Host 0:03
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show, to The Blogger Genius. First off, I just launched my own personal Instagram account. I’ve been on Instagram for years and years, and now, I’m finally putting myself out there.
So if you would follow me at @JillianTohberLeslie, that’s J-I-L-L-I-A-N, Tohber, T-O-H-B-E-R, Leslie, L-E-S-L-I-E, you’ll get to see what my life is like as an entrepreneur, as a mother living in Austin. And if you follow me and DM me, I will happily follow you back.
Okay. Today’s show, very excited about this. I’ve got my friend, Monica Froese, back on the show. She is sharing all things promoted pins. And what’s cool about this episode is not only has Monica created a promoted pins course, and we talk about why it makes sense today to pay to promote your content on Pinterest.
But we break it down and she shares how she promotes her course using the power of Pinterest and also Facebook. So you will get some behind-the-scenes strategy on how you can sell and promote stuff. using paid marketing. I think you’re going to really like this episode.
Without further ado, here is my friend Monica Froese. Monica, welcome back to the show.
Monica Froese 1:43
Thank you so much for having me again. I’m super excited about this.
Jillian Leslie 1:46
Yes. So last time we talked — and I will of course link to our previous episode, I think I split it into two parts because it was so meaty and so good — and it was about a year ago. So really, welcome back.
Monica Froese 1:58
Yeah. We were just talking before we recorded that. That was two parts. And I actually got a ton of people that reached out to me after because we recorded right after I had a baby. It was an interesting interview.
Jillian Leslie 2:11
Yes. But yeah, you couldn’t tell. I mean, you were just so helpful. And I don’t know, just I love the way you think. I really do.
Monica Froese 2:20
Thank you.
Jillian Leslie 2:21
So you have created, so in this last year, you have created a course about Pinterest ads?
Monica Froese 2:28
Yes. Well, actually, so the course was created right before I had the baby. So I did a beta for it at the end of 2017 when I was entering my third trimester, and I was actually really resistant to doing it, which is the funny part in hindsight.
I had a few of my blogging friends realize that I was running Pinterest ads, and I was seeing success with it, and they had a lot of questions. And I was answering the same question over and over again.
And a few of them said, “You really need to create a course on this.” And I was like, “You are nuts. I’m glad to have a baby, I’m going into nesting. I’m shutting down.” I had no desire to create another course.
But of course, the bug, it was put into my head so I a very hard time ignoring things like that. So I said, “Okay, I’m going to do a beta course,” and I let 20 people in and within an hour, the 20 flat sold out. I was like, “All right.”
So I created it within five weeks over Christmas because I was like, okay, I have to be wrapped up and ready to close down by the end of January so I can prepare for the baby. So I said, Okay, I’m going to create it with this beta group for five weeks and then I did what I would call probably my first big launch in January of 2018.
And what I didn’t realize at the time, which for me, it was a very successful launch. I mean, I never would have anticipated having a launch that even made… I think it made slightly over $10,000 and I was blown away. I charged 147, I think, when it went public the first time.
And what happened was I did close down pretty much, I closed my calendar. I put my emails on autopilot. I think I scheduled like eight weeks out. And I kept getting Facebook messages from pretty big bloggers and influencers saying, “I heard about your course and I want to get in but it’s closed. Can you do something?”
Or, you know, “I heard you just had a baby. But is there something you can do to let me in your course?” And I’m sort of scratching my head on maternity leave thinking, “Okay, maybe I should do something.”
So my husband said, “Why don’t you just open it up for a couple days, real low key, and just say, ‘Hey, you know, I’m still off, still taking care of the baby. But it’s open if you want to get in.'”
And there was a huge response to that small, what I thought was going to be a small cart open, and it just took a life of its own since then. And now that Pinterest is officially a publicly traded company, there is a even higher renewed interest in running Pinterest ads.
So it’s just kind of taking on a life of its own and really became… I still had many different courses I was really focused on when I first created this, but now, it’s like the course that I’m focused on.
How to Make Promoted Pins Work for You
Jillian Leslie 5:10
Oh, that’s so cool. So you saw the need, you built the product. And it worked.
