How to Track Impact for Sustainable Business Growth – InstantFollowerz

Return on advertising investment (ROAS) has become the default metric for many marketing teams. It’s clean, accurate and makes CFOs happy. Spend $X, get $Y back. Simple… right?

Not really. Here’s the problem: the more precise the marketing metric, the easier it is to manipulate. Want 2x ROAS? You can get it. Want 20x ROAS? And that is possible. Just flip a few levers — increase retargeting, get more discounts, reduce spend — and watch your ROAS numbers increase.

The real problem is that ROAS only measures how effective you are at meeting existing demand – they do not create new demand. It’s like fishing in an ever-shrinking pond and celebrating that you’re getting better at catching the remaining fish.

In a recent Marketing Against the Grain episodesKieran and I discussed a solution. Don’t abandon ROAS entirely, but expand your strategy with other metrics. There it is bucket model comes in: a framework for balancing short-term returns and long-term growth by breaking down your ad strategy into three main categories.

Content

Download now: Advertising Planning Kit

The Buckets Model: A Balanced Approach to Advertising

To get a clear view of your the impact of online advertisingyou have to diversify beyond a single metric. The bucket model provides a simple, efficient way to organize your ad investment into three main categories: direct ROAS, incrementality, and brand awareness. Each bucket has a specific role to play in collecting returns and building future demand, creating a more sustainable growth model.

Bucket 1. Direct ROAS (demand extraction)

Your first bucket is your money machine. This is where you capture existing demand, with the goal of getting a direct return on every advertising dollar spent. For example, if you see a 3 to 1 return on advertising spend, then for every dollar you invest, you get back three dollars in sales.

The goal here is to maximize returns on measurable actions, like clicks and conversions, by targeting an audience that is already aware and interested in your brand. You should almost always saturate this bucket first because you can track profits and efficiency directly.

Bucket 2. Indirect ROAS (Extraction Demand & Demand Creation)

The second bucket focuses on incrementality — a measure of new demand generated by your ads. Incremental models track how your marketing reaches new audiences that might not otherwise engage with your brand.

Unlike ROAS, which captures existing demand, incrementality shows you the “extra” value your campaigns generate over time, especially in channels like video or display ads where conversions aren’t immediate.

Expert guy: Your incremental bucket should help your first bucket grow over time. As you create new demand, you expand the pool of customers that your direct response advertising can effectively capture.

Measuring incrementality with upconversion studies

One of the best ways to measure incrementality is with conversion lift studies. Here’s how it works.

Divide your audience by region (eg US states), launch your campaign in certain areas and keep it dark in others. Then track the difference in performance. If conversions increase in regions with active advertising, that difference is your incremental lift—the extra growth that wouldn’t have happened without ad spend.

Warning: The downside of incremental models is that they need regular updates. Plan to repeat your lifting studies every three to six months (or up to nine months) to maintain accuracy. This may mean a temporary blackout in some areas, but it ensures you stay on top of how your ads are generating new demand.

Bucket 3. Brand ROAS (Demand Creation)

The third segment focuses exclusively on creating demand through brand building. Think of this as your own engagement bucketwhere you are not held accountable for ROAS metrics.

Instead, you invest in tactics that build familiarity and trust over time—billboards, podcasts, and other outreach activities that help you expand your total addressable market. In this segment, success is often measured by reach or impressions rather than conversions.

Checklist: How to use bins together

The key to using the spoon model effectively is to fill each bucket in turn. Here’s your step-by-step path.

1. Start by saturating your direct ROAS segment. Run quick tests — spend a large amount on the platform to identify the maximum budget you can effectively spend. This tells you exactly how much of the existing demand you can profitably capture.

2. Watch for signs that your direct ROAS bucket is full. When your ROAS approaches 1:1 (spend a dollar to earn a dollar), that’s your signal to expand beyond demand capture.

3. Start incremental testing. Set up conversion studies in certain regions while keeping others “dark”. This creates your baseline for measuring indirect impact.

4. Calculate and track your indirect ROAS ratio from these studies. This ratio shows how many additional conversions you get indirectly. Update these measurements every three to six months to keep them accurate.

6. Layer in spending on brand awareness. Focus on broad-reach channels like billboards and podcasts, knowing that these investments will eventually return to your other segments.
7. Continue cycling through all three bins. Adjust your spending as markets evolve. And remember: As your brand awareness grows, you create more opportunities for incrementality, which generates more customers for your direct ROAS acquisition efforts.
   

Conclusion for choosing sustainable advertising metrics

The path to sustainable growth isn’t about choosing between measurable and non-measurable marketing—it’s about building a framework that embraces both. By following this roadmap and filling your buckets in sequence, you will create a balanced strategy. This allows you to capture today’s demand and create new opportunities for tomorrow.

To learn more about advertising tactics and metrics, see full episodes of Marketing Against the Grain below:

This blog series is in partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, a video podcast. He digs deeper into the insights shared by marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they uncover growth strategies and learn from notable founders and peers.