In episode 488, Erin Harding guides us through the essential steps for food bloggers looking to leverage Pinterest ads successfully.
We cover information on the requirements you need in order to advertise on Pinterest, whether it is right for you and three key points to create successful ad campaigns on Pinterest.
Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.
Write Blog Posts that Rank on Google’s 1st Page
RankIQ is an AI-powered SEO tool built just for bloggers. It tells you what to put inside your post and title, so you can write perfectly optimized content in half the time. RankIQ contains a hand-picked library with the lowest competition, high traffic keywords for every niche.
Guest Details
Connect with Simple Pin Media
Website | Facebook | Instagram
Bio Erin is the Director of Pinterest Ads Management at Simple Pin Media. For 8 years she has been bringing the power of Pinterest to brands and businesses, large and small. While she started out developing & managing organic strategies, she is now managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad spend for brands on Pinterest.
Takeaways
- Prepare Your Offer: Ensure your product or lead magnet is ready for advertising, and consider its circulation and success on other platforms.
- Understand the Pinterest Mindset: Recognize that Pinterest is a visual search platform, not social media. Meet users at every stage of their journey, from inspiration to decision-making.
- Run Ads For A Period of Time: Pinterest ads are not an overnight solution. Plan to run ads for a minimum of 8-12 weeks.
- Budget wisely: Plan for 8 to 12 weeks of consistent advertising with a budget ranging from $20 to $100 per campaign per day, depending on your goals and the nature of your offer.
- Advertising is an Investment: Know what your budget is before you start. Whether you hire an agency or run ads on your own, set a budget that is comfortable and stick to it.
- Outsource Pinterest Advertising: Can you run Pinterest ads on your own and what are the advantages of hiring an agency?
Resources Mentioned
Transcript
Click for full script.
EBT488 – Erin Harding
00:00 – Intro
Food bloggers, hi! How are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth and, ultimately, help you to achieve your freedom, whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and, most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported.
00:39 – Megan Porta
Well, here’s a new spin on a Pinterest conversation that you may not have considered before, food bloggers. Erin Harding joins me from Simple Pin Media. She is the director of Pinterest ads over there, and she joins me inside this interview to talk about food bloggers running Pinterest ads. To start, we talk about what kind of requirements you would need in order to consider something like this. Is this right for you? We talk through that, and then she has three points that she talks through when you feel ready to run ads on Pinterest. She talks through your offer and making sure it’s ready to go. It’s a great offer; you have the pain points nailed, and your sales page is ready, or whatever you have going on. She also talks through your mindset about running ads and how you have to have that right in order to get started, and one of the most important things that we want to know about is budget. She talks through what to expect and she gives ranges too, so that’s really helpful. This interview really got my wheels turning about Pinterest and just seeing Pinterest in a new way. I have loved Pinterest for so many years, and I tell all food bloggers you have to be on Pinterest. If you’re not, do it. Get your beautiful, mouthwatering content up there ASAP. And now we have this new perspective to think about, which is running ads. I hope you enjoy this episode. It is number 488 sponsored by RankIQ.
02:08 – Sponsor
Eat Blog Talk is thrilled to unveil the Eat Blog Talk Accountability Group, an exclusive community made for food bloggers who crave accountability, focus, and connection. We understand that not everyone is ready to dive into the Mini-Minds Group or the Masterminds Program. That is why we’ve crafted this special offering for bloggers like you who want that extra push toward their aspirations but aren’t yet able to make the financial or time commitment. Here is what the Eat Blog Talk Accountability Group has in store for you for this low introductory price of $34 a month. This ongoing membership has its own private Slack channel. You will gain access to a dedicated channel facilitated by the community manager at Eat Blog Talk, Terran Soli, for questions, insights, and collaboration. You will get weekly accountability check-ins so you can stay focused and motivated with those weekly check-ins in Slack to track and achieve your goals confidently. You will have access to productivity focus sessions. Join these optional live Zoom sessions twice a week to boost your productivity by working alongside your peers and tapping into that collective energy. And you will get monthly group Zoom calls replacing the former Clubhouse chats. Join these calls to connect, discuss current topics, share experiences, and celebrate achievements. Those calls will be hosted by me, Megan Porta, and I can’t wait to see some of you there. If this sounds intriguing, head over to eatblogtalk.com/focus to sign up today, eatblogtalk.com/focus.
