Ever wonder if your latest marketing campaign actually moved the needle—or just made noise?
That’s where incremental sales come in.
In a world where every dollar of marketing spend counts, understanding what incremental sales are helps you separate the sales you would’ve made anyway from the additional revenue your marketing efforts actually brought in.
This guide breaks down what incremental sales really mean, how to calculate them, and the strategies that help turn your campaigns into real, measurable wins.
Let’s break down the numbers behind your sales performance—and learn how to drive incremental sales smarter and faster.
What is incremental sales?
Incremental sales refer to the additional sales generated as a direct result of a specific marketing effort, advertising campaign, or promotional activity.
It essentially isolates the “extra sales” you earned from marketing versus what you would have sold anyway without any campaign.
Moreover, it can be defined as the difference between actual sales and baseline sales, where baseline sales represent what your business would have achieved without the marketing activity.
In simpler terms, if you’re wondering “what does incremental sales mean?” — it means the added value your marketing strategy brings to your total sales figures.
Why do you need to measure incremental sales?
Measuring incremental sales is essential to assess whether your marketing campaigns are truly delivering results. It allows sales professionals and marketing teams to:
- Assess marketing effectiveness: It helps determine the impact of marketing campaigns on sales revenue, providing insights into which strategies are most effective.
- Optimize marketing spend: By understanding the return on investment (ROI) of different marketing activities, businesses can allocate their marketing budgets more efficiently.
- Enhance sales strategies: Insights from incremental sales data enable sales teams to refine their approaches, focusing on tactics that drive additional revenue.
- Understand customer behavior: Analyzing incremental sales aids in gaining deeper customer insights, allowing for more targeted and personalized marketing efforts.
- Monitor business growth: Tracking incremental sales contributes to understanding overall sales growth and identifying areas for improvement.
By analyzing incremental sales figures, you can accurately understand which marketing channels and promotional efforts are driving paying customers.
How to calculate incremental sales?
The incremental sales formula highlights the growth in sales due to promotional activities during a set timeframe.
Let's learn how to calculate incremental sales to evaluate the success of marketing campaigns.
Incremental sales formula:
Incremental Sales = Total Sales – Baseline Sales
- Actual sales: The total sales achieved during or after a marketing campaign.
- Baseline sales: The estimated sales that would have occurred without the campaign (based on historical data or predictive analytics).
Incremental sales example
To better understand how incremental sales work, let’s look at a few real-world examples.
These examples will help illustrate how specific marketing campaigns directly contribute to additional revenue generated.
Example 1
Imagine a clothing retailer runs a limited-time offer where customers receive a 15% discount on all jackets. During the campaign, actual sales reach $50,000. Without the promotion, their baseline sales are typically $40,000.
Using the incremental sales formula:
Incremental sales = $50,000 - $40,000 = $10,000
This means the campaign generated $10,000 in additional revenue, helping the retailer understand the impact of the marketing effort on sales outcomes.
Example 2
A software company offers a free trial for one month to attract more users. After the campaign, they see actual sales of $120,000. Their baseline sales, without any promotional activity, would have been $100,000.
Using the incremental sales formula:
Incremental sales = $120,000 - $100,000 = $20,000
The campaign drove $20,000 in incremental revenue, showing how the marketing strategy boosted sales volume and customer acquisition.
Best practices for improving incremental sales
You can't improve what you don't measure. If you want to make the most of your incremental sales metric, tracking it properly is essential.
Here are the best practices to accurately measure incremental sales across your organization:
1. Define a reliable baseline
A clear baseline sales estimate is critical. Use historical data, industry benchmarks, or data from a control group to establish what your sales figures would have looked like without a campaign.
This is the foundation for any incremental sales calculation.
2. Use a CRM with real-time dashboards
A robust CRM like Salesmate can help track incremental sales KPI in real time.
With built-in analytics, you can track your sales performance, view campaign-specific data, and even use an incremental sales calculator to visualize your gains instantly.
3. Track multiple KPIs
Don’t just rely on one number. In addition to incremental sales, monitor conversion rates, click-through rates, lead-to-customer ratio, and average annual sales growth.
These key performance indicators give you a complete picture of your marketing effectiveness.
