4 Proven Ways to WIN In a Saturated Market

0:00 In 2025, nearly every market is saturated. And if yours isn't, don't tell a soul what you're doing. On today's episode, we're going to walk you through the four key things that any brand can do to stand out in a saturated market. But first, I want to say this. Being in a saturated market is not a bad thing. That means there's overwhelming demand for your product or service, and that's going to bring a lot of competitors. So, by using the tactics and frameworks in this episode, you'll be able to stand out when everyone else is blending in. All right. First up is storytelling. This is your why, your origin story, your reason for starting the company. I want you to check out this company, Flur Glasswware, and we're going to look at his launch video for an example of a perfectly told founder story. His hook is his why. He says, "I built a coffee glasswware brand because

0:46 I didn't like any of the cups I was drinking out of." And then he proceeds to inject his personality in discussing the justification for why he built this brand. He says, "Old mugs belong in old school diners." He says, "The tall cylinders perspirate and make your hands wet to the touch." By that time, you're kind of thinking. You're able to pick up in a sensory way these different problems that you've had with mugs in the past. And so, you're curious. You want to hear what his solution is going to be. And ultimately, he justifies why that solution is needed with his storytelling. Another key ingredient that he injects that everyone should think about when they're telling their own story is he says after months of testing with an industrial designer. Think about that key word. He's telling you that he spent a lot of time, money,

1:33 and effort into making the best product possible for you. All of a sudden, you're going to have less of an objection to whatever price this may be. Say a mug is $2.99 and his is $6. Well, he put in that effort through the process of building the mug, building his new, you know, line of glassware. So, now you're thinking, "All right, well, I get it. There's quality. There's, you know, an artisan's touch to this product." And that stuff does matter. It matters tremendously because cups could not be more saturated. Most people are not making decisions on cups based on any sort of form factor. They don't really care. But if you tell a story about why this product was built the way it was, all of a sudden you're going to be able to build value towards it. And when you watch this video,

2:19 you'll note something that our friend Callaway calls the dance. The dance is a tactical way to tell a story where you introduce context and then you introduce conflict. So every time that he introduces context, he's saying I, you know, I was using this mug and it would burn my hand. Or when I was using cute glasses, then the glasses would break because they were made of lowquality stuff. So the context is, yes, there are cute glasses. There are well-designed mugs, but then the conflict is those things break. So by doing that dance, by going from context to conflict, he's able to keep your attention throughout the whole video. This is nothing new. This is the pillars of storytelling. You know, when when you read a book, um there's a book that I've been reading

3:05 called Barbarians at the Gate. And every single time, every chapter is moving the story along of a hostile takeover in the 1980s. And the way that the authors are able to captivate your attention is whenever a character is about to be introduced, they gives the context of who that character is. They say, "So and so was an investment banker in the 1970s. He failed and he failed and he failed. He married, he got divorced. And it just does this dance over and over again to make you actually care about the character before they introduce them to the main storyline. And at that point, you're invested in their role. You know this character. You know a little bit about their background. So what they do becomes inherently more interesting and allows you to understand why they behave the way that they behave. When you compress all that down to a short form story, it's the same

3:52 principles. you're still giving context for someone to care about the next scene, about the next line. And so you have to kind of inject these things if you want to stand out in a saturated market. All of the brands that are doing this, you're seeing all these founderled content examples, this is a science. It's not an art. And all you have to do is practice the context, conflict, framework, as well as injecting your why and adding value through social proof of the hard work that you've done. So what you're doing is ultimately telling people there was a failed solution. I experienced that failed solution. I experienced it personally through XYZ. You introduce maybe a a specific example like he did where you know and we'll have the video up on the screen, but he poured an espresso and the hot espresso

4:39 broke the glass because the glass was cheap. So now he's saying this is what happens when cheap glassware is used for cool glasses. I don't use cheap glassware. I use quality glassware. That's why theirs is $3 and mine is six. So that's how you're going to stand out in an extremely saturated market is you're going to do it through storytelling. So that's number one. Now the second way you're going to stand out in a saturated market is a tale as old as time. This has been happening in the DTOC Shopify ecosystem for about the last 15 years. Think about the goats, right? uh you know, Dollar Shave Club or Casper mattresses, Allirds, like these original names. And this one is form factor. So, product differentiation. And

