Wow, this is an interesting report from Internet Retailer about the effectiveness of landing pages.
If a consumer comes into an e-commerce site from a paid search ad they are 50% more likely to purchase than if they click on the organic results to get to the site. The reason they think is that a paid search result puts the consumer on a landing page that is designed for them while an organic search responder could land in the middle of the site or certainly not always on a page that is tailored to their search request.
That makes a lot of sense to me and I think can logically carry over to offline sales, too. If a consumer is looking for a specific product and lands on a page all about that product versus landing somewhere on a local retailers site it seems logical that you have a better chance of closing the sale with information that is more to the point.
And, even better if they land on a page that is only about your brand and presented exactly as you want it.
So, if you’re a brand manager trying to get good materials into the hands of your retailers I would help them buy and manage local search ad campaigns and include in the material a great landing page(s) builder.
It would be a heck of a better way to spend your money and/or their co-op dollars than overspending on local newspaper ads.