You may or may not have heard about the chip shortage. Memory chips are being scooped up and used by the AI boom to build data centers. This has created a shortage for consumer products that use memory.

Apple just raised its prices because the shortage has created a price spike. It was not a profit grab. Microsoft, Dell, HP, and Lenovo have all followed suit.

The Internet of Things is next, with TVs, smart home products, cell phones, gaming consoles, and even home appliances and autos.

Why that matters is that AI requires your devices to have more RAM to process the new wave of AI apps and processes.

So the cost of the things we rely on every day will be higher, while our equipment will need replacing more often because older devices will not be able to handle the onslaught of data processing.

Needless to say, most technology needs replacing every 3-5 years, but this may cut that time in half.

While advances in AI are moving quickly, the ROI of using AI tools is slowing down and is also about to get more costly.

The Small Business Conundrum

While bigger businesses adjust more easily, the average small business is finding that affordability is starting to hit home. The pressure to find cost savings via AI is diametrically opposed to the rise in cost of doing business.

Cell phone service costs are rising, the cost of cell phones is rising, and the cost of apps and tools is rising. I mentioned that QuickBooks is now over $100 per month with no added ROI for my business with the increased cost. They try to put perfume on that pig by claiming it has added features, but none of them save me time or make me more money. Just more reporting of how hard it is becoming to afford to make my business more profitable.

At the same time, as a marketing agency, we are being asked to show ROI on the marketing dollars our customers spend. Often that requires more advanced analytics tools that can be way out of reach for smaller businesses.

Social media is especially hard to show ROI since many reserve analytics for paid advertising, while diminishing algorithmic exposure for business posts and free content. Even harder is the fact that platforms (Instagram and TikTok) don't allow URL linking in posts. Both allow you to post a link in your profile, but not on individual posts.

So how can you show ROI when the analytics just show views, but not clicks?

Your ROI Has an ROI

ROI (return on investment) is getting harder to prove, but the theory is still a simple business formula for marketing. If you spend 1 dollar on marketing, your break-even is 3-to-1. You need to make $1 for the cost of the marketing activity, $1 for your time, and $1 in profit.

Business growth requires at least a 5-to-1 or 10-to-1 ratio. That is where more money can be funneled into more advanced techniques and analytics.

There may be another ROI that may make your client's (or your own) ROI more repeatable, valuable, and unique.

This ROI is known as Required Outcome Intent.

In standard marketing and finance, ROI is strictly “return on investment” and refers to the profit generated relative to what you spent. Outcome‑based and customer‑centric marketing thinking pushes you to start with the required outcome (what the marketing is trying to achieve) and the value of that outcome, then back to the financial return.

Traditional ROI requires a sale, whereas Required Outcome Intent uses a different and more easily measurable path or result.

Changing the Target

Trying to measure outcomes by sales alone, especially in B2b business, is hard. The common way is to create sales funnels. The problem with sales funnels is they generally require the prospect or customer to identify who has entered the funnel.

I prefer to look at intent outcomes. For example, the most valuable one is to have a person fill out a contact form or a download form for an asset. That has a pretty measurable outcome, but they can come from multiple intents.

You create an article and post it on your website. Then that article is posted to social media. Maybe you use it in a LinkedIn ad. Then you can email a link to that article to your list. When someone comes to your website and fills out a form, you have no real way to know if those original posts or emails were the driving factor for that outcome, or if it was a cumulative effect of that or a past article.

So the outcome of completing the form could come from any or all of those activities, which all had the same intention. OR, maybe instead of completing the form, they call the company, connect with a salesperson online, follow your newsletter, subscribe to your email, and any of many other desired outcomes.

Measure the Intents

Clicks, likes & comments on social media are nice to measure, but they don't have a direct correlation to closing sales. The same goes for email opens and clicks. Those are all intents. Outcomes can be classified as interactions.

The most basic one is direct visits to your website. Often, links from social and emails show up in that category in Google Analytics. The outcome is increased or decreased interactions based on the topics included in your content.

Interactions with salespeople should be logged. This includes phone calls, emails, texts, and social messages. Ideally, your salespeople will enter those into a CRM or spreadsheet, measured at least weekly. The outcome is human-to-human contact.

Contact and download forms can be exported into a spreadsheet containing current, past, and prospective customers. That way, you may be able to correlate that contact to your Google Analytics and salespeople's interactions. This outcome should be integrated into your CRM and relayed to the salesperson if the customer is one of theirs.

Closing Thought

Ideally, all of this can be automated, but in reality it's only useful when someone acts on the outcomes to close a sale.

AI promises automation, but often it takes longer to program than to manually “Just Do It.” It can also miss subtle clues that can correlate a specific post or email to a customer's or prospect's action. The hard part is doing this consistently and getting buy-in from a fast-moving, time-crunched, and task-stressed team.

As AI slowly eats away at our profits and creeps into our businesses with promises of windfalls and cost savings, right now it's like my QuickBooks, offering no real-time cost savings, just features. And your business and people may not fit into the square-peg system they offer.

The old saying goes, “What gets measured gets done.” What I am proposing to you is that “What gets logged gets measured.”

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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.