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Identifying and Measuring Key Performance of Pinterest KPIs

By August 16, 2018 No Comments

Part 5 in our 2018 Pinterest Influencer Marketing Playbook series. 

With over 2 billion idea searches every month, there is ample opportunity for brands to win customers on Pinterest – 97% of users searches are unbranded. As such, marketers who prioritize a Pinterest strategy and presence now have a unique opportunity to maximize their Pinfluencer potential and own that share of voice in their category.
Despite Pinterest’s relevance in consumers’ and influencers’ (known specifically as Creators on Pinterest) lives, it has yet to translate into how the majority of marketers are prioritizing influencer marketing on Pinterest. This is large in part due to Pinterest’s slow start in advertising in addition to originally lacking the scale, return and sophistication of the other social media platforms in the space. However, in the past year, Pinterest has released an abundance of new features that have emphasized its search engine functionality while improving several analytics, targeting and ad options, resulting in many key industry players beginning to run influencer campaigns on Pinterest.

Paid, Earned and Owned Media on Pinterest

When measuring success on Pinterest, Pinterest says it best:
On Pinterest, paid, owned and earned media work together. Since many Marketing Mix Model analyses focus on more traditional paid media and causal relationships, they don’t accurately capture Pinterest’s influence on customer behaviors and brand goals.
Each month, 200 million people use Pinterest to discover possibilities and act on their favorite ideas. That sets Pinterest apart from other social platforms because people use it for themselves, rather than connecting with friends or posting photos. Because people use Pinterest to find ideas and evaluate products, content from brands aligns with their needs. 75% of the content on Pinterest links to a brand website. While some of that content is owned media, much of it comes from Pinterest users, who organically add content they like onto the platform. In doing so, they generate earned media and reach on behalf of their favorite brands.
Paid media works differently on Pinterest too. Ads are helpful rather than disruptive, because they are contextually relevant to someone’s needs on Pinterest. Plus, Pinterest users often save ads to their boards so they can find them again later. As the content spreads through users‘ networks, brands often see strong gains and engagement from earned media in addition to their paid media results.

Using Pinterest Tags to Measure Success

Measuring success on Pinterest is unique because behavior on Pinterest is unique. The Pinterest tag makes it possible to track the actions people take on your website after seeing your Promoted Pin. These tags allow you to track conversions beyond the click – something that is increasingly useful to brand marketers in tracking consumers’ paths-to-purchase.

Track action on your website: With the Pinterest tag, you can track page visits, category views, searches, when items are added to a cart, checkouts, signups, video views, lead generation activity, or add an event for the purpose of audience targeting. With specific audience targeting parameters in place, you will be able to further drive engagement with your Pinterest content.

Track action across devices:Using the Pinterest tag, you’ll also be able to trace activity across devices, which will show you where people engage with your content and where they convert. Nearly 80% of Pinterest usage is on mobile today, but people typically take that final action on a desktop, so tracking across multiple devices is an important part of understanding your performance.

 

Measuring CPA for Pinterest Campaigns

Once you have implemented the tag, it’s important to understand that attribution on Pinterest is fundamentally different from other social networks. When measuring success on Pinterest as it relates to your overall marketing strategy, it’s important to think about a longer attribution window. While Pins may not immediately drive conversions, they are influencing consumers as they think about what they want to do. Since Pinterest is about planning for the future and people are planning their lives – especially for longer consideration cycle industries (i.e., weddings, furniture) – longer windows = more conversions.

Increase attribution window: In order to capture the future orientation of consumers on Pinterest, marketers should think about a longer attribution window. Pinterest recommends a minimum of 30 days for clicks and engagements and 1-60 days for views.

Remember your CPA will improve over time: Start with a flexible CPA target at the beginning of a campaign, knowing that efficiencies will be gained over time. Since Pinterest is a planning platform and saved content generates earned conversions, conversions will increase while CPC will decrease. Also, due to the evergreen nature of Pins, they will receive saves and conversions from earned media even after a campaign has ended. To start, pull historical reporting – making sure you pull aggregated rolling reports as far back as the attribution window allows. This will ensure that you’re capturing all the conversions that your Promoted Pins are driving.

CPA graph

Pinterest Analytics Dashboard

With Pinterest Analytics, you can learn more about your audience and how Pinterest works for you. Brands and influencers can use this feature to refine their Pinterest strategies and get more impressions, clicks and saves. Pinterest analytics is organized into three sections: your Pinterest profile, your audience and website analytics.

Table depicting KPIs and definitions

Pinterest Profile Dashboard

Pinterest profile analytics gives you a look at how the Pins from your profile are doing. This includes all Pins you Pinned to your profile, and things you Pinned from your website or saved from others. You can switch between views to see Pins with the most impressions, saves or clicks.

You’ll also be able to see top performing Pins and boards from the last 30 days in addition to all time – again in terms of impressions, saves and clicks.

Table depicting KPIs and what they mean

Pinterest Website Analytics

Similar to the profile analytics dashboard, the website analytics dashboard shows you how content from your website is doing on Pinterest. Website analytics shows data for all Pins that link back to your website, not just the Pins you’ve added to your own profile. Like profile analytics, you can sort website analytics by impressions, saves (formally repins), clicks and all-time.

The Pinterest website analytics dashboard has two additional sections: original Pins and Pin It Button. The Original Pins section shows you how many unique Pins are created from your website on a daily basis. You can also see the most recent unique Pins that have been created. This helps you understand how much unique content is being added to Pinterest from your site, as well as the latest trends Pinning from your site.

Download our latest 2018 Pinterest Influencer Marketing Playbook to learn how to work with content creators on Pinterest to create, amplify and measure the performance of influencer-generated content on Pinterest.

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