mentality. If that solution is to buy something like your digital product, they’re already primed because they proactively searched for the solution. So the action they take could be to sign up for your email list, because you offer an amazing freebie to solve their problem. Or the action could be to buy something you offer or recommend. But the end result is this. You want to get in front of people who need what you have to offer. And search engines are where you can find these people. So a lot of people like to talk about how Pinterest is a visual search engine. But no one really tells you what that means and why it’s so powerful. Until right now. Pinterest is the third largest search engine in the world, following Google and YouTube. Let’s break down what a visual search engine really means. Pinterest users are primed to buy from you, even if they don’t know you yet. Hint, hint, an audience that doesn’t know you, or your brand is primed to buy from you. This is a cold audience. So let’s talk about why this is what makes visual search so different. It’s the connection. Humans are visual beings, we like to envision solutions to our most pressing and nagging problems. This helps connect us to the solutions that are being presented in search results. So before we can run an effective Pinterest ad campaign, we need to understand how a Pinterest sales funnel actually works. Because at the end of the day, being successful Pinterest advertising, it’s all about the sales mechanism you use which can also be referred to as a sales funnel. So in this illustration, I’m breaking down the funnel process for Pinterest. So this is how it works. On top, we have keywords, by using keywords effectively, you’ll get your content shown in search results, the more times your pin is shown, the more opportunities you’ll have to earn clicks. Now the second layer is images. Not everyone who sees your pin in the feed or in the search results will click on it. On Pinterest, this means you must have a compelling image that encourages the user to click through on your site or to your site. Now content is the third layer, the people who actually went and click through to your site need to be compelled to take an action. The fourth layer is nurture. Once they’ve taken the action that you’ve asked them to take, it’s time to nurture them into what we all want if we’re in business, which is a sale. And of course in this regard, it’d be the sale of our digital product. Now, at each stage of the funnel, you’re going to lose people. So this is why conversion rates are so important when it comes to running Pinterest ads. Plus, the more people you capture at the start of the funnel, the more chances you have to eventually make a sale. So let’s look at an example of how Pinterest search results help us build connection with our audience. Have you ever seen the sound of music? It’s one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid, the main character’s name is Maria. Just like my fire redheaded three year old. And in the beginning of the movie, there is a song called How do you solve a problem like Maria. And this is my Maria thinking it’s funny to play and the one spot I didn’t want her to play, which was with electrical cords at our last house. And as you can tell, she is pretty proud of herself. So my problem and I do say this with air quotes is that I have a spirited child, we walk around singing the song How do you solve a problem like Maria almost daily, not in a bad way because of course we love her. But of course some days, we could use some coping mechanisms to deal with how strong wheelchairs so let’s look at the search results that appear on Pinterest. When I search spirited child. I’m instantly presented with dozens of images representing an isolated child sitting by herself and pouting. An angry child with her arms crossed a child who needs the loving embrace of her mother, a child who is laughing, a child who is playing the search results are giving me inspiration, they are showing me that there are solutions to my problem. And I call this pre framing my offer. In other words, the pin image is pre framing the solution that I am going to offer with my digital product. So Pinterest provides us more visual inspiration where you’re able to envision yourself wanting the solution before you even click the Pin. So if my child’s pouting, I’m going to naturally be gravitating towards the pin images that have a child pouting. Now, here’s the million dollar question. Every business owner needs to be asking themselves, how do we take advantage of the connection we can build on Pinterest with a cold audience, an audience that doesn’t know anything about you or your business yet. The cool thing about reaching there’s a really cool thing about reaching cold audiences I should say on Pinterest, because not only are people who don’t know anything about you more likely to buy from you on Pinterest, you are also building a warm audience have raving fans at the same time. So why Pinterest ads. So Pinterest has made a dramatic shift towards becoming a shoppable platform. This has taken many forms such as the shopping tab, merchant verification and enhanced advertising options. All of these signals tell us one very important thing. Pinterest wants to help you sell your products. And there’s never been a better time to learn with Pinterest traffic being up and the holiday season right around the corner. Pinterest ads are also really great because leads from ads are actually free. Once you earn them. You pay for a lead once and then they continue to buy from you and that lead becomes free ads are a long term investment for your business. Now, people come to Pinterest with that buyers mentality because they’re already primed to buy your solution, which is your digital product, because they’re not only