5:24 form factor is one of the most underrated ways to look at a business. Take this new business, Grunes, for example. I don't know if anyone's seen Grunes, but they're the hottest thing in the Shopify world right now. And in retail, all these guys did uh the founder is a private equity investor and he saw what Athletic Greens success was and he was like, "Athletic Greens kind of tastes gross. So, I'm going to put Athletic Greens into a gummy." Well, it's a gummy bear form of Athletic Greens. That's it. They recently raised $10 million at a $500 million valuation because they cannot stay on the shelves. And it's that simple. Greens was becoming a saturated market and everyone was doing powders because powders was a very easy delivery system. It was also

6:10 very you know I mean it's a high margin business right powders are always going to be a good way to protect your margins and have more margins which means a healthier business but gummies are as well. And so he looked at the landscape and he said well this product is redot greens are becoming saturated but no one's really done an effective daily greens gummy. Lo and behold, he builds a daily greens gummy. It's got massive demand built into that quote unquote saturated market and he's able to scale it very quickly. Arguably one of the fastest scaling DTOC brands of all time. Another way that you can think about form factor is what are these uh potentially you know retail first experiences. So a brand that I came across recently is called CVT Softsurf and they actually aren't very good at

6:57 content on their own. Um, no shade to them, but they went extremely viral because a store that they're in in Naples did a very, very simple video where the headline was elite summer snack and it showcased their product which was a soft serve pouch. So, this is a frozen pouch with soft serve ice cream. It's very, you know, elegantly designed product and the grocery store's video went extremely viral. Why was it viral? Well, number one, the headlines set the context. Elite summer snack. It's May, starting to get hot in a lot of the US. So, people are thinking about this stuff. But two, the product soft serve is not something that you have ever seen really in a pouch in that form, especially in

7:42 retail. Think about the differentiation here. Most people are bringing soft serve into a traditional ice cream carton. That is a very saturated market. It is very hard to get on the aisle in the ice cream category. You have to innovate in a couple of ways. You know, some people put protein in ice cream, uh, Halo Top, Halo Top, whatever their name was, they made it extremely low calorie and disgusting, but that's besides the point. What you need to do in the ice cream category is look at, all right, soft serve is something that, you know, is very nostalgic. It's people only get that maybe in, you know, an In-N-Out or or whatever it is. You know, it's it's something that you got in your childhood during a hot summer day and it, man, it hit, right? all of a sudden now you can just have it at retail, have it on go, have it for the kids, you know, have it if maybe it's like a

8:30 little bit better for you, but probably I doubt they really even care about that. I think they just wanted to make a good product. Um, I looked into the the founder story a little bit. They're East Coast ice cream snobs and moved to LA and said that there was no good ice cream in LA. So, the way that they were able to get attention though is that form factor, right? And all of a sudden, I I would guarantee you in the next 18 months, that's a product you're going to see on your ice cream shelf is CVT soft serve because it's a pouch. And guess what? It's an elite summer snack. That's the story line is already there. Um, which again, you know, one thing we talk about over and over on this podcast is the power of one video going viral and the signal that tells you about your messaging. So, let me just kind of flush that out. When you're posting organically, the

9:16 video has to work. You're not paying for impressions. So, if it does not get amplified by the algorithm, there's no one to blame but the video. I I have very bad news for you. If your content isn't moving, it sucks. Something we've had to, you know, Alex and I have had to accept ourselves many, many times. We put out good content we think is good, doesn't resonate with people, it doesn't move. The algorithms are designed to amplify good things, to put them in front of people that are going to watch them for a long time. So knowing that we can then infer that anytime something works extremely well then that's resonating with people. If it works organically then their message is right there. It's the best way to create a test. So really, you know, through finding this format, CVT now has a very repeatable format is just

10:04 show the product extremely well lit probably in daylight. So summer snack, you know, comes across, people can feel the heat through their phone. I know that's weird, but there is audio sensory uh, you know, things that come through content. And from there, you know, they just need to repeat that across so many different touch points on their own social through their influencer program. Just brief every single person that is familiar with your product to put that on their story and to put that into an Instagram reel or Tik Tok and they will generate millions and millions of impressions towards their product by highlighting very simple things because the form factor leads the way in that saturated market that has a ton of demand. Um, another one that, you know, did this well with form factor is the,

