How to Run Pinterest Lead Ads for Just $2 a Day

Marketing Tips

Jan 28

I know spending money on advertising can be scary as a business owner, especially when you’re first starting out.

I remember sitting down with my first coach, who was a big fan of Facebook advertising and had used it to grow her million-dollar business, and her telling me it was time to invest in ads.

I understood the concept. Spend money on ads, send new people to a landing page, offer them a freebie, get their email address and build a relationship.

And it made sense.

But, forking out money that wasn’t yet consistent in my business at a minimum of $10 a day was so scary.

Hard to believe that today I spend close to a thousand a week, but that’s growth for you.

Throughout my journey with advertising in business, I’ve explored many options and by far my favorite and most profitable has been Pinterest.

I hope this post serves as a quick overview of Pinterest Advertising and gives you the confidence to get started today.

Because, having this consistent stream of traffic to your website, email list and offers is amazing when you’re looking to streamline your marketing and build a sustainable business.

THE TRUTH ABOUT AD SPEND

As I mentioned before I understand how it can feel to blindly invest in advertising, so I want you to look at it two different ways.

At the very minimum, you need a lead magnet, landing page and welcome sequence you’ll send new subscribers through.

This is where many entrepreneurs start as a way to build an email list to later make their offer too. This method doesn’t require as much money up front, but your ROI isn’t instant.

The way I look at it is you can spend money to gain consistent traffic to your website (more on this later) and/or landing page for your free offer every single day with advertising. This ROI is more about time in the beginning, not having to create content or worry about “showing up” and the money ROI comes inside the welcome email sequence or later during a launch.

The second method is an evergreen approach, where you have a course or offer that someone can buy within minutes, hours or days of joining your email list. This is obviously going to give you the best ROI right out of the gate with ad spend.

Full transparency I started with option one in the beginning and once I had my course I adjusted my funnel to the new offer. I still use the first from time to time when gearing up for a launch, inviting new subscribers to a live challenge or class.

There is also retargeting, which I’ll touch on later, but not the focus of this post.

No matter what you choose, think of it as a machine.

You put in $2 and you make $5.
You put in $5 and make $10.

When you find the right rhythm for advertising it’s just a smart business move for scaling your business.

I’ll spend $5 to make $10 any day, especially when it gives me my precious time back.

WHY PINTEREST ADVERTISEMENT IS AN ENTREPRENEUR DREAM

As I've mentioned before I love experimenting with advertising in business, but Pinterest, I believe is an entrepreneur dream.

REASON #1: Pinterest is a search engine platform, meaning people go to the platform with specific goals in mind. They are searching for something specific and through keyword targeting you’re able to show up in their search.

This is a far difference from Facebook where you’re just throwing stuff on someone’s feed and “hoping” they click!

REASON #2: Pinterest ads are much easier to set up. One of the hardest things, in my opinion is writing copy, headlines and making graphics for ads. There are so many options and testing takes a lot of trial and error.

With Pinterest, it’s mostly visual (or course titles and descriptions help with SEO, but let’s be honest here). Your focus can be on creating graphics that catch the eye of your target audience.

**more on strategy and my top tips below**

REASON #3: Pinterest ads keep going. This might be one of my favorite benefits of Pinterest advertisement. Because of the nature of the platform, even after you turn your ad spend off your traffic keeps increasing. The reason for this is as you were promoting your pin, it was being shared and saved. On Facebook you turn your ad off and it’s done.

This longevity makes Pinterest one of the best tools for sustainability in business! One of the strategies we love to use is promoting a few pins every month to give them the boost they need and then switching them off.

PINTEREST ADVERTISING STRATEGY

Alright, let’s use the $2 a day strategy from the title and get you started!

Step #1: I recommend all my clients get started with organic Pinterest strategies first.

Of course, you can jump in and start ads, but having a Pinterest presence and strategy is just good for business. I teach my clients inside of The Brandmerry Academy exactly how to do this effectively because a lot of people just do Pinterest wrong.

So, after you’ve started your organic strategy you can see what’s working and what’s not. This will give you great insight into what people are gravitating towards within your content.