Monica Froese 5:15
Even though I was resistant.
Jillian Leslie 5:17
Even though you were resistant and you had a baby in the middle of it.
Monica Froese 5:21
Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 5:22
So let’s dive in to Pinterest ads. And can you give me an overview of why you think there is an opportunity today advertising on Pinterest versus, say, Facebook, Instagram, that kind of thing, or how you think about these different platforms in terms of advertising.
Monica Froese 5:40
Yeah. So I think that they’re very different and serve very different purposes, and often can be used in conjunction with each other. Like I use them in conjunction with each other. So the first thing is, when you’re thinking about Pinterest ads, which is synonymous with promoted pins (just so no one gets confused) promoted pins is what Pinterest calls them, it’s Pinterest ads. That’s the same thing.
So the first thing you have to do is think “Is my demographic even on Pinterest?” Because if you can’t answer that question, or if you don’t know, you have to figure that out first. Pinterest is very heavily dominated on the female side of things at this point. The majority of users are in the US. They’re millennials, their moms.
So, I mean, if your target demographic is older men, probably they’re not there, they’re not on Pinterest. Right?
Jillian Leslie 6:32
Right.
Monica Froese 6:32
So that’s the first thing you have to know. And then, it’s important to understand the difference between Pinterest and Facebook, which Pinterest is a visual search engine, and Facebook and Instagram are social media sites. So the way the ads are served are just completely different.
On Facebook and Instagram, you don’t open the the app hoping to be served an ad about wedding planning. But if you are actively wedding planning in your life, you most likely will be served in and about it because Facebook and Instagram just know so much about you, and they’re targeting and retargeting options for businesses.
I mean, it’s like the best out there.
Jillian Leslie 7:10
Right. Bar none.
Monica Froese 7:11
Yeah, they just know so much about you. But Pinterest, you open the app with a problem in mind and you’re proactively searching for the solution. So there are two totally different ways that you’re using it. And on Pinterest, the users are really in that different mindset, which I call the ‘buyer’s mindset’.
Jillian Leslie 7:31
Definitely. Very much like Google. Meaning you go to Google not because you’re just bored, you go to Google because you have a question and you want it solved.
Monica Froese 7:40
Exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly what makes it so different. And one of the thing, when Pinterest went public, they filed every one that… every company that wants to go public, they have to file an S1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
And it’s basically a very in-depth view of where the company stands, where they’re going, their financials, all this fun stuff. It was 184 pages and I read it all.
Jillian Leslie 8:08
Okay, good.
Monica Froese 8:08
I got a lot out of it and I distilled it down to like 2500 words in a blog post just because it was good.
Jillian Leslie 8:16
Okay. We’ll link to that.
Monica Froese 8:17
Yeah. I’ve gotten really great feedback on it because I really did, I feel like I broke it down quite well. But one of the things that they said in there that actually made me chuckle to myself, was theiradvertising.
So the way that ads are served on their platform is native. And what they were saying was that ads blend into the Pinterest user experience. And they said — this is the part that made me chuckle — their ads are less annoying.
Jillian Leslie 8:44
That’s funny.
Monica Froese 8:45
Thta’s what Pinterest says about their ads.
Jillian Leslie 8:47
Yes. Right. It’s part of the experience.
Monica Froese 8:50
Exactly. And that’s what they hope to continue to make to differentiate themselves from Facebook and Instagram.
Now, I will say this, I’m definitely a realist when it comes to, especially when a company goes public, I worked for a Fortune 100 for the first 11 years of my career, so I’m actually more conditioned to understand, I feel, a publicly traded company than a privately held company.
And the reality of this is, Facebook serves us ads in so many different ways, because that’s how they make money, that’s their revenue. And the same is true for Pinterest, they actually highlighted several times in their filing that their only revenue stream are promoted pins.
And so chances are, ads on their platform are going to get a little bit more annoying because they have to figure out different ways to serve it, so that they’re upping their revenue. That’s just the reality of the situation.
Jillian Leslie 9:50
Right. And now, they have to report revenue four times a year. Therefore, and they need to look like you know, continue to grow. Totally get that. Go ahead.
