Curious to know more about how promoted pins can work for your business? Welcome to the Promoted Pins 101 episode!

Paid advertising on Pinterest can be confusing for some folks. Does it work like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and is the paid advertising as inexpensive as on other platforms? Today we’re breaking down everything you need to know about how to get started with Pinterest Promoted Pins, aka our Promoted Pins 101 episode!

If you’re new to the Pinterest marketing world, I encourage you to listen to this episode anyway.

Re-Introducing Monica

Monica Froese started her site, Redefining Mom, as a working mom blog back in 2013. She was working in a corporate job at the time. She eventually became a full-time blogger and honed her corporate background marketing skills on Pinterest.

She is a self-professed expert in Pinterest ads, and for good reason. Monica used to teach content creators and small businesses on how to DIY their own Pinterest ads. Her goal was to make a massive impact on their conversion rates.

The Promoted Pins 101 Guide

What Are Promoted Pins?

I know we have some listeners who aren’t 100% sure what a promoted pin is.

Promoted pins are synonymous with Pinterest ads, they are the advertising platform for Pinterest.

It’s the way businesses can put money behind their pin to have it shown in three places within the platform:

• the home feed

• the related pins
 feed

• the search results

5 Reasons Why Promoted Pins Are Awesome

Why are promoted pins so awesome? Monica offers up five reasons that she is a huge fan:

* Promoted pins are low cost. This means that content creators with a small budget can have an ad strategy that doesn’t break the bank.

* Promoted pins are still very new to online marketing and there is a lot of room for growth.

* Search Ads. People come to Pinterest with the intent to buy. It is a search and discovery network. Your ads are able to pop up based on the user’s search, not just at random (like Facebook ads).

* Promoted pins are native within the platform. This means that the ads are not disruptive. They are part of the everyday experience of the user. Most times you don’t even know you are clicking on a promoted pin.

* Pinterest recently went public which means their current focus is on promoted pins. That can’t be underestimated because ads are how Pinterest makes their money. Pinterest wants promoted pins to work because when it’s beneficial for your business, it will also be good for them.

Monica wrote an amazing article on Pinterest going public. She took a 184-page document and made it much easier to read. Make sure you check it out because it’s super informative.

Will Promoted Pins Mess Up My Organic Pins?

Some of you don’t want to invest in promoted pins, because you think that Pinterest won’t show your organic pins. The more content creators are putting their pins on the platform, the more content Pinterest has to serve to the user.

The question you need to be asking yourself is:

How can I make my pins show up in search results?

You have the organic side where Pinterest prefers fresh content and no rotating images, with a heavy focus on keyword optimization. If you’re doing those things you can show up in the search results. Ads don’t have to replace your organic strategy. They should enhance to your organic strategy on Pinterest.

Getting Started With Promoted Pins

The first thing I would tell someone about promoted pins is to re...