Don’t run away from mature markets where buyers can be found in droves. Get in there and make money now!

What You Will Learn

The Big Marketing Mistake

If you spend any time hanging out in online marketing forums and communities, you will find someone complaining about ‘saturated markets:’

“Blogging on Medium used to be good, but it’s saturated now….”

“If you got in early, the personal finance niche was great. But that market is totally saturated. I’m looking for something else…”

And so hopeful entrepreneurs move on, hoping to stumble across ‘the next big thing’ just as it’s getting off the ground. Good luck with that, but you would probably have a better chance of success if you just bought lottery tickets.

Someone may get lucky with ‘the next big thing,’ but it probably won’t be you.

But this is a classic case of stumbling past a gold mine without even realizing it. It’s a big mistake to avoid so-called saturated markets...those are exactly the markets you want to be in!

Think Positive, Not Negative

The issue here is that the phrase ‘saturated market’ has a very negative spin. It implies that the market is so full of sellers that there is no room for anyone else.

This is never true - far from it. In the 1990s, Larry Page and Sergey Brin could have said:

“People already have Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista and many other search engines. Maybe we should just drop this Google idea. The market is saturated...”

Howard Schultz could have said the coffee shop market was too crowded for Starbucks. Steve Jobs could have backed out of the ‘saturated’ mobile phone market. No room for his iPhone concept, right?

Fortunately for all of us, they knew better. They were not looking through pessimistic glasses, so they didn’t see saturation. These visionaries looked through a lens of optimism - and what they saw was opportunity!

Don’t let competition put you off - it’s the best sign there is that you’ve found a profitable niche.

Go Where the Money Is

I know this phrase is a worn-out cliche, but I’m repeating it because it’s very apt here and gets my point across. When bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, his answer was simple:

Because that’s where the money is!

And for marketers today, the same principle applies. Go for the ‘saturated markets’ because that’s where the money is!

Let’s face it. Your chances of creating a wholly innovative product that defines a new category are pretty slim. And (by definition) you probably won’t be able to launch into a sector that has high barriers to entry.

So you are left with two options:

1. Go into a saturated market
2. Search for a non-saturated market

If you go with option 2, you are likely to discover very quickly why there are not many sellers in your chosen market. (Hint: it’s because there are not many buyers, either!)

Legendary copywriter Gary Halbert said that if he could be granted a single advantage over his competitors, he knew exactly what he would ask for: a hungry market.

And that’s exactly what a saturated market is - a market full of rabid buyers who are always ready to spend money on your product. That’s why all the other sellers are there!

When people talk about saturated markets, what they really mean is competitive niches. And competition is a good thing, because it means there are lots of hungry buyers.

So don’t run away from these markets - dive right in!

Winning in Competitive Markets

Of course, it’s easy to understand why people are wary of getting into such competitive markets. Life would so much easier if you could find a profitable niche with few competitors. After all, who wants to work hard to make money?

Nice idea, but it’s probably never going to happen. So man up (or woman up) and face reality. Competitive markets are where the money is to be made, so you need to figure out how to win.

There are many different ways you give yourself a leg up and kick your competitors’ butts, including:

In short, you have to get good - very good - at all aspects of marketing. Become the best in your business, and no-one can prevent you from succeeding.

Scale at Will

Once you have the best-converting sales funnel in your industry, you become unstoppable. Now there is nothing to stop you scaling your business as far as you want to take it.

Go for it!

If you can afford to spend more on customer acquisition than your competitors, you will win every ad auction and every campaign battle.

So don’t run away from saturated markets - they are your best friends. Jump in feet first and start building your business into an empire.