Belief: buyers find us on Google, so SEO is the plan. Shortlists now form in review sites and AI answers too.
G2's 2026 buyer survey, more than 1,000 B2B software buyers worldwide, run in June 2026, found review sites (38%) and AI chatbots (37%) were the top influences on shortlists. G2's news release adds that 82% had sourced software recommendations from an AI chatbot in the previous 24 months, half of them saying AI helped most when narrowing and comparing options. The survey is global and G2's own.
Search still earns the click, but a buyer may arrive with a shortlist already formed elsewhere. That is why SEO and AI visibility work for software starts with the pages an answer engine or a reviewer would cite: pricing, integrations, security and use cases, each stating plainly what the product does and for whom, with AI citation movement reported monthly. Paid media runs Google Search on category and competitor terms, and LinkedIn ads where the buyer is a named role at a certain kind of company.
Belief: evaluation is the sales team's job. It starts on pages marketing owns.
In the same survey, evaluation was the longest stage for 40% of buyers, ahead of research (36%) and decision (22%). Give that stage evidence a buyer can check without a call: the pricing page, the integrations list, the security page and the use-case pages. Each needs a clear next step for the buyer reading it, a trial for someone who can sign alone and a demo for a team that needs approval.
Once a buyer has a shortlist, G2 found IT security review was the single biggest source of delay (39%) between choosing a vendor and completing the purchase. On the security page, say exactly what exists. The AICPA says CPAs use its SOC offerings to provide assurance reports, so a SOC 2 is an auditor's report, and there is nothing to display until one exists. In the UK, the NCSC says a growing number of organisations require suppliers to be certified to bid for work under Cyber Essentials. Publish what you hold today, with report dates and scope, and label anything in progress as in progress.
Belief: a versus page or an "AI-powered" line is just copy. Both are claims that need evidence on file.
Comparison and capability pages are evaluation pages, read by buyers who are already deciding. In the UK, the CAP Code's conditions for naming a competitor include that comparisons are between products meeting the same needs or intended for the same purpose, and objectively compare material, relevant, verifiable and representative features. In August 2025 the ASA ruled against a software company's own versus blog, finding that offered customer testimonials and references alone were not adequate substantiation. That is one ruling. In the US, FTC policy encourages naming competitors but requires clarity and, if necessary, disclosure to avoid deception, and advertisers need a reasonable basis for claims before they are disseminated.
Capability claims need the same reasonable basis. In January 2025 the FTC said that overstating a product's AI or other capabilities without adequate evidence is deceptive, in an order against accessiBe, an accessibility software provider. In April 2025 it alleged that Workado promoted its AI detector as "98 percent" accurate when independent testing showed 53 per cent on general-purpose content. Both are US settlements of FTC allegations, not court findings.
Compare features against the rival's own public documentation and date the page. Keep a dated test result for every capability and accuracy figure, run on data like your customers' own, because a buyer in evaluation can test the claim against a trial.
Belief: more five-star reviews is the goal, however they are collected. G2's terms judge how you ask.
G2's community guidelines bar vendors from, among other things, collecting reviews in ways that segment out potentially negative reviewers, conditioning incentives on positive reviews, or incentivising reviewers without telling G2. The guidelines also limit incentives for a review to $100 USD, whether cash, gift cards or swag. A gift card can be a fair thank-you within G2's terms; asking only happy customers cannot.
Pick one point in the lifecycle, such as thirty days after a team reaches its first meaningful action, and ask every customer who reaches it, including those who never praised support. The reviews that result describe the product as a typical customer uses it, which is what a buyer comparing profiles is reading for.
Belief: emailing company addresses needs no consent. It depends on the address and the country.
The ICO says the UK rule on marketing by email does not apply to corporate subscribers, although you must still not disguise or conceal your identity, and must give a valid address for opting out or unsubscribing. Sole traders and some partnerships are individual subscribers, treated like individuals, so you can email them only with their consent or under the soft opt-in. UK GDPR still applies when you hold an individual's details in their business capacity, so you must tell them and have a lawful basis. The guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act. In the US, the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email, and its requirements include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how to opt out and your valid physical postal address.
Tag sole traders and partnerships before any UK outreach, and check each US email against the FTC's full list.
Belief: subscription-trap rules are for consumer apps, not us. They reach any plan a consumer can buy that renews, continues or turns paid automatically.
The UK's new subscription rules will come into force in January 2027, including a 14-day cooling-off period after a trial or long-term contract renews. They sit in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and cover only contracts between a trader and a consumer, a consumer being an individual acting for purposes wholly or mainly outside their business. The test is the buyer's purpose: a seat bought for someone's business falls outside that definition, a plan individuals can buy for personal use may fall inside it, and a freelancer's purchase is a question for a solicitor. CAP Executive advice on subscription offers says significant information is likely to include whether a paid subscription starts automatically after the trial and the extent of the financial commitment.
In the US, ROSCA makes it unlawful to charge a consumer through an internet negative option feature unless, among other conditions, the seller clearly and conspicuously discloses all material terms before taking billing information and obtains express informed consent. Among California's conditions, an automatic renewal or continuous service offer made to a consumer in California that includes a free trial must carry a clear and conspicuous explanation of the price charged after the trial ends, or how the pricing will change.
If you sell a self-serve plan beside the enterprise tier, start by showing the post-trial price and renewal terms next to the card field, then work through the full conditions linked above.
Belief: once the buying team says yes, the deal is done. Finance can still reverse it.
In G2's survey, 49% of buyers said their CFO had reversed a deal the buying team had already approved in the previous 12 months. After security review, budget approval (32%) and implementation planning (25%) were the next biggest sources of delay between choosing a vendor and buying. That means the person who booked the demo may not be the last person to read your material.
The handoff from marketing to sales carries two things. The first is context: a demo request reaches sales with the pages the buyer read and the answers the form collected, and time to first reply sits in the same report as the request. The second is material the buyer can forward: a pricing page that shows the total a finance team will see, the security page, and an implementation page that says how long set-up takes and who does it. Report the share of demo requests sales accepts, the pipeline created and the win rate, and note where lost deals stalled, so the next quarter's pages answer the objection that stopped them.
Belief: a trial sign-up is a new customer. Activation comes first, and payment follows it.
A self-serve funnel sells through a pricing page and a trial, and a trial ends in a paid account or an abandoned login. Activation, the share of sign-ups that reach a first meaningful action in the product, sits between the two, and trial-to-paid follows it. Agree the action with the product team (a first report sent, a first integration connected, a second user invited), then build lifecycle email that fires on what each sign-up has and has not done, instead of on the day count. Measure activation and trial-to-paid by the page and campaign that brought each sign-up, and move spend toward the sources whose users activate. Churn and net revenue retention are reported too, but they are mostly product and customer success work, and the marketing does not claim them.
The Social Target, founded in London in 2017, has worked with 600+ clients over nine years. We take on SaaS and software companies in the UK and the US, work across both countries' time zones, and quote in GBP or USD. We’ll reply in writing within one working day, then scope the work if it’s a fit.