4. Segment by marketing channel
Break down your data by marketing channels—email, SEO, social media, paid ads, etc.
This helps identify which channels are driving the most additional revenue generated, so you can double down on what works and refine what doesn’t.
5. Run controlled experiments
To isolate the true impact of a specific marketing campaign, set up A/B tests or split campaigns.
This helps you clearly see which efforts are responsible for increases in sales volumes and which are simply coincidental.
6. Account for sales volume variance
External factors like seasonality, marketing & sales trends, or competitor actions can impact sales volume variance.
Always factor these in when analyzing campaign results so your incremental sales figures stay accurate and actionable.
Track your incremental sales with ease!
Download the free sales tracking template from Salesmate and start organizing your sales efforts to measure growth and drive additional revenue.
Tips for increasing incremental sales
Incremental sales aren't just a number—they reflect the true impact of your marketing efforts on sales outcomes.
If you want to keep your incremental sales figures moving upward, here are actionable tips to help you drive additional revenue generated from your campaigns:
1. Use personalized marketing to attract new customers
Tailor your promotional campaigns to specific segments of your target audience.
Personalized content builds stronger customer relationships, increases engagement, and brings in new customers, which directly contributes to sales growth.
2. Encourage repeat purchases with loyalty programs
Customer loyalty is a powerful driver of incremental revenue. Offer points, perks, or early access to keep existing customers engaged.
Loyal customers are more likely to respond to promotional efforts, contributing to consistent sales volume variance in your favor.
Must read: 5 Best customer loyalty program ideas for SaaS businesses to drive sales
3. Optimize your sales funnel
Streamline every stage of the sales process—from lead capture to closing.
Remove friction points and ensure your sales team follows up effectively to convert leads into paying customers, increasing the chance of extra sales beyond your baseline sales.
4. Leverage product bundling, upselling, and cross-selling
Sell more to those already buying. Suggest relevant add-ons or upgrades during checkout.
These strategies increase average order value and can significantly improve incremental sales totals.
5. Align marketing and sales strategy
Ensure your sales and marketing teams are aligned on goals, messaging, and campaign timing. When both departments work in sync, you improve your sales outcomes and drive more incremental sales from every campaign.
Insightful read: 9 Sales strategies revealed by top entrepreneurs and sales experts
Incremental sales challenges
Tracking incremental sales can be tricky without the right setup. Here are a few common challenges:
- Messy or inconsistent data makes it hard to get accurate numbers across tools and teams.
- Overlapping campaigns can blur attribution, making it unclear which effort drove the additional revenue generated.
- Delayed customer actions mean sales might not happen immediately, making real-time tracking difficult.
- Shifting customer behavior and unexpected marketing trends can skew your baseline.
- Static baseline assumptions often ignore seasonality or product changes, leading to flawed incremental sales calculations.
- Limited visibility into the customer journey makes it harder to tie actions back to results.
Factors affecting sales volume variance that you’ll need to take into account
Several factors can influence sales volume variance, impacting incremental sales calculations:
- Seasonality or trends in customer behavior
- Shifts in marketing investment
- Changes in sales team performance
- External factors like economic conditions or competitor activity
- Differences in baseline sales assumptions
All these impact the sales volume variance, so be sure to account for them when measuring your incremental sales total.
How to monitor incremental sales in real-time?
To accurately measure incremental sales on the go, adopt the following tools and practices:
Maximize your campaign results!
Salesmate CRM makes it easy to track key metrics and refine your sales strategy with data-backed insights.
Conclusion
Overall, incremental sales is a crucial metric for any business’s growth. Keeping track of the metric will help your business increase revenue as you can constantly optimize your sales efforts and gain a competitive edge in the market.
And strategies like upselling, cross-selling, product bundling, and many more, help ensure that the incremental sales figures keep growing.
By implementing the incremental sales best practices and measuring their effectiveness, businesses can stay ahead of the competition and continue to grow and thrive.
Frequently asked questions
1. What do you mean by incremental sales?
Incremental sales are the additional revenue generated from specific marketing efforts, beyond your baseline sales. It helps assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by comparing total sales with and without the campaign.