Monica Froese 10:00
I was just going to say their initial offering, they did really well in comparison to some of the other tech companies that were going public at the same time. So especially if they want to keep those favorable stock prices, their first couple quarterly filings are going to be super important.
Jillian Leslie 10:18
Totally. Okay. So let’s say I sell the product. How good are promoted pins for helping me increase sales? Like, will this work? I sell invitations or I sell stationery. How can promoted pins help me? I pin a lot. Let’s say I pin all of my products. I’m in there, I’m repinning. That kind of thing. What is your thought about this?
Monica Froese 10:45
I have a lot of facts. Okay, so I always say that an ad on any platform, any ad, whether it’s on Pinterest or not, does not solve a broken system, or a broken funnel. So if your product hasn’t sold organically, throwing ad spend behind it isn’t going to change that.
Jillian Leslie 11:03
I like that.
Monica Froese 11:04
And I really do think it’s important to make sure the product sells from the platform you’re going to promote it on. If you can’t get any sales from Pinterest organically, I probably wouldn’t dive right into ads.
Jillian Leslie 11:20
Right. You’d work on the product, fixing the product.
Monica Froese 11:23
Or at least how you get people to the product. I think a lot of people jump right to here’s the sale before nurturing any of their customers. It’s just such a journey that you want to go on first to figure out who is, because you want to promote to the right type of keywords that what are people even searching that makes them care about your solution, which is your product.
And so there’s a lot of groundwork, I think, you have to put in first if you’re going to jump right into selling a product through ads. One of the ways that I teach Pinterest ads actually godes completely against the grain, too.
So I say that I think that you have to prove it organically first. But also, I think once you prove it organically, you can do something that most marketers would not tell you, which is that you can sell directly to a cold audience on Pinterest.
Jillian Leslie 12:17
Interesting. Okay, explain, first of all, what is a cold audience versus a warm audience, and then what do you mean by that.
Monica Froese 12:24
So cold audience is an audience that does not have any familiarity with you, so they haven’t interacted with you in the past. And a warm audience had some sort of interaction, whether they were on your website before or they’re on your email list, or they engaged with your, in Pinterest language, your pin.
So they’ve seen your pin, they’ve clicked it, or they’ve saved it, something like that.
Jillian Leslie 12:48
Right. You can think warm fuzzies.
Monica Froese 12:51
Warm fuzzies, yes. So most people are going to tell you, most marketers that teach advertising are going to tell you to target only a warm audience or that a warm audience is going to convert better when it comes to directing someone to a sales page or directing someone direct to a product.
Jillian Leslie 13:09
Right. Because they know you, they like you. They trust you.
Monica Froese 13:12
Right. And I think on Facebook, that’s where because their retargeting is so good, I think Facebook definitely excels there. But Pinterest, essentially because people come to Pinterest in this active mindset looking for a solution to their problem, they’re more likely to buy cold from a sales page or product page than they would be if they were served the same ad on Facebook.
Jillian Leslie 13:33
So if the solution is there, regardless of whether you know this brand or not, you’re more willing to open up your pocketbook.
Monica Froese 13:43
Correct. And Pinterest has a lot of studies that they’ve done with this, that they did call out in their their S1 filing, which I mentioned in that blog post because their whole spin on this really for investors too, to get people to invest into the brand, is that they’re unique in the sense that they have people who are ready to buy it. It’s a unique journey basically.
Jillian Leslie 14:12
Right. I get that. In fact, I learned this. I think I had discussed this in a previous podcast, which is we monetize Catch My Party with ads. And it turns out that audiences that come to Catch My Party via Google versus social media are more valuable. Because somebody, if you come from Google, you’re much more likely having a problem and looking for a solution then you are just casually coming via social media.
Monica Froese 14:45
So I think that hitting that point is that Facebook, I view it as a way to close a sale. Especially for higher ticket items, it’s like that last interaction to remind them hey, you should take action on this.
What you’re trying to sell really took, it required a lot of touch points. Like when I sell my course, for example, I don’t try to close my core sales through Pinterest. It will not work. It costs too much money. They need more touch points with me. I will try to close the sale through a Facebook ad to a warm retargeted audience.
