Vincent NG
Thanks for dropping by the Pictures to Profits Podcast. and I’m happy to be interviewing Andy Hayes, who is the founder and creative mind at PlumDeluxe.com, which is a lifestyle blog that helps people create moments that matter.
Plum Deluxe was inspired after Andy witnessed her mom go through a wonderful transformation of living life during her six years of living with breast cancer. After her diagnosis, she spent time traveling the world, spending quality time with family and friends and created memories and moments that mattered.
Unfortunately Andy’s mom passed away, but her legacy and inspiration lives on with PlumDeluxe.com. Andy also shares in the podcast his journey of how Pinterest became Plum Deluxe’s number one traffic driver (yes even over Google), and how he continues to use Pinterest grow a new audience.
He’s also share with us about how the self serve Pinterest advertising platform, also known as promoted pins, works and how he is using to promote his online tea business.
Here are some key highlights from our podcast discussion.
How the Pinterest Advertising Platform Works
Currently the Pinterest advertising platform is only available through application.
Andy and PlumDeluxe.com were invited to test out the new platform, and he’s been using it to help promote the sales of his teas. He says he’s seen some success with it, and explains that Pinterest advertising works in the following ways.
- Self serve advertising pins must be connected to a specific keyword.
- The pin will show up as a promoted pin for that search term when approved.
- Your promoted pin can show up for more than one keyword or search term.
- Pricing is not allowed to be mentioned in the pin descriptions at all.
- You are allowed at most one hashtag to use in the pin descriptions. So make sure you use hashtags properly.
- You must create the pin first and have it pinned onto your Pinterest feed first before it can be promoted.
- They will look at your pin and the url to ensure that they do match and that the pin is not misleading.
- No nudity, gratituous violence, or promotion of hate.
- You are can geo locate by metropolitan area. So if you want to target Los Angeles in your ads, you can.
- You can target based on gender.
- You can target based on device used.
- You can choose the type of budget you want to allocate for a day, or for a certain period of time, or for an ongoing campaign.
Here was some helpful advice from Andy when it came to the advertising platform.
If you don’t have rich pins for your e-c0mmerce product, ensure that you do first. This way you can include the pricing in the actual pin. Depending on your e-commerce platform, this can be as simple as using an extension, or you may need to the help of a developper.
The Pinterest platform does offer insight into how many people generally look up specific search terms on Pinterest, however Andy advises on also use Google Adwords (Keyword Tool) to understand more in depth of potential keywords that people are searching for.
In terms of how long it takes for your pins to be approved for the advertising process, Andy says it only takes a couple of hours. That’s a pretty quick turnaround time.
However, there is a catch. The advertising platform is only available to U.S. businesses on Pinterest, and is not available to the rest of the world yet. If you are a business on Pinterest, you can apply to be an advertising here. You need to have a business account on Pinterest before you get approved.
Pinterest is Great for Reaching a New Audience
Andy doesn’t have some top level secrets for growing a new audience with Pinterest, instead he suggest st focusing on the fundamentals for your own blog.
This means creating images that contain text in your blog post so that it encourages people to repin content on Pinterest, as well as getting others on your site to pin your blog posts.
It’s also about taking your visual game to the next level. While Andy and Plum Deluxe, have their own studio for taking photos, Andy advocates learning how to take better photos and create better visuals. This can be especially important if you have sponsored blog posts.
A great pinnable image can help attract people to a sponsored post and keep you, and your sponsors happy.
Since starting on Pinterest about two years ago, Plum Deluxe has seen their followers grow beyond 18,000. A big part of this was because Plum Deluxe had several of their boards featured in Pinterest newsletters across the world.
He credits part of the reason he was featured so often was because of the incredible content that Plum Deluxe would curate.
That’s part of the reason that Pinterest is their main traffic driver.
Links and Resources:
Andy Hayes on Twitter @AndrewGHayes
How to Get Rich Pins for Your Business
P.S. I’ll be attending Social Fresh West
Are you heading off to Social Fresh West conference in San Diego on October 28th-30th. If you are, I would love to meet you in person and chat with you all things Pinteresting. Drop me a line in the comments or e-mail me if you are going.
