Many affiliate marketing blogs say you should NEVER enter a saturated market. They speculate — it’s too hard, there’s no more money there, and the list goes on. If there was a lot of money, then there STILL is a lot of money in that niche. I’ll attack one more myth and say:
Over-saturation can sometimes be a GREAT problem to have because that usually means you will have two advantages…
- Most marketers have already dropped out. During the supposedly “over-saturated stage,” there may be even less competition than before the pioneering marketers were there.
- The market has been proven. The most important thing to an ad writer (other than a hungry crowd) is data.
When saturation occurs, the market’s state may change in two ways (via Eugene Schwartz):
- How much does your market know about your product? (Their State of Awareness.)
- How many similar products have they been told about before? (Their State of Sophistication.)
And, by the way, I’m going to be quoting a lot of Eugene Schwartz in this post. All quotes are from him unless otherwise stated.
If you’re first to a market and you know your market is hungry, this will be how you start your message and headline:
Be simple. Be direct. Above all, don’t be fancy. Name either the need or the claim in your headline—nothing more. Dramatize that claim in your copy—make it as powerful as possible. And then bring in your product; and prove that it works.
Nothing more—because nothing more is needed. To illustrate, let’s look at one of the most profitable, insatiable, constantly renewing, and therefore overworked fields in marketing history: the reducing [weight loss] field. No one knows who was the first man to stumble on the reducing field (though it’s fairly certain that he must have become a millionaire). But all he had to say in his headline as a simple statement of the direct desire of millions of women:
“NOW! LOSE UGLY FAT!”
As he started to clean up, others inevitably followed. But, by this time, the reducing field had already been tapped. Advertisements had been run. The direct claim had been made. Mere repetition would no longer be enough. In other words, the reducing market was now in its Second Stage of Sophistication. A new approach was necessary.
To be direct, most ads aren’t even as good as simply stating a benefit. Being direct will usually be better than most ads, but as you probably know: most ads don’t make a positive return on investment. So your job isn’t to be better than most, it’s to bring in a substantial return and outperform your competitors.
This is typically where you don’t need very long ad copy. Having too much ad copy could hurt in rare cases.
Because you will most likely be second or third to market, I will be posting part 2 (which will cover what to do if you’re second to the market).
Part 2: If you’re second to market.
Part 3: If you’re third to market.
Part 4: If you’re fourth to market.
Part 5: If you’re fifth to market.
Part 6: Putting these tactics to action in search, banner, or native ads.
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