Incremental Sales [Formula, KPIs, and Best Practices] (2024)

How do you know your marketing or a sales promotion campaign was effective? How many more customers were you able to win?

While you might already be tracking campaign metrics, one method that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign and measure the success more objectively isincremental sales.

This article describes the basics of incremental sales, the formula to measure it, KPIs, and the ROI you can expect.

In this article:
>> Incremental Sales Formula
>> Incremental Sales Example
>> Measure Incremental Sales
>> Measure Incrementality
>> Best Practices to Improve Incremental Sales

What is incremental sales?

Incremental sales is a metric or KPI that gauges the efficacy of a marketing or sales promotion campaign. It calculates the difference between the sales you made during a promotion and the sales that you would have made if there was no promotion running during the same period.

Incremental sales formula

A simple formula to calculate incremental sales is:

Incremental Sales = Total Sales – Baseline Sales

Here, two key terms are baseline sales and total sales.

Baseline sales is the amount of revenue you would have generated without a promotion or a marketing campaign. It is an important metric in the incremental sales formula since it defines the status quo. Campaigns where incremental sales metric matters the most are seasonal offers like Black Friday sales, or when you test a new marketing channel, and want to assess its effectiveness.

Total sales is, of course, the overall sales you make for the specified period when the said campaign was live.

Incremental Sales Example

Let’s say a retailer expects to sell $50,000 worth of sports accessories in a month without advertising.

The retailer launches an influencer campaign that costs $20,000 and sells $80,000 worth of items.

In this case, incremental sales will be $30,000:

Incremental sales = $80,000 – $50,000
= $30,000

Please note, incremental sales is different from the marketing ROI. Here, the goal is to evaluate the additional revenue generated from promotional campaigns.

How to measure incremental sales

To accurately measure incremental sales, you must know your baseline sales. Then look at how many new customers you acquire during a campaign. You can look at up using your CRM solution.

Note that companies differ on what they consider as “new.” A customer can be new if they have never interacted with your brand before. Some brands consider them new if they have not made any purchase in the last six months or a year.

Some businesses enforce the single source rule. Suppose you have an affiliate marketing program. When the customer buys through the affiliate link, then only it will be counted as an incremental sale.

A catch here is, the customer may be influenced to buy it via the affiliate program but does not use the link to make the purchase. So, even though the program led to the sale, the business will not consider it as an incremental sale.

The incrementality test is one way to gauge your campaign performance. This test is similar to medical tests where the test group gets the actual drug, whereas the control group gets a placebo. This test allows you to see which method performs better. The results can even help you tweak your campaigns to be more effective and eventually drive up your sales.

Measure incrementality

According to Trevor Testwuide, Co-founder and CEO ofMeasured, Incrementality indicates the portion of last touch conversions driven by media.

Incrementality = (Test Conversion Rate – Control Conversion Rate) / (Test Conversion Rate)

Incremental Sales [Formula, KPIs, and Best Practices] (1)

Where, LT = last touchpoint or channel that a user interacted with before converting on your site.

Because of other variables in brand marketing, you may also want to consider the following factors while calculating incrementality.

First touch percentage:

It is the percentage of revenue that a partner brings in by being the first point of contact of the customer. It could be an affiliate partner or a marketing campaign partner. The first-touch percentage allows you to understand how a partner indirectly drives the revenue even though they may not be the last touchpoint. An example of this could be influencer marketing. The customers see an influencer using the product or the service. Customers can then do further research and make the purchase separately.

Assisted revenue:

It is the revenue you won because of a partner, but the partner was not credited for it. Generally, partners are paid on the basis of the last-touch structure.

Participated revenue:

It is the revenue you get from an affiliate where the affiliate partner interacted with the customer at some point during the sales process.

New customer percentage:

This metric is the best way to see the effectiveness of a marketing campaign or an affiliate program. However, this metric also heavily depends on how a brand defines its new customer. For instance, a loyal customer may be influenced to purchase because of a marketing campaign, but the brand may not consider that at all.