Jillian Leslie 15:22
Oh, wow. Okay.
Monica Froese 15:27
And here’s the thing that we should talk about. You get somebody on Pinterest to see your course, to go to your website, then that person can be retargeted on Facebook.
Right. So that’s one of the things I do. Sometimes I lose people and I talk about this, but the high level is, both Pinterest and Facebook run off of cookies, right? So the Facebook pixel you install attracts visitors on your site, the Pinterest tag, is the same thing as a Facebook pixel but for Pinterest.
And both tags are reading your visitors no matter where they came from. If they came from Google, they came from Pinterest, they came from Facebook. So making those tags feed each other. You can drive Pinterest traffic or to your Facebook pixel for the close. You can look at it like that.
I would definitely say that cold traffic converting on Pinterest is a lower price point that you’re probably dealing with here. If you’re selling $1,000 product, you’re not going to close that cold. We can be realistic about that.
Jillian Leslie 16:36
I just want to translate. Okay, so I sell a $1,000 product, somebody needs a solution. They’re on Pinterest, they see my solution. But chances are, they’re not going to click on my one pin and take out their credit card and and buy my thousand dollar product. Not going to happen is what you’re saying.
Monica Froese 16:54
Most likely not. So what I do. In this case, I coined it my ‘triple dib funnel’. Okay, I was running into this conundrum where I was driving a ton of traffic to sales pages with Pinterest and I was putting ad money behind it. And I was making back the ad money, I was making money on the ads. So I knew that the cold traffic was converting on the sales page.
But I also recognize the conversion rate wasn’t where I want it to be, so I started thinking, what can I do to still capture when they land on the sales page, still capture something from them to be able to nurture them further.
So when I promote cold to a sales page, at the very end, I have a mention that says, some hook like if you’re not ready to buy or you’re not ready to take whatever action I’m asking you to take, whatever the problem is that I’m solving with the product, I offer a freebie for you to opt into my email list.
And when you opt into my email list, one of two things are going to happen. One, you’re going to get offered a tripwire price on the same product or a down-sell for that product. And I’m now going to get your email address. And you better bet I’m going to nurture you to close on a virtual product that you landed on.
Jillian Leslie 18:09
That’s terrific. Wow. Okay. Got it. Can we unpack this? Yeah, so let’s go through this step-by-step because I think this is really brilliant. I’m going to say it back to you, you tell me if this is correct. Which is, what you do is you run an ad on Pinterest. And you’re not assuming that that person is, again, going to click and buy.
Now what you found is your ads made sense on Pinterest, meaning you were making back what you were spending or even making a little bit more money. So you spend $5, let’s say you make $7. So it’s covering your costs with maybe a little extra, but you’re like, you know what, I could probably get more sales. There’s a lot of work to put in for only a $2 return on $5.
So what you do is, when they click on your ad on Pinterest, they’re going to a sales page. And if in fact they’re not ready to buy, they can get a freebie and then you’ve got their email address. And then you’re sending them an email that says, hey, if that was too expensive, I’ve got a special offer, it will expire in like 24 hour… I don’t know how you do it.
But, you know, you can get it for, who knows, you know, a cheaper price. Or if you’re not ready to buy that, you can buy this other product that’s cheaper, but that will kind of help you along the way. And if you’re not ready for that, that’s fine, because I’m going to then start sending you emails,
Monica Froese 19:35
Correct. Nurture emails.
Jillian Leslie 19:36
Nurture emails. And how long is that nurture sequence?
Monica Froese 19:41
It always depends, for me, at least on the price point of the product. And just a lot of trial and error, honestly, with how… I track each of my emails individually to see fall-off rates with unsubscribes, click-through rates, open rates, so I can tell you my funnel is like okay, by the time they get to like the fourth email, they’ve significantly dropped off with open rates, so I definitely want to hit them with the offer in the second email maybe. So I experiment.
Jillian Leslie 20:11
That’s great. And how many of these funnels have you set up? How many different products are you selling? How many funnels do you have for each product? That kind of thing.
