Incrementality

Incrementality is the purest way to think about a marketing or sales channel’s contribution to a lead, opportunity, or sale. It can be thought of the difference between what would happen without marketing in play—the base or counterfactual—and what would happen with marketing in play. Incremental attribution should be the goal of MMM and MTA solutions. The most common error made by marketers is overestimating the incrementality of marketing, leading to overinvestment in lower-funnel channels like affiliate and branded paid search.