What should I do if my Pinterest Ads are underperforming?

If your Pinterest Ads are underperforming, it's important to diagnose the potential issues and take corrective actions to improve the performance of your campaigns. Here's a step-by-step guide on what you can do:

1. Check Your Targeting
Audience Overlap: Ensure that your targeting isn't too broad or too narrow. If your audience is too small, you may not be reaching enough people. Conversely, if your audience is too broad, your ads may not be relevant enough to capture attention.

Action: Refine your targeting by focusing on specific interests, demographics, and behaviors that are more likely to resonate with your brand.

Test Lookalike Audiences: Create a lookalike audience based on your current customers or website visitors to reach people who are similar to those who already engage with your brand.

Targeting Based on Keywords: If you're relying on keyword targeting, make sure you're using the most relevant, specific, and high-performing keywords for your products or services.

Action: Review and update your keywords, add long-tail keywords, or try using Pinterest's keyword suggestion tool.

2. Review Ad Creative and Format
Visual Appeal: Pinterest is a highly visual platform, so your ads need to stand out. If your images or videos aren't eye-catching, users might scroll past your ad without interacting.

Action: Use high-quality, engaging images or videos that reflect your brand's message. Test different formats, such as carousel ads or video pins, to see which format resonates best with your audience.

Design Best Practices: Follow Pinterest's design best practices. For example, use bright, vibrant images, add text overlays for context, and ensure that your pins are mobile-friendly.

Pin Descriptions: A compelling description that aligns with the interests of your target audience can encourage engagement.

Action: Revise your pin descriptions to ensure they are clear, concise, and optimized for both SEO (keywords) and user intent.

Call-to-Action (CTA): Make sure your CTAs are clear and compelling. If your CTA is vague or doesn't prompt users to take the next step, your CTR and conversions may suffer.

Action: Use strong, actionable language in your CTA, such as "Shop Now," "Learn More," or "Get the Look."

3. Analyze and Optimize Bidding Strategy
Bidding Too Low: If your bids are too low, your ads might not be competitive enough to appear in front of your target audience.

Action: Consider increasing your bids slightly to make your ads more competitive, especially if you're using manual bidding.

Automatic Bidding: If you're using automatic bidding and seeing low performance, it may be worth switching to manual bidding to have more control over your costs.

Action: Test both automatic and manual bidding strategies to see which one delivers better results for your campaign goals.

4. Reevaluate Your Budget and Scheduling
Budget: If your budget is too small, you may not be able to reach enough people to generate meaningful results. Similarly, if your budget is spread too thin across multiple campaigns, you may not be able to optimize properly.

Action: Increase your budget if you're not spending enough to reach your goals. Alternatively, prioritize the best-performing campaigns and allocate more budget toward them.

Ad Scheduling: Ads running at the wrong time may not get the traction they need. If your audience is not active when your ads are running, it can lead to underperformance.

Action: Analyze performance by day and time to identify when your audience is most active, and adjust your ad scheduling to align with peak times.

5. Refine Your Landing Page or Website
Conversion Issues: Even if your Pinterest Ads are driving traffic, if your landing page isn't optimized for conversions, visitors may not take the desired action.

Action: Optimize your landing page for speed, mobile-friendliness, and clarity. Ensure your landing page has a clear CTA and a user-friendly design.

Test Your Funnel: Make sure your conversion funnel is working properly (e.g., users are able to complete purchases or sign up without issues).

Consistency Between Ads and Landing Page: If there's a disconnect between your ad and the landing page it leads to (e.g., different messaging or visuals), users might feel misled and bounce.

Action: Ensure that the content, messaging, and visuals in your Pinterest ad align with the landing page users are directed to.

6. Test and Optimize with A/B Testing
Run A/B Tests: Continuously test different versions of your ads to see what resonates best with your audience.

Action: Test different ad creatives (images, videos, text overlays), CTAs, and targeting parameters. For example, create variations of your ad with different headlines, visuals, or audience segments to find the best-performing combination.

Test Different Ad Formats: If your standard pins are underperforming, try using video pins or carousel ads to see if they yield better results.

7. Improve Ad Relevance Score
Relevance Score: Pinterest uses a relevance score to measure how well your ad aligns with the interests of your target audience. A low relevance score can result in your ads being shown to fewer people or costing more.

Action: Improve your ad relevance by refining your targeting, creative, and messaging to better match the interests and behaviors of your audience.

8. Monitor and Adjust Based on Data
Use Pinterest Analytics: Dive into your Pinterest Ads Manager to analyze which campaigns, ad groups, and pins are performing best. Look at metrics like CTR, CPC, CPA, ROAS, and conversions to identify underperforming areas.

Action: If certain ads or targeting options are underperforming, pause them and reallocate your budget to better-performing ads. Continuously monitor the results and adjust as needed.

9. Retarget and Expand Your Audience
Retarget Website Visitors: If people have visited your site but didn't convert, retarget them with relevant ads that encourage them to return and complete their purchase or desired action.

Action: Set up retargeting campaigns using Pinterest's Custom Audiences feature to reach users who have previously interacted with your website, app, or Pinterest profile.

Broaden Targeting: If your campaigns are too restrictive, you might be missing out on potential customers.

Action: Test expanding your audience by using broader interests or behaviors, or try exploring new geographic locations, age groups, or other demographics.

10. Review Campaign Goals and Objectives
Align Objectives: If your campaign goals don't align with the way you're running your ads, they may underperform. For example, if you're running a traffic campaign but expecting conversions, you may need to adjust your strategy.

Action: Revisit your campaign objectives in Pinterest Ads Manager and ensure that your ad setup aligns with your business goals (e.g., driving sales, generating leads, increasing brand awareness).

Conclusion
When your Pinterest Ads are underperforming, there's no single fix, but a combination of strategies can help improve performance. By refining your targeting, improving your ad creatives, adjusting your bidding strategy, optimizing your landing pages, and continuously testing and analyzing results, you can boost your Pinterest ad performance. Always align your efforts with your campaign goals, keep monitoring data, and optimize based on the insights you gain.