For instance, I would have never guessed years ago that this pin would be my most popular, but it was and today has led to well over $40,000 in cash in my business and over 5,000 website visitors.

We’ve since updated the original graphic multiple times and continue to optimize this popular topic that’s very unique to my business.

Remember, marketing always works when you focus on the data!

Step #2: Decide where you’ll send your traffic

I recommend having a combination of sending pin traffic directly to your freebie optin landing page, as well as to your blog.

Pinterest is originally a platform for bloggers and information, so it’s more familiar with your audience to send them to a blog post and may, in the long run, increase sales in your business because your audience is warmer.

You’re providing value to your customers before asking them to provide their email address or make a purchase. For this reason, we love having a combination of pins to the landing page for my freebie and to my popular blog posts.

Again, this is where the data comes in handy because you’ll be able to see which blog topics and pins are the most popular.

Step #3: Set up your specifics

Choose your graphic, more than one if you want to test and don’t have a lot of data, and set up your ads. Again, this isn’t going to give you the ins and outs of doing so, I teach that inside of The Academy.

Conversion is an option on Pinterest and a way for you to track your leads (i.e. people who take the next step from your ad and opt-in to your email list). However, I always suggest running Traffic campaigns. My contact at Pinterest told me conversion ads are for a larger ad spend and more data, so Traffic campaigns allow you to get started without the hassle.

To track accurate conversions you can just set up a separate form with your email provider for Pinterest traffic.

The most important step here is choosing your keywords and target audience. This is why ideal customer work is so important in the marketing process and why I recommend doing your research.

Take some time to research keywords on Pinterest by using the search bar. Then include those keywords in your targeting.

Step #4: Starting with just $2 a day can make a HUGE difference in your website traffic.

It’s very common to pay around .10 cents for a click to your website (referred to as outbound clicks on Pinterest). Imagine spending just $2 a day and getting 20 clicks to your website every day. This might not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but in a month that could mean 600 website visitors!

If you’re getting like 10 a month that’s a big difference. Now imagine you spent $60 to get those 600 website visitors and one person buys an offer for $197 - that’s a $137 profit and my guess is you’ll make even more.

As you make more you can increase your spend, but even today most of my graphics are only spending $5 a day.

THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR WEBSITE

I feel like it goes without saying that your website is SUPER important here.

If you’re sending traffic to your website, specifically your blog post which is recommended, then you want to make sure you're providing high-quality content and multiple ways for them to take the next step and join your email list.

You can also experiment with selling a low-priced offer as well.

Needless to say, your website setup matters and one of the things we teach inside of The Academy is how to increase conversions on your website through design, strategy, and copy.

Use this blog post as an example and look at all the places I give my audience the opportunity to opt-in and join my email community!

BONUS: RETARGETING WITH FACEBOOK AND PINTEREST ADVERTISEMENT

Quick word on retargeting and combining Pinterest and Facebook for an enhanced advertising strategy. Now, at the time of writing this there are a lot of questions around the new retargeting practices and limitations as part of the new IOS 14 roll out. It’s too early to tell, and I don’t like to freak out over marketing strategies over here, but just keep in mind retargeting might shift as we go through 2021.

With that being said, retargeting your website traffic on Facebook shouldn’t change too much! When you’re ready to add on to your existing Pinterest strategy you can retarget your website traffic on Facebook with your freebie to make sure your audience gets on your email list.

Your audience has already been on your website, thanks to Pinterest, and knows what you’re about, so you’ll find your Facebook retargeting ads are less expensive and more effective.

It’s a win win!

CONCLUSION

Pinterest is not only great for organically marketing your business, but adding in Pinterest Advertising practices is a no brainer in my opinion.

No matter where you are in your business journey, I highly encourage you to explore this option in order to streamline and automate your marketing efforts.

If you’re ready to stop guessing and learn advanced marketing strategies to grow your business then it’s time to check out Brandmerry Academy. Doors only open a few times a year, so click here to learn more.

Branding and Business Coach | Michelle Knight of Brandmerry

P.S. Ready to build a revenue-generating brand? One that not only stands out online but also makes it easier than ever to create high-value content? Tune in to my free brand class and learn my Build a Better Brand Method. Watch now at brandmerry.com/class.