proactively searching for the solution, but you primed them with your pin. They’ve already proactively looked for your solution, you’ve already presented the idea of your solution in a pin, in a visual way, so they’re already primed to go on to buy from you if you’re offering something for sale, and a digital product is a great way to do that. So why do Pinterest ads and digital products work so well together? Well, here are a few tips. A few reasons I have pinners are proactively looking for a solution to their problem, you are providing visual inspiration for their solution that you’re offering to the problem with your pin. They already know what to expect based on your visual representation. And they’re primed for buying your solution because they’ve already had two touchpoints. They’ve had they search for the problem. And they’ve seen your pin, and digital products have a high profit margin, leaving you with plenty of margin to invest in effective advertising. Pinterest ads are cost effective. So if your audience is on Pinterest, then your ad costs are much more likely to be cheaper than on Facebook, especially after the iOS 14 up. So what do you need to be successful with Pinterest ads? Well, you need a selling mechanism. Remember that sales funnel we talked about? You need a sales funnel that converts. Now we already walked through what a Pinterest funnel looks like. But how do you actually build one? Well, I’ve developed a four step framework for building a profitable digital product sales machine called the hype design. A sales funnel, or Sales Machine is just a fancy word for talking about the customer journey. Think of it as a way for your ideal customer to get from point A to point B, point A meaning they being that they know nothing about you, and point B being that they’re ready to buy something from me. So the height design is broken down into four sections. The first one is help. That’s where we find the problem. The second one is innovate. That’s where we build the solution. What’s the solution, your digital product. The third is knowledge. That’s where we Educate people who need the solution. That’s where you’re going to educate your pinners, who clicked your website, why your solution is the best solution to their problem. And the fourth part of this is experience, you’re going to provide the best customer experience. Now I used the word hike to describe my method of building a profitable sales machine. Because going on a hike reminds me of an adventure you have to work for. Yes, that’s right. Anyone who tells you if you build it, they will come they’re lying. It’s not as easy as creating a product slapping together a sales page, and then putting up a PIN and calling it a day. There is an art to attracting the people who need what you have to offer, in convincing them that your solution is the best. Luckily, the hook design will help you iron out all of the important aspects of your customer journey before you even build it. So let’s bring all of the layers of pipe design together. So we have what is the problem? That’s where they go to Pinterest and type in their problem. What is your solution? That is the pin that you’re presenting to pre frame your solution? And then you’re going to offer the solution when they click to your site. Now what value are you providing to show your solution is what they need? That is the website content that they’re going to be presented with when they land on your website? And then how are you providing an amazing customer experience. So closing the sale doesn’t mean you’re done with your new customer. Paid advertising is the most effective with digital products. When you take advantage of your new relationship to bring in more sales. The first product of your ascension ladder is used to make back your ad spend. You really capitalize on paid advertising once they become your customer. So you don’t need to boil the ocean with your first product. Because the idea is that you give them such a hyper specific solution to solve a big pain point that they are having that they will gladly come back and pay you more money because you’ve earned their trust. The more dialed in the product is that you promote on Pinterest, the easier it will be to get an easy yes and easy. Yes, meaning the sale. So remember, the bigger picture here of your customer journey. The height design is purposefully designed so that you can use it over and over again to build out your product suite. So here’s an example of one of one of our product ascension letters. The Digital Product Launch Pad sells from 37 to 97 and is what I call our 10,000 foot view on how to get started With digital products, it gives you enough tactical and strategy information to get started. And we use this product to pay for all of our ad spend, essentially, bringing in free leads to our business. Now the next layer after they buy the launch pad is they are offered our empowered business box. And this is our monthly template membership for 47 a month. Each month, we deliver a new a new toolbox to help you create and sell your digital products. This not only creates recurring revenue in our business, but it keeps our customers coming back for more month after month. Now the Empowered Business Lab is our signature program on how to create sell and launch digital products. And it’s a cross between a course and group coaching. It’s much more detailed and high touch from me as the creator. Now the whole point of the product ascension ladder is to increase the lifetime value of each customer you acquire. And this is especially important when you are using paid advertising. So let’s look at a legitimate six figure Pinterest ad campaign for wait for it I $19 digital product. So over a seven month period, this campaign made a whopping $112,790 in revenue. And when you minus out the ad