2. What does incremental mean in business?
In business, incremental refers to gradual improvements or increases. Incremental sales measure the additional revenue driven by marketing efforts, helping businesses evaluate the success of their initial marketing investment and adjust sales strategies.
3. How to calculate sales increment?
To calculate sales increment, subtract your baseline sales from your total sales after a marketing campaign:
- Incremental sales = Total sales - Baseline sales
4. How to track incremental sales?
Track incremental sales by comparing total sales to baseline sales before and after a campaign. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) and CRM tools to measure growth and evaluate the impact of your marketing strategies.
5. How to drive incremental sales?
To drive incremental sales, focus on targeting the right audience, optimize upselling and cross-selling, and align your sales managers with marketing. Track KPIs, and ensure marketing efforts generate additional revenue and contribute to sales growth.
Key takeaways
Ever wonder if your latest marketing campaign actually moved the needle—or just made noise?
That’s where incremental sales come in.
In a world where every dollar of marketing spend counts, understanding what incremental sales are helps you separate the sales you would’ve made anyway from the additional revenue your marketing efforts actually brought in.
This guide breaks down what incremental sales really mean, how to calculate them, and the strategies that help turn your campaigns into real, measurable wins.
Let’s break down the numbers behind your sales performance—and learn how to drive incremental sales smarter and faster.
What is incremental sales?
Incremental sales refer to the additional sales generated as a direct result of a specific marketing effort, advertising campaign, or promotional activity.
It essentially isolates the “extra sales” you earned from marketing versus what you would have sold anyway without any campaign.
Moreover, it can be defined as the difference between actual sales and baseline sales, where baseline sales represent what your business would have achieved without the marketing activity.
In simpler terms, if you’re wondering “what does incremental sales mean?” — it means the added value your marketing strategy brings to your total sales figures.
Why do you need to measure incremental sales?
Measuring incremental sales is essential to assess whether your marketing campaigns are truly delivering results. It allows sales professionals and marketing teams to:
By analyzing incremental sales figures, you can accurately understand which marketing channels and promotional efforts are driving paying customers.
How to calculate incremental sales?
The incremental sales formula highlights the growth in sales due to promotional activities during a set timeframe.
Let's learn how to calculate incremental sales to evaluate the success of marketing campaigns.
Incremental sales formula:
Incremental Sales = Total Sales – Baseline Sales
Incremental sales example
To better understand how incremental sales work, let’s look at a few real-world examples.
These examples will help illustrate how specific marketing campaigns directly contribute to additional revenue generated.
Example 1
Imagine a clothing retailer runs a limited-time offer where customers receive a 15% discount on all jackets. During the campaign, actual sales reach $50,000. Without the promotion, their baseline sales are typically $40,000.
Using the incremental sales formula:
Incremental sales = $50,000 - $40,000 = $10,000
This means the campaign generated $10,000 in additional revenue, helping the retailer understand the impact of the marketing effort on sales outcomes.
Example 2
A software company offers a free trial for one month to attract more users. After the campaign, they see actual sales of $120,000. Their baseline sales, without any promotional activity, would have been $100,000.
Using the incremental sales formula:
Incremental sales = $120,000 - $100,000 = $20,000
The campaign drove $20,000 in incremental revenue, showing how the marketing strategy boosted sales volume and customer acquisition.
Best practices for improving incremental sales
You can't improve what you don't measure. If you want to make the most of your incremental sales metric, tracking it properly is essential.
Here are the best practices to accurately measure incremental sales across your organization:
1. Define a reliable baseline
A clear baseline sales estimate is critical. Use historical data, industry benchmarks, or data from a control group to establish what your sales figures would have looked like without a campaign.
This is the foundation for any incremental sales calculation.
2. Use a CRM with real-time dashboards
A robust CRM like Salesmate can help track incremental sales KPI in real time.
With built-in analytics, you can track your sales performance, view campaign-specific data, and even use an incremental sales calculator to visualize your gains instantly.
3. Track multiple KPIs
Don’t just rely on one number. In addition to incremental sales, monitor conversion rates, click-through rates, lead-to-customer ratio, and average annual sales growth.
These key performance indicators give you a complete picture of your marketing effectiveness.
4. Segment by marketing channel
Break down your data by marketing channels—email, SEO, social media, paid ads, etc.
