I recently tried a Pinterest experiment. I tried their Promoted Pins – all so I could tell y’all my thoughts on the question “are promoted pins worth it.” Sometimes I love that having a blog gives me an excuse to try things so I can share the results on here. I was curious about Promoted Pins and so I tried them out – here’s my thoughts on if they are worth the cost!
What is a Promoted Pin? According to Pinterest,
Promoted Pins are just like regular Pins, only you pay to have them seen by more people. They’re native ad units that perform just as well, if not better, than organic Pins, helping people discover and save ideas for their future.
First things first, you must have a business account to access Promoted Pins. It’s free and simple to do if you haven’t set up a business account already (you can do that here).Once you’re all set up, it’s time to get started. Go to your Pinterest page and click on the star in the right hand corner – from there select Promoted Pins.
You can choose either to boost engagement for your pins or to get traffic for you website. If you choose to boost engagement, you are charged per engagement. If you choose to get traffic to your website you are charged per click. I chose to use the Promoted Pins to get traffic to my Start a Blog page. I set a limit of a $5 spend per day and ran the campaign for seven days. You can see the results in the screen shot below.
Over seven days, my pin garnered 30k impressions. That equals out to about 28.6K paid impressions and 1.4 earned impressions (not as a result of my Promoted Pin). In addition, during that seven day period, the pin was repined 80 times (versus 6 earned repins) and received 101 click throughs (versus 14 earned click throughs). I think that this is a relatively good return on your money. If I had a product that I was consistently selling, I would definitely probably do a couple of Promoted Pins. I would also be really interested in how doing a Promoted Pin would increase engagement, so that may be my next experiment. I’m curious to see the lingering effects of promoting my pin and if there’s any spillover. The neat things is those 80 repins could continue being really valuable for a long time. At least that’s the hope!
Have you ever promoted a pin? Do you have a business Pinterest account?
Pinterest is actually not a platform I use frequently. It does sound like, however, it worked pretty well for you. I think if I used it and was selling something, I might look more into it!
Hollie recently posted…Training: Mile Repeats & 2 Year PR
You know, I haven’t set up a Pinterest for my blog yet, but you may have just convinced me to do so! I will check this out…thanks for sharing the results of your experiment! I’m curious how different subjects would perform.
Jess @ Jess Runs ATL recently posted…New Tune Tuesday: Patriotic Songs
Pinterest is a HUGE source of traffic for my blog – if you want to seriously grow your blog, I definitely recommend it!
Wow, that’s interesting, Courtney! I’ve never done any sponsored pins, but that would definitely be a great way to try to boost engagement; thanks for sharing your experiment with us!
Tara @ Running ‘N’ Reading recently posted…Tuesday Intro – Fast Girl
it was interesting – a fun little experiment!
This is great – Thank you for sharing. I’ve never heard of promoted pins but now I’m definitely interested!
It’s fairly new – I think less than a year old.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, Courtney. Its always good to read about what other (more experienced!) bloggers think about things like this. I know Pinterest is a GREAT tool for increasing blogging traffic so to hear more about this is helpful!
Angie @ Pace with Grace recently posted…Monster Run
Pinterest is a fantastic blogging tool – a total game changer!
I have tried it for a few recipe pins and yes I got a lot of pins and click throughs. It is something that I would do again but I can also see how the cost can add up with doing them. Interesting to see your experience as always!
Deborah @ Confessions of a Mother Runner recently posted…Peanut Butter Oatmeal Protein Bars
I think it’d definitely be smart to set and stick to a budget for this!
Thanks for sharing this Courtney! This is really good information to know. I want to launch some products in the next couple months and this may help it be successful.
Alaina @ The Simple Peach recently posted…What the Chicago Marathon Taught Me + Future Races
This would definitely be helpful for a product launch!
I love pinterest but this is way beyond my comprehension…lol
Hahaha! It’s really not that complicated if you already have a business account! 🙂
Interesting experiment and results. Thanks for trying and sharing! I’ll be pinning this of course. 😉
Coco recently posted…How To Train Your Brain For Better Running
Haha, thanks 🙂
What I’ve seen with promoted pins is I get better results when I promote a pin that is already doing well – so when I’m looking to promote for clicks, I go to the “30 days most clicked” page and pick something from there to promote. When I try to promote a new pin, it seems to fall fairly flat.
Tracie recently posted…Root Canal In Paris
That’s an excellent tip!
Fun experiment! I might throw 5 bucks in and give it a try!
MIchelle recently posted…Give Up the Good to Go for the Great
Interesting. I get very little traffic from Pinterest. Surprisingly Facebook is still my biggest referrer! I did click to see what it was about but apparently there is a waiting list to promote your pins?!
Get on it! It’s a good tool to have available when you want to use it!