03:38 – Megan Porta
Erin is the director of Pinterest Ads Management at Simple Pin Media. For eight years, she has been bringing the power of Pinterest to brands and businesses, large and small. While she started out developing and managing organic strategies, she is now managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad spend for brands on Pinterest. Hello Erin, so good to have you on the podcast. How are you today? Hi, thanks for having me.
04:02 – Erin Harding
Megan, I’m doing well, thank you.
04:05 – Megan Porta
Yay, so excited to talk about Pinterest. I know it’s a hot topic for food bloggers all the time, so we’ll get into that in just a minute. But first, do you have a fun fact to share with us? Oh my gosh.
04:16 – Erin Harding
Well, so my fun fact is that I am in Pinterest advertising. That’s what I say is my real job, but I do have a fun side gig, if you will, and I do all things houseplants. So I have a blog where I share how to bring plants inside your home and how to care for them, and so I do lots of fun DIYs and projects with indoor plants. And I think in doing things like this, a lot of people probably don’t know that about me. So that’s my fun fact for the day.
04:51 – Megan Porta
Do you have a blog about that? Were you detailed?
04:53 – Erin Harding
Yes, I do. So, it is fun because it does help me to be able to understand bloggers and where they’re coming from and their needs in advertising as well, because I am one.
05:05 – Megan Porta
So, oh gosh, that’s so awesome. So the plants thing I need inspiration. I’ve just gotten into plants, but I’m not by any means an expert. I need direction. So, oh my gosh.
05:16 – Erin Harding
Yes, well, I will send over my blog to you, and then I also have two published books as well that are really fun, and they’re not only cute little coffee table books, but they are great educational and inspirational books as well.
05:32 – Megan Porta
Oh my gosh, so cool. Love knowing that about you. That’s so fun. All right, you are director of Pinterest ads management at Simple Pin Media, correct? Yeah, you love Pinterest ads, and you are here to talk about Pinterest ads for food bloggers and whether it’s a good fit, so just kind of generally speaking, for food bloggers. Are ads good for food bloggers, and what food bloggers I guess would have this on the radar?
06:01 – Erin Harding
Yeah, so I’ve worked with a variety of food bloggers before. So anywhere from food bloggers who are just really interested in building their email list, so anyone with lead magnets or free offers work really well on Pinterest, all the way up through products. So a lot of my food bloggers who I’ve worked with before have graduated into their own products, which has been amazing, and then everything in between that, so anything like meal planning guides or kits or anything like that. So Pinterest is first and foremost, before anything else. Before home decor, before anything that was really big on Pinterest, food, food bloggers and just anything along those lines was really almost the main pillar of Pinterest for a long time. So it’s definitely the place to be when you’re a food blogger
07:00 – Megan Porta
So you would say ads for traffic or leading to a URL maybe doesn’t apply?
07:07 – Erin Harding
I would say, okay, so a lot of people do it, and I think it’s great if you have a goal in mind. So, for example, I did work with a food blogger who really wanted to get their traffic up because they wanted to work with a particular ads company where they needed a certain amount of traffic. So if you have a goal like that in mind, then yes. If you are willing to invest in your business through advertising, that is definitely something that you might want to add you know, look into, but I would say the best goal for advertising is something that you can measure. So whether it be building your email list or selling a product or selling a digital you know offer, anything like that, I definitely suggest that’s where you’ll see the return and so that’s that’s the best type of product or offer to run ads to okay, and I imagine we’ll talk about this in your talking points.
08:09 – Megan Porta
But budget, you know like I know food bloggers listening or probably like well, what do I need to spend on this?
08:15 – Erin Harding
But I think we’re gonna get to that right we are going to get to that and I have sort of a basic little you know, a thing that you can kind of go off of to see am I ready with my budget? Do I have the budget that I need to? You know, potentially see success on Pinterest.
