How to Measure Incremental Sales

As marketers, we’re always on the hunt for new ways to measure our efforts. While we love a good UTM or Meta Pixel, these tactics don’t always show the whole picture and can be complicated to install and analyze. Sometimes we just need to know if a marketing tactic is working by answering the simplest possible question: Are we making money, or losing it? 

Calculating incremental sales is a straightforward way to figure out if your performance marketing is actually driving results or just making noise. Instead of focusing solely on clicks or impressions, it digs into the full value of marketing—the sales that happened because of your campaign, not just during it. 
 

What are incremental sales? 

Incremental sales measure the lift in sales directly attributed to your marketing efforts. It’s a simple method to determine if the juice is worth the squeeze. The formula is simple: 



Your baseline sales are what you’d expect to earn without running a campaign, based on historical trends or predictive modeling. Subtract that from your total sales, and you're left with the sales driven directly by your campaign. In other words, how much more did you sell because of your marketing, compared to what you would’ve sold anyway? This is your incremental lift—and what it tells you is pretty straightforward: 

• A positive number = your campaign is working. 

• A negative number = time to reassess and optimize. 

When it comes to performance marketing, this metric is one of the clearest indicators of whether your investment is delivering meaningful results. It’s a valuable KPI because it gives you a direct, quantifiable way to tie your efforts to business outcomes. Instead of guessing or relying solely on vanity metrics (hello, impressions), you’re measuring actual impact. And that kind of clarity makes it easier to justify spend, adjust strategy and prove ROI up the chain. 
 

Determining your business’s baseline sales   

Before we can measure incremental value of marketing, we need to establish a reliable benchmark for comparison. To calculate your baseline sales, look at the last 3-5 years of historical revenue trends and identify your average annual revenue growth. Be mindful of anomalies like seasonality or new product launches.   

This estimate works best if your past growth wasn’t influenced by paid marketing. If you have been running ads, you’ll need to make some educated adjustments to strip out ad-driven revenue and get a clearer picture of your true baseline. 
 

Incremental sales in action 

Let’s imagine that the International Pogo Stick Museum (it’s real in our hearts) is conducting their annual sales review. They make most of their revenue from ticket sales, with an extra boost from gift shop snacks and souvenirs. 

Last year, the museum launched a Facebook video campaign to drive more visitors, spending $10,000 over the course of the year. The campaign brought in more traffic and more ticket sales on their site. But now they’re asking the right question: Did the campaign actually drive that growth, or would it have happened anyway? 

That’s where incremental sales provides clarity. 
 

How to calculate incremental sales for a campaign 

The International Pogo Stick Museum’s annual growth averaged around $50,000 without spending a dime on ads. Here’s a quick snapshot of how that looked over four years: 



With several years of consistent growth in their rearview, the museum ran a $10,000 Facebook ad campaign and saw their revenue jump by $100,000. That sounds like a win, right? 

Well, let’s zoom out. Given their historic growth rate, it’s more reasonable to assume that $50K would’ve happened with or without the campaign. That means the incremental revenue—the true lift from their marketing—was closer to $50,000, which is the number that actually matters when evaluating ROI. 

This mindset also helps avoid false positives. If the museum had only grown by $50,000 that year, and ignored their baseline, they might’ve mistakenly celebrated a campaign that didn’t really move the needle. 

So let’s review: 
 

Incremental ($50,000) 

After isolating the baseline ($500K) from the total revenue ($550K), the museum can confidently attribute $50K in incremental sales to the Facebook ad. That’s a 5x return on their $10K spend—proof that the campaign made a measurable impact. Using this more nuanced KPI helps connect the dots between your marketing efforts and real business outcomes, even when platforms like Facebook Ads Manager can’t tell the full story. 

Why track incremental sales? 

Not everything worth measuring shows up in your analytics. We have plenty of tools (UTMs, pixels, attribution models) that track user behavior and show how someone moves from ad to purchase. And while they’re incredibly useful, they’re not bulletproof. 

Let’s say someone sees a Facebook video about the International Pogo Stick Museum, gets curious, but doesn’t click. A week later, they mention it to a friend who ends up buying tickets. That initial impression played a role—but good luck tracing it in your attribution report. 

Incremental sales helps fill in those blanks. It’s not here to replace UTMs or attribution models but rather, to work with them. 

More frequently asked questions 

What is a good incremental sales rate? 

There’s no universal benchmark, but if you’re seeing an uplift of 10–15% or more, you’re likely on the right track. The higher the percentage, the stronger the campaign’s impact. 
  

How do you test for incrementality? 

Using A/B testing or a control vs. exposed group analysis helps isolate whether a campaign truly caused a lift in sales. 
 

What’s the difference between attribution and incrementality? 

Attribution tracks the “who/where/what” of a conversion. Incrementality answers: “Would this sale have happened without the campaign?” 

How do I know if my sales are organic or incremental? 

Compare your current results to your expected baseline. Tools like holdout testing or media mix modeling can also help you calculate what portion of sales were thanks to your marketing. 

Tie Your Work to Real Results 

If you’re still relying on clicks and views alone, you could be giving credit where it’s not due. Incremental sales puts your marketing to the test—and that’s a good thing. When you measure lift instead of just activity, you can start investing with clarity and precision. 

It’s time to move beyond surface-level metrics. Let’s work together to find the real return behind your spend.