Fashion brands seeking an alternative to the Meta/Google duopoly have increasingly been turning to Pinterest.
But scaling Pinterest isn’t as simple as copy/pasting your Meta ads strategy on to a new platform. As with any new channel, there are things you need to know to set your brand up for success.
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Jordan Fry worked as an account rep on the “rapidly scaling brands” teams at both Google and Pinterest before leaving to start his own growth marketing agency. His specialty is helping brands with no/minimal Pinterest presence scale it up into a meaningful customer acquisition channel.
Jordan was kind enough to answer some of my most burning questions about Pinterest, which I condensed into seven pieces of advice for setting up your first campaign and scaling.
He’s currently taking on new clients, so click here to get in touch if you’d like some expert help getting started with Pinterest.
#1 Pinterest Is A Good Fit For Brands Targeting Women, Gen Z And/Or High Household Incomes
Pinterest has 570 Million monthly active users (MAUs). 42% of those users are in Gen Z, and 70% of those users are female. Pinterest also reaches 40% of US households with a HHI greater than $150k/year.
Even more interesting: 96% of Pinterest in-platform searches are unbranded. Most Pinterest activity occurs higher up in the funnel than Meta. To use direct response terminology, Pinterest users are problem aware, but not solution committed.
Translating that into the fashion buyer’s journey: users are researching outfit ideas for specific events or learning more about trends, but they haven’t yet locked in to the “I need silver gladiator sandals” level of specificity.
This means Pinterest is a great opportunity to build relationships with potential customers earlier in the buying journey, before it reaches the cutthroat, high CPM auctions in Meta’s “in market shopper” audience pool.
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#2 Pinterest Has Invested In Improving Their Ad Product, So It’s Worth A Second Look
Personally, the first time I experimented with Pinterest ads was in 2019 when I was working for Tibi. And, to be honest, at that time the ads manager was confusing and tedious to use and the traffic quality we got wasn’t great.
If you’ve had similar experiences in the past, it’s worth giving Pinterest a second look because many of those issues have been resolved. When Bill Ready became CEO of Pinterest in 2022, he made shoppable features and direct response marketing the core focus of the company.
You might have noticed this as a user–I certainly have. The paid and organic content recommendations are more relevant and I’ve even purchased one or two things from Pinterest ads over the past year.
As an advertiser this renewed focus translates to AI-powered targeting, bidding and budgeting options (similar to Advantage Plus on Meta) and product tagging within your pins.
#3 Pinterest & Meta Ads Have Similar Features With A Few Key Differences
Both Pinterest and Meta have a similar campaign structure (campaign -> ad set(s) -> ads), and both platforms offer AI-modeled audiences. But Pinterest uses Act-Alike audiences instead of Lookalike audiences.
Pinterest models their audiences based on users’ behavior within Pinterest, while Meta’s modeling is based on behavior within Meta and across all websites tagged with a Meta pixel.
In terms of campaign objectives and bidding, Pinterest offers awareness, consideration, video completion, conversion, and catalog sales campaigns. You can bid for both volume or value with or without targets (CPA or ROAS).
Unlike Meta but similar to Google and X, Pinterest allows you to bid on search terms
#4 What You’ll Need For Your First Pinterest Campaign
You’ll need five things to get your first campaign up and running:
- Create a Pinterest account for your brand.
- Install the Pinterest tag on your website and set up CAPI.
- Install the Pinterest Shopify app and connect your store. This is the fastest way to install tracking and import your product catalog.
- Achieve “Verified merchant” status if possible. This helps you enrich your ads with shoppable inventory and pricing and availability data.
- Develop a minimum of 10 ad creatives (pins) to get started (more on this in #6).
#5 How To Structure Your First Pinterest Campaign
If you intend to use Pinterest with the same conversion-focused objectives as Meta, use this setup:
- 80% conversion objective campaigns, 20% catalog objective campaigns.
- “Checkout” event optimized.
- Target ROAS bidding model and Performance+ bidding setting.
- You can use target CPA bidding, but only if your AUR range is narrow enough to accommodate a single CPA target, and only if you’re spending enough to drive 50 conversions per week.
Budget a minimum spend of $100 per day for at least three months. You can pause campaigns or ads during that time, but three months gives the average brand enough time for users to go through the consideration cycle (remember, you’re starting higher up the funnel than Meta).
Higher AUR/luxury brands might need even more time to evaluate Pinterest because they will have a longer consideration cycle.
#6 Pinterest Creative Best Practices–Different Than Meta!
Meta conversion campaigns target “in market” audiences who are already solution aware and often solution-committed. Pinterest campaigns target audiences who are problem aware, but still researching solutions.
Because you’re targeting a different stage in the buying journey, many Pinterest creative best practices break the rules of my Meta Ads SILIBI playbook:
- Start with static (photo) and video ads
- Make your brand name/logo clearly visible on the ad creative
- Feature aesthetic lifestyle content, not just product-focused images.
- The creative should be eye-catching, intriguing and inspiring. This is the place to showcase your seasonal campaign shoot.
- Use vertical images or videos at 600x900px or 1000x1500px resolution. Anything longer will get cut off in the feed.
- Videos will not play sound by default in the feed, so it’s crucial to add captions or make it obvious what the ad is about without sound.
#7 How To Tell If It’s Working (Attribution & Measurement)
Let’s get it out of the way: if you are wedded to last click attribution and need your ads to start showing results in a few days, Pinterest is not the platform for you.
Jordan prefers to cross-reference Pinterest’s internal analytics against a third party source like Northbeam or TripleWhale to understand how to “discount” or “mark up” Pinterest in-platform compared to Meta or Google in-platform.
For example, many brands who use Meta as their primary acquisition source may find that Meta’s in-platform ROAS is 10-20% lower than their business-level aMER. They’ll use this differential to set accurate in-platform targets.
Using third-party analytics will help you understand how Pinterest in-platform is similar/different to Meta in-platform, and the average delta between Pinterest in-platform and business-level results. This will help you scale budgets more effectively, even if in-platform metrics look soft.
That said, the ultimate “is this working” test is this: are you able to spend more budget each day at your target aMER? This is why Jordan recommends that brands keep their campaign running for at least three months–that’s how long it takes to experience the full benefits of the platform.
If you’re looking for expert guidance getting started with Pinterest, or simply wondering if it makes sense for your brand/current goals, reach out to Jordan on Linkedin, X, or his website.