6 Actionable Creative Insights for Your Next Pinterest Beauty Campaign

By : Yashvi Gattani

5/6/20

Pinterest’s mission is to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love—much like beauty marketers aspire to provide inspiration for their customers to create a look they love. But with everyone encouraged to remain at home during the COVID-19 outbreak, how does that impact the way people find inspiration in their everyday lives? How are routines shifting? What interests are emerging or receiving a greater share of attention?

It’s questions like these that marketers are wrestling with as they try to reach audiences during these unprecedented times. Some answers come as no surprise: self-care, which is arguably now more important than ever, is trending big on platforms like Pinterest. For example, Pinners have increasingly searched everything from home haircuts (+417%) to homemade eyebrow wax recipes (+321%) to DIY manicure at-home tutorials (+159%). That’s good news for beauty advertisers.

So how can beauty advertisers let their customers on Pinterest know they’re here for them during COVID-19? In collaboration with Pinterest, VidMob analyzed 528 ads, 12,000+ frames, and 1.5 billion impressions across five major beauty brands to uncover industry-specific trends. Using VidMob’s AI-powered creative analytics tool, we broke each video down, frame-by-frame, into its creative elements to identify the creative strategies that achieved better results. Here are the six recommendations from that analysis:

 

1. Product and model interaction lifted Save Rates.

Featuring a model presenting the product with their hands had a 43% lift in Save Rate compared to ads showing the product by itself. This likely encourages viewers to associate the product with personal use, as if they were envisioning it in own hands.

2. Step-by-step messaging incentivized Pinners to zoom in.

We defined messaging as the key takeaway for viewers from the ad. Tutorial ads with instructive messaging, that demonstrated the product is easy to use, boosted Closeup Rates by 25%. Viewers were more likely to further engage with an ad when they could clearly understand how a product adds value and fits into their beauty routine.

3. Including clear branding boosted brand awareness.

Placing the logo in a prominent position increased Save Rate by 13x. When a Pinner is actively searching for beauty inspiration, seeing a brand logo clues them in that this is a product they can add to their repertoire.

4. Shorter ads drove higher website traffic.

Ads that were less than 10 seconds long drove 67% higher CTR and 1.3x higher Closeup Rate than longer assets. Viewers are more likely to watch shorter ads that do not interrupt in-feed scroll and discovery.

5. Seasonal themes engaged audiences.

Text or key visuals that celebrate a holiday or specific time of year were more appealing to viewers. Ads featuring seasonal elements saw a 100% higher CTR than ads designed for any time of the year. Viewers want to see products that could help them with seasonal challenges, like ads that focused on dry skin in the winter versus in the summer.

6. Faster pacing retained viewers’ attention.

VidMob measures pacing by looking at the number of scene changes within the first 3 seconds of the ad. Comparing ads with 0 through 4 scene changes, ads with 4 scene changes had a 22% higher View-Through to 25% Rate than ads with no scene changes. Introducing faster scene changes and more elements can showcase the product in different contexts upfront, and attract the interest of fast scrollers.

 

While stay-at-home lifestyles are changing up what Pinners are eyeing and buying, one thing remains the same: beauty buyers are looking for inspiration. These creative considerations are just a few of the ways beauty brands can experiment and innovate on Pinterest to meet their customers where they’re at. While these are general considerations, the key to creating effective pins is to always be testing and learning.

For more discussion on how beauty brands can create inspired Promoted Pins, check out our webinar “6 Actionable Creative Insights to Drive Better Results from Your Next Pinterest Beauty Campaign” that we hosted together with Pinterest.