The Truth About Incremental Conversions
Incrementality Isn’t ‘More Data’ - It’s The Only Data
Incremental conversions have been framed: as "more data," "better quality," and "premium insight." And this is really a shame, because that’s completely wrong.
As marketers, the value of marketing measurement, analytics, and attribution isn't to give you more datapoints on marketing's impact. Incremental conversions shouldn’t be considered a fancy addition or a special feature.
An incremental conversion implies your business had sales before you ran marketing.
Say you sold 10 pairs of shoes a day.
Your company starts marketing and advertising, and then at some point, you are selling 15 pairs of shoes a day.
The difference in how many sales you used to have versus the new number of sales you have today— that change in sales, that’s what ‘marketing conversions’ are supposed to be. Marketers call those ‘incremental conversions’, but what marketers call an ‘incremental conversion’ would just be called a conversion to anyone from outside the world of marketing.
When you start making ‘incremental conversions’ synonymous with ‘conversions’ at your company, your marketing and finance teams will start speaking the same language.
