Company
IANS is a leading advisory and consulting firm that supports CISOs and senior security leaders with peer insights, research, and hands-on guidance to navigate complex cybersecurity challenges. By combining expert advisory services with a trusted community of security executives, IANS helps organizations make better, faster decisions in an increasingly high-risk environment.
To support growth, IANS needed a scalable way to consistently connect with senior security decision-makers who would benefit from its consulting and advisory services.
Problem
While IANS had a strong reputation and highly respected offerings, generating a steady flow of qualified conversations with CISOs and senior security leaders was challenging. The audience IANS serves is notoriously difficult to reach, time-constrained executives with crowded inboxes and little tolerance for generic outreach.
Traditional outbound tactics alone were not producing consistent results at the quality level IANS required. The challenge wasn’t just generating leads, but securing meetings with the right people: CISOs, CIOs, and Directors of Security at mid-market and enterprise organizations who were actively open to advisory conversations.
IANS needed a demand generation approach that could cut through the noise, respect the time of senior executives, and reliably deliver high-quality meetings without relying on a single channel.
Solution
IANS partnered with SweepLift to launch an incentive-driven demand generation program designed specifically for senior security leadership.
SweepLift implemented and managed LinkedIn Ads campaigns targeting a tightly defined ICP that included CISOs, CIOs, and security leaders at companies with 200+ employees and $10M+ in revenue. While the total LinkedIn addressable audience exceeded 51,000 professionals, campaigns were optimized toward decision-makers and budget owners, not general IT practitioners.
SweepLift handled end-to-end execution, including audience targeting, ad creation, messaging refinement, and ongoing optimization. To reduce friction for busy executives, SweepLift incorporated a $150 incentive for completed qualified meetings, making it easy for senior leaders to justify the time investment.
After validating messaging and performance on LinkedIn, SweepLift expanded the program to include email prospecting, allowing IANS to scale volume while maintaining seniority and relevance.
Impact
Over a three-month pilot, SweepLift generated 35 qualified meetings with senior security and technology leaders for IANS, averaging 11–12 qualified meetings per month.
Meetings were held with CISOs, CIOs, VPs, and Directors of Security across industries including financial services, healthcare, higher education, SaaS, manufacturing, insurance, and enterprise services.
From a cost perspective, the program delivered strong efficiency despite the seniority of the audience. Including LinkedIn ad spend, SweepLift’s platform and management fee, and meeting incentives, the fully loaded cost per qualified meeting was approximately $808, well below typical outbound benchmarks for executive-level security roles.
Beyond the immediate pipeline impact, the program validated that incentive-based demand generation can work effectively even for highly constrained, enterprise-level audiences. IANS gained a repeatable channel for engaging senior security leaders while maintaining the quality and credibility required for advisory conversations.
The partnership provided both tangible results and strategic insight into how IANS can continue scaling demand generation with precision and confidence.
Conclusion
The IANS case study demonstrates that even the most difficult audiences to reach, senior security and technology leaders, can be engaged predictably with the right strategy. By combining precise ICP targeting, incentive-based engagement, and disciplined campaign execution, SweepLift helped IANS create a reliable stream of qualified conversations with CISOs and security decision-makers.
More importantly, the program delivered results without sacrificing quality. Meetings were held with true decision-makers at mid-market and enterprise organizations, and the fully loaded cost per qualified meeting remained well below typical outbound benchmarks for executive-level roles. This validated that incentive-driven demand generation is not only viable for enterprise audiences, but scalable when executed with intent and control.
For IANS, the partnership with SweepLift provided both immediate pipeline impact and a proven framework for future growth. The result was not just more meetings, but a repeatable, defensible approach to engaging senior security leaders in meaningful advisory conversations, on their terms and at scale.
