In this episode, Peep Laja is joined by Kathleen Booth and Dave Gerhardt to unpack the real buying behavior behind B2B SaaS in 2025. They break down the power of dark social, peer communities, and brand storytelling in an era where Google is no longer the first stop. Learn how to win trust, get talked about, and drive growth—without a single paid ad.

Chapters:

[00:00:00] Buyers No Longer Start on Google
[00:01:00] Dark Social Isn’t New
[00:02:00] Community Beats Search
[00:03:00] Trust Comes From Peers
[00:04:00] Why “Dark Social” Caught On
[00:05:30] How Real Word-of-Mouth Works
[00:06:30] Winning Starts With Being Mentioned
[00:07:15] LinkedIn’s Real Role in Buying
[00:08:30] You Can’t Game the System
[00:09:30] Influencing the Influencers
[00:10:30] Brand and Peer Trust Collide
[00:11:30] Build a Narrative, Not Just Features
[00:12:30] What to Spend on Community
[00:14:00] Create Shareworthy Artifacts
[00:15:00] Showing Up Consistently Matters
[00:16:30] Case Study: Carabiner Group
[00:17:30] Making the ROI Case
[00:19:00] Track What Actually Matters
[00:20:00] Key Takeaways: How to Win

Peep Laja dives into why speed is a critical and often underrated competitive advantage in today's fast-paced business world. Learn how to make swift decisions, conduct rapid experiments, ship products and campaigns quickly, and gather market feedback efficiently. Drawing from historical military strategies and modern business practices, Peep explains how speed can help you stay ahead of the competition. Tune in to discover actionable insights on fostering a culture of speed within your organization, optimizing decision-making processes, and enhancing market agility.

Chapters

[00:00:00] Intro and Importance of Speed
[00:01:15] Competitive Noise and Clones
[00:02:15] Aggressiveness and Fast Action
[00:03:15] Blitzkrieg in Business
[00:04:45] Faster Decision Making
[00:06:00] Chinese Car Manufacturers
[00:07:00] OODA Loops
[00:08:00] Innovate Faster
[00:09:15] Reducing Waiting Time
[00:10:00] Bezos Decision Speed Matrix
[00:12:30] Democratizing Decision Making
[00:14:30] Meeting Reduction
[00:16:45] Copycats and Innovation
[00:18:45] Personal Experimentation Failures
[00:21:45] Final Thoughts

My links:

X: https://twitter.com/peeplaja

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peeplaja/

Personal site: https://peeplaja.com/

Wynter: https://wynter.com/

Speero: https://speero.com/

CXL: https://cxl.com/

In this episode, Peep Laja emphasizes the importance of deeply understanding your target market and ideal customer profile (ICP) to drive growth in B2B SaaS. He advocates for ongoing research to inform effective messaging, breaks down the key components of high-converting copy, and shares how tools like Wynter enable teams to get fast feedback and align around the ICP. By implementing these strategies, companies can speed up feedback loops and gain a competitive edge.

[00:00:00] Intro: Winning through market understanding
[00:01:22] Importance of regular market research
[00:02:30] From annual to ongoing micro-testing
[00:04:00] Optimizing for speed to insights
[00:05:30] Getting budget for market research
[00:06:30] Building mental availability
[00:08:00] Balancing short and long-term efforts
[00:09:00] Positioning vs. messaging
[00:10:28] Four layers of effective messaging
[00:12:30] Addressing buyer uncertainty
[00:14:00] Communicating customer value
[00:15:00] Importance of strong copywriting
[00:16:30] Characteristics of good copy
[00:17:00] Achieving team alignment
[00:18:00] Speeding up feedback loops

My links:

X: https://twitter.com/peeplaja

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peeplaja/

Personal site: https://peeplaja.com/

Wynter: https://wynter.com/

Speero: https://speero.com/

CXL: https://cxl.com/