How to scale a Pinterest account 10x – Client Success Story InVideo

Pinterest Management Services Case Study | InVideo

• InVideo is a video creation platform to create video ads, promo videos, social media videos, and more.
• The company is based in Mumbai, India, and already has one million+ users in 195 countries.
• This startup grows fast and wants to be present on every platform where their actual and potential users hang around.

The goals for their Pinterest account:

• Grow brand awareness.
• Get qualified traffic.
• Bring more users to the platform (signups for the free plan, paid subscriptions for the pro plan).

This case study explains how we scaled important Pinterest numbers and KPIs by a factor of 10 and more in a short time. I started writing this client success story four months after I began to work with InVideo. During this time, I had contact with many of their internal teams. I sprinkled in some testimonials from them below.

What is InVideo and why is their product so awesome

InVideo is an online video creation and editing platform with more than 1 million users. The Indian-Based startup has the ambition to disrupt the existing market — and they have the resources to pursue this ambitious goal. They recently raised an additional 15 million dollars in venture capital.

I was one of their first customers when they started in 2019, and I was immediately hooked. The combination of powerful features, impressive templates, and ease of use is unique. Not to speak of their support: qualified, friendly, and blazing fast. I never waited longer than a minute (!) until someone from their team started to work on my request.

“Sounds great, Matthias. I bet they are expensive!“

Hahaha. No. Just the opposite. InVideo (affiliate link) is very affordable. You can get many features for free, and their pro plan is ten bucks a month. Do yourself a favor and compare this to the major players in the online video creator market. I did it — in this blog post about how to make Pinterest Video Pins.

Long story short: Over time, I got in contact with the InVideo CEO, Sanket Shah. He used to hang around in the InVideo Facebook group, always interested in users’ opinion, collecting feature requests, and more. InVideo is seriously the most user-centric company I ever experienced.

Growing the InVideo Pinterest account

InVideo was present on all major platforms – but not on Pinterest. This had to change, so we agreed that I would grow and manage the InVideo Pinterest account.

So I happily started working, doing extensive keyword research, creating boards, crafting optimized descriptions. But what did I know?

Everything at InVideo moves fast – product development, troubleshooting, and above all, their excellent customer service. But the fastest of all might be the CEO. I got this email from Sanket shortly after sending in my first report, working for only a month on the InVideo account:

Wow. Please consider that we had an excellent start. The first niche keywords began ranking in Pinterest search. The account already gained some engaged followers, and things were moving smoothly. Due to Google Analytics, we even passed by Instagram Stories in the category ‘Traffic from Social Media’. I mean, after one month. Eat this, Insta!

Then, this:

“How can we scale this 10X?”

Sanket Shah, CEO InVideo

In our discovery call, I told them that Pinterest is a long-term game. That we will need at least three months before we will see steady growth. That… You know, all the things that every legit Pinterest Manager will tell every potential client. Because it is just so true: Pinterest is a slow cooker. With a fantastic potential for getting qualified traffic over time.

I thought about it. Long. And hard. Then I realized: Sanket was right. He is the CEO, and he absolutely should ask this kind of question. My job as a Pinterest Manager is to develop a solution — if there is one, of course. Hint: we found one. We scaled. Stay tuned.

First things first: let’s look at 30 days of Pinterest Analytics data. This chart shows the early 30 days after we started with scaling.

The total audience grew from 453 visitors (August 8th) to 21,310 (September 8th).

Please remember: we are talking about a brand-new business account in the SaaS (Software as a Service niche). No recipes, no DIY, no Fashion, no Home Decor. Why is this important to know? Because these are niches predestined for Pinterest. New accounts are always hard to grow these days, but less popular topics are even more challenging.

So how did it work?

We decided to run Pinterest Ads.

Promoted Pins are a turbo-supercharger

Don’t get me wrong; organic growth and traffic are key. It is what I told InVideo, and what I will tell every new Pinterest Management customer. But why not create some strategic Promoted Pin campaigns that work like a turbo-supercharger?

