Buying Software Is Confusing. So Is Marketing It.

Here's the thing about buying business software these days: there's more info than ever. Comparison sites, reviews, LinkedIn hot takes, analyst decks, and now AI that'll "research" anything for you in ten seconds flat. 

You’d think that would make buying easier.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it just creates more noise.

And here's the flip side -  AI is also making it easier to build software, launch products, and produce huge amounts of content about them. Buyers get more choice and more claims to wade through. Vendors get lost in a sea of everyone shouting the same stuff. 

Two different headaches. Same root problem.

Buyers are trying to work out who to trust.

Vendors are trying to work out how to be trusted.

More information doesn’t always mean more clarity

Buyers hold all of the cards now.

Before speaking to a salesperson, you can research a company, compare products, ask AI for alternatives, read reviews, and become reasonably well informed about the market.

That’s genuinely a good thing.

But recommendations - AI or otherwise - only get you so far.

At some point, particularly with more complex software, you need to talk to somebody. Ideally someone who has used the product, or someone who knows it well enough to have a proper conversation about what it can and cannot do.

And sometimes the most reassuring thing a salesperson can say is:

“Having talked it through, we’re probably not the right fit for you.”

Trust isn’t built by pretending your product does everything.

It comes from being just as comfortable explaining what it can’t do as what it can.

There’s a third answer too: what it could do.

Products evolve. Customer requirements change. Sometimes the honest answer isn’t “yes” or “no”. It’s “not yet, but let's talk about building it .”

That’s a far better conversation than turning every question into a sales pitch.

Marketing didn’t invent the problem

Nobody wakes up excited about business software. But if it does its job properly, it might stop you waking up in a cold sweat.

Most people start looking because something is already broken.

 A process is too slow. Info's buried somewhere. Systems don't talk to each other. Someone's stuck manually wrangling spreadsheets at 11pm. 

Marketing’s job isn’t to invent a problem you didn’t know you had.

It’s to understand the problems that already exist and make it clear where we might genuinely be able to help.

 Marketing's job isn't to invent a problem you didn't know you had. It's to spot the real one and show where we might actually help. Then sales takes over - show it, understand what's actually needed, and be honest about where it fits and where it doesn't. 

But there’s another part of this that’s easy to forget.

The customer isn’t really the end of the story.

They have customers of their own.  Employees, suppliers, managers - all relying on stuff working properly behind the scenes. 

So a software decision can ripple much further than the person actually buying it.

It might save an employee from doing the same manual task every week. Help a manager find an answer without chasing three people. Reduce delays for a supplier. Make it easier for a company to respond quickly and reliably to its own customers.

That’s where the value starts to spread.

The customer experience starts before anyone signs anything

We often talk about “customer experience” as though it starts after the contract is signed.

It doesn’t.

• People treat "customer experience" like it kicks off after the contract's signed. But… It starts with the first search.
• If someone has to decode vague marketing waffle to figure out what we even do - we've already made their life harder.
• If marketing oversells and reality doesn't match - we've made the sales call harder, and probably planted a problem for later.
• If you force a fit that isn't there - we've made the decision harder for the customer

 Basically: how a company treats you before you're a customer tells you exactly how they'll treat you after. 

Marketing needs to hear the boring conversations too

Marketing teams don't talk to customers daily. We get the shiny stuff — the success story, the good review, the product launch.

But the real gold is in the everyday chats between customers and account managers. What are people confused about? What do they quietly love that nobody ever mentions? What did they expect that didn't match up?

Which is why unglamorous stuff like updating the CRM matters so much. If good conversations just live in someone's inbox or memory, the whole company loses the plot on what customers really need.

Shouting louder isn’t the move

Uncomfortable truth: a lot of software does the same stuff. And a lot of software companies describe it the exact same way.

Everyone's "transforming," "streamlining," "unlocking insights," "empowering teams."

Add AI content tools into the mix, and the temptation is just to churn out more of it.

More posts. More noise. Zero extra clarity.

Getting noticed isn't about volume. It's about actually knowing your audience and saying something that matters to them. Being confident enough not to oversell. Being upfront about what you're not good at. And just... showing up with the right answer when someone needs it.

None of this is easy. But maybe that's where buyers and vendors want the same thing:

Be useful. Be clear. Be open. Be honest.

Don't be another voice yelling into the void. 

The goal isn’t to convince everybody.

It’s to help the right people make a confident decision - and then help them make life easier for everybody relying on them.

Let's talk through your current setup

Jenny Duffy
Marketing Director