#1 - Why geo-lift incrementality testing is central to Brumate's customer acquisition strategy

Welcome back to Don’t V*LOOKUP ☄️ , where we explore how top commerce operators and practitioners leverage data to make critical business decisions.

In the latest episode of Don’t V*LOOKUP, we dive into the world of performance marketing with Hans Harris, the Director of Growth at Brumate.

We have to say, this has been one of the most insightful interviews yet as Hans weaves in marketing, psychology, tactful experiment design and measurement and even where the “i” word that must not named plays a role (okay, intuition) in data-driven decision making.

Yet the main topic that is the talk of brands in the Meta Disruptors program is incrementality testing, also known as the “gold standard” of measurement in the post-ATT privacy world.

🎯 The TL;DR on what you’ll learn in this post 🎯 

1. How the avoidance of survivorship bias has influenced Hans’ approach to testing

2. Why geo-lift incrementality testing is key to Brumate’s omni-channel marketing strategy

3. Hans’ Northstar KPI and go to tools to lower the barriers to data-driven decision making

*for more from Hans, tune into our full-length interview above

» how his background making and selling skis kickstarted his eComm journey
» his first marketing stint at a media agency where he honed his “intuition”
» how survivorship bias (for the psychology buffs out there) can play an adverse role in decision making
» how Brumate has leaned into creative targeting to attract different customer types
» why “keep it simple stupid” is the panacea for becoming data-driven

 💭 Behind Brumate’s current approach to marketing 💭 

Hans joined Brumate, which is known for its innovative insulated tumblers, drinkware, and coolers, just over a year ago and has already instilled many of the data-oriented learnings from his previous brand and agency experiences.

Most important is challenging the team to avoid making decisions solely based on observed data, also termed as survivorship bias. 

"We are making decisions on the observed, but its what we are not observing that will have us make a very different decision."

This is where testing, and specifically geo-lift incrementality experiments, has come into the forefront.

🗺️ The importance of geo-lift testing for understanding incremental ad effectiveness 🗺️ 

There comes a time in every scaling DTC brand’s lifecycle where Meta’s reach has been exhausted.

With Brumate’s 70/30 DTC to Wholesale/Amazon split, they have now turned its attention to omnichannel efforts.

And, believe it or not, Meta continues to be the key for unlocking offline scale.

Hans has found that Meta’s open-source GeoLift tool has been an effective method at measuring the impact of reach and frequency campaigns that drive online and offline sales.

Let’s dive into how this works.

First off, what is incrementality?

Incrementality is a testing method that involves measuring the results of a series of experiments that involve control and test groups that have similar characteristics (e.g. live in a similar zip code), yet receive a different treatment (e.g. marketing campaign).

How does Meta fit in?

Meta offers a free to use tool that allows brands to run marketing scenarios across different DMAs (Designated Marketing Areas), that:

• Automatically assigns synthetic (treatment) groups by DMA based on a pre-selected set of control groups by the brand

• Allows brands to optimize for different campaign objectives, ranging from upper funnel reach/frequency campaigns to bottom of funnel conversion campaigns

• Allows brands to upload sales figures across online (DTC) and offline (Amazon, Wholesale, Retail) channels to understand omnichannel lift

What is measured and how long does this take?

Incrementality is all about “lift” relative to a baseline, which in this case is the difference in the results for the synthetic vs. control groups.

For a recently concluded geo-lift test by Hans, they tested a hypothesis of whether just using reach/frequency campaigns can drive omnichannel sales (e.g. does brand advertising work to drive sales).

Brumate is already seeing a 1.5% conversion lift in just 1-week vs. control but, given how early this read is, Hans expects that result to compound and turn into a healthy incremental ROAS.

What else should I know about this geo-lift test?

For starters, patience is a virtue.

Hans expects these results to change over the next 30, 60, 90 days as purchase consideration cycles can play into the time from first ad exposure to eventual conversion (we’ve also set calendar reminders up to bother him for results).

And while there are also other “done for you” measurement tools out there, Hans prefers Meta’s tool not only for the price tag, but rather its flexibility as it does not require some rigid testing structure to run.

🔎 Main takeaway 🔎 

For brands looking to understand their omnichannel impact from marketing activities in a non-intrusive way, geo-lift incrementality testing is worth a look.

We also learned from early results of Hans’s specific incrementality test that top of funnel brand campaigns can have a significant impact across online and offline sales.

⭐️ North star metric & key data tools ⭐️ 

North Star Metric:

• MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)

  • Calculated as Total Revenue / Paid Spend over the same period.

MER is seen as an essential metric for keeping their cash position balanced and is tracked on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis (with a bias towards a monthly target).

Note, investments in brand marketing efforts can impact short-term MER with protracted purchase consideration cycles which is why keeping on eye on how this metric evolves is important.

Key Data Tools:

• GeoLift - Meta’s open-sourced geo-lift incrementality tool

  **note, this requires some technical know-how and Hans’ credits his partnership with his sharp Director of Analytics (Andrew Jones)

• KnoCommerce for collecting survey responses on purchase consideration cycles

» for more on testing strategies and incrementality, tune into our session with Ben Dutter from Power Digital and don’t forget to check out our Youtube channel.