10:50 uh, new Orca bottle. So, Orca is a energy water drink. Personally, I don't want caffeine in my water. Um, energy drinks in particular is ridiculously competitive. It is a massive space because it's extremely high margin in the beverage category, uh, which is very large. And it's also retail business. That is strictly retail. So, in in retail, the name of the game is how do you get foot traffic to people to go buy your product? Well, you have to have something that's going to stand out on the shelf, but also you have to have something where that viral moment is kind of inherently there. So, they decided to make a transparent bottle. It's a clear bottle, but it's a can. Um, so that's I'm sorry, not a bottle, it's a can. So, they made a transparent can. You're used to Dani, right? you're used

11:36 to uh Evian and you're used to, you know, whatever plastic microplastic filled water bottle you've been drinking for your whole life. When it's in a can similar to what Liquid Death did, then um you know, it's a little bit different, but then they made it transparent. So, they took what Liquid Death did with an innovation on product differentiation and form factor, took it one step further, and then they threw in the energy drink category as well. So those are three examples of something, you know, a place where you could argue it was not somewhere you want to enter. You you do not want to go into the ice cream category to the greens category or to the water category. All three of those are extremely saturated. But by simply innovating on form factor, and granted these are form factors that

12:22 pretty much existed. I mean, gummies existed, pouches existed for, you know, baby food, superfood stuff. Um and it's the juxosition which is kind of interesting because you know and use that in your brainstorming right so why did the soft serve work it's because mostly when that is being uh pushed that form factor of a pouch it is baby food you know it's like applesauce it's it's kind of like quote unquote healthy things and so but it's awesome you know a lot of people love pouches as a delivery system and so by injecting you know soft serve which is an even better product or an enjoy a more enjoyable taste into that form factor that's already kind of beloved. It's borderline ironic. You know, you're used to getting baby food through this. Now you're

13:07 getting soft serve. It's like it's not a health food anymore. It's tasty snack or dessert. Um groins is the same thing, you know, and and so like there's some irony to it. Like a gummy is a candy, but it's actually greens, you know. And then orca, it's like it's a can, which you typically would get something that's not water, but you're just drinking water. So all those things, you know, think about a touch of irony in the delivery system in the form factor and the thing that actually makes it unique. All right. So we've already talked about storytelling. We've already talked about product differentiation form factor. But the next one that I want to talk about is positioning. So positioning is arguably as important, if not more important than the other two. And here's why. I can't think of a more saturated category right now than electrolytes. Electrolytes are everyone is throwing

13:52 salt in something in a pack and throwing it, you know, maybe with some essential minerals, whatever it is. But electrolytes is an extremely popular category right now. Uh the stick pack method is very profitable. That is very lowcost way to charge a good amount of money. And so naturally, you're going to see a lot of competition. The health and wellness movement, you know, hydration versus just drinking water, all this stuff has changed. And you're actually going to continue to see this grow in my opinion because Liquid IV innovated this category first. You know, Liquid IV basically took Crystal Light, made it cool, and now everyone's trying to do liquid IV but for XYZ. And you see this with Element. Element is liquid IV but for high performance athletes. It's not

14:38 a hangover cure. It's a fuel system. Uh, one of the brands that I work with very very closely, they're called Taste Salude. They're liquid IV but for you know traditional authentic Mexican flavors. So they have aqua frescoa flavors or tata flavors like all these kind of nostalgic flavors. And what happens when you do that is think about a big pot and that pie is your market. So you know the electrolyte pie liquid IV has already got their segment but there's like within liquid IV's segment there's like little micro segments right? So, you know, that Mexican-American audience or Hispanic audience, like they are in that liquid IV, they've tried liquid IV or maybe they're in the rest of the pie, which is the potential market, and they haven't tried liquid IV because they're not interested because it's not for them.

