Pinterest for Building Materials
This is a recipe, not a guarantee. How well any ad campaign performs depends on things no recipe can control: your budget, how crowded and expensive your industry's auctions are, the products you sell and what you charge for them, how well your website actually converts visitors, the quality of your customer support, your reviews and reputation, your creative, and plain timing. A perfect recipe on top of a weak offer or a broken website will still lose money — ads amplify what's already there, good or bad.
The budgets shown are suggestions only — yours could and should vary with your available funds and your goals. Follow this recipe with caution: make sure every step lines up with your budget and your business, and edit where necessary. We explain why each step exists, but nothing here is one-size-fits-all. Before you spend a dollar, be blunt with yourself about the list above — get your house in order, then use the recipe to learn and test. That's what it's for.
Check the rules that govern your industry before you run anything. Plenty of businesses carry advertising obligations that have nothing to do with the ad platforms: licensing boards, professional advertising standards, rules about what you may claim and how you must substantiate it, age restrictions, and consent laws covering email, texting, and calling. Those rules are yours to know, they vary by state and country, and they override any step in this recipe.
If you work in a licensed or regulated field — health and medical, legal, financial and lending, insurance, real estate, alcohol, firearms, cannabis, childcare, education, anything with a board or a license behind it — confirm what applies to you before you spend a dollar, and ask your attorney or your licensing body if you are not certain. Nothing on this site is legal advice.
This recipe uses Pinterest as its single platform, starting with the Pinterest Tag and a catalog feed, then layering in a low-cost awareness campaign before scaling into Pinterest’s Shopping and broad-interest campaigns once signal exists. Pinterest is the right call here because building materials buyers — contractors scoping a project, homeowners planning a remodel, architects pinning finishes — are actively saving and searching for products weeks or months before purchase, making intent-rich discovery campaigns far more efficient than interruption ads on Meta or search-volume-dependent Google campaigns.
This recipe is for building materials suppliers, distributors, or manufacturers selling to homeowners, trades, or design professionals who need to generate awareness and product demand on a lean budget with no prior ad history. The core problem is that building materials are considered purchases — nobody impulse-buys roofing shingles — so your ads need to reach people early in the planning cycle and stay visible long enough to convert.
What can you afford to pay for a customer?
Advertising can only cost what's left after everything else. Put in what a typical order looks like and this works out the rest.
These are your numbers as you've typed them. Connect your store and we'll work this out from your actual orders instead — including the costs most people forget.
Tag, Catalog, and Conversion Foundation
Pinterest Tag: Install the base Pinterest Tag on every page of your site. Fire the PageVisit event on product/category pages, AddToCart on cart actions, and Checkout (with order value and currency) on the confirmation page. Verify in Pinterest Tag Helper Chrome extension before spending a dollar.
Product Catalog (if selling specific SKUs): Go to Ads → Catalogs → Create catalog. Upload a CSV or connect your data source feed (Shopify, WooCommerce, or a hosted CSV). Required fields: id, title, description, link, image_link, price, availability, condition. Approve and fix any feed errors — rejected products don't serve ads.
Conversion Event Priority: Set your primary conversion event in Ads → Conversions. For most building materials businesses this is Lead (quote request, dealer locator form) or Checkout if you sell direct. This sets the optimization target for every campaign you'll run later.
Baseline measurement: Tag UTM parameters on every ad URL (utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=) and confirm they flow into GA4 or your analytics tool before launch.
Put the Pinterest tracking pixel on your website, fire the right events (page views, add to cart, purchases or form submissions), and upload your product catalog if you sell specific items. This is boring but essential — without it, Pinterest's algorithm has nothing to learn from and your data is garbage. Get this working perfectly before you run a single ad.
Organic Pin Seeding and Creative Asset Build
Before paid spend, publish 10–20 organic Pins across 3–4 boards that map to real buyer intent categories: e.g., "Hardwood Flooring Ideas," "Modern Exterior Cladding," "Kitchen Tile Trends." Use vertical images (2:3 ratio, 1000×1500 px minimum). Write keyword-rich Pin descriptions — Pinterest's search algorithm indexes them.
This matters for paid ads too: promoted Pins that already have organic saves and clicks get a quality signal boost in the auction. Seed organic first, identify which Pin formats and topics get saves without paid push, then promote those winning creatives.
