Going full tilt with full-funnel

The journey from “I love this!” to “add to cart” is rarely linear. These days, it can actually take as many as 14 touch points with a shopper to close the deal.² What does this mean for advertisers? It's increasingly important to connect with customers at every stage of the customer purchase journey.

Split the funnel into three distinct media objectives

Pinterest offers solutions for every campaign goal. We break the purchase funnel into three distinct objectives: awareness, consideration and conversions. This helps you to target customers at different stages of the funnel from discovery to action. 

A full-funnel media strategy is the most effective way to keep your brand top of mind across the purchase journey. It lets you connect with customers not just when they’re in discovery mode, but also when they're ready to take action. When a customer sees ads on Pinterest from across the funnel—across awareness, consideration and conversion objectives—conversion rates are 3x higher.¹

Measuring effectiveness throughout the marketing funnel

Pinterest’s Brand Lift Studies are often associated with upper funnel effectiveness measures like ad recall and brand awareness. But they can also help understand performance throughout the funnel by posing questions about consideration, brand favourability and purchase intent. Is your brand message getting through? Does it impact a person’s perception of your product? Does that put you into their consideration set? With the right set up, a brand lift study can offer a glimpse into every part of the funnel all the way down to conversion intent. 

Pinterest Australia’s 2023 Brand Lift Meta Analysis analysed brands at all different levels of maturity and notoriety to determine what were the drivers of full-funnel success. The analysis covers two years worth of studies across eight different industries with a total sample of ~120,000 Pinners. Here’s what your brand needs to know:

1. Video is the hero format for full-funnel impact

Pinterest Video ads turn inspiration into action. This could be explained by earlier studies which showed that videos on Pinterest had 3x higher viewable reach than those on other social platforms.³ And with multiple video formats like Idea Ads and the best performing, Max-width video, there is an ad type for all your goals. This doesn’t mean that static is redundant. Static is still the most recalled ad-format and can drive reach most efficiently. The sweet spot? The average campaign should allocate 50-60% of budget towards video formats.³ 

2. Keep creative fresh with simple tweaks 

Keeping your campaign feeling fresh is important to moving consumers through the funnel. It’s hard for one or two creatives to raise awareness, communicate a distinct proposition, drive favourability and promote a purchase. A campaign with 10-15 creative executions (across a two month period) can drive a 3.2x increase in ad recall.¹ While a campaign with 16+ creative executions can drive 2x the lift in favourability.¹ As a rough rule of thumb we like to think that Pinners should see a fresh execution every 1-2 impressions. 

Don’t fret! This doesn’t mean you need a dozen distinct creatives to double brand favourability metrics. Try simple creative tweaks like colour palette changes or varied text overlays. You can increase your creative executions by varying ad formats too. Campaigns with three or more ad formats drove awareness increase by 3x.³ 

3. Drive action with inspirational and educational content 

People on Pinterest are searching for inspiration. Product-centric ads are ideal for ad recall,  but inspiration drives action. How-to videos, recipes and tutorials measure substantially stronger mid-lower funnel uplifts like 12x the impact on brand favourability and 8.5x on purchase intent.³ To maximise results pick the ad format that best fits your goals and aim to educate and inspire Pinners to incorporate your products or brand in their life in relevant ways.

And give it time. Especially with a new brand or product. To get a sense for a new brand, audiences need to spend time with them and get to know what they’re about. On average, campaigns running seven or more weeks measure the strongest awareness and purchase intent impacts.³

Make full-funnel pay off for your brand

Follow these steps to maximise performance and stay top of mind for shoppers across the customer journey:

1. Experiment with multiple objectives: Advertisers who take a full-funnel approach may see more success than those who hone in on a single media objective. By adopting more than one objective, advertisers have seen up to a 57% improvement in sales lift.⁴ If you’re focused only on conversion, you may forgo reaching new customers further up the funnel. 

2. Upweight your spend towards video: Aim for video to comprise 50 to 60% of your media plan, and the remaining 40 to 50% on tactic and carousel ads. 

3. Keep your campaign feeling fresh: Using 3+ ad formats increases awareness 3x.³

4. Take a holistic approach to measurement: Better understand the impact of your full-funnel campaign by linking your upper funnel brand building and acquisition efforts to lower funnel performance activity. This will help you holistically measure, plan, buy, and optimise your media.