08:32 – Megan Porta
Got it, okay so unless you’re just really really trying to get into an ad network and really need to boost your traffic as soon as, as quickly as possible, then focus more on those products or lead magnets. You talked about freebies, meal planning, guides, plans, things like that, and that’s kind of what we’re focusing on today.
08:50 – Erin Harding
Yes, I would say that is definitely your, your safe place to be. And I would say the biggest thing, and and not only the success on the side of the food bloggers, but also on the side of the whoever’s managing for you. So, whether you’re doing it yourself or whether you’ve hired an agency to do it for you, having that, that success measurement is you know really what you want to go first up.
09:13 – Megan Porta
Okay, so starting with some sort of measurable goal of some sort, so where do we start? So I know you have three main points to talk through. What is that first one?
09:23 – Erin Harding
Yes. So I always like to make sure people are ready to run ads on Pinterest, and what I mean by that is just that I Want to see people succeed through Pinterest advertising. So if you are not ready, that’s okay. You just need to prepare and be ready in order to do it. So I like to kind of divide it up Into three main things. Number one is your offer.
So you want to make sure you have your offer ready to advertise. I know that sounds super simple, but I’ve had a lot of people come to me with you know, okay, I’m ready to run ads, and then their offer isn’t even set up or it’s not ready. And so I think, just making sure that you have your offer set up, it’s running, the offer is live, even bonus points if the offer’s already been circulating. So, whether that be products offers, you know your lead magnet, whatever it is, having that already sort of circulating, and if it’s been successful on other platforms before. Even though we’re talking apples to oranges when we talk about either, you know, like Facebook ads or Google versus Pinterest, but if you have had success in running ads on other platforms, that’s definitely a bonus because we can take some of that data, information and and know that that it will most likely work on Pinterest.
10:54
And then, once you have your offer and everything is set up, then you want to make sure that you’re auditing your journey and and I’m sure that most of bloggers know that this is a Big step it’s something that you want to do before you launch anything. But just you know, making sure that you have the information you have, you know you’re addressing pain points on that sales page or that lead page. You have images that are enticing, the checkout or the opt-in is easy and the deliverable seamless. You kind of want to just make sure that all of that is set up and ready before you even think about running Pinterest ads. I’ve worked with some clients before who have said okay, I’m ready to go, so we launch ads and then you know they want to change something two weeks in or they want to redo the lead page. Well, that you’re just going to waste money if you do that right. So you just want to be prepared. You want to have everything set.You want to have everything ready before you launch ads
12:00 – Megan Porta
So proof that it’s running and working really, so there’s no kinks in your process.
12:03 – Erin Harding
Yes, and you know you don’t have to have had experience prior to running ads anywhere. You can, you know, start on Pinterest and establish that baseline, but just, you know, making sure that everything is working right, that when somebody clicks on the ad they can easily go through your offer and, you know, get that desired product. So you just want to make sure that everything is set up and ready to go and you can easily do that by just doing a quick run-through and audit in your journey.
12:34 – Megan Porta
Yeah, I mean that’s easy enough, but there are some steps in there that maybe you don’t think about. When you think about an offer, right, like you mentioned, the pain points and just the images you use and kind of your messaging your sales page, there are kind of a lot of elements in there that you need to think through and maybe having someone else look at that too, having another set of eyes or two, to just say like, oh, you need this before you.
13:00 – Erin Harding
You’re exactly right. And one of the things I say is most people, when they create an offer, product, or whatever it is, they already know kind of who their audience is. They know who they want to reach for the most part. I always say, pick a friend who you think is in that demographic, right? So just pick a friend who you think would benefit from your product or your offer or your service, whatever it is, and have them go through the process. You know, because when you’ve created your process and you’ve created your offer, well, of course, we’re gonna think it’s amazing, right.
Yeah, and you’re not gonna see some of the things that other people see. So you’re exactly right; I love the idea of having a friend or having a co-worker or someone who is particularly in that demographic that you want to target. Have them run through the process and see what they have to say and see if they have any feedback on that, and I think that’s a great idea.