Quick conversion:

The quick conversion rate lets you know when a lead makes a purchase in a few minutes after the last referral click. Brands generally prefer a longer conversion rate. A quick conversion often means that the customer is actively searching for a coupon code, and the business may lose money in that case. Say, for example, a customer wants to purchase a subscription for software. They go online and search for coupon codes for that software. They find the promo code from an affiliate link and make the purchase. The company can lose out money on that sale, and they also need to pay the affiliate partner a commission for that sale.

All these metrics help you understand incrementality, the factors that increase sales, and where you need to focus more. While the incremental sales metric gives you an overview of how effective a campaign was during a particular period, the other metrics listed above help you dig deep.

Why is it crucial to measure incremental sales?

It is obvious that the higher your incremental sales numbers are, the better your business is doing. It shows that your marketing campaigns are effective, your sales team is doing equally well, and you are efficiently converting leads into customers.

In contrast, if you’re not getting the desired ROI from your campaigns, you might want to backtrack some KPIs.

The incremental sales KPIs will help you identify shortcomings and increase your profit margin by improving them. You may find that you are paying commissions for leads that you would have gotten anyway. These are expenses that you can eventually skip. Thus, you can increase your profit while making the same number of sales.

When you accurately measure incremental sales, you will be wiser in your marketing spend. If you see that your marketing efforts are working, then you can increase your ad budget too. If your conversion rate is not improving, you can decrease your ad budget and focus more on sales efforts.

Also read:

  • 5 Simple Hacks to Improve Sales Performance
  • 6 Sales Effectiveness Metrics You Should Be Capturing
  • Mining the Real Gems from your Data – Lead Scoring and Engagement Scoring

Best Practices for Improving Incremental Sales


1. Find KPIs relevant to your business

Before you start measuring incremental sales, look at other KPIs that influence your incremental sales. Also, look at average purchase value, cost of goods sold, and more. While you cannot plug in these KPIs directly into the Incremental Sales KPI, it will give you an intuition of how you can improve your sales metrics.

2. Build better customer relationships

Improve your marketing collateral, target specific audience groups, and engage more with customers. It will give you a better overall experience with your marketing efforts.

3. Try out different channels

See which channels work better for your business. Different target audiences are reachable via various social media platforms. Look at related metrics to see which platforms offer a better return on investment.

4. Adapt Quickly

Customer behavior and social media trends can change in an instant. Therefore, your marketing efforts should adapt to these changes too. Be aware of the changes in marketing trends and consumer behavior. Do not shy away from trying a new marketing technique, as trial-and-error is the best way to form an effective strategy.

When you create a marketing strategy, test and analyze the results. Look at your incremental sales values and check other related metrics as well.

Wrap Up

While incremental sales give you a concrete idea of how well your marketing efforts are working, other numerous metrics will help you understand the various facets of your marketing and sales efforts.

If you want to keep a tab on your sales performance, campaigns, channels and gain better customer insights, you must consider a CRM. TakeLeadSquaredfor a test spin and see how it takes your sales to the next level.Take a free trialnow.

Incremental Sales [Formula, KPIs, and Best Practices] (2024)

FAQs

What is the formula for incremental revenue? ›

Incremental revenue = number of units x price per unit. Follow these steps to calculate incremental revenue: Determine the number of units sold during a period of growth. Determine the price of each unit sold during a period of growth. Multiply the number of units by the price per unit.

What is the key metric in measuring the incremental sales generated from a marketing program? ›

One of the other most important metrics is the quick conversion rate. This lets you know when a sale was completed less than five minutes after the last referral click.

What is incremental sales growth? ›

Incremental sales refers to the value of products or services sold during a tracked period of time that goes over and above what your business might normally sell.

How do you measure incremental growth? ›

The most accurate way to measure incrementality of media is through testing and experimentation. To measure incrementality, audiences are randomly segmented into test and control groups. The difference in conversion rates between the two groups demonstrates the marginal incremental contribution of that media channel.

What is incremental calculation? ›

Incremental cost is the total cost incurred due to an additional unit of product being produced. Incremental cost is calculated by analyzing the additional expenses involved in the production process, such as raw materials, for one additional unit of production.

