The E-commerce Founder's Complete Guide to Pinterest & TikTok Ads

So you've been told that TikTok and Pinterest are the next gold rush for e-commerce. You've seen the viral "TikTok made me buy it" videos and the perfectly curated Pinterest boards, and you want a piece of the action. You've probably even tried boosting a few posts or running some campaigns, only to find you've discovered a very efficient new way to burn cash with little to show for it.

The problem isn't the platforms. The problem is that most founders approach them with the wrong mindset. They copy and paste their Meta or Google strategy, upload a polished brand video, and then wonder why nobody's buying. It's because they've completely misunderstood what people are doing on these platforms in the first place.

This isn't going to be another guide telling you the "top 5 hacks" for going viral. This is a strategic breakdown of how these platforms actually work for e-commerce, based on what we've seen running campaigns for dozens of brands. We're going to tear down some common myths and give you a proper framework for using these channels to actually grow your business, not just your vanity metrics.

Why Your Pinterest & TikTok Ads Are Failing: The Great Misunderstanding

Let's get the biggest and most costly mistake out of the way first. TikTok and Pinterest are not interchangeable "social media" channels. Lumping them together is like saying a billboard and a product catalogue do the same job. They both use pictures, but their purpose, context, and how people interact with them are worlds apart.

The core difference comes down to one thing: user intent.

TikTok is a Discovery Engine. Think of it as the ultimate entertainment vortex. Nobody opens TikTok to go shopping. They open it to be entertained, to laugh, to learn a weird dance, to switch off their brain for a bit. Your ad is an interruption to their doomscroll. To succeed, your ad cannot feel like an ad. It has to feel like native content. It has to entertain or provide value first, and sell second. It's a platform for creating demand where none existed a second ago. A user sees a cool gadget they never knew they needed, and a seed is planted.

Pinterest is an Inspiration Engine. It's a visual search engine for the future. People go to Pinterest to actively plan things. "Summer wedding guest outfit." "Small bathroom renovation ideas." "Healthy meal prep for the week." They are curating their future lives and, crucially, their future purchases. Your ad isn't an interruption; it's a potential solution. It's a discovery, but a deliberate one. It's a platform for capturing intent that is already forming. You are helping them find what they are already looking for.

Understanding this fundamental difference is everything. When you grasp that you need a different approach for capturing existing intent versus creating new demand, you stop wasting money trying to force a sales-heavy ad on a TikTok audience that just wants to be entertained. You're aligning your message with the user's mindset, which is half the battle.

TikTok: How to Stop Interrupting and Start Selling

Right, so we've established your TikTok ad is an uninvited guest at the entertainment party. To not get thrown out immediately, you need to look and act the part. This means tearing up the traditional advertising rulebook.

Your Creative Is 90% of the Battle

On Meta, you can sometimes get away with a mediocre creative if your targeting is laser-sharp. On TikTok, the creative is non-negotiable. The algorithm is so powerful that a brilliant, engaging video will find its audience even with broad targeting. A boring, corporate ad will get zero traction no matter who you target.

What works?

• -> Lo-Fi is the new Hi-Fi: Content shot on a phone, with natural lighting and slightly shaky hands, often outperforms a slick, high-budget studio production. It feels real. It feels native. It doesn't trigger the "oh, it's an ad" reflex that makes people scroll past.
• -> UGC is Gold: User-generated content is your most powerful weapon. Get your product into the hands of real customers or creators and let them make content. Unboxings, honest reviews, "a day in my life with product X"… this is the stuff that sells. We've seen campaigns where a simple, authentic customer video drives a far lower cost per acquisition than a professionally shot ad.
• -> Problem-Agitate-Solve: This classic copywriting formula works wonders on video. Start by showing a relatable problem (e.g., messy kitchen counter). Agitate it (show the frustration of not being able to find anything). Then present your product as the perfect solution (a clever organiser that makes everything tidy). It's a mini-story that hooks people in.
• -> Show, Don't Tell: Don't waste the first three seconds with your logo. Get straight to the action. Show the product in use. Show the amazing result. Make it visually satisfying. If you sell a cleaning product, show the dirt being obliterated. If you sell a dress, show someone twirling in it at a beautiful location.