13:56 – Megan Porta
Okay, so once we’ve got our offer established and we’re really confident about you know all the details are in place in an order. Where do we go from there?
14:04 – Erin Harding
Well, you know, I think mindset on Pinterest is the most important.
I think that this is one of the biggest obstacles that I face with clients or discovery calls. Is that brands and businesses are not always educated on how ads on Pinterest work, so they come with the wrong expectations.And you know, Pinterest is not social media. I think that that’s a big thing that you know.
You see, that you see pictures, you see pretty pictures, so you just automatically think it’s social media, but it is a visual search platform, and so people are using Pinterest to plan for moments and events in their lives, and they’re and they’re coming to Pinterest to search for solutions, and so I think it’s just really important to note that most people go to Pinterest to start this journey of search, and we, Pinterest says like 89% of pinners use it for inspiration in their path to purchase. So, if you can say that again, for people who didn’t quite get that, it’s inspiration in their path to purchase. So people use Pinterest from the very beginning of their journey, and so it’s really important that, through ads, we meet them at every step of that journey, from beginning to end, so you have the inspiration level which is, you know, kind of top of funnel, you have consideration which is sort of middle funnel and then they take action at the very bottom. So you need to show up at every decision-making phase in order for ads to really work on Pinterest.
15:48 – Megan Porta
Yeah, I love how you explain that and a lot of people do throughout the term social media when they’re talking about Pinterest and like, no, it actually is now a search platform that is visual and appealing and mouth-watering and all those descriptors. So I guess how do we make sure that we’re meeting people in different parts of their journey on Pinterest?
16:12 – Erin Harding
Well, I always say that we want to inspire and then we want to show up when they’re considering their options and then we also want to show up when they’re willing to make that decision. And so just having a full funnel and taking advantage of the full funnel advertising opportunity on Pinterest is really important. But the biggest thing is that you know this this takes time, you know. I always tell people plan for anywhere between 8 to 12 weeks when you begin your Pinterest advertising journey, because people go to Pinterest for inspiration and they go for solutions. And so let’s just say we’re starting off.
Because I’m a mom of two young boys, school is starting, I have a lot on my plate and I need an easy solution to make sure that my kids are eating. My kids and my family are eating like dinner every night, and it’s healthy, right, but I don’t really have the time. So the first thing I do is I create a board and this is me as a user. I’m creating a board for meal options or meal planning or dinner ideas for the family, right. And so then I begin my journey, and what I’m doing is I am trying to figure out which ads relate to me. So I’m searching meal planning. I’m searching healthy dinners, I’m searching dinners the kids will eat, whatever those search terms are, and so I go into the search bar and I start searching and I start saving ads or pins or ideas that inspire me.
So that’s the first step of the journey. The second step of the journey is once I’ve saved it can be anywhere from 20 to 50 pins that I’ve saved then I’m going to go through and I’m going to figure out which ones really meet my needs. So maybe I have a meal planning guide that’s a free meal planning guide, or maybe I have one that’s saved, that’s an actual kit for meal planning. So I go through and I see, okay, what do I wanna pay? What’s my budget? How do I want to address this pain point I have, which is that I need quick, easy, healthy meals for my family, right? So then now we’re at that consideration level. Now I’m kind of weaning out the things that aren’t going to work for me and I am going to now start clicking on those ads and I am going to go to the websites to see, okay, is this a good match for me?
So this is that process, this is that journey that people take on Pinterest, and so when you’re running ads on Pinterest, you have to think of it as meeting them at every step of the journey.
So we want an ad to inspire, we want an ad to show our brand and have them consider using our brands right, and then we want to be there when they’re making the decision. So this takes time. We really recommend anywhere from eight to 12 weeks of running ads on Pinterest to really determine efficacy, and the reason it takes so long is because we have a few weeks of a learning phase, and then there’s optimizations you have to make, and then we’re testing of targeting and testing of ad creatives, and you may want to refresh some of those, and so you’re building audiences to also retarget during this time too. So there’s a lot that goes on during this process, and so you have to understand the time it takes and the process in order to really, you know, be prepared to run ads on Pinterest and to really be prepared to take that time to spend on Pinterest making it work for you.