Monica Froese 20:20
Dozens, dozens. So a lot of Pinterest, a lot because it’s very heavy e-commerce focused, we’re not talking about thousand dollar products. I do think marketers are very like when they see stuff on Facebook, I do feel often that marketers get served other marketer’s ads in there for higher priced products.
And the same is just not true on Pinterest. There are a lot smaller dollar amounts that we’re dealing with.
Jillian Leslie 20:52
The actual products, okay.
Monica Froese 20:53
The actual products, yes, are smaller dollar amounts. And I have, oh gosh, I couldn’t even tell you exactly how many funnels I have set up. But a lot of the funnels that I run these tests on are smaller dollar products like $49 or under.
And then what I do when it comes to nurturing for a larger or higher priced product, is I focus on sending. And I believe this is one of the things that we are going to talk about is, I am a huge proponent on using Pinterest ads to build my email list.
So building your email list on Pinterest is really where I even started with Pinterest ads. I recognized pretty early on that people take action from Pinterest. And so I wanted to really fuel my email list early on and focus on that.
Jillian Leslie 21:45
I have one question before I forget it, which is, so what are your highest priced products? Like how high is most expensive product?
Monica Froese 21:56
Right now, it’s the Pin Practical Promotions, which is the Pinterest ads course, and that’s for 497.
Jillian Leslie 22:03
Got it. Okay. So i just needed to know what the range was. So you’re looking at products that might be $49 or something close to $500.
Monica Froese 22:11
Yes. A lot of the cold sales pages I drive to will be $49 or less. And then the tripwire will be anywhere from like $7 to $27.
Jillian Leslie 22:24
Explain that. Say that again.
Monica Froese 22:26
Okay, so after they’re on the sales page, they decide not to buy, if I offer…
Jillian Leslie 22:31
This is the sales page for the $497 course or for something smaller?
Monica Froese 22:37
Something smaller. I do not use that funnel on the big sales pages. So if it’s some $500 product, I’m not offering a freebie at the end. And that is a much different strategy for me. I focus much heavier on getting them in my funnel through Pinterest. And then I nurture them. Not direct to a sales page with an ad when it’s a higher price product. This is this is really like lower ecommerce level.
Jillian Leslie 23:05
Okay, so you go back. So you’ve got let’s say this $49 product.
Monica Froese 23:10
Okay, yeah. So you’ll land on the sales page. If you get to the freebie. You take the freebie, I will redirect you to A, tripwire page, and I’ll offer it for $19 for 20 minutes.
Jillian Leslie 23:22
Wow. That’s great.
Monica Froese 23:24
Okay. What I was finding was when I drove cold traffic to a sales page for a product in that range, like below $100, let’s say, if it’s below $100, I was seeing a decent conversion rate for cold traffic like up to 10%, which is a very decent conversion rate.
Jillian Leslie 23:43
That’s great, yes.
Monica Froese 23:45
Yes. But when I added the tripwire on, I was getting conversion rates for some of the funnels over 70%. Which is when I realized I was on to something.
Jillian Leslie 23:54
That is incredible. ble.
Monica Froese 23:57
Yes. Very high conversion rates on the tripwire. I teach about trip wires, I could talk about them forever. I just love trip wires, I think they’re a very easy way to fuel getting people to buy from you right away. And it makes it so much easier down the road.
So one of the funnels I have is a one-on-one ebook on promoted pins. It’s $49. I’m very big on data so when I run all of the statistics who for who buys the promoted pins course for 497, 80% of them had bought the one-on-one eBook.
Jillian Leslie 24:35
Wow, wow.
Monica Froese 24:37
So I get their attention, I get their rust factor. They see the e-book, they get value from the e-book, they take action on their first ad. And then they’re like, “I want the next level,” which is the course.
Jillian Leslie 24:47
That’s amazing.
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Now talk about getting email subscribers on Pinterest. What is your strategy for that?
Monica Froese 27:22
Okay, so I actually still try very hard to always have a tripwire behind building my email list. So a lot of people will send Pinterest traffic. This is going to go a little bit against, I think, how people view Pinterest.
