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Tying an online ad or piece of email marketing directly to a customized landing page that acknowledges the communication and has a specific call to action can improve lift by 40% and is a necessity for marketers, according to a survey by CrownPeak.

However, the survey also shows that a majority of marketers still do not take the basic step to link their communication with relevant landing pages, and are missing out on a wealth of post-click analytical data, not to mention sales.

The recently-released "Holiday PPC Ad Strategies" study found that 66% of holiday-themed online search advertising drives traffic to a home page or some other landing page that is not obviously tied to the online ad, thus confusing or annoying potential shoppers. Only 34% of the holiday-themed search-engine ads analyzed in the study directed traffic to specific landing pages that urged shoppers to buy, or were otherwise reflective of the original ad.

Campaigns Not Linked

As part of the research, CrownPeak analyzed search marketing results across 10 different holiday-themed phrases, including general themes such as "holiday deals" and "holiday gifts; specific products such as "Nintendo Wii" or "Elmo Live"; and product categories such as "Halloween costumes" and "Christmas decorations." Individual ads were analyzed from more than 100 online marketers, all of which used Google Adwords to disseminate campaigns. Advertisers were assessed over a period of two weeks.

The study found that the majority of online ad campaigns and web content were not linked. Of the 66% of advertisers that did not tie specific, relevant landing pages to their search ad, nearly 13% went to the advertiser home page. The remainder sent traffic to general category pages, or canned "searches" that didn't specifically play off of the advertising copy.

Rich Media Grows in Importance

Landing pages clearly tied to ad campaigns - and those not linked - take on added significance with the growth of rich media advertising and web analytics applications. In addition to closing a sale, creating a landing page for each campaign makes it easier to see who's responding to an ad, how quickly, and which messages or keywords are working, according to Campaigner.

Robust post-click analytics capabilities also enable marketers to maximize landing pages for key demographics. "Post-click analytics can show marketers exactly how each demographic segment is interacting with a particular landing page," writes DM News.

New Tools

Some vendors are responding with tools that make it easier to create landing pages, especially for video and for other rich media marketing messages. Flimp, for example, is a software-as-a-service application aimed at non-technical marketers. Its platform enables users to create, edit, distribute and track customized video landing pages through a drag-and-drop graphical user interface without any programming or analytics plug-ins.