This helps identify which channels are driving the most additional revenue generated, so you can double down on what works and refine what doesn’t.
5. Run controlled experiments
To isolate the true impact of a specific marketing campaign, set up A/B tests or split campaigns.
This helps you clearly see which efforts are responsible for increases in sales volumes and which are simply coincidental.
6. Account for sales volume variance
External factors like seasonality, marketing & sales trends, or competitor actions can impact sales volume variance.
Always factor these in when analyzing campaign results so your incremental sales figures stay accurate and actionable.
Track your incremental sales with ease!
Download the free sales tracking template from Salesmate and start organizing your sales efforts to measure growth and drive additional revenue.
Tips for increasing incremental sales
Incremental sales aren't just a number—they reflect the true impact of your marketing efforts on sales outcomes.
If you want to keep your incremental sales figures moving upward, here are actionable tips to help you drive additional revenue generated from your campaigns:
1. Use personalized marketing to attract new customers
Tailor your promotional campaigns to specific segments of your target audience.
Personalized content builds stronger customer relationships, increases engagement, and brings in new customers, which directly contributes to sales growth.
2. Encourage repeat purchases with loyalty programs
Customer loyalty is a powerful driver of incremental revenue. Offer points, perks, or early access to keep existing customers engaged.
Loyal customers are more likely to respond to promotional efforts, contributing to consistent sales volume variance in your favor.
3. Optimize your sales funnel
Streamline every stage of the sales process—from lead capture to closing.
Remove friction points and ensure your sales team follows up effectively to convert leads into paying customers, increasing the chance of extra sales beyond your baseline sales.
4. Leverage product bundling, upselling, and cross-selling
Sell more to those already buying. Suggest relevant add-ons or upgrades during checkout.
These strategies increase average order value and can significantly improve incremental sales totals.
5. Align marketing and sales strategy
Ensure your sales and marketing teams are aligned on goals, messaging, and campaign timing. When both departments work in sync, you improve your sales outcomes and drive more incremental sales from every campaign.
Incremental sales challenges
Tracking incremental sales can be tricky without the right setup. Here are a few common challenges:
Factors affecting sales volume variance that you’ll need to take into account
Several factors can influence sales volume variance, impacting incremental sales calculations:
All these impact the sales volume variance, so be sure to account for them when measuring your incremental sales total.
How to monitor incremental sales in real-time?
To accurately measure incremental sales on the go, adopt the following tools and practices:
Maximize your campaign results!
Salesmate CRM makes it easy to track key metrics and refine your sales strategy with data-backed insights.
Conclusion
Overall, incremental sales is a crucial metric for any business’s growth. Keeping track of the metric will help your business increase revenue as you can constantly optimize your sales efforts and gain a competitive edge in the market.
And strategies like upselling, cross-selling, product bundling, and many more, help ensure that the incremental sales figures keep growing.
By implementing the incremental sales best practices and measuring their effectiveness, businesses can stay ahead of the competition and continue to grow and thrive.
Frequently asked questions
1. What do you mean by incremental sales?
Incremental sales are the additional revenue generated from specific marketing efforts, beyond your baseline sales. It helps assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by comparing total sales with and without the campaign.
2. What does incremental mean in business?
In business, incremental refers to gradual improvements or increases. Incremental sales measure the additional revenue driven by marketing efforts, helping businesses evaluate the success of their initial marketing investment and adjust sales strategies.
3. How to calculate sales increment?
To calculate sales increment, subtract your baseline sales from your total sales after a marketing campaign:
4. How to track incremental sales?
Track incremental sales by comparing total sales to baseline sales before and after a campaign. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) and CRM tools to measure growth and evaluate the impact of your marketing strategies.
5. How to drive incremental sales?
To drive incremental sales, focus on targeting the right audience, optimize upselling and cross-selling, and align your sales managers with marketing. Track KPIs, and ensure marketing efforts generate additional revenue and contribute to sales growth.
Hinal Tanna
Seo ExecutiveHinal Tanna is a SEO strategist and content marketer, currently working with the marketing team of Salesmate. She has a knack for curating content that follows SEO practices and helps businesses create an impactful brand presence. When she's not working, Hinal likes to spend her time exploring new places.