When it comes to creating an effective landing page, one of the most important elements that marketers need to master is the element of relevance - making sure that the visitor finds what they're expecting once they click through your ad or organic search result. 

Does your landing page copy reassure visitors that they've come to the right place, or is there a disconnect between what your ad offers and what your landing page delivers?

Let's take a look at a few examples that cover the landing page spectrum - from the 'not so good' to the 'rather impressive' - and see what insights we can learn from each.  For the purposes of our example, let's imagine that our boss has asked us to check out data security best practices, so we've performed a Google search for 'data security free white paper' to find a document that provides a good overview of the data security space.  Here's a sampling of the ads and landing pages we'll find:

• nCircle's landing page is similar to its pay-per-click ad - to the point, but not descriptive enough to give us a good idea of what we're going to receive.  We could use more information about who David Lacey is and why we should trust him--and the rest of the content leaves quite a bit to be desired.  We must rely on the navigation at the top or bottom of the page to find out more, distracting us from downloading the white paper - or, we may simply say, “I don’t have time for this”, and return to our Google search. So while it's consistent, it's consistently poor from the ad through the landing page.

• Orchestria.com does a sufficient job of letting us know that we're in the right place.  Their landing page reiterates the offer of the white paper mentioned in their search ad and the copy gives a brief overview of what is discussed in the paper.  They could make better use of the space to explain the acronyms used in the pay-per-click (PPC) ad, for example, spell out that ‘DLP’ means 'data loss prevention’.  While the landing page may also be improved by reducing the navigation, the form is a good length and doesn’t ask for too much personal information, so overall it does a decent job.

• On the 'very well done' side of the landing page spectrum is CodeGreenNetworks.com. Their ad copy touts data loss as 'a problem mid-sized organizations cannot ignore' and offers a free white paper.  Sounds good already.  But will the landing page deliver?  Thankfully, it does. 
  
  Clicking through to the Code Green landing page, the first thing we notice is a large graphic reiterating the information we just learned from the ad copy - that data leaks are a problem mid-sized organizations cannot ignore.  There's no mistaking that this is the landing page that belongs to the ad we just clicked on. 
  
  After reiterating the high costs of data leaks, citing third-party stats and providing an overview of the white paper itself, the copy invites us to fill in the short form and receive the free white paper.  And the landing page copy gives us more detail on the information that was mentioned in the PPC ad - just like it should be done.
  
  And we don't have a bunch of unnecessary navigation elements to distract us.  Code Green continues their winning landing page design with a simple 'contact us' button at the top of the screen and a link to additional web site content within the copy.  It's just enough to help us if we need it, but not so much that we're tempted to go off in a radically different direction. From start to finish, this is an excellent example of creating a relevant landing page.

So when it comes to creating relevant landing pages, focus on the big elements - make sure that your ad or search engine copy is consistent with your landing page copy.  But take advantage of the opportunity to expound on your ad's theme a bit more - after all, you have many more available characters on your landing page than you do in your PPC campaign creative. Reassuring visitors that they're in the right place will increase conversions *and* visitor satisfaction!

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