Creative specs for paid campaigns:
- Static image: 1000×1500 px, under 20 MB, .jpg or .png
- Video: 1080×1920 (vertical) or 1:1, 6–15 sec for awareness, up to 60 sec for consideration
- Carousel: 2–5 cards, 1:1 or 2:3, good for showing product variants (colors, finishes)
Prepare at least 3 static Pins and 1 video or carousel per campaign. If you only have product photos, add a short text overlay with a clear benefit or spec ("Rated Class A Fire Resistant," "Ships in 3 Days").
Before paying for a single impression, publish real content to Pinterest boards with keyword-rich descriptions. Find out what resonates organically — saves are a free signal of buyer interest. Then use those winning images and formats as your paid creatives. Also get your image and video assets sized correctly now so you're not scrambling later.
New to "funnel" talk? What top, middle, and bottom mean
Think of every person who could ever buy from you as water moving through a funnel. Top of funnel is strangers — people who've never heard of the business. Campaigns here buy attention and first visits, not sales, so expect cheap clicks and few purchases. Middle of funnel is people who've shown interest — they visited, engaged, or are comparing options. Campaigns here re-engage and build the case. Bottom of funnel is people ready to buy right now — searching for exactly what you sell or abandoning a cart. Campaigns here convert; the clicks cost the most because the intent is worth the most. Full funnel means automated campaigns that work every stage at once. One thing that surprises people: recipes usually start at the bottom — capture the demand that already exists before spending money creating new demand at the top.
Awareness Campaign — Interest and Keyword Targeting
This campaign runs cold — it reaches people who have never heard of you. Its job is to generate cheap Pin impressions and saves among in-market audiences so the Pinterest Tag starts accumulating audience data for future optimization.
Campaign type: Brand Awareness (CPM buying)
- Go to Ads → Create campaign → Brand awareness
- Budget: $15–$25/day; set at campaign level
- Ad group 1 — Interest targeting: select interests including Home Improvement, Architecture & Interior Design, DIY & Crafts (subcategory: Home Renovation), Flooring (or relevant product category). Layer in demographic: 25–65+, all genders unless your product skews (e.g., luxury tile may skew female 30–54).
- Ad group 2 — Keyword targeting: add 20–40 search keywords relevant to your product (e.g., "hardwood floor ideas," "exterior siding options," "porch decking materials"). Use broad and phrase variants — Pinterest keyword targeting is search-based, not Google match types.
- Placements: Browse and Search both enabled
- Frequency cap: 2 impressions/day per user
- Creatives: 2–3 static Pins per ad group. Rotate to find the best save rate.
- Optimization goal: Awareness (impressions)
Why CPM/Awareness first: Pinterest's conversion optimizer needs 50+ conversion events in a 30-day window to exit learning. At a modest budget you won't hit that quickly. Running awareness first at CPM builds audience pools and generates organic saves (free earned media) while the tag accumulates data. Switch to conversion optimization only after your Checkout or Lead event fires 50+ times.
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
Pure top-of-funnel — reaching cold audiences who are browsing renovation and building ideas and have never engaged with your brand, to build awareness and begin accumulating tag data.
- Go to Pinterest Ads Manager → Create campaign → select Brand Awareness as the campaign objective.
- Name the campaign (e.g., 'BWM — Awareness — [Product Category]') and set a daily budget of $15–$25 at the campaign level.
- Create Ad Group 1 — 'Interests': under Targeting, select Interests relevant to your product (Home Improvement, Interior Design, Flooring, Exterior Design, etc.). Set age 25–65+. Leave gender broad unless your product has a strong skew.
- Create Ad Group 2 — 'Keywords': under Targeting, switch to Keywords and enter 20–40 search terms your buyers use (e.g., 'hardwood flooring ideas', 'exterior siding options', 'concrete patio pavers'). No special match type syntax needed — Pinterest uses its own search relevance model.
- For both ad groups, enable Placements: Browse and Search.
- Set Frequency cap to 2 impressions per day per user on each ad group.
- Upload 2–3 vertical static Pins (1000×1500 px) per ad group. Include a text overlay with a key spec or benefit. Write keyword-rich Pin descriptions.
- Set Optimization goal to Awareness (CPM). Do NOT select Conversions yet — you don't have enough conversion data.
- Launch and monitor for 7–10 days. Track: impressions, save rate, outbound click rate. Pause Pins with a save rate below 0.2%.
