Pinterest Ads Tutorial – Setting Up Traffic Campaigns

Check out our Pinterest Ads tutorial below and learn how to set-up website traffic campaigns. Pinterest Ads have continued to improve and we see great performance from their channel with affordable advertising rates, plenty of targeting options for users, and campaign goals ranging from branding to engagement to website traffic to mobile app installs.

Pinterest Ads Tutorial

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Step 1 – Create and Access Pinterest Ads Account

The first thing you absolutely need to do is create a Pinterest ads account for your Pinterest profile. You can simply sign-in to your profile and then go directly to the URL http://ads.pinterest.com for access. And like every other paid advertising channel, you’ll need to set-up a payment method before your ads will run.

Step 2 – Hover Over Ads and Click Traffic

At the top you will see two drop-down menus. One is for Analytics and that’s great for checking how much activity and impressions your organic Pinterest pins get. The other drop-down is for Ads and that’s where you can see everything related to paid Pinterest advertising. You want to select ‘Traffic’ from the drop-down menu because that will be your goal.

Step 3 – Click Create Campaign Button

Click the big red Create Campaign button to get started with your first campaign.

Step 4 – Create New Traffic Campaign

Make sure you are in the Traffic campaign section and select to create a new traffic campaign when it gives you the option. Other campaigns will show up if you have any and you can edit them if need be.

Step 5 – Name Campaign & Set Lifetime Budget

The name of your campaign should describe what you are advertising and a goal. It helps you when you start adding more and more campaigns. As far as a lifetime budget, I recommend setting one up in case you ever forget about your Pinterest campaign and to help with pacing.

Step 6 – Set-up Ad Group

Set-up your first ad group by naming it. I usually name ad groups based on the targeting I am using within each ad group, so I named it ‘Keywords’ in this case.

Step 7 – Add Targeting Like Keywords

You have different options for targeting including retargeting, email list targeting, lookalike audiences, interest audiences, and keyword targeting. I love keyword targeting the absolute best because you can reach people when they search for your products.

Step 8 – Set Your Max CPC Bid

I recommend setting Max CPC bids low to start but it is dependent on your budget level and competition. The less competition you have the lower you can bid, but more competition means higher bids. In addition, you can set bids at the minimum level of $0.10 if you have small budgets but you will need to increase them for larger budgets.

Step 9 – Choose Promoted Pin

You can choose from all of your different pins to find the one you want to promote. I recommend uploading beautiful custom pins to promote and also promoting your most popular and engaging pins. You will find that certain pins end up doing extremely well and others don’t so the ones that are doing well organically should do well with some paid advertising.

Step 10 – Name Pin, Set-up Destination URL, and Submit

Your final step includes naming your pin, setting up your destination URL, setting up Google Analytics UTM campaign tracking if applicable, and clicking submit.

Takeaways

As you can see, Pinterest guides you through the entire process. Each screenshot flows from when you enter your Pinterest ads account to creating the campaign to setting up targeting to setting up your destination URL. The key after you click submit is to check your campaigns every single day and optimize them to get better results. The more you test, the more you will learn.