Today we are going to consider consumer brand advertising on a non-traditional platform. LinkedIn.

Traditionally LinkedIn has been the professional network platform for B2B brand advertising. However, I have started to notice more consumer brands and services appearing on this site. At the end of the day professionals not only have pain points and needs for their businesses but also on a personal level too. The perfect example of this can be found in my newsfeed today: ‘College Nannies, Sitters and Tutors’, obviously this ad is geared for parents who now, due to the pandemic, have to work alongside their kids.

LinkedIn is filled with professional people trying to balance life and work, so this ad is perfectly positioned.

The copy is effective, empathetic and very clear but let’s delve deeper into the ad’s structure:

1. It points out the first pain point of the audience:  falling behind at work because they have to care for young children. They’ve identified the problem and promise to solve it in the sentence: “help get you all back on track”. 

2. The second pain point alludes to the fact that parents are teachers, cooks, babysitters and professionals… the ads acknowledge this with the sentence “How many hats can you wear?”

3. The third point is that it instills a sense of urgency. “Summer is coming!” Even if parents are managing remote learning for their kids fine just now, summer camps are being canceled and parents will need to fill 3 months of unscheduled time, and that’s where the summer program comes in.

4. One thing I noticed about the URL Copy (shortened URL by LinkedIn https://lnkd.in/eUhf56g) is that it has no UTM tracking (it becomes https://www.collegenanniesandtutors.com/nannies/). This makes me really sad because the traffic that comes from this link will be miscategorized in google analytics and any other analytics services. LinkedIn’s tag is the only place this brand will be able to rely on information about their paid ads, which is not 100% reliable and it is limited in the information you get.

The picture is a play of their copy but also a highly unusual picture to see in a professional network, so it makes you stop. The colors are bold and prominent so they help stand out from the whites and blues that characterize LinkedIn’s newsfeed.

As brilliant as this ad is, I have some problems with the Landing Page. I was lured in with the Summer program and this is a general Landing Page with a lot of information.  Although pleasant and clean it has very little information about the Summer program. There is a lot of misused space that makes me scroll for long periods of time. If I was interested in the services I would have lost my patience halfway through the page. But just seconds before I was going to abandon the search altogether, I found the program – Summer program. A little text and a button, yay! Excitement followed by more heartbreak. I clicked on it and it took me to the top of the same page! Potentially this could make audiences frustrated and lose their interest.

To sum up: The ad agency is doing a great job at ad placing and creative, however my advice would be that the Landing Page should be shorter and more program centric, explaining the different services that are on offer. Once I have made my informed decision about what program I am interested in, then I can find out more about the process and the brand. Plus retargeting would be so much easier and effective if you can separate the three programs in three different Landing Pages. Somebody that needs nannies only for the Summer can be retargeted effectively and in a different way than somebody that needs fulltime coverage year around.

Thank you so much for reading this short analysis.  If  you are thinking of starting a campaign please check out our free planning checklist at https://www.springhilldigital.com/ihaveaplan