So Pinterest is a content marketing machine, right? I mean, it’s content driven. So a lot of blog posts exists on Pinterest and, you know, the top 10 tips about X and then you might have an opt-in at the end of that post and you hope people are going to opt in.
Well, I prefer, probably this is part of my control freak ways. I always want to control the relationship. And to do that, I would scratch my head and think, how do I get more people to opt into my list. I don’t want to just wait until the end of the blog post.
And also, when you’re on a lot of these blogs, you’ll notice there’s a like a subscriber bar in the header and there will be a sidebar. And a lot of times, the opt-ins that are being offered on the site are very different than what the actual topic of the blog post is because the same header shows up and the same sidebar shows up.
That’s confusing, and you don’t want to confuse someone that doesn’t know you and they’re on your site for 30 seconds.
Jillian Leslie 28:42
They’ll do nothing.
Monica Froese 28:43
Exactly. So I decided that I’m going to just cut to the chase and I started creating opt-ins, I could drive direct to it a landing page, just a simple opt-in page. And that’s what I usually promote.
So I do organically still absolutely drive traffic organically on Pinterest to my blog posts. But when it comes to my ads, I’m very prescriptive. And I drive 90% of my list-building ads through a landing page opt-in where the whole purpose is, I’m going to give you X and you’re going to give me your email for it.
Jillian Leslie 29:16
I love that. Because again, people don’t want to think, they don’t want to make decisions. They don’t want lots of choices. Tell people what to do, and then they do it. Okay, so give me an example of your most successful ad that you’re running on Pinterest that gives you email subscribers. Like what are you offering, what does the ad say? What are you offering? And how does that work?
Monica Froese 29:43
Well, gosh, I’ve run so many. But I would say probably my most successful ones, and the ones that I’ve seen students be most successful with are… so Pinterest is very seasonal. Because it’s a search engine, people come and search seasonal topics. So holidays, budgeting gets real popular in the beginning of the year. Goal setting gets very popular.
Jillian Leslie 30:06
Fitness, weight loss.
Monica Froese 30:08
Exactly. So the best ads are when you’re capitalizing on trends on Pinterest. So the best ad that I have personally run that probably was the cheapest email subscribers, was I have a goal planning opt-in for moms.
And when I run that starting in early December, and I usually let it ride until mid February, I was driving email subscribers under 30 seconds. Very, very reasonable. And I’m very, well, I can get very complicated with funnels, but I’m very intentional once they get onto my email list.
Jillian Leslie 30:48
But here’s one question, which is, you’re getting emails by providing moms with goal setting, but are these moms who will be buying your Pinterest course?
Monica Froese 31:00
So that’s where my brand is very interesting. And I am working to actually divide out my brands, B2C and B2B.
Jillian Leslie 31:08
Got it. Wait, just for the audience, that means business to business, business to consumer.
Monica Froese 31:13
Correct. Because Redefining Mom, which is my main site, which is where all of my Pinterest stuff does live as well, Redefining Mom is a working mom blog. That’s how it was founded. It gives tips to working moms. A lot of my working moms want to get out of corporate but they still want to work and they want to figure out how to repurpose their skills in a more flexible manner.
And that’s a very consumer-based audience. The Pinterest stuff, when I talk about Pinterest ads, definitely I’m talking to another business. So I’m working to spend that, I just filed the trademark for another brand to spin that off. It’s another brand.
Jillian Leslie 31:49
Okay, so these email lists then stay separate.
Monica Froese 31:54
So the interesting part where I feel like I can be a little bit of a unicorn, but also I think it’s something that other people might benefit from, might open up your mind a little bit, I have a decent success rate at moving people who come in on the mom side of my email list over to the business side.
Jillian Leslie 32:11
Wow. That’s terrific. That’s terrific. Well, because you’ve got working moms, they’re looking for new opportunities. They’re used to hustling. I mean, they have like a business mindset, so I could see how that would work.
Monica Froese 32:26
And actually, the way I nurture my email list through weekly emails is I actually connect to the moms through a lot of mom stories in what’s going on with balancing my business, having a baby, all that stuff. That’s how I connect with people. And then I do a recap at the end of my emails, which is very focused on the different things I’m doing with Pinterest, with blogging, with affiliates, and stuff like that.