spend that was $70,291 in profit in profit from a Pinterest advertising campaign to a $19 digital product. Remember that budget spreadsheet I told you about that I launched in 2016 and went on to make multiple six figures. Well, here’s an example of one low dollar campaign I ran for the budget spreadsheet on Pinterest. I spent $167 over the course of 12 days, and my ad budget was $15 a day, I ran this to a cold audience so they knew nothing about me they had no previous interactions with my brand. And the campaign made $440 on the $167 ad spend. Plus, we collected 557 email addresses for people that I can now nurture into a future sale. Now I did this using a unique sales funnel I created and trademarked called the triple dip funnel. Now you may be wondering, do Pinterest ads really work? Can it actually produce real results. Now, the hook design is a method I’ve been using in my own business since 2016. And this screenshot, the bottom screenshot is just scratching the surface of what is possible when you create your own digital product and run Pinterest ads. This screenshot shows over $220,000 in profits for products costing mainly $37 or less in the last year, and the majority of the sales came directly from Pinterest. And this only represent a fraction of the digital products that I sell in my business. It’s just a glimpse into what is possible when you run effective Pinterest ad campaigns. So Keywords are the backbone of your ad campaign by using the right keywords when running a Pinterest ad, you’re telling Pinterest exactly where your pin should be shown in search results. Keywords are essentially the problem your ideal customer is searching. So what is the problem they are searching that would lead them to buying your digital product. There are three places I suggest you do keyword research before running a Pinterest AD. The first is the obvious one, go to the Pinterest search bar, you’ll see recommendations in the drop down as you start searching your keywords. And also, you would want to spend some time reading the text overlays in the descriptions on the top pins in search results. And finally, one of the coolest ways to do Pinterest keyword research and what Pinterest developed specifically for advertisers such as us is the pin the Pinterest trends tool. And you can locate that at trends that pinterest.com. And what that tells you is when certain search trends spike throughout the year so that you can time your Pinterest advertising campaigns when more people are searching for a solution to the problem you’re solving with your digital product. So here are some helpful tips that I want you to know before I end this training. Listen closely because these are really great tips. First, start tracking all traffic to your website with the Pinterest tag. This is a little piece of code that goes on all pages of your website just like the Facebook pixel or Google Analytics. The Pinterest tag allows you to track conversions for your ad campaigns. So this would be email leads and sales. And it allows you to retarget everyone who has landed on your website. This is a very powerful marketing tool. Pinterest relies heavily on the conversion data that fires from your Pinterest tag to optimize for conversions. So Pinterest takes into consideration the people who are already converting into email signups or sales from your site. And your campaigns work to find more people like them. Because of this, new advertisers should not start with a conversion campaign, which seems like the obvious choice, but rather a seven day. And I should change it from traffic to what they call now a consideration campaign. But for four years, they call it a traffic campaign. It’s so hard to change that, but it’s actually called a consideration campaign. Okay, so now you’re probably wondering, okay, Monica, that sounds great. But I still don’t understand the problem with starting with the conversion campaign, because after all, you’re looking to get conversions, email subscribers, or what we all want the sale. Well, when you’re getting started with promoted pin campaigns, your Pinterest tag doesn’t have any data to reference to understand who is already converting on your website. So when you start with a consideration campaign, Pinterest will optimize for the click. While you pay for the click, you are still tracking your conversion data. So after seven days, most of my students can then move to a conversion campaign. And that’s when things really start to take off. Because now you’re telling the Pinterest tag to go find more people like the people who are already converting. So I recommend a minimum at this point of $20 a day in order to see traction. I recently recorded an episode of the Empowered business podcast that talks all about Pinterest ads in 2021. So you can take a listen over at Monica fros.com Ford slash podcast and navigate to Episode 23. So what do you think? Are you going to start using Pinterest ads with your digital products? I want to know go ahead and send me a DM on Instagram Monica.froese. And let’s chat about this because it happens to be one of my favorite topics mirroring how to get more sales with paid advertising. And I hope you’ve learned a lot from this presentation and I hope to hear from you what your thoughts are about Pinterest ads. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Empowered business podcast. If you want to get started creating your own digital products and don’t know where to start, I am hosting a live five day free training that can help. It’s called digital product dash live, how to discover your unique million dollar digital product formula. Head on over to empowered business.co forward slash dash to join us live the week of January 24 2022. I’ll see you back here again next week.

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