20:19 – Megan Porta
I appreciate that you talked through the user perspective because that helped me understand. Like, okay, right, if I’m looking for X, it’s going to take me a couple of weeks of you know, like sorting through the inspiration and then maybe a few more. You know, that really helped. So from our perspective, from a creator’s perspective, do we put those different stages out simultaneously or do we just put the inspiration out first, or, like, do we just create everything and launch all the ads, or how does that work?
20:52 – Erin Harding
Yeah, well, that’s a great question and a lot of that will be determined by your budget, which we will talk about. Because when we talk about the 8 to 12 weeks, that means that when you hit start on those ads, I don’t want you stopping for eight to 12 weeks because it does take time to do all of those things. So, like you said, you may start in layers. So let’s say you say, well, I’ll start out with inspiration because I maybe only have $20 to $30 a day. So I’m going to start out kind of with this inspiration level. So I am going to reach people through my free offers, I’m going to try to reach people through this lead magnet. So maybe that’s where we start and we start to do $20, $30 a day.
21:40 – Megan Porta
Hello food bloggers, are you looking to spice up your social media account with unique and exciting content? If you want that secret edge that makes you stand out in your niche, I might have the answer for you. Catharina can help you streamline your podcasting and social media content with audio editing, video editing, or social media strategies. She specializes in working with food bloggers, tailoring her content creation packages to their needs. Whether you want to create something new, like a gripping podcast, or if you want to refresh your social media strategies by creating scroll-stopping video content for platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, she has got you covered. If this sounds intriguing, get in touch with Catharina. Go to eblogtalk.com/resources to get more information about Catharina’s services. Again, go to eatblogtalk.com/resources and click on her link. Now let’s get back to the episode.
22:39 – Erin Harding
And then, once we build that audience of people who are opting into our offers, or once we have this audience of people who have visited the website now we can create audiences based on those actions and retarget them with our offers or our products or anything paid at that point, and so that’s why it takes a little bit of time. So you can certainly start out. If you have the budget, you can start out by doing all the levels at once, which is really great because if you have the budget, you really do see the results a lot quicker, I would say. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. You can start out at the different levels. You can start out at just inspiration or top of funnel and start to build that up there and then layer them in when you have the budget, or layer it in once you start seeing the return and you say, oh, I can up my budget now by $20 a day. Then you can add another campaign in. So that’s really the beauty too is it can be done in different ways.
23:45 – Megan Porta
Okay, yeah, that’s helpful. So, assuming that somebody has a great offer, they’ve got great messaging, they’re hitting those pain points, they have lovely-looking pins. What is an effective budget that you’ve seen? I’m just trying to gauge, like what’s the range that we’re looking at.
24:07 – Erin Harding
Yes. So when you’re running ads on Pinterest, you’re connecting with your ideal audience. You’re staying at the top of their minds while they’re making these decisions. You’re increasing website visitors. You’re converting shoppers into buyers. So all of this costs money, while Pinterest is understanding who you are and what your ads are about.
So, whether you decide to hire an agency or do it yourself, you need to be prepared with a budget, and a budget that doesn’t just work for Pinterest but also works for you too, and advertising really is an investment in your business. And so I always say figure out before you are ready to run ads, figure out what that looks like for you. You need to be able to, and you need to be comfortable spending that money daily through that minimum of eight to 12 weeks. So what I would recommend is starting with just kind of a simple calculation of eight to 12 weeks being about 60 to 90 days, and starting with one to two campaigns being anywhere from about 20 to $100 a day. So I know that’s quite a rain, but the reason I say that is because if you’re doing something like a freebie offer, lead magnet, something like that where you want to build your email list, you could do something like that at $20 a day and just really get in there, get started and just sort of build that up while you’re in there. And not only are you getting email subscribers, but Pinterest is learning who you are through advertising and so you’re really building that.