So I’ve meshed the two very well. And so even though I filed the trademark for another brand, I’m going to be very careful. They play off of each other of the names, and I’m going to be very careful in how I move forward with nurturing because there is still a lot of synergy I get between the moms and the business side.
Jillian Leslie 33:09
I mean, when we started, when we were connecting before we pressed record, what were we taking about? Being moms and babies and sleeping and all of that stuff. And then all of a sudden, oh, we switched gears, and now we’re talking about business.
So I see that as this like we bond you and me over what it’s like to be a mom. And then because we have this connection, then we’re like-minded, and we can talk Pinterest ads.
Monica Froese 33:38
Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 33:38
Like it’s not as crazy as it seems.
Monica Froese 33:42
It’s not. And I think a lot of times, I do like to go against traditional marketing, but the advice because if I had listened to all the gurus when I started, they would have told me absolutely not, I can’t do this. I have to stick with the, you know, the working mom stuff.
And I would have missed a huge opportunity for something that I’m really good at. And especially if I had taken, if I had said, Oh, I can’t do this unless I divide out my brands right now, I would have diverted my attention and I wouldn’t have had the time to really figure out what I have to figure out on my own.
And I actually do get a lot of now that the course is pretty popular, I get men who email me. I get very mixed opinions from men. I have men that are like, I don’t know, I’ve had men say basically, I don’t know if I should buy because you have a mom brand.
And I’m like, Well, if a dad had a skill that I wanted to learn, a dad brand wouldn’t stop me from from buying it and I’m not going to change my whole brand because someone thinks that.
I have other men who come and say, This is amazing, I’m so glad I found you. I’m so glad that you know, I didn’t let the mom side of it stop me.
So, I mean, honestly, I feel like sometimes I look around and I think some of the best brands are founded in ways that are just very non traditional, and I kind of feel like I’m a very non-traditional brand.
Jillian Leslie 35:09
But there’s something very authentic about it. We talked before, because we’re winding down, but can we talk about this idea of using Pinterest ads to drive page views.
Monica Froese 35:23
Okay, so I’m not a huge fan of the strategy in and of itself to just drive page views. The question really isn’t “Should I use promoted pins?” I can talk promoted pins to drive page views. But rather, why do I want to drive page views? That’s the question you want to ask.
Because I’m very, very, very prescriptive on this in my course, with getting people to understand their strategy before promoting, but I’ll still get a few students that come to me. They ran an ad and they’ll come and say, Well, how do I know if this was successful? And they’ll give you their stats?
And I’ll say, Well, what was your objective? Why did you want those page views? How are those page views serving you?
And often I get blank stares when I ask that question. And so then I throw them back to that module 2 of my course, which is why did you promote the pin to begin with? So it’s not a matter of am I using ads to increase my page views? It’s what are you doing with the page views.
Jillian Leslie 36:23
Right. So let’s say for example, I do a promoted post with Brand X. And I want Brand X to see that this post got a lot of page views, that people saw it. So in that respect, I’m being paid by the brand, it’s probably worth it for me to put some money behind this pin so that I can get more eyeballs on my pin.
Monica Froese 36:49
Correct. The two caveats that I give on my course for page views are, I’m not totally against the first one, which is, if you have if you have solid advertising income like, if you can relate the ROI from your Pinterest traffic to your advertising, meaning you have ads on your site, and you have a high rpm and all that stuff, that’s not necessarily a bad strategy if it works for you.
And the second one is sponsored posts. When you can work with a brand especially the first time and show them Hey, look at how well this is and you put ad spend behind it, I’m totally okay with that as well.
Jillian Leslie 37:29
And I would say in the first one, do the math, meaning look at how much money you are generating in ads, in your own ads on your blog, let’s say, and really make sure it makes sense to be putting money behind promoting that pin, which will drive traffic to that blog post. Because sometimes, I would say it’s very easy to get upside down, which means you’re spending more money than you’re making.