15:24 The brand isn't appeal to them. So, now Salute is able to carve out a little bit of Liquid IV's audience, but unlock an entirely new potential market segment that could be interested in electrolytes, but wasn't previously because there was nothing that applied to them. Um, you know, ele element is the same thing. There there was the liquid IV folks, but there's a lot of the country that's drinking less alcohol and liquid IV was sort of branded as, you know, a potential hangover cure for a long time. Well, there's also secondary benefits to performance. You know, when you're when you're drinking more salt, when you're drinking the things that are in element, you can get better energy, you can recover faster when you're a high performance athlete. Um, and so they were able to do the same thing. take a little bit of liquid IV's existing pie but then unlock more of the

16:10 market segment that was looking for more of a hightouch option and now you're seeing this with a lot of these different brands you know cure hydration is riding the uh mineral deficiency wave right so there's positioning here that is okay yes electrolytes but for xyz so when you are thinking about your category which could be anything um you know genuinely I mean you could be shirts for people that love alpacas, right? I mean like Kodapaxi, Patagonia, these brands were, you know, apparel and goods for people that love the environment. Like it's you are X for Y. You know, your brand is this extremely popular thing for why. And we we learned this uh when I was fundraising back in

16:56 the day for for uh Grind Basketball, which is a company I was doing before this. What what we were always told is you want to really easily frame your solution for someone that doesn't know anything about you. So we were taught we wanted we were a basketball technology company. Pelaton was redot at the time. You are Pelaton for basketball. And that simple line opened so many doors for us because there's now a headline easy way for people to describe us, right? And that's another pretty good litmus test for your positioning is what would someone who's like your friend maybe describe your business as? Oh, he's building the, you know, liquid IV but for, you know, Mexican-Americans or, you

17:42 know, for high building liquid IV for high performance athletes. Building uh, you know, soft serve for babies, like whatever it is. Uh, Malbin, right? I'm I'm wearing a Malbourne golf shirt and Malb is another example of this positioning. Melbourne did not really differentiate on form factor. They've done a good job storytelling, but not like the best. They're not 10 out of 10 on it. And what did they do extremely well was positioning. Golf for hype beasts, golf street wear, right? Golf for people that want to look cooler on the course. Golf for people that don't want to be stuffy. And when you're, you know, products for people that are underserved, that's when you have something really strong. Golf was a

18:29 saturated market. Titleist, Tailor-Made, Nike, the big brands, they own the space. They owned it for a long time. It was very boring. Now you're seeing a lot of disruption on YouTube Golf, on the Live Golf Tour, and then Melbourne is sort of riding that new age wave, which, you know, you could argue Melbourne came after a brand called Bad Birdie that, you know, initially dropped some really loud shirts. Um then Melbourne made a cleaner version which was still divergent from traditional golf but you know was maybe a little bit cleaner but still not necessarily just your average like you know pastel colored polo right so um you know Peter Mar for people that want to actually have swag stuff like that that's how you're going to do positioning is you're going to think about it like how do I

19:15 describe commonly known thing extremely commonly known thing like very very very well-known and you know Coca-Cola for people with digestive issues, lollipop, like how do I use that initial word to set the context and then describe my target audience in the second one. So that's how you position your brand. All right, so we've covered three ways for you to stand out in a crowded market. Number one was storytelling. Number two was form factor or product differentiation. And number three was going to be positioning. But number four is also in your toolbox if you want to really stand out. We just talked about how hydration was extremely saturated. Everyone's starting electrolyte brand because it's extremely profitable and easy to massproduce. Now, Pure Sport is

20:00 a brand that is in the hydration space. They're based out of the UK. And one thing that they did recently that was absolutely brilliant was they set up a fuel station at the London Marathon. This was not marketed that much. It was definitely captured on their social media, but really they were just giving value to the community and trusting that that value would return back to it. So, what this was is a gas station themed uh pure sport dispenser. So, you know, on the one hand, you had the uh typical, you know, handle and gas dispenser that you would see at a fuel station. It's all in Pure Sports branding. They use the tagline, you know, for the long run. And you could fill up your cup with, you know, electrolytes. crucial at that time. Um, and it was brilliant, right?

20:45 It was ironic. We talk a lot about irony here and that I think irony plays a huge role in getting attention because you're like, "Oh, haha." You know, you almost want everyone to have that initial reaction. Um, and so, you know, having a gas station, having a fuel station at the London Marathon for people that are lagging is perfect. And then the other thing that it does is we've talked a lot about the moment marketing framework. So when you're crafting marketing moments for your brand, you need to keep in mind the four things that are important to those. Number one is the moment itself. They found the London marathon. This is a place that they were going to have a huge presence at regardless. And so you have to activate in a proper way. Number two is the medium. you know, social media is going to be where they're going to distribute this information. But by making the product, which is the other

