The 2 tweaks that will make you dominate in any competitive market (Part 6)

This is the LAST part in the series on how to overcome a saturated niche. You may read part one through five here. This post is theoretical with actionable tips (assuming you’ve read the first five posts in the series).

For reference, these are the 5 approaches to dominate a market:

1. Promise the benefit.
2. Enlarge the claim.
3. Mechanism/invention accomplishes goal.
4. Enlarged claim with mechanism/invention which accomplishes goal.
5. Identification of prospect.

I’m currently in two niches that I believe are one of the most over-saturated markets (other than weight loss and some health categories). To make each profitable, I’ve continually used two techniques. I’ll teach you what they are:

1. Continually improve your landing page’s conversion rate with a formula.
2. Improve your ads’ CTRs by using one strategic tip.

The first technique requires more work, but if that isn’t your problem, the second technique will work quite easily.

Step 1: Conversion = 4Motivation + 3CommunicatedValue + 2(Incentive – Friction) – 2Anxiety

By itself, users’ motivation is the most important factor in getting a conversion. Motivation will typically be lower when there’s competitors and saturation. So your goal is to improve the perceived value your product/service gives as well as increase incentive, and decrease any hesitancy. Typically, someone that knows how to combat a saturated market, will write longer ad copy (that appeals to both sophisticated and less sophisticated markets). Shorter copy usually only works on the less sophisticated market. Furthermore, I’ve written about this formula here: Follow this 1 Rule to Guarantee the Profitability of Any Campaign.

Step 2: Increasing your ads’ CTR gives you more traffic at less of a cost.

So I’ve written 5 parts on this subject. Which part matters to you will depend on the level of competition plus which type of traffic source you are using.

If you are using search engine advertising, there’s continually a plethora of new searchers every day. It’s hard to reach the highest saturation point.

• If there’s 2-3 competitors, start testing with these approaches (1, 2 or 3)
• If there’s 4+ competitors, start testing with these approaches (3 or 4)
• If there’s 4+ competitors and the search term is generic/non-specific, start testing with these approaches (4 or 5)

If you are using display (banner or popups), you’re likely going to hit a market that sees lots of advertising. I would test 5 ads, each using a different approach (1-5). You may have an anomaly where one ad doesn’t have a predictable CTR. If it’s higher, than you know what path to take.

After you have results, I’m predicting that approach 5 will have the lowest conversion rate, but may have a CTR about double of approach 4.

Why it’s now hard to sell

From Eugene Schwartz:

[T]his is the hardest fact of all to accept. At this stage of your market, a direct statement of what your product does, what desire it satisfies, or what problem it solves, simply will not work. Your product either has not reached that direct stage, or has passed beyond it. And you cannot simply shift from one desire to another. You are not faced here with a problem of sophistication, but one of complete indifference, or unacceptability. Therefore, the performance of your product, and the desire it satisfies, can only be brought in later. You cannot mention them in your headline….

You are giving them the information they need and want, about a problem still so vague that you are the first to put it into words.

Here, above all, is the type of headline that never attempts to sell a product or a performance, but simply tries to sell the remainder of the ad itself—the information that follows on the page.