Key Takeaways
- Demand programs aligned with buyer intent signals produced significantly more engagement, more leads per account, and deeper buying-stage activity.
- The study reinforces that combining intent data with activation helps marketers reach active buying groups more effectively.
INFUSE, a global B2B demand and revenue marketing performance company, and G2, a com data source on B2B software, have published a joint study examining how the combination of G2 Buyer Intent signals and INFUSE demand activation performs across cybersecurity vendor programs.
Accounts appearing simultaneously generated 21% more leads per account, 93% higher multi-touch engagement, and were 1.6x more likely to be at the decision stage of the buying process than accounts reached by demand activation alone.
This market study draws on 243,000 G2 Buyer Intent accounts, 19,200 INFUSE-engaged accounts, and more than 130 individual campaigns tracked over 6-to-12-month periods across 11 cybersecurity programs.
Why Intent Signals Are a Reliable Targeting Predictor
“When campaign targeting is aligned with what buyers are already researching, the result is not just higher engagement but engagement at the stages that matter most for pipeline conversion,” said Alexander Kesler, Founder and CEO of INFUSE, in a statement.
The 42% overlap rate between G2 Buyer Intent accounts and INFUSE-engaged accounts, ranging from 22% to 90% across individual programs, establishes active research signals as a consistent predictor of campaign responsiveness across varied program structures and target segments.
Overlap accounts recorded 2.5x more total G2 pageviews, 3.0x more competitor pageviews, and up to 5.3x more comparison pageviews than non-overlap accounts (accounts that were engaged by INFUSE but not surfaced in G2 Buyer Intent data during the analysis period). Nurture depth reflected the same pattern, with 57.4% of overlap accounts reaching three or more content touches versus 29.7% of non-overlap accounts.
“Buyers conducting active research on G2 represent high-quality demand that is ready to be engaged,” said Eric Gilpin, President of GTM at G2. “When that research intelligence is paired with demand activation at scale, the engagement lift speaks for itself.”
How to Reach the Buying Committee
Overlap accounts demonstrated higher VP-level engagement across multiple programs, confirming that signal-driven demand activation reaches both technical practitioners conducting evaluations and executive decision makers approving them.
The study showed that 80-98% of overlap accounts showed competitive signal behavior during the analysis period, with accounts recording competitor pageviews generating up to 41% more leads per company. Seniority-level data showed 85-99% of leads at Manager level or above across both cohorts.
“The 93.3% lift in multi-touch engagement confirms that intent-signaling accounts yield deeper organizational penetration, with multiple stakeholders engaging across the buying group,” said David Verwey, Chief Commercial Officer at INFUSE.
Keys on Making the Shortlist
Across the 11 programs analyzed in the study, approximately 196,000 G2 Buyer Intent accounts were not targeted by active demand programs, a measurable pool of actively researching buyers outside campaign reach. Global information security spending is projected to reach $240 billion in 2026, a 12.5% increase from $213 billion in 2025, with B2B buying groups now averaging nine members and average buying cycles compressing to seven months. The data signals a shrinking window for vendor engagement, according to executives from both companies.
Shortlist formation increasingly occurs before direct vendor contact: 51% of buyers now start software research with AI chatbots over Google, and 71% rely on AI chatbots in their process, placing G2 as the second-leading source influencing shortlists after generative AI tools.
“What has changed is not just where buyers start, it is what they are doing throughout the entire journey,” said Tim Sanders, Chief Innovation Officer at G2. “They have moved from reference to inference. Instead of weeks of research, they are using ChatGPT to one-shot their shortlists.”
The full benchmark study is available by clicking here.
