How to market ProcureTech solutions: A guide for founders and revenue leaders

Marketing procurement technology is fundamentally different from marketing other B2B software. Procurement leaders are sophisticated buyers who see through generic marketing tactics, and the competitive landscape demands more than simply having a great product. This guide shares what actually works when reaching procurement decision-makers.

Key takeaways

• Marketing beats product in the short term: A good-enough product with strong marketing will outsell a superior product with weak marketing every time
• Stop copying larger vendors: Your go-to-market motion must match your stage, resources, and specific positioning—not mimic competitors with ten times your budget
• Ditch traditional lead gen: Paid ads, cold outreach, and gated ebooks no longer deliver results because procurement buyers have learned to ignore them
• Position differently, not better: Every vendor claims to be better—show buyers how you're fundamentally different instead
• Invest in SEO and AI search: Search visibility delivers compounding returns and reaches buyers with genuine purchase intent
• Hire domain experts: Generic B2B marketers miss the nuances that determine success with procurement audiences

The uncomfortable truth about product versus marketing

Here's something most procuretech founders don't want to hear: the best product with poor marketing will always lose to a good-enough product with good marketing. This isn't cynicism. It's market reality.

Procurement leaders can only evaluate solutions they know exist. They can only shortlist vendors who appear in their research. They can only buy from companies that have built enough credibility to justify the procurement process required to bring on a new technology partner. Your engineering excellence means nothing if the right buyers never discover you.

This doesn't mean product quality is irrelevant. Poor products eventually fail regardless of marketing. But in the crowded procuretech landscape, where dozens of vendors claim similar capabilities, marketing determines which solutions get evaluated in the first place. The vendors who win are those who combine genuine product value with the marketing sophistication needed to reach their buyers.

Why you can't copy what the big ProcureTech vendors are doing

Every procuretech company has a different go-to-market motion. One of the most common mistakes founders make is trying to replicate what larger, more established vendors are doing. This approach almost always fails.

Large procurement suites can afford to sponsor major industry events, maintain analyst relationships across multiple categories, and run broad awareness campaigns. They have brand recognition built over decades and installed bases that generate referrals. When a startup tries to compete using the same playbook, they spread limited resources too thin and fail to make meaningful impact anywhere.

Your go-to-market strategy must reflect your specific situation: your funding stage, your target buyer persona, your competitive positioning, and the specific problem you solve better than anyone else. A seed-stage supplier risk platform requires a completely different approach than a Series C source-to-pay suite. A solution targeting mid-market manufacturing companies needs different channels than one focused on enterprise financial services.

The vendors who break through are those who find their unique angle and commit to it fully, rather than diluting their efforts across tactics borrowed from competitors with ten times their budget.

Procurement leaders are tired of being sold to

Procurement professionals spend their careers evaluating vendors and negotiating contracts. They've sat through countless sales presentations and read thousands of marketing messages. They can identify vendor spin from the first sentence. And frankly, they're exhausted by it.

The irony is that many procuretech companies market to procurement leaders the same way every other vendor does: feature lists, ROI calculators, case studies with suspiciously round numbers, and demo requests disguised as thought leadership. Procurement leaders see through all of it. They've used these same tactics on their own suppliers.

What actually resonates is demonstrating genuine understanding of the challenges procurement teams face. Not generic statements about "digital transformation" or "driving value," but specific acknowledgment of the obstacles that keep procurement leaders up at night: stakeholder adoption challenges, data quality issues, the political dynamics of changing established processes, the gap between what technology promises and what it actually delivers.

When your marketing shows that you truly understand procurement's reality, not the sanitized version from vendor case studies, you earn attention. When you acknowledge the messy complexity of their work instead of promising simple solutions to complicated problems, you build credibility that competitors can't match.

Traditional lead generation doesn't work anymore

The standard B2B marketing playbook has stopped delivering results for procuretech companies. Paid advertising, cold outreach, and gated content behind lead capture forms no longer generate the pipeline they once did. Understanding why reveals what you should do instead.

• Paid advertising faces two problems in procuretech. First, the target audience is relatively small and highly specific, making cost-per-click prohibitively expensive for keywords procurement leaders actually search. Second, procurement professionals are trained to be skeptical of advertising claims. They don't click on ads the way other buyers do. They research independently and trust peer recommendations over promotional content.
• Cold outreach has been destroyed by its own success. Procurement leaders receive dozens of vendor emails daily. Most never get opened. Those that do face immediate skepticism. The personalization tactics that worked five years ago now feel manipulative. SDR sequences that once generated meetings now generate unsubscribes and spam reports.
• Gated content has become a game everyone has learned to play. Procurement professionals know that downloading an ebook means entering a sales sequence. Many use fake contact information. Those who provide real details often have no genuine buying intent. They wanted the content, not the sales calls. The "leads" generated rarely convert because they were never real opportunities.