This campaign introduces your brand to strangers — people browsing renovation ideas on Pinterest who don't know you exist. You're paying for visibility right now, not clicks or sales. That sounds backward, but Pinterest's algorithm needs data before it can optimize for conversions, and awareness campaigns are the cheapest way to feed it. Think of this as planting seeds.
Consideration Campaign — Shopping or Collection Ads
Once your tag has 2–3 weeks of data and your catalog is approved, launch a Shopping or Collection campaign. This moves beyond impressions into active product discovery — people searching or browsing see your specific products with prices and click directly to a product page.
Campaign type: Consideration → Shopping Ads (catalog-based) OR Consideration → Collection Ads (if you want a hero image/video with product tiles beneath)
- Go to Ads → Create campaign → Consideration
- Budget: $10–$20/day (in addition to the awareness campaign)
- Ad format: Shopping (auto-pulls from catalog) or Collection (1 hero + up to 24 product tiles)
- Targeting: Actalikes off your site visitors (requires 100+ visitors — check your tag data volume first). If visitor pool is too small, use the same Interest + Keyword targeting from Phase 3 as a fallback.
- Bid: Automatic bidding; set a max CPC cap of $1.50–$2.50 depending on your margin
- Placements: Browse and Search
- Optimization goal: Click (outbound)
- Feed-based ads pull title, image, and price directly from catalog — make sure your product titles are descriptive, not SKU codes ("3/4 in. Solid Oak Hardwood Flooring" not "SKU-10234")
Honest note: Shopping campaign performance depends heavily on product image quality, pricing competitiveness, and landing page experience. Pinterest ads get people to the page — what happens there is on your website, not the platform. If your product pages have no reviews, vague specs, or slow load times, fix those before scaling budget.
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
Middle-funnel — serving specific products with prices to in-market browsers and searchers who are actively exploring options but haven't committed to a purchase yet.
- Go to Pinterest Ads Manager → Create campaign → select Consideration as the campaign objective.
- Name the campaign (e.g., 'Consideration — Shopping — [Category]') and set a daily budget of $10–$20.
- Under Ad format, select Shopping Ads (catalog-based). Choose your approved catalog and the relevant product group (or All Products to start).
- Under Targeting: check your Pinterest Tag audience size. If site visitors exceed 100 users, create an Actalike audience (1–2% similarity) and target it. If below 100, use the same Interest + Keyword targeting from the Awareness campaign.
- Set Placements to Browse and Search (both enabled).
- Set Bidding to Automatic. Optionally set a Max CPC cap of $1.50–$2.50.
- Set Optimization goal to Click (outbound clicks).
- Verify your catalog product titles are descriptive (not SKU codes) and product images are clean, well-lit, and at least 600×900 px.
- Launch. After 14 days, review which product groups drive the most outbound clicks at the lowest CPC. Pause or lower bids on underperforming product groups.
- Note: if your catalog has fewer than 20 approved products, use Collection Ads instead — upload a hero lifestyle image and manually select up to 24 product Pins beneath it.
Now you're showing your actual products — with photos, names, and prices — to people who are actively looking for what you sell. If you have a product catalog set up, Pinterest pulls everything automatically and shows the right product to the right person. This is where you start turning browsers into visitors who actually land on your product pages. Results here depend as much on your website and pricing as on the ads themselves.
Conversion Campaign — Unlocked After 50 Events
Once your primary conversion event (Lead or Checkout) has fired 50+ times in a 30-day window — check in Ads → Reporting → Conversions — you can switch optimization to Conversions and let Pinterest's algorithm find the highest-intent users automatically.
Campaign type: Conversions
- Go to Ads → Create campaign → Conversions
- Conversion event: select your primary event (Checkout or Lead)
- Budget: $20–$30/day (you can reduce or pause the Awareness campaign at this point and consolidate budget)
- Targeting: Actalike audience (1%) based on converters (requires 100+ converters for best performance — use site visitors as seed if converter list is smaller)
- Placements: Browse and Search
- Bidding: Automatic (Target CPA if Pinterest offers it for your account — it becomes available once enough conversion history exists)
- Creatives: Use your highest-save-rate Pins from Phase 3 plus any new creatives. Test at least 2 per ad group.
- Optimization goal: Conversions (your selected event)
Retargeting note: At budgets under ~$50/day, don't run a separate retargeting campaign. The Conversions campaign's Actalike targeting already skews toward high-intent users. Once your daily budget exceeds $60/day AND your site visitor pool exceeds 1,000 users per month, add a retargeting ad group targeting site visitors (30-day window) within this campaign.