Well, we did. And it worked. Not only did the numbers grow, but the ROAS (return on ad spend) was also delightful to watch:

The report above shows an ad group performance during the first three months of the Conversions campaign. No, not all of the campaigns and ad groups have been this successful. Glad you asked. But this is perfectly normal for ads. A Pinterest Ads Manager has to stop or pause the campaigns that are not performing well. We achieved an overall ROAS for all conversions campaigns (optimized for signups) of 421% (duration: 4 months).

I had to blackout some of the data (because we don’t want to disclose too many details to the competition, I’m sure you understand).

“Nice, Matthias. So you just have to run some Pinterest Ads to get a return on ad spend of several 100%?”

Hahaha. No. Sorry. Of course, I had to do extensive research first. Knowing who the ideal customers are, what they are searching for, and why they might be interested in a product or service is critical.

While there are some niches where the targeting and audiences are more apparent, the InVideo ad campaigns were quite demanding — and interesting to create and manage.

Pinterest Ads – The Art of Targeting

The targeting options on Pinterest are not as extensive and in-depth as on Facebook and other platforms, so a Pinterest Ad Manager often has to think outside the box. In this case, I tried different targeting options (keywords, interests) and audiences. 

A promising approach was to target users of a particular social media platform who might be interested in creating promo videos. I also tested different actalike audiences (for example, recent website visitors).

After running several short traffic campaigns (mainly to gather more data), we focused on conversions campaigns. The technical team at InVideo did a great job with the website’s necessary preparations (implementing the Pinterest tag base codes and event codes). I closely watched every campaign, knowing that we had to give the conversions campaigns more time to develop. They are like a heavy vessel that needs time to pick up speed. Too many course corrections can harm the campaign results, so some patience is required.

Slow but mighty: growing a Pinterest account organically

‘Understood. Running successful Pinterest Ads requires expertise and patience. So you completely ignored organic traffic?’

No! Never! Sorry for shouting, but I will always look to grow a Pinterest account organically, even when running multiple ads simultaneously.

While Promoted Pins are a great way to achieve relatively fast results, the most important thing to know is this:

“Pinterest is a long-term game.”

Matthias Hauser (and every other Pinterest Expert)

It really is. While a Facebook post has a half-life of 90 minutes on average (a tweet has 24 minutes, by the way), a Pinterest Pin has 3 1/2 months. Some of the most successful Pins on my own account (Art for Home Decor) are more than a year old. They bring me lots of impressions, saves and clicks each day!

On the other side, it can take quite some time until a new Pinterest account starts to gain traction.

Organic traffic is key

So, long story short: organic traffic is the solid foundation of every successful Pinterest account. It is the reason why I’m scheduling about 150 Pins for InVideo every month. The InVideo Design team crafts most of the Pins, but I always contribute some of my Pin Designs into the mix. After seven years of experience with Pinterest, I know which type of Pins gets the best engagement for a specific niche. The importance of organic traffic is also why each board and pin has a carefully crafted description (for Pinterest SEO).

Which goals did we achieve so far?

• First things first: Solid organic growth. My first and most important goal as a Pinterest Manager.
• We reached top positions for some essential search terms — an excellent achievement for an account that is only a few months old. Also, most boards are doing great in the board searches for their keyword phrases.
• We scaled the total audience 40x within four weeks.
• We scaled the number of impressions 30x within four weeks.
• We scaled the number of link clicks 11x within three weeks.
• Last but not least: We did several Ad campaigns with very good ROAS. Not all of them did scale equally, but this is part of the ads game: always coming up with new ideas while maintaining the growth of the existing ad campaigns.

In terms of time, the InVideo Pinterest account is still in its infant stage. Yet, it already has more monthly visitors than many of the older, more established competitors. Just between you and me: this was one of my personal goals.

Thanks to the whole InVideo team, working with you is a real pleasure. 

We have lots of work to do for sure, but I’m confident that we can convince more people what an incredible video creation and editing tool InVideo is. I’m very proud to work with their internal teams and do my best to grow and manage the account. Greetings to all the incredibly talented and engaged people at InVideo. I love to work with you!

If you are interested in growing your Pinterest account (organically or with Pinterest Ads), please don’t hesitate to contact me. I have seven years of experience with all things Pinterest and would be happy to help you. Let’s find out how to grow your business with the help of Pinterest!