#21 - Peep Laja

Hey all,

Welcome back to the Good Content series. This week, I spoke with three-time founder and CEO of Wynter, Peep Laja.

He’s an expert on messaging and optimization, and he’s built one of the largest LinkedIn audiences in the B2B marketing space. Peep’s clearly eating his own messaging dog food, because his LinkedIn content drives about 80% of Wynter’s pipeline.

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Watch Peep Laja talk about how most messaging isn't hitting the mark.

While we chatted some about his content creation process (which is shockingly organic for the amount of conversions it drives), we dove deeper into his assessment of where most B2B companies go wrong:

Messaging.

The problem with messaging

At Wynter, Peep’s run thousands of message tests with VP- and C-level decision makers across SaaS, ecommerce, and other B2B categories. The results are damning: average clarity and resonance scores sit at around 3.5/5.

“Most messaging is very mediocre.”

Peep chalks this up to two main issues:

1. No differentiation.

Visit any category — email marketing, CRM, analytics — and the copy looks identical. “Track open rates. Grow your business. Automate campaigns.”

Brands are afraid to be bold in their language while buyers are trying to pick from a shortlist of 5-8 tools that seem like copycats of each other.

2. No clarity.

“Supercharged solutions to accelerate your optimization.” Marketers feel like loaded buzzwords make their copy appealing, but they’re meaningless to buyers trying to make a decision.

These problems emerge from a few different places.

First, marketers are worried that direct comparisons will drive readers to competitors. If we remind them that HubSpot exists (even if we’ve got a differentiator)… they’ll just go straight to HubSpot, right?

Second, writers can’t read the label from inside the jar. In-house teams fall prey to believing their audience knows more about them and their offer than they actually do, leading to zero clarity and major jargon.

And finally, copy often goes through so many rounds of approvals that, by the end, the message is designed to please a committee, not persuade a customer.

Peep thinks messaging gets the short end of the stick too often. He made a great point about how rebrand projects typically work:

$150K budgets. $125K to design. $25k to language… despite the fact that the design’s entire job is to carry the message.

Peep put it simply:

“If the words are right, they’ll buy. If they’re wrong, they won’t.”So he thinks it’s time to reprioritize — which is why he built Wynter. Companies can submit their site for feedback directly from their ICP and, in 48 hours, they can learn exactly what is and isn’t working about their messaging.

What happens next

I was curious to understand where Peep thinks marketing in general is moving. The entire B2B space has changed immensely over the last few years, so I wanted to get his take on what’s coming next.

He pointed to one key shift:

Personality is moving to the center of brand marketing.

As AI continues to improve, content only gets easier to create and channels get more and more saturated. To combat overwhelm, buyers just want to purchase from someone they know, like, and trust.

An individual — even in B2B settings.

Peep himself is proof: Wynter’s growth isn’t fueled by a faceless company page or paid ads. It’s fueled by his personal, consistent, and confident posts.

As he puts it:

“The middle way is boring. You need strong opinions, even if people disagree.”People resonate with Peep’s takes to the point that, when it’s time to buy, they know exactly who they’re going with. TL;DR: If you’re not already building a personality-driven presence online, it’s time to get started.To learn more about Peep’s perspective, you can check out the entire conversation here.

Next Guest:

Jimmy Burt, VP of Content at That's Good Content

Thursday, September 25

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Thanks for stopping by, folks. As always, feel free to reach out with questions, feedback, suggestions, or anything else that’s top of mind for you.

– Peter

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