Differentiation in 2026

A Conversation with Peep Laja

When I first got into B2B marketing and was trying to make sense of it all, there was a voice that stood out for understanding the nuanced worlds of differentiation, messaging, and positioning: Peep Laja.

Peep is the founder of Wynter, a B2B market research tool, much loved by PMMs. He’s one of the sharpest thinkers on what actually makes companies win in crowded markets. And right now, markets are more crowded than ever.

So I spoke with him about how to differentiate in 2026, who you’re really competing against, and how AI is changing the way buyers discover software.

A few of the key points that struck me from the conversation:

• Running the foundational research for your positioning and messaging is essential - you have to do the insights work before getting to the creative stuff.

• AI is changing the way business leaders buy products - and it's making message hygiene much more crucial.

• Differentiation is more important than it’s ever been - but who to focus on isn’t always who you might assume.

• Your website is still an essential part of of the buying process - and is increasingly shaping the buyer opinion before they even speak to you.

Here’s what Peep had to say about differentiation, competition, and how AI is reshaping the way buyers discover and evaluate software.

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How important is differentiation in 2026?

If you look at the SaaS stock index from January, everything’s down. People are looking for the new modern AI alternative to legacy products like ServiceNow and HubSpot. Which means new SaaS companies are coming, and they’re coming fast.

And look at the Y Combinator batches. How many are AI-powered companies? Every year I’ve been saying there’s never been more competition than there is today. And again, in 2026, it’s true. It’s exploding. The advent of AI coding enables smaller teams, especially if they’re well funded, to build even faster.

So differentiation has never been more important.

What are the credible ways to differentiate? And are those answers different depending on whether you’re an incumbent or the new AI player trying to disrupt them?

In every business category, the default is the top two or three players. If someone’s looking for a new CRM, they’re going to evaluate HubSpot, Salesforce, maybe Pipedrive.

So differentiation really needs to answer: why us over HubSpot? You’re not competing with other small startups, because the odds are very good that the buyer has never heard of you or the hundred other tiny startups that are just like you. It’s completely fine if another small startup is exactly like you. The real competition is the old guard.

You need a compelling answer to “why us over the category kings?” That’s the most important thing. And what the differentiation should be depends on what the buyer cares about. You can say, “Our product is the most green,” but nobody cares about that. It needs to be something the buyer cares about, and those preferences are changing every year, sometimes quarter to quarter.

If you’re a new player, should you spend much time worrying about the other new players?

In terms of fighting over customers, I wouldn’t care about them too much. Obviously you want to keep an eye on what they’re doing because they might be doing something interesting and it serves as inspiration. Everybody copies everybody.

But in terms of winning business, I would only worry about the top three biggest companies in your category.

You’ve been writing about this topic for years. What feels genuinely different about 2026 versus the last few years?

At Wynter, every year we run a survey on how companies buy software. What’s been consistent over the past three years is that word of mouth and peer recommendations are the number one source of vendor discovery. That’s hard work. You have to go to events, form relationships, be active on social, and have a good product.

But what has really changed is that three years ago, the number of people using LLMs for product discovery was zero. Last year it was maybe around 20%. But now, 84% of the C-suite is using ChatGPT, Gemini, and so on to discover vendors. More than 80% of them, when they’re coming to a demo, are already very familiar with the tool.

Essentially, instead of googling categories and going to G2, they’re going to an LLM to map out the category, understand who the different players are and how they’re different. So these machines need to know how you are different - communicated accurately.

Does that change how a company should approach their positioning and messaging work?

Your website is your home. It’s the source of truth. Your messaging, your positioning. But the way you are described in other places outside of your website also matters. Your G2 listing and so on. The LLMs are synthesising from various sources.

If you run any changes or experiments with your messaging, you need to go and update that in all the places you control - not just your homepage.

We also heard from survey participants that business leaders always go to your website to evaluate you and decide whether you’re one of the companies they want to get a demo with. So your messaging is absolutely critical. They come with some idea about you already, and then your website needs to seal the deal.

So consistent messaging becomes even more important now because the algorithms can pull descriptions from anywhere?

Absolutely. Let’s say you were very successful at getting other people to write about you two years ago. Now your product has evolved. Maybe you changed positioning. Maybe you’re a platform now - as opposed to mono-functional. But then the LLM pulls what was true two years ago from all these websites. That is potentially a big problem.

How should PMMs think about measuring whether their positioning and messaging actually works?

There are some prerequisites:

• It needs to be clear.

• The customer needs to get it.

• It needs to be compelling.

• And it needs to be different from the category leaders.

To make sure you’ve nailed those requirements, you can run message testing before you go to market. And you should not proceed until you’re feeling confident about this validation.

The rest depends on whether you’re sales-led or product-led. In sales calls, are people saying, “Yeah, tell me more about that”? The talking points should be resonating. What I like to do is push messaging onto social media. Create posts about it. See social engagement. It could be a pain point, it could be a benefit. Then elaborate on it.

And in the end, it comes down to your northstar metric: be it pipeline, deals closed, or sign-ups - you’ll see effective positioning and messaging play out in your most important numbers.

If you could only give one piece of advice to a B2B marketing team trying to stand out in an increasingly busy market, what would that advice be?

You need to invest in qualitative research. Survey your would-be buyers, prospects, about their priorities and needs regarding whatever your product does. Once you really understand what matters to them today, then you can adjust your messaging and positioning to remain relevant - or ideally hyper-relevant.

Then you need to pass those key tests: is your positioning clear, compelling, and differentiated? But you can do all of these things within 24 hours. Run a fast-paced survey and message test. The research does not need to be long. This idea that it takes a few months is just obsolete these days.

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Takeaways

I found Peep’s advice both reassuring and challenging. Reassuring because the fundamentals still stand. Understand what your buyers care about, position yourself against the category leaders, and test your messaging before you launch.

But it’s also challenging because consistent messaging now matters more than ever. LLMs are pulling descriptions from everywhere, and if your positioning evolved but your social channels or mentions on Reddit haven’t, then you’ve got a problem.

The window shopping phase is growing. Buyers arrive at demos already familiar with your product. And this means your website, your social profiles, and anywhere else you’re describing yourself needs to tell the same story. And that story needs to answer one question clearly: why us over the category leaders?

If you want to test your messaging with real buyers, check out Wynter. And if you’re a US-based PMM organising your diary around excellent B2B marketing events, Wynter Spring is worth a look.