How to Boost Pins on Pinterest

Boosting a Pin on Pinterest is one of the fastest ways to get your content in front of a massive, engaged audience ready to discover new ideas, products, and brands. When done right, it can supercharge your traffic, increase brand awareness, and drive real sales. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create and manage a successful boosted Pin campaign, covering everything from choosing the right Pin to understanding your results.

What Does "Boosting a Pin" Actually Mean Today?

First, let's clear up some terminology. A few years ago, Pinterest had a simple "Boost" button that offered a quick way to put advertising spend behind a Pin. Today, that process has evolved into creating a full-fledged ad campaign through the Pinterest Ads Manager. While you might still hear the term "boost," what you're really doing is creating a Promoted Pin.

Don't let the new name intimidate you. The modern ad system gives you far more control over who sees your Pin, what you want to achieve, and how you spend your money. Think of it as "boosting" with expert-level controls.

Why Should You Boost a Pin?

Organic reach on any platform takes time. Boosting a Pin is like pressing a fast-forward button, giving you immediate access to a larger, more targeted audience. Here are a few strategic reasons to run a Promoted Pin campaign:

• Reach New Audiences: Break out of your follower bubble and get your content in front of people who are actively searching for keywords and ideas related to your brand.
• Drive Website Traffic: Do you have a new blog post, a popular recipe, or a pillar piece of content you want more eyeballs on? A boosted Pin can send a surge of targeted traffic right to your link.
• Promote a Product or Service: Launching a new product or running a sale? Promoted Pins put your offer directly in the feeds of users who have shown interest in similar items.
• Increase Brand Awareness: Get your brand's unique visual style and message in front of thousands of potential new fans and customers, building recognition and trust.
• Accelerate Results: While a solid organic strategy is the foundation, boosted Pins deliver a quick and measurable impact, perfect for timely campaigns or important launches.

Choosing the Right Pin to Boost: The Foundation of Success

Not all Pins are created equal, and throwing money behind a poor-performing Pin is a waste of a good marketing budget. The secret to a successful campaign is to promote content that has already proven its worth organically. You're not trying to make a bad Pin good, you're taking a good Pin and making it great.

Look for Pins in your Pinterest Analytics with the following characteristics:

• High Organic Engagement: Look for Pins that already have a good number of saves, clicks, and impressions. The data is telling you this content resonates with people.
• A Stunning Vertical Visual: Your Pin needs to stop the scroll. Use a high-quality, vertically formatted image (a 2:3 aspect ratio like 1000x1500 pixels is best) or a video that is bright, clear, and attention-grabbing.
• A Clear Value Proposition: The user should understand what the Pin is about and why they should click within seconds. Use a brief, bold text overlay to communicate the main benefit (e.g., "5 Easy Dinner Recipes," "Fall Outfit Inspiration").
• An Optimized Landing Page: The click is only half the battle. Does the link on your Pin lead to a fast-loading, mobile-friendly page that delivers on the Pin's promise? Mismatched content leads to a high bounce rate and wasted ad spend.

Step-by-Step Guide to Boosting a Pin (Creating an Ad)

Ready to launch your first campaign? First, make sure you have a Pinterest Business account. If you have a personal account, you can convert it for free in your settings. Once that's set up, follow these steps.

1. Choose Your Campaign Objective

Head to your Pinterest dashboard and click Ads >, Create ad. The first and most important choice you'll make is your campaign objective. This tells Pinterest what you want to accomplish so it can optimize your campaign to achieve that goal.

• Brand Awareness: Ideal for getting your brand in front of as many new people as possible. You'll pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM).
• Consideration: Want to drive traffic to your website, blog, or landing page? Choose this one. It's often the best starting point for content creators and businesses. You'll pay per click (CPC).
• Conversions: If your goal is to drive specific actions like sales, sign-ups, or adds-to-cart, this is the one for you. It requires a Pinterest Tag installed on your website to track actions.

2. Set Your Budget and Schedule

Next, you’ll define your budget under Campaign details.

• Campaign budget: You can choose a daily budget (e.g., $10 per day) or a lifetime budget (e.g., $100 spread across two weeks).
• Campaign schedule: You can choose to run your campaign continuously or set a specific start and end date.

If you're new to ads, it’s smart to start with a small daily budget (even $5-10) to test the waters and see what works.

3. Define Your Audience Targeting

This is where you tell Pinterest who should see your ad. Getting this right is critical for your campaign’s success. You don't have to fill out every section, but the more precise you are, the better your results will be. At the Ad Group level, you'll find these options:

Targeting Strategy

Here you can choose to find new customers or reconnect with existing ones (retargeting).

Interests and Keywords

This is the core of Pinterest targeting. You can target people based on the topics they are interested in (e.g., "healthy recipes," "home decor") and the keywords they are actively searching for (e.g., "vegan lasagna," "farmhouse living room"). Keyword targeting is usually more effective because it captures intent. Brainstorm a list of 20-25 keywords someone would use to find your content or product.

Demographics

Narrow your audience by gender, age, location, language, and device. If you know your target customer is primarily women ages 25-44 in the United States, apply those filters to avoid spending money on irrelevant audiences.

Placements

This determines where your ads will appear. You can let Pinterest handle this automatically with "All placements," or you can choose between "Browse" (when people are scrolling their home feed) and "Search" (when they are actively looking something up). Again, search often delivers better results because of the user's intent.

4. Select and Finalize Your Ad

Now for the fun part! This is where you select the Pin you want to promote. You can choose from Pins already on your boards. Pick the one you identified earlier that has strong organic performance and a clear message.

Once you’ve selected your Pin, you’ll assign it to your ad group. You can leave the URL as is (since it’s already attached to the Pin) and give your Promoted Pin a name for your own future reference.

Finally, click "Publish." Your ad will go to Pinterest’s team for a quick review (this usually takes less than 24 hours), and then it will go live!

Best Practices and Pro Tips

Launching the campaign is just the beginning. Use these tips to improve your odds of running a profitable campaign.

• Always use a conversion pixel (The Pinterest Tag): Even if you're only running a traffic campaign, install the Pinterest Tag on your website. It's the only way to accurately measure how many people are signing up, purchasing, or taking other important actions after clicking your ad.
• Don't Set It and Forget It: Check in on your campaign performance every few days. Look at your click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), and conversion data. If a campaign isn't performing well after 3-5 days, don't be afraid to pause it.
• A/B Test Everything: Create two different versions of an ad group to test one variable. For example, use the same Pin but test two different audiences (keywords vs. interests). Or, use the same audience but test two different Pin creatives. A/B testing is how you learn what your audience responds to and lower your ad costs over time.
• Focus on One Goal at a Time: Make sure your Pin's creative, copy, and landing page are all aligned with a single objective. If the goal is email signups, the Pin's text overlay, description, and link should all point toward that action. Don't confuse the user with conflicting messages.

Final Thoughts

Boosting Pins on Pinterest is an exceptionally powerful tactic for growing your brand, but it works best as an amplifier of what's already good. By focusing on promoting your best organic content, targeting a well-defined audience, and carefully measuring your results, you can turn a small ad budget into a reliable source of traffic, leads, and sales.

Before you ever spend a dollar boosting Pins, you need a strong organic foundation with a consistent publishing schedule. We built Postbase to make that simple. Because we’ve been social media managers ourselves, we know the pain of wrestling with outdated tools. That's why we created a clean, visual calendar that helps you plan and schedule all of your social content - including your Pins - so you can build that organic momentum first, and then step on the gas with ads.