These tactics fail not because of poor execution but because procurement buyers have adapted to them. The solution isn't to execute the old playbook better. It's to recognize that differentiation now matters more than volume. When you can't outspend competitors on ads or outpace them on cold emails, you must out-position them instead.

Positioning is everything: Be different, not just better

In a market with dozens of spend management platforms, supplier risk solutions, and sourcing tools, claiming to be "better" is meaningless. Every vendor claims to be better. Procurement leaders have no way to evaluate these claims without extensive evaluation processes they don't have time for.

What cuts through is positioning that shows how you're different. Not better at the same thing, but fundamentally different in your approach, your focus, or your philosophy. Different is memorable. Different creates a mental category where you're the only option. Different gives procurement leaders a reason to include you in evaluations they've already populated with established vendors.

Strong positioning answers specific questions:

• Who specifically is this solution for, and who is it not for?
• What alternative approaches does this replace, and why?
• What trade-offs does this solution make that competitors don't?
• What would a buyer lose by choosing this solution instead of alternatives?

The last question is the hardest and most important. Vendors who can honestly articulate their trade-offs demonstrate the kind of self-awareness that procurement leaders rarely encounter. It builds trust that no amount of feature claims can match.

SEO and AI search: The long-term strategy that actually works

While traditional lead generation tactics have declined in effectiveness, AI search engine optimization remains the most reliable long-term strategy for building awareness and attracting buyers who are ready to purchase. This is especially true in procuretech, where buyers conduct extensive independent research before engaging with vendors.

When a procurement leader searches for "supplier risk management software comparison" or "best spend analytics tools for manufacturing," they have genuine intent. They're actively researching solutions to real problems. Appearing in those searches puts you in front of buyers at exactly the right moment, without the friction and skepticism that comes with outbound tactics.

The search landscape has evolved significantly with the rise of AI-powered search. Procurement buyers now use ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews to research solutions. These platforms synthesize information from across the web and recommend specific vendors in their responses. Being mentioned and recommended by AI search engines has become as important as ranking in traditional search results.

This shift toward AI search, sometimes called Answer Engine Optimization or AEO, requires rethinking content strategy. AI platforms prioritize authoritative sources that demonstrate genuine expertise. They favor content that directly answers specific questions over keyword-optimized pages designed to capture traffic. Building the kind of authority that AI systems recognize requires consistent thought leadership, PR coverage, and content that procurement professionals actually find valuable.

The compounding nature of search visibility makes it the ideal long-term investment. Content created today continues generating traffic and leads for years. Authority built now pays dividends as AI search becomes increasingly important. Unlike paid advertising, which stops working the moment you stop paying, search visibility creates lasting competitive advantage.

Work with partners who understand procurement

The principles in this guide sound straightforward, but execution requires genuine procurement domain expertise. General B2B marketing agencies, no matter how talented, consistently miss the nuances that determine success when reaching procurement leaders.

They don't know which industry analysts matter in which categories. They can't distinguish between messaging that resonates with procurement leaders and messaging that sounds like every other vendor. They produce content that procurement professionals immediately recognize as surface-level because it lacks the specific understanding that comes from working in the field.

Whether building an internal marketing team or selecting agency partners, prioritize procurement domain expertise. Look for marketers who have worked with procuretech companies, who understand the competitive landscape, and who can speak the language of your buyers authentically.

At Generate More, we've worked in procurement and supply chain marketing for almost a decade. We understand the specific challenges procuretech founders face because we've helped dozens of companies navigate them. We know which strategies actually work for reaching procurement leaders because we've tested them extensively across different market segments and solution categories.

The bottom line

ProcureTech marketing is different from broader B2B marketing. To succeed you need to understand and address the needs of procurement leaders. 

Stop chasing leads with tactics procurement buyers have learned to ignore. Focus instead on three things: position yourself as genuinely different (not just better), invest in SEO and AI search visibility for long-term compounding returns, and work with marketers who actually understand how procurement leaders think and buy.

At Generate More, we have almost a decade of experience in ProcureTech marketing, reaching procurement leaders and influencing enterprise procurement software decisions. Reach out to get an assessment and our recommendations.