21:31 element of this, by making the product inherently, you know, photographable, aesthetic, all of that, it's a really strong way to ensure that your medium is going to be used effectively. So that is the fuel station, the irony, right? That is very, very, very, you know, Instagrammable, Tik Tok sharable, whatever. Uh, and last is the hero. So the hero is obviously they're highlighting people completing the London marathon and you know pure sport is the person that is helping them get that done. So pure sport and essence in this scenario becomes the hero. So really amazing job by them first class and I think uh you know salty pace was on there. It was cool. But that is a healthy way to think about how do you

22:17 make a viral stunt? And you know, a lot of folks would probably say, "Well, I don't have money to stand something up at the uh London Marathon." That's totally fine. I I actually don't think that you need to do the London Marathon. Let's flash back to uh the brand that we just talked about, CVT Softserve. You know, they're pouches, right? Like instead of having a soft serve dispenser, they could just have coolers of these at a local, you know, coffee morning coffee run, right? Or, you know, local run clubs. Imagine if they had their uh soft serve pouches after a run club. There's a touch of irony there. You just worked out. You don't want to ruin the calories that you burned, but you can use that soft serve pouch as a reward. And there's your irony. You're

23:05 being healthy, but then kind of having a dessert. So there's plenty of ways to think about it, but as long as you reverse engineer from those points, which is, you know, a little bit of irony, a little bit of Instagram sharability in what you're doing, and then also making sure that there is a moment that attaches to your brand. Reminder, it does not have to be as big as the London Marathon. It can be an average Saturday in your hometown. But you got to get out there and you got to introduce your product to the right audience in a way that's ironic, but also is going to serve the customer. So those are the four ways that uh you know I think brands can stand out in a saturated market. It's storytelling, it's product differentiation, it's positioning, and it's viral stunts. If you do those four things and you're in a saturated market, I think you'll have an extremely high chance of success because

23:53 saturated markets are where you want to be. You don't want to be in a market that is blue ocean unless you're first. Okay? So because a lot of the times people are not in markets that you know are technically blue ocean because the solution is extremely difficult. You know I think uh even in what I've built with Nibble it's an agency that did something that other people deemed very difficult which was organic content. And I've found out firsthand why that's really difficult because it's really hard to scale creativity across a lot of talented folks in a way that's affordable. A lot of the people that can produce at that level just do it on their own. So it's a tactical balance that you have to kind of do and it is difficult in a services business. So it gets that granular. It's not physical

24:40 product is you know the only people that this is relevant for like any of these things all of these tenants that we just talked about storytelling or you know differentiation positioning. I personally chose positioning, you know, I wanted to be a more approachable uh marketing agency. I wanted to have a brand associated to it, you know, instead of just kind of like a random name. It's like nibble meant tasty bite-sized content. Like I think that was very important. Um, and then also we were very modern, right? So our positioning was, you know, meta is not delivering you the results you need. You need to invest in other channels. And so my content reflected that. You'll notice if you go to my Instagram, all of my content highlights people that did amazing things without paid ads. Um, and

25:27 I learned that exact background from, you know, running paid ads and seeing them decline in effectiveness over the last 5 years. So, um, I say all that not to flex the brand, but just to emphasize like it doesn't necessarily have to be a, you know, physical product. There are a lot of saturated markets in software and services in uh you name it crypto who you know it doesn't matter but as long as you practice one of these four tenants and you emphasize it in your marketing strategy you'll have a really good chance to win. So if you enjoyed this video um please like and subscribe uh to Sweat Equity. This was a solo episode today. Alex is still coming back from his wedding in Italy. We had a time. I'm surprised he's coming back at all because it was so beautiful out there. Um, but if you're still watching this, drop Alex a little congratulations

26:13 on your wedding. He's now a married man. Uh, building a beautiful family. And, uh, let us know if we missed anything. Uh, if there were other cool brands that are practicing any of these things, whether it's storytelling, you know, differentiation, form factor, uh, viral stunts. Viral stunts when I was kind of stumped. I wanted to do, you know, uh, more than pure sport, but this was one of the best ones I've seen recently. So, felt it was best to illustrate the point using them. Otherwise, guess what? We'll see you next week back for our regularly scheduled programming. Alex and I will be back um with a lot of heat this summer for you. So, make sure to subscribe and stay tuned. All right.