What was once a place to find recipes and DIY projects has since grown into something so much more. Today, Pinterest is a powerhouse platform with 291 million monthly active users worldwide with 78% of users saying content from brands is useful . That is absolute music to a marketer’s ears, yet only 27% of global marketers are currently using Pinterest for promotion. What better time to get started on your own Pinterest campaigns, you early adopter, you?

If you haven’t added Pinterest to your marketing mix, AdStage recently made it even easier with an integration that allows you to analyze your Pinterest Ads data in a single blended view with other ad networks like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more and see your ad creative along with performance metrics on your dashboard using our Ad Creative widget. No more cutting and pasting!

Pinterest is largely an image-based discovery site, so will it actually help drive sales? Here’s another little stat to answer that question: By 2020, Pinterest ad revenue is projected to surpass $1 billion . So yes, Pinterest users are not only open to ads, they’re clicking and buying, too.

Keep reading for tips and strategies to get your own successful, sales-driven campaign running.

Use Pinterest’s New Conversion Optimization and Video Ad Options

Being able to set up campaigns and ads that are optimized for a chosen goal isn’t new when it comes to PPC marketing, but it’s new for Pinterest. As Pinterest explained in their press release , Conversion optimization optimizes Promoted Pins for specific consumer actions, rather than just clicks. Those other actions include online checkouts, increased signups or stronger leads.

Just like conversion optimization on every other platform, you need to have the Pinterest Tag installed on your site. That allows you and Pinterest to track visitor actions after they’ve viewed your ad on Pinterest. From there Pinterest recognizes which user is more liable to take which action. So if you want to drive more conversions, Pinterest will show your conversions optimized ad to people who are more likely yo convert.

Pinterest also added Promoted Video for conversions . When clicked, these videos take users to a landing page with the advertiser’s website and a closeup of the video. Video allows marketers to better explain a product’s features and benefits, in addition to the movement being eye-catching in feed, which will hopefully all yield higher conversions.

Adjust Your Calendar to Reach People Earlier

People perusing Pinterest are planning, they’re not looking for something they need right now. Consider launching a timely campaign, such as holiday, earlier than you would on other platforms. People on Pinterest are looking for Christmas-related topics in October, whereas people on Facebook are looking at the same topic much closer to when it’s going to happen. You don’t want to miss out on valuable Pinterest traffic by hitting people with ads too late.

Find Your Current Customers on Pinterest

Leverage your customer list to reach existing customers on Pinterest. Upload customer emails or mobile IDs and match them anonymously to your customers’ Pinterest profiles. Be sure to adjust your creative accordingly. With this strategy, you’ll be advertising to people who are already familiar with your brand. Knowing this, you’ll want to reframe your messaging as a repeat purchase or upsell.

Create a Cohesive Customer Journey

“Shopping” on Pinterest is a unique experience, so you want to make sure your customers have an easy and enjoyable time. That starts with your ad — clearly show your product, offer, or brand benefits in the image or video. This is no time to be unclear and mysterious. From there, make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly, simple, and easy to navigate. You don’t want someone clicking through and then thinking something went wrong because your landing page is such a mess. Your landing page should also look and feel like your ads and have a clear call to action that’s visible as soon as someone lands on the page.

Optimize Your SEO

There are three places on Pinterest that you want to make sure are up to par on SEO. Your profile, your board descriptions, and your pins. The idea is to make yourself easily discoverable, but also easy to understand what products or services you’re providing. If someone comes across one of your ads and wants to learn more about you before considering a purchase, you want to make that information easy to find and understand.

Profile

This should be pretty easy. You’re probably already using versions of this on other social channels. But before you just copy and paste, be sure to look for opportunities to revise it for Pinterest’s specific purpose and use — to help people discover.

Board

Each of your boards will have a different them, so make sure your SEO and descriptions reflect that. Don’t just copy and paste what you came up with for your profile. What might people search for that you’d want the board to pop up in answer to? Weave those keywords into your description.

Pins

Anytime you add a new Pin you want to make sure you include keywords in the title and the description. Don’t overthink it, either. Keywords that you’ve found success with on other PPC platforms are a great start. Again, just remember to make any revisions geared toward Pinterest’s purpose of helping people discover.

Use Rich Pins to Provide More Detail

Think of Rich Pins as extended Pins with more space for more info. Pinterest makes Rich Pins available for four specific topics: app, product, recipe, and article. App and product Pins are probably the most relevant to us here. Product Pins make shopping a whole lot easier because the Pins have dedicated space for real-time pricing, availability and where to buy your product. The Rich Pins for apps actually show an install button on the Pin so people can download your app without leaving Pinterest.

Add Buyable Pins to Your Mix

Buyable Pins are the easiest way for someone to make a purchase on Pinterest because the whole interaction stays on Pinterest. There’s no navigating to an external landing page where you’ll likely see numbers drop off no matter how stellar your page is.

Note that you can’t just stick any old image into this ad unit, though. Buyable Pins have white dots over each of the shoppable pieces, like the below example from Pinterest:

Pinterest is one of the more beautiful platforms when it comes to visual appeal, but it can also work beautifully well for sales when you put the right strategies in place. If you’re not already using AdStage to manage and optimize your paid media campaigns, join our 14-day free trial . And read more about AdStage Report and how it can help you measure performance faster with real-time data from Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Yahoo Gemini, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and HubSpot.