Part 3 in our 2018 Pinterest Influencer Marketing Playbook series. 

More visual search than social network, Pinterest remains an anomaly among social platforms and a huge opportunity for influencer marketing and media professionals, especially when it comes to value generated over time. Unlike Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, Pinterest is designed for long-tail influence. The organic lifespan of a Pin is significantly longer than the lifespan of other social posts – 110 days vs. 24 hours (or less). In this way, it works the completely opposite – with the majority of views coming from search, creators (and marketers) have to wait for content to be discovered to understand performance – or accelerate the process.

For media professionals, it’s important to note that insights from high-performing Pins will emerge in months, rather than hours. In this way, media can be a strategic partner to influencer marketing professionals in their ability to rapidly test influencer-generated Pinterest content to gain insight and visibility into which types of Pins perform best.

Since people come to Pinterest to discover new ideas, they’re open to any Pins that help them do that – even if it’s branded content. Generally speaking, Pinners tend to be more open-minded to ads on Pinterest since they fit seamlessly within the platform and cause minimal disruption – similar to the consumer experience on Google. At the end of the day, it boils down to the difference in consumers’ mindsets on Pinterest versus other social platforms. Pinners come to Pinterest to accomplish something – whether that be finding fashion inspiration, a new dinner recipe or advice on how to decorate a bedroom – whereas users go to other platforms to be entertained.

Integrating Paid Into Your Marketing Mix on Pinterest

When it comes to integrating paid into your marketing mix, marketers should aim to amplify top-performing content via Promoted Pins. On the most basic level, other than the paid-for expanded audience and addition of the word “Promoted” at the bottom of the Pin, the actual structure of a Promoted Pin looks similar to a regular Pin. When someone saves your Promoted Pin to their own Pinterest board or embeds them on the web, those re-pins are considered organic, meaning the Promoted label is not included and the extra traffic is essentially free of charge.

Promoted Pins have been shown to drive action 61% of Pinners have discovered new brands or products from Promoted Pins and 50% of Pinners have made a purchase after seeing a Promoted Pin. Pinterest offers five formats of Promoted Pins – Standard Promoted Pins, One-tap Promoted Pins, Promoted Video Pins, Cinematic Pins, and Promoted App Pins. Each ad format is designed to drive a unique set of business objectives.

Table describing the types of Promoted Pins on Pinterest

Download our latest 2018 Pinterest Influencer Marketing Playbook to learn how to create, amplify and measure influencer-generated content on Pinterest, with a step-by-step guide to creating a Pinterest strategy and optimizing content for Pinterest.