4 steps to start incrementality without making it too much complicated | Farmer

I may live in a bubble of marketing measurement, but if you are a brand, especially a consumer brand Heb you probably felt the itching: “Maybe we should think more seriously about incrementality.”

The good news? You don’t have to overhaul everything at the same time. Here is how to start.

Step 1: Recognize the limits of Attribution

This is not just about anti-attribution. Attribution (GA4, MTA, platform reports, etc.) has traditionally been the standard source of truth for many teams. However, the first real step is to recognize what is attributable and what it is not.

Only because something gets credit does not mean that it has caused a sale. And only because something gets no credit does not mean that it had no impact.

Your organization can be overly dependent on attributing if:

• Marketing attributed Roas always seems to rise, while the total turnover and profit do not.
• You have added a number of new channels for the sake of diversification, but those who were above the goal with small budgets and those who do not touch any goal are paused, never to return.
• When you spend more, your mixed cac is blown up. If you spend less, your mixed CAC will decrease, but your new customer volume remains stable.

This all points to the same: your marketing expenditure (and team) is optimizing for credit, not for growth.

Dig deeper: what your attribution model does not tell you

Step 2: Test on the easiest, highest impact place

Do not revise your entire measuring strategy tomorrow tomorrow. Start with a clear hypothesis and a simple test. The ideal place to start is the search for a brand.

Most people intuitively understand that searching for a brand is not very incremental. It often cannibalizes organic traffic and performance looks great in the platform. This makes it easy to get a buy-in and offers a clear test structure.

Turn it off and see what happens.

• Is organic searches getting up just as well as the search for the brand decreases?
• Does the turnover retain, or do you see a real fall in sale?

From that test you can start building organizational muscles around what incrementality means in practice. You can also discover that this same effect takes place in other tactics – especially those who are looking for that brand or combining retargeting in their targeting.

Dig deeper: How attribution masks what drives growth

Step 3: Share results and win buy-in for teams

You cannot perform a test, see a result and then continue as if nothing has happened. If the search for a brand of ROA’s in-platform is 25, but your test shows that it is 2.5 and you even break with a Roas of 4, you must communicate that and what it means for where dollars have to be spent.

Ideally, there is a culture of curiosity and openness to run how things are done. Without that this step is difficult. Many teams buried results that challenge the status quo because they fear that they will look bad. This is often the reason why many incrementality test results are placed in a deck that rarely gets out of a marketing team meeting.

But Ideally, the results generate questions throughout the organization:

• How should the results influence budget planning?
• Which channels are under -financed because of attributed Roas and must now be tested for actual impact?
• How should our budget in a period in which we are more focused on growth?
• What is the case if we have to concentrate on profitability?

The latter two questions in particular can forge a real partnership between marketing and finance.

Step 4: Change insights into smarter budget decisions

After you have performed that first test and have communicated the results, the next step is crucial: CHear behavior. Measuring instruments exist to help you make better decisions. They don’t create value in themselves.

Use measurement data to make bets with confidence and then measure the results, knowing that they are bets. Informed bets, but bets anyway. Use company level statistics as your goal post.

If the search for a brand has little value, but has recorded historically 20% of your budget, you will leave it expenses and monitor your mixed marketing efficiency ratio (EIA) and the total income. Ideally, the turnover will remain stable, while EIA improves and confirms that you have eliminated an expensive, low value tactic.

Now make a bet. Put that budget in a best performing channel to see if there are marginal returns to achieve. Do you see your income increasing or a peak in EIA without meaningfully influencing the income?

Trusting for mixed statistics can be sufficient for smaller brands. With larger brands, marketing can be good for a too small part of the total income to see quick results. In that case, Geo-Tests design to get a clearer picture of the impact and then follow mixed statistics over a longer period to gauge the overall success.

Dig deeper: Marketing results do not add. They multiply and synergy.

Avoid these common pitfalls

Test and learning is good, but even more important, you have to test, learn, evangelize and act. The biggest mistakes are:

• Not taking others in the organization for the incrementality trip.
• Not changing behavior based on what has been learned.

Other common pitfalls are:

• You realize that atmosphere is poor and then overcorrected by throwing money to tools, suppliers and dashboards that you are not ready for. Start easily instead. Perform one test. Use mixed statistics.
• You panic when you see a series of possible results (confidence interval) because you are used to a single number. Understand what each end of the reach means for your company. It will guide whether your next step is a small optimization or a larger pivot.
• Channel owners/teams become defensive when a channel is tested or contradicting results This happens when the team culture is not tailored to the broader business priorities and marketing work in a silo. As a marketing leader, evangelize the risks of attribution and make it clear that marketing is tailored to finance and the objectives of the company.

At the end

Incrementality is the missing connection between marketing activities and business results. The best teams don’t just ask: “What have we received credit for?” They ask: “What has the needle moved?”

More than an incidental KPI, incrementality is the backbone of how they measure success, plan budgets and optimize for growth.