Pinterest has long been the darling of retailers serving the bridal, fashion and home décor markets, who used the image saving site to promote their offerings to eager, affluent customers. Promoted Pins first appeared in the spring of 2014, and have gone through several changes since then. Today, Promoted Pins can be motion activated, and the number of targeting options grows regularly.

90% of Pinterest users have made a purchase based on a Pin they saw. To demonstrate the effectiveness of Promoted Pins, Pinterest contracted with Oracle Data Cloud, a company that tracks customer buying behavior. Their research found that Promoted Pins drive five times more incremental in sale purchases than compared to other types of social media posting.

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That being said, not all Promoted Pins are created equal. If you want to make the most of this sales channel, it helps to know what types of Promoted Pins are working best.

Pinterest’s audience has a well-established hunger for how-to content – a significant portion of Pinterest’s burgeoning male audience specifically seeks out DIY projects – in the form of recipes, mini-tutorials, step by step guides, and videos.

However, the most popular Pins are not basic, intro level information; there’s an assumption that people are at least somewhat familiar with cooking, crafting, DIY-ing, applying makeup, or whatever topic may be appropriate. Giving this audience unique or offbeat ways to use familiar products is a definite winning formula: Hidden Valley had tremendous results by giving users a recipe that featured their ranch dressing in a spaghetti pie. Clever, unusual, and appealing are the words to keep in mind when creating Promoted Pins: it may mean giving your imagination a good work out but the results will be well worth it!