The skincare market is increasingly competitive—but not all skincare is created equal. As a long-standing leader in the space, CeraVe sells a wide range of skincare solutions, developed with dermatologists. For their 2022 prospecting campaign, the team wanted to educate potential customers about their range of products, showing how there’s a CeraVe solution for every need, at every budget. 

CeraVe wanted to reach people as early in their shopping journey as possible, before they even picked a brand or product to buy. Working with the Pinterest team, they learned that 97% of the top beauty searches on Pinterest are unbranded.¹ People on Pinterest are actively searching for skincare education and product ideas, without a specific solution in mind. That gave CeraVe a huge opportunity to reach potential customers at the earliest phases of product research and discovery.

The right routine: Educational and personalized ads

CeraVe leaned on Pinterest search data to create content that aligned with top skin concerns, such as “blackheads” and “skincare routines,” and created ads that targeted those keywords.³ Their ads centered on engaging, informative content that helped people find products for those specific skin needs. Some ads were static, while others used video to stand out even more in people’s feeds. In the videos, dermatologists filmed full routines specific to individual skin concerns, such as acne. Other video ads included tips and product recommendations for each concern. This approach helped CeraVe educate people about product options and routines really early in their journey.

Glowing results 

After the campaign, more than 50% of incremental sales on Pinterest came from new customers.² Most of those conversions came from video ads, which drove the highest ROAS in the campaign compared to the other ad formats used.²

CeraVe also saw that targeting non-branded keywords helped them reach a broader audience, who later searched specifically for the brand’s products. For example, by the end of the campaign, there was a 2x increase in organic searches for “CeraVe hydrating cleanser.”⁴

The skincare brand plans to continue creating educational video ads for their future Pinterest campaigns. They’re excited to discover new customer skincare needs from the platform’s trends and insights.

Tips for your next campaign

Try these Pinterest best practices to get more out of your ads:

1. Use the Pinterest Trends tool to spot unique audience behaviors. This will help maximize your campaign creative and targeting strategies.

2. Target unbranded keywords to maximize your audience reach. Non-branded search provides a unique opportunity to reach potential customers before they’ve decided on a brand or product. 

3. Include video Pins in your campaign to help drive high audience engagement. For optimal performance, keep the video length around 5-15 seconds.