LinkedIn Advertising For B2C: How Olive Garden Crushed It

With B2B marketing my full time gig and consumer marketing in my past (with  the occasional freelance engagement), I perk up when I see a consumer brand on what’s normally a business ad platform and thus it sparked a LinkedIn advertising review when I saw a well executed campaign by Olive Garden.

How Olive Garden Proves LinkedIn Advertising For B2C Is Possible

I noticed Olive Garden prominently displayed on LinkedIn the other day around 10:00 a.m. Ever the inquisitor, I naturally started to click on the ad and found a clever campaign from Olive Garden.

“Overcoming Lunch Block”, a video series targeting business professionals and portrays the dreaded “what should we do for lunch today” conversation that takes place in many offices. Here’s why it works for them.

The media matched the platform: The message of the campaign targeted business professionals so naturally LinkedIn would be a logical place for the media placement.

TOD Targeting: The storyline of the campaign starts within a few hours of lunch and the ad is only displayed during that time period targeting people who are already starting to think about lunch ideas anyway.

Drives in store traffic: On another tab after watching the video, Olive Garden provides access to a flash promotion to drive traffic to their restaurants converting the impressions into easily measured in-store tickets.

Here’s the video:

What else do you think generally consumer facing brands need to make  sure they don’t miss in their campaigns in traditionally business ad spaces? Have questions about your next LinkedIn advertising campaign? Get in touch.