The goal is to blend in. For an e-commerce business, your aim should be to create ads that look and feel just like the other content in a user's "For You" page. That's the secret sauce; you can find a lot more detail in our full guide for e-commerce founders on TikTok.

Structuring Your TikTok Funnel for Actual Profit

Here's a mistake we see all the time: a founder sets up a single campaign with a "Purchase" objective, targets a cold audience, puts £20 a day behind it, and then complains they're getting plenty of clicks but no conversions. This is like asking someone to marry you on a first date. You're moving too fast.

You need to build a proper funnel to warm people up.

This tiered approach works because it aligns with the user journey. First, you're just paying to entertain them and find out who's interested. The cost to get a video view is tiny compared to the cost of a click. Then, you're only paying the higher cost for traffic from people who have already raised their hand by watching your content. Finally, you're focusing your most expensive "Purchase" objective clicks on people who have already visited your site. It's a filtration system that makes your budget work much, much harder. It's the core of what we teach in our masterclass on TikTok ads for e-commerce.

Pinterest: The Slow Burn That Wins the Race

If TikTok is a frantic sprint for attention, Pinterest is a marathon of inspiration. The mindset is completely different, and so your tactics must be too. People here are planning, dreaming, and saving ideas for later. Your job is to become one of those ideas.

Keywords and Quality Visuals are King

Forget viral sounds and frantic editing. Pinterest is a visual search engine. This means two things are critical:

1. Keywords: You need to do proper keyword research, just like you would for Google. What terms are your ideal customers typing into the search bar? "Minimalist living room decor," "sustainable fashion brands," "gluten-free dinner recipes." Your Pin descriptions, Pin titles, and even your Board names need to be optimised with these keywords. This is how you get discovered organically and how you target your ads effectively.
2. Aesthetics: While TikTok rewards authenticity, Pinterest rewards aspiration. Your visuals need to be high-quality, inspiring, and aesthetically pleasing. Clean, bright lifestyle shots, beautiful flat lays, and well-designed graphics or "Idea Pins" perform best. It's about selling the dream, the end result. Don't just show a pan; show the delicious meal being served from the pan in a beautiful kitchen.

A common pitfall is treating it like Instagram, just posting product shots. That won't work. You need to provide value beyond just your product. A furniture company shouldn't just post pictures of sofas; they should post Pins titled "5 Ways to Style a Small Living Room" that happen to feature their sofa. You're a resource first, a retailer second.

Structuring Your Pinterest Funnel

The sales cycle on Pinterest is much longer than on other platforms. A user might save a Pin for a new dress in March but not actually buy it until June when they have a wedding to attend. This is normal. Your funnel needs to account for this longer consideration phase. Trying to force an immediate sale often fails because you're rushing the user's natural planning process.

If you find you're running campaigns with no engagement or conversions at all, it's likely because you're asking for a direct sale from a cold audience who are still in the 'browsing and dreaming' phase.

This structure ensures you're present at every stage of the user's journey on the platform. You're there when they start their search with helpful content, you're there with specific product solutions when they narrow down their options, and you're there to remind them when they're finally ready to buy.

The Engine Room: It's Not Your Ads, It's Your Offer & Website

I'm going to let you in on a secret. After auditing hundreds of ad accounts, I can tell you that 9 times out of 10, when a founder says "my ads aren't working," the problem isn't really the ads. The ads are doing their job—they're getting clicks. The problem is what happens after the click.

You can have the best ad creative and targeting in the world, but if you send that traffic to a slow, untrustworthy website with a confusing offer and a clunky checkout process, you've just wasted your money. Traffic doesn't pay the bills. Sales do. And sales happen on your website, not on TikTok or Pinterest.

This is especially true for Shopify store owners. Many assume the platform handles everything, but if your Shopify ads are not converting, you need to look at your entire sales funnel, from the ad scent to the post-purchase thank you page.