There’s the technical Pinterest tag and all that data that Pinterest is collecting when you run ads. So all of that is really helpful. So not only are you getting email subscribers, but you’re also building yourself up on Pinterest, and so anywhere from $20 to $40 for a lead but if we’re talking higher priced items, so I did have a client who was doing a meal planning guide and it was a digital guide but that was like $99 was their product, and so when you are advertising a product that’s a little bit more costly than obviously your budget will need to go up there. So just kind of between $20 to $100 per campaign per day is what you want to use as your calculating beginning point. So again, like $20 times 60 to 90 days, you want to make sure you have about that in order to start running ads on Pinterest.
27:10 – Megan Porta
Okay, so if we did the bare minimum from your suggestions that would be. So at 20 a day for 60 days that would be $1,200 total. So I’m curious from your perspective have you seen people investing this amount of money and having a good ROI from it?
27:28 – Erin Harding
Yes. So again, it depends on what your offer is. So I would say, if you are doing something like email building through Pinterest advertising, I recommend really knowing what is that subscriber worth to you. So before you start, if you say okay, I know that when I send out my email list or I send out my newsletter every week and this is what I do in it that I tend to get this out of it right. So let’s just say, because it’s easy math, for me that a subscriber is worth $5 to you.
So that can really help you determine whether you’re being successful through Pinterest ads. So you can see what a subscriber is costing you to convert on Pinterest. And so knowing what that is is really important, and I don’t typically recommend starting unless you have a pretty good idea of how much you want to pay for it. Now you may not know what a subscriber is worth to you, but at least if you have an idea of what you’re willing to pay for a subscriber, then that really helps you to not only run your ads on Pinterest but make the optimizations you need to make and really target the right people. So now, if you have a product, I would say doing any type of product is a lot easier to see what that return is, typically with my food bloggers who have products to offer. So whether that be actual consumable products or digital products, this is what we tend to see. Running ads for about eight to 12 weeks, we know for sure whether it’s working for you or not.
So I always like to say at about week eight we should be getting at least 100% return on our ad spend, and at the 8 to 12 week mark is when we try to get between one and two times our return on ad spend and then, going from there, we either like to maintain anywhere between a two to three times return on ad spend in the weeks after
12 weeks or we like to throw in other offers to start building on that foundation. So that’s kind of our goal. If we don’t see 100% return on ad spend by between like 8 and 12 weeks, then we feel like something’s missing, something’s not right, something’s not working. So, whether that be the offer, the product, the audience, whatever that is, that needs to be sort of dealt with at that stage in order to keep going. So, yeah, we really try by about week 12 to have that two to three times your investment.
30:30 – Megan Porta
Okay, that is all super helpful. Love those numbers. And I guess, how do you know if you should dive into this alone or if you need help from an agency?
30:40 – Erin Harding
Well, that’s a great question and I always say that Pinterest is probably the hardest ads platform dashboard to deal with. For some reason, even though, you know, they’ve been going for however many years, it just still feels a little clunky if you’re not familiar with it. So I would recommend, if you have experience running ads on other platforms, so you kind of know the lingo, you kind of know what you’re looking for, you know what you want, you know what your goals are I would say that it would be worth it to test it out and see if you can build those campaigns on Pinterest. Now, they’ve made it pretty if you know how to start, they’ve made it pretty easy to go through and they kind of guide you through. Okay, next, pick your keywords and interests. Okay, next, pick your demographics. Okay, next, do this, you know, so you can walk through the process on Pinterest and set up campaigns.
I think where the maybe the obstacles in doing it yourself lie is just knowing, well, what do I do? Even if I can get started and I can launch, what do I do next? Like you know once they’ve been running now, what do I do, and so I think you know, if you know, how to do optimizations and things like that, then yeah, definitely give it a shot because hiring an agency can be expensive and that’s because usually they take everything off your plate and do it all for you. And so I recommend you know if you have any experience and ads, or even you know you’re a savvy marketer, I would say that it would be worth it to kind of test, even if you do a low like $10 to $15 a day, just seeing if you can build a campaign. I would say it would be worth it. But there’s also a lot of educational options out there. If you want to run ads on your own, we have some at Simple Pin Media and there are actually trainings through Pinterest as well.