How do you calculate incremental in Excel? ›

On the Cost sheet, start at the first intersection of cost and increment. This should be in cell B2. Type "=A2*B1" (without quotes) and Excel will perform the required math.

What are the three main forms of incremental analysis? ›

Incremental analysis (also referred to as the relevant cost approach, marginal analysis, or differential analysis) is a decision-making tool used to assess financial information. The three main concepts relevant to incremental analysis are relevant cost, sunk cost, and opportunity cost.

How do you calculate incremental sales lift? ›

Incremental Sales Lift – The difference between actual sales and baseline sales equals sales lift. This can also be determined as a percentage of sales increase.

What is simple incremental analysis? ›

What Is Incremental Analysis? Incremental analysis is a decision-making technique used in business to determine the true cost difference between alternatives. Also called the relevant cost approach, marginal analysis, or differential analysis, incremental analysis disregards any sunk cost or past cost.

What is the basics of incremental principle? ›

Incremental principle states that a decision is profitable if revenue increases more than costs; if costs reduce more than revenues; if increase in some revenues is more than decrease in others; and if decrease in some costs is greater than increase in others.

How is sales growth KPI measured? ›

Revenue Growth is a KPI used to measure how sales are increasing or decreasing over time. It is calculated by dividing revenue generated during one time period by the revenue generated during a subsequent time period, subtracting 1, and then multiplying by 100 to obtain a percentage.

What are the 4 key metrics? ›

Four critical DevOps metrics
  • Lead time for changes. One of the critical DevOps metrics to track is lead time for changes. ...
  • Change failure rate. The change failure rate is the percentage of code changes that require hot fixes or other remediation after production. ...
  • Deployment frequency. ...
  • Mean time to recovery.

What are the 5 marketing metrics? ›

Are you watchful of these 5-marketing metrics as a marketer?
  • Total number of conversions. The conversions are the visitors that convert into records for your marketing database and let you focus on what truly matters. ...
  • Reach & Engagement levels. ...
  • Conversion rate by channel. ...
  • Cost per sale/acquisition. ...
  • Return on investment.

What are the steps in incremental model? ›

As part of the Incremental model, each module (increment) passes through four phases: requirements, design and development, testing, and implementation. Every new release of the module adds functionality to the previous release module.

What is the example of incremental model? ›

Example of Incremental Model

The drawer started from the first iteration and once the module was completed, the second iteration started which was the other module. Once that was completed, it was then integrated into the first module. This was done until the whole product was integrated and ready.

What is incremental example? ›

Incremental innovation doesn't create new concepts or products, as it focuses on marginal improvements to what already exists. For example, Gillette constantly upgrades its razors, adding new features, like extra blades, heated razors, and a pivoting head.

What is average incremental revenue? ›

Incremental Revenue refers to the value of additional revenue of the company during the period under consideration if there is a change in sales quantity. The incremental revenue is calculated by dividing the change in the revenue of a specific period by the change in quantity sold.

How do you calculate incremental percentage? ›

Calculating percentage increase and decrease
  1. work out the difference between the two numbers being compared.
  2. divide the increase by the original number and multiply the answer by 100.
  3. in summary: percentage increase = increase ÷ original number × 100.

What are 4 general way to increase sales? ›

Increase sales
  1. INTRODUCE NEW PRODUCTS OR SERVICE. Provide a broader range of products or services for your clients. ...
  2. EXPAND TO NEW DOMESTIC MARKETS. ...
  3. ENHANCE YOUR SALES CHANNELS. ...
  4. MARKETING ACTIVITIES. ...
  5. CHANGE YOUR PRICE. ...
  6. BE AWARE OF THE COMPETITION. ...
  7. IMPROVE COMMUNITY RELATIONS. ...
  8. DON'T NEGLECT CUSTOMER SERVICE.

What is a good sales increase percentage? ›

In general, however, a healthy growth rate should be sustainable for the company. In most cases, an ideal growth rate will be around 15 and 25% annually. Rates higher than that may overwhelm new businesses, which may be unable to keep up with such rapid development.

Is a 10% sales increase good? ›

Sales growth of 5-10% is usually considered good for large-cap companies, while for mid-cap and small-cap companies, sales growth of over 10% is more achievable.