LTV: The Metric That Unlocks Aggressive Growth

Most founders are obsessed with the wrong metric: Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). They try to get it as low as possible, which often means chasing low-quality traffic. The real question isn't "How low can my CPA go?" but "How high a CPA can I afford to acquire a great customer?" The answer lies in your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV tells you how much profit a customer will generate for you over their entire relationship with your brand. Once you know this number, you know how much you can spend to get them in the door. I remember one campaign for a subscription box company where we achieved a 1000% return on ad spend. When you know what a customer is truly worth, you can make much smarter decisions about your advertising budget to achieve these kinds of returns.

Let's calculate yours.

Suddenly, that £50 CPA from TikTok doesn't look so bad when you know each customer is worth £1,200 to you. This is the maths that lets you scale confidently. If you're serious about growth, understanding and improving your LTV is one of the most important things you can do. It's the foundation of any successfull paid advertising growth strategy.

Fixing Your Leaky Bucket

Once you're driving the right kind of traffic, you need to make sure your website is optimised to convert it. A 1% increase in your conversion rate is often easier and cheaper to achieve than a 10% decrease in your ad costs, but has a much bigger impact.

Here's a quick audit:

• -> Speed: Is your site fast, especially on mobile? Every second of load time costs you sales.
• -> Trust: Does your site look professional and trustworthy? Do you have clear contact information, shipping policies, and social proof like customer reviews and testimonials?
• -> Clarity: Is it immediately obvious what you sell and why someone should buy it from you? Is your value proposition front and centre?
• -> Friction: How easy is your checkout process? Can customers pay with options like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, or PayPal to avoid typing in their details?

For our clients in the UK market, we've found that building trust is paramount. Shoppers are savvy and skeptical. A few small tweaks to build credibility can make a huge difference, which is something we cover in depth in our guide to fixing Shopify conversions for UK brands.

Bringing It All Together: A Multi-Platform Strategy

The smartest e-commerce brands don't rely on a single channel. They understand how different platforms work together to guide a customer from awareness to purchase and, ultimately, to loyalty. TikTok and Pinterest aren't replacements for Meta and Google; they are powerful additions to your marketing mix.

A truly effective strategy uses each platform for what it does best.

This is obviously a simplified journey, but it illustrates the point. By understanding the unique strengths of each platform, you can create a cohesive system where each channel supports the others. You can use TikTok to fill the top of your funnel with cheap, engaged audiences, then use the superior retargeting capabilities of Meta and Google to close the sale. This multi-touchpoint approach is how you build a resilient, scalable e-commerce brand.

Your Action Plan: TikTok vs. Pinterest at a Glance

We've covered a lot of ground. To make it easier to digest and put into action, here’s a summary of the key strategic differences and how you should approach each platform.

When It's Time to Call for Help

Look, running paid ads effectively is a full-time job. Between mastering the nuances of each platform, keeping up with constant algorithm changes, producing a stream of new creative, and analysing the data to make smart decisions, it can quickly become overwhelming for a founder who also needs to manage inventory, customer service, and, you know, run a business.

If you're spending a few hundred pounds a month, you can probably manage it yourself using the principles in this guide. But if you're looking to seriously scale your ad spend and your business, the complexity grows exponentially. That's when working with a specialist can be the difference between stagnating and breaking through to the next level.

An expert doesn't just push the buttons for you. We provide strategic oversight. We understand the data and can spot opportunities you might miss. We have experience from dozens of other accounts that we can apply to yours. We free up your most valuable asset—your time—to focus on the parts of the business only you can do.

If you're feeling stuck, spending money without seeing a clear return, or you're ready to scale but not sure how, it might be time for a conversation. We offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we'll look at your business, your ad accounts, and give you honest, actionable advice on what to do next. There's no hard sell, just a genuine attempt to help. If we think we're a good fit to help you grow, we'll tell you. If not, you'll still walk away with a handful of expert insights you can implement right away.

Hope this helps!