So I would recommend definitely digging into that and seeing what educational pieces you can get prior to it, but it’d be worth it if you are on a tight budget to run on your own.
33:01 – Megan Porta
Let’s say somebody has the budget to explore this through an agency. What does Simple Pin Media have to offer in this realm?
33:09 – Erin Harding
Well, we can meet you where, pretty much wherever you’re at. So we do full-service management, where we take everything off your plate and we do all of the building, the research, the strategy, the launching, optimizing, the managing. We also do consulting. So a lot of our people who come to us don’t have the budget for full management, but they kind of have an idea of what to do. They maybe just need a little bit of guidance, maybe some help with strategy or optimizing. So we do just one-hour consult calls. You can always sign up for one of those if you’d like to do that.
But we have a really cool educational offer too, which is the Simple Pin Ads Society, where we guide you through, basically step by step, how to do it yourself. So if you are in a place in your business where you’re not quite ready to hire an agency yet, but you really think Pinterest ads could work, this is a really great offer and it’s super low cost at $69 a month, and we also have discounts for multiple months. But it’s just a really cool education. I’m in there a lot. I do all of the trainings. We do one training a month. We do live Q&As. We have a forum where you can go in and ask questions while you’re doing your campaigns. If you need any help or something comes up that you’ve never done before, you can ask questions in the forum and my team will answer those for you. We’re in the forum five days a week, so it’s a really cool option if you’re not quite ready to hire an agency.
34:50 – Megan Porta
Awesome, okay, and how do people find that?
34:56 – Erin Harding
You can go to simplepinmedia.com and you’ll see the advertising management button right there and you can see all of our offers there.
35:04 – Megan Porta
Is there anything we’re missing, Erin? This has been been very thorough and enlightening for me personally as a food blogger who’s honestly just never considered running ads for products or freebies or anything like that. So thank you for all of this, but I just want to make sure we’re touching on everything before we start saying goodbye.
35:22 – Erin Harding
Yeah well, I would just say that the three main things just make sure that you have your offer set and to understand how Pinterest works, going into Pinterest advertising, and that you have a budget that you’re comfortable spending.
I will say that the interest on Pinterest for food and beverage is huge because not only is it such an evergreen thing, but it’s something that pretty much comes up seasonally for every single holiday as well. So, depending on what your offer is, even, like you said, even if it’s just email list building or even if you do have a product, it is almost guaranteed that your audience, even if you have a very specific product or anything, it is almost guaranteed that your audience is on Pinterest and that they will interact with your ads because of the amount of people who use Pinterest for meal planning, for recipes, for dessert ideas, for everything, and it is just such a really cool place. I mean, before I even started working in Pinterest advertising, that is primarily what I used Pinterest for back when I joined in like 2011. It was because I had just gotten married and I was really going to learn how to cook. That’s what I was going to do.
I wanted to be ready when my husband got home and well, let’s just say that didn’t really continue, but I did a really great job as a new wife, cooking meals that I never would have done before, all because of Pinterest. So I definitely think that Pinterest is the place to be for food bloggers. So definitely try it and just see, just make sure you’re ready and see where you’re at and try it out. And I definitely think it’s something that anytime I have a discovery call come to me and it’s a food blogger, I’m almost guaranteed that they will be successful. So that’s what I love about food bloggers in Pinterest.
37:35 – Megan Porta
I know it is such an opportunity and so many food bloggers have this block against Pinterest for some reason, and I’m always like you guys food. Food is visual, it’s beautiful, it’s mouthwatering. People love going to Pinterest for food and that is probably never going to change, so don’t miss this opportunity, right.
37:57 – Erin Harding
Yeah, and I think, Megan, like you said, you know, food bloggers have been on Pinterest for a long time, and so anybody who has been on Pinterest for a long time has experienced ups and downs with Pinterest, and that is no lie. It used to be where food bloggers got so much traffic from Pinterest. I mean, just in any kind of blogger, I mean even for my own personal plant blog, I mean, 90% of my traffic came from Pinterest. So Pinterest in the very beginning, worked really, really well for food bloggers. And then there was this period of time where, because of the metadata and the way that they showed the recipe, they didn’t necessarily have to click to the website to get the recipe, and then that was an issue because we weren’t getting the traffic anymore, right.