Monica Froese 37:59
And the reason I don’t focus very heavily on only driving page views is because even if you’re driving it for your advertising income, you can view it as like a double dip. All right, I am getting ad revenue from this, but also, I’m getting them on my email list.
Jillian Leslie 38:20
Right. So make sure there is some other value add, not just I want page views for page views’ sake.
Monica Froese 38:28
Right, exactly.
Jillian Leslie 38:28
But again, like you were saying, I’m controlling their journey.
Monica Froese 38:32
You are. And in some cases, when you get really good at this, and I do this now, we alluded to it earlier with feeding visitors to our Pinterest tag and our Facebook pixel. You can get very low cost per clicks on Pinterest. And so if you have a funnel that you know works, but they need to warm up to you first, then page views can be very strategic if you’re using them the right way in the overall marketing funnel that you have set up.
Jillian Leslie 39:04
Right. Right. Because again, if they’re clicking on your blog or your landing page, you now have kind of captured them into your universe. And that you can then retarget them, whether it’d be on Facebook, or Pinterest or someplace like that.
Monica Froese 39:22
Right. Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 39:23
So that click can be valuable to you.
Monica Froese 39:26
And I just had a student ask me, she set up a whole nurturing sequence of Facebook ads. So someone comes to a page and it triggers the pixel to then serve them the next level ad and like it’s basically they are stacking their their Facebook ads, you could take this action, you get served the next ad.
Jillian Leslie 39:43
So again, you’re sending them on a journey with ads.
Monica Froese 39:46
Yes. So she has this whole system set up for her Facebook ads. And she came to me in the course Facebook group for Promoted Pins, and said, Do you think it’s worth it if I drive page views from Pinterest, to feed the Facebook pixel to kick them off?
And I said, Well, if you can get the low, and when I say low cost per click, I want to see 10 cents or below, like your floor bid on Pinterest is 10 cents, so you bid the floor, try to drive it below that. That’s going to be heavily reliant on how you target.
And then what you have to pay close attention to is how is the Facebook funnel producing, you know, how is it converting for you, because that’s really going to be the telling point here if you should ramp up your promoted pins or not.
Jillian Leslie 40:31
On Pinterest. Got it. So again, dig into the analytics, which you know, which can be difficult, but is totally where you need to be spending your energy to know whether what you’re trying is working.
Monica Froese 40:46
Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 40:47
I love it. Okay, Monica, I’m going to please invite you back for a part two, because I feel like we can do multiple episodes on this. But please tell everybody how they can find out about you. And we’ll have links in our show notes and everything to you. But how can people find out about you, find out about your courses, find out about your products, that kind of thing.
Monica Froese 41:12
So I everything is under the same umbrella right now, which is RedefiningMom.com. The Pinterest ads course is called Pin Practical Promotions, which Jillian will link to in the show notes.
Jillian Leslie 41:23
Wait, wait. And say it slower. Pin Practical Promotions.
Monica Froese 41:27
Pin Practical Promotions, correct. Yeah, for sure. And that’s not open all the time because I do control the amount of students I get on influxes because it I am very active in the community and answering people’s questions. So I have to make sure that it’s a little bit of a controlled environment.
But what I do offer is a free course, which is very meaty. It’s called Pin Practical Ads. Okay, you can get that at RedefiningMom.com/ads. And that’s a great, great way to get started.
Jillian Leslie 42:01
Oh, wow. Monica, you are just such a wealth of information. I’m like, you’ve got my, I don’t know, my mind is thinking in all these different ways. And I am just so excited hearing you and you’ve given me so much to think about.
Monica Froese 42:19
Well, thank you. I’m very excited to come back and talk about this. I do love to talk about this topic.
Jillian Leslie 42:25
Okay, good, because they’re already like different offshoots that I’m like, Oh, we should get into this or we should get into this. So yes, please.I will have you back if you will will do it.
Awesome. Yeah, I’d love to. Well, thank you so much for being on the show.
Monica Froese 42:38
Thank you.
Jillian Leslie 42:39
I hope you guys liked this episode. If you did, please head to iTunes right now and rate us. It helps other people find the show, and it helps me get more great guests like Monica. Okay, I will see you here again next week.
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