What is an incremental strategy? ›

In incremental approaches, strategy is a loosely linked group of decisions that are handled incrementally. Decisions are handled individually below the organizational level because such decentralization is politically expedient—organizational leaders should reserve their political clout for crucial decisions.

What is a fully incremental analysis? ›

Fully incremental analysis involves the calculation of incremental QALY gains and costs along a list of treatment options ranked by ascending cost.

Is an incremental approach the best approach? ›

The incremental approach often offers the best way to reduce the destructiveness of confrontations over intractable issues.

What is incremental problem solving? ›

Incremental problem solving works as follows: collect all information about the problem from all sources available. write down your own ideas and comments as separate topics. process all that information with incremental learning techniques. document all new ideas and new sub-problems that need to be tackled.

What is incrementalism model? ›

incrementalism, theory of public policy making, according to which policies result from a process of interaction and mutual adaptation among a multiplicity of actors advocating different values, representing different interests, and possessing different information.

What is incremental project life cycle? ›

An incremental life cycle is. an adaptive project life cycle in which the deliverable is produced through a series of iterations that successively add functionality within a predetermined time frame. The deliverable contains the necessary and sufficient capability to be complete only after the final iteration.

How does incremental analysis work? ›

Incremental analysis models consist of relevant costs that are divided into variable cost and fixed cost, respectively. The analysis puts into consideration opportunity costs that refer to the missed opportunity when you choose one alternative leaving out the other to ensure that a firm pursues a favorable option.

What are the limitations of incremental analysis? ›

Disadvantages of Incremental Analysis

The situation of incremental analysis arises when there is an increase in the order book apart from the normal orders. The excess order book, however, comes at a price for the manufacturer. The manufacturer has to take a margin hit, whereas the volume of the business tends to rise.

What is marginal and incremental principle? ›

The marginal principle involves a comparison of benefit with cost, at the margin. That is, comparison of incremental revenue with incremental cost. Incremental cost denotes change in total cost, whereas incremental revenue means change in total revenue resulting from a unit increase in production.

What are the different types of sales growth? ›

The 4 primary types of growth a business can experience include strategic, internal, organic, and lastly- partnership, acquisition, or merger growth. Learning more about each of these 4 types of growth can help business strategy efforts be more successful and organized.

Which is an example of an incremental approach? ›

As an example of incremental analysis, assume a company sells an item for $300. The company pays $125 for labor, $50 for materials, and $25 for variable overhead selling expenses. The company also allocates $50 per item for fixed overhead costs.

What are the 5 P's in sales? ›

The 5 areas you need to make decisions about are: PRODUCT, PRICE, PROMOTION, PLACE AND PEOPLE. Although the 5 Ps are somewhat controllable, they are always subject to your internal and external marketing environments.

What are the 4 P's of sales? ›

The marketing mix, also known as the four P's of marketing, refers to the four key elements of a marketing strategy: product, price, place and promotion.
...
What is the marketing mix (4 P's of marketing)?
  • Product. The item or service being sold must satisfy a consumer's need or desire.
  • Price. ...
  • Promotion. ...
  • Place.

What are the 5 A's in sales? ›

Named by Dr. Philip Kotler, the five stages (Awareness, Appeal, Ask, Act and Advocacy) allow marketing and sales professionals to create a map of the customer's needs and priorities during the different parts of their purchase process.

How do you write an incremental analysis? ›

Follow these steps to help figure out what information you need to complete an incremental analysis and how to do so:
  1. Determine the relevant costs.
  2. Identify any opportunity costs.
  3. Add costs together.
  4. Compare the options.
  5. Make a decision.
May 21, 2020

Why incremental model is most effective approach? ›

Advantages of Incremental model:

Generates working software quickly and early during the software life cycle. This model is more flexible – less costly to change scope and requirements. It is easier to test and debug during a smaller iteration. In this model customer can respond to each built.

What is the most important use of the incremental model? ›

The main importance of the Incremental model is that it divides the software development into submodules and each submodule is developed by following the software development life cycle process SDLC like Analysis, Design, Code, and Test.

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