Attribution: Pinterest defaults to a 30-day click + 1-day view attribution window. Compare this to GA4 data — Pinterest often over-reports conversions due to the long window. Use GA4 as your source of truth for business decisions.
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
Full-funnel automated campaign — Pinterest's algorithm targets lookalikes, in-market browsers, and past visitors all at once, optimizing toward your actual conversion event once enough signal exists.
- Confirm your primary conversion event has 50+ fires in the last 30 days: Ads Manager → Reporting → Conversions tab.
- Go to Ads → Create campaign → select Conversions as the campaign objective.
- Select your primary Conversion event (Checkout or Lead) at the campaign level.
- Set daily budget: $20–$30/day. Consider pausing or reducing the Awareness campaign from Phase 3 to consolidate budget here.
- Under Targeting: create an Actalike audience seeded from your converters (or site visitors if converter list is under 100). Set similarity to 1%.
- Set Placements: Browse and Search (both on).
- Set Bidding to Automatic. If Target CPA is available in your account, set a CPA goal based on your margin (e.g., if a sale is worth $200, a $30–$50 CPA target is reasonable to test).
- Add 2–3 creatives per ad group. Prioritize Pins with the highest save rate from the Awareness campaign.
- Set Optimization goal to Conversions (your selected event).
- After 21 days in this phase, compare Pinterest-reported conversions to GA4 sessions and goal completions. Use GA4 numbers for budget decisions — Pinterest's 30-day attribution window inflates its own numbers.
This is the 'graduate' phase — you only unlock it once Pinterest has seen enough real conversions to learn from. At that point, you tell it 'find me more people who buy or submit forms' and it does the heavy lifting. Before that threshold, running a Conversions campaign is a waste of money — the algorithm has nothing to learn from. Be patient, hit the 50-event milestone first, then flip this on.
Measurement Discipline and Next Unlocks
Weekly checks (15 min):
- Pin save rate: target >0.3%. Below that, creative is the problem — refresh images before increasing budget.
- Outbound CTR: target >0.2% for awareness, >0.5% for shopping/consideration.
- CPL or CPA (from GA4, not Pinterest): set a ceiling based on your margin. If you're over it after 3 weeks, lower bids or test new creative before cutting budget.
- Catalog health: check Catalogs → feed approval weekly. Disapproved items don't serve.
What to ignore: Pinterest's native conversion numbers at a 30-day window. Use 7-day click attribution in Pinterest reporting for a more honest view, and cross-reference with GA4.
Budget scaling rule: Increase daily budget by no more than 20% per week once a campaign is performing. Larger jumps reset the learning phase.
Next unlocks (when budget > $60/day and site traffic > 1,000 visits/month):
- Retargeting ad group within the Conversions campaign: target site visitors (30-day window), past Pinners who engaged with your Pins, and video viewers (if you ran video ads)
- Promoted video campaign: 15–30 sec product demo or installation video — Pinterest video saves have strong organic amplification
- Seasonal campaigns: building materials have strong seasonal demand spikes (spring remodel season, pre-winter exterior projects) — budget up 4–6 weeks before those peaks
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
Measure the right things and ignore the vanity metrics. Pinterest will show you impressive reach numbers — what matters is whether people are saving your Pins, clicking to your site, and converting in GA4. Check in weekly, adjust creatives before adjusting budget, and don't scale spend until a campaign is clearly working. Retargeting and video campaigns are real options, but only once you have enough traffic to make them worthwhile.
The recipe card
- Before anything else: confirm the advertising rules for your own industry and location — licensing board requirements, professional advertising standards, what you may claim, age restrictions, and consent rules for email, texting, and calling. They override every step below.
- Install Pinterest Tag and catalog feed before spending — no data, no optimization
- Run a CPM Brand Awareness campaign first to seed audience pools cheaply
- Unlock Shopping/Consideration ads after 2–3 weeks of tag data collection
- Graduate to a Conversions campaign only after 50+ conversion events in 30 days
- Use GA4 as your conversion source of truth — Pinterest's 30-day window over-reports
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Talk to Gorilla PublicRecipes on this site are educational, not legal advice, and not a guarantee of results. You are responsible for each platform's ad policies and for any laws, licensing rules, or consent requirements that apply to your industry and location.