How we helped to generate £840k of incremental revenue for our client

Mollie Ellerton • 28 February 2025

Brand incrementality testing... are you on the fence? Or do you think you could be winning big?

Picture this:you've just switched your paid media activity over from one agency to another. There's just one day where you've got no media coverage as the switch happens. That's fine, right? Of course it is!

But imagine that it could get even better: you have an SEO team who are incredibly data driven (yes, I'm blowing our own Hookflash trumpet here!), and who keep a close eye on what is happening to your organic traffic. This team notice that on one particular day, organic traffic spiked by +100%, and that this was driven by branded search.

While this may sound like a dream, this was reality for one of our clients. When we flagged with our media agency partner and client that we had seen these dramatic uplifts in traffic, it was quickly realised that on the one day where paid activity was switched off, organic had picked up all of the traffic. Not only that, organic also had seen over +100% uplifts in revenue too; PPC was not incremental on overall site revenue for branded queries.

With these findings, and based off of just one day's worth of data, we were able to work closely with the paid media team to align on a proposal: to switch off brand activity altogether. The results? Organic traffic is up +100% YoY, and this budget can get re-invested into generics instead. This has the potential to drive a whopping +£840k of incremental annual revenue.

Will a brand incrementality test work for all websites?

No, it is not a given that a brand incrementality test will work for every type of website. We got lucky that this one-day switch off gave us the results we needed to propose such as test, but usually a lot more planning and preparation would go on behind the scenes.

Importantly: our client's sister website, which also had paid media switched off for one day, did not see the same results.

The methodology for planning a brand incrementality test would justify a separate blog in it's own right. At the core of it; you need A LOT OF DATA. Your client needs to trust that the test will generate the results that you are seeking, and they need to have a clear understanding of the risks. The rewards, though, could be HUGE.

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