So there’s all these ups and downs with Pinterest, but there is no doubt about it that people who use Pinterest are people who plan for meals, for recipes, for holidays, for entertaining, and food and beverage just is across the table there for every single one of those subjects. So I would you know it can be frustrating for some people. I think when they change I mean with any platform, right, it’s like Instagram does the same thing they change the way they show things, or you have to do reels in order to be seen. I mean, you know all these things. So I would just say, no matter what, just know that your people are on Pinterest and they’re still searching for recipes and they’re still searching for solutions for their entertaining, and so I definitely recommend kind of trying to get past frustrations and and stay with the times and do what Pinterest wants you to do with your content, because it does work.
39:44 – Megan Porta
Well, yeah, and there’s just so much traffic opportunity that other platforms don’t offer like. Things change on Instagram, yes, but we don’t get a ton of traffic from Instagram, it’s right. Such a traffic potential and then also adding this layer that you’re talking about, you know, potential for promoting and selling your products or getting people on your email list. So, all around there, there’s just so much potential for food bloggers there. I think that’s my message. I’m with you. I’m with you. Thank you, Erin. This was so good, such good food for thought for all of us. It’s been such a pleasure to learn from you today, so we appreciate you and your time today.
40:23 – Erin Harding
Well, thank you for having me, it’s been fun.
40:25 – Megan Porta
Yeah, so fun. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?
40:29 – Erin Harding
well, one of the things that my boss, who is the founder and CEO of Simple To Media Kate Ahl. She always tells us something when we’re frustrated or when we just tried something and maybe it didn’t work out, and she always tells us we fail forward. And I think that that’s I think about that a lot every time I tried to launch a new campaign, or every time I say, okay, I think I’m ready to do this. If you fail, that doesn’t mean you can’t get back up and try again, because you’ve learned from that failure, and so I love that she says that to us all the time. She’s like we just fail forward, and so in anything you do whether it be trying Pinterest, advertising or, you know, any step you make in your business I think it’s important to note that if it doesn’t work the first time, you just learn from your mistakes and you try again.
41:26 – Megan Porta
Such a good message for this audience. I love that. So thank you for sharing that, Erin. Okay, tell everyone where they can find you Simple Pin. I know you guys have a podcast. Anything you want to mention here?
41:38 – Erin Harding
Yep. So our podcast you can find on Apple, any of the podcast platforms, and that can also be found on our website. Simplepinmedia.com, and we have a variety of services and we also have our Simple Pin shop. So if you are the type of person who wants to DIY your Pinterest marketing or advertising, you can visit the Simple Pin shop for all of our training and all of our products and there’s well to help you through that awesome.
42:09 – Megan Porta
We’ll be sure to get the links you’re talking about in the show notes too, so people don’t have to go searching all over the internet. So we will do that. Everyone go check it out if that sounds intriguing to you, and just thank you, Erin. Again so much for being here and thank you so much for listening at food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.
42:32 – Outro
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the blog talk. Please share this episode with a friend who would benefit from tuning in. I will see you next time.
💥 Join the free EBT community, where you will connect with food bloggers, and gain confidence and clarity as a food blogger so you don’t feel so overwhelmed by ALL THE THINGS!
Want to achieve your goals faster than you ever thought possible? Stop by Eat Blog Talk to get the details on our Mastermind program. This transformative 12-month experience will help you accomplish more than you would be able to in 5+ years when forging ahead alone.
Click the button below to learn what a mastermind program is, what your commitment is, and what Eat Blog Talk’s commitment to you is. Learn More About The Mastermind Program
✍️ Reach out to connect with Heather Eberle, a copywriter for food bloggers. As much as you enjoy your business, maybe writing or marketing isn’t your cup of tea. Maybe you’d rather spend more time in the kitchen and less time on your laptop. Heather is here to clear your plate!