The Secret Behind Good Short-Form Content in Any Niche

Understanding the Spectrum of Market Sophistication is vital in today’s age.

This zombie and John Wick below, represent the two ends of the spectrum.

Understanding this has helped my team generate almost a billion views for our clients, made them 10s of thousands as well as taken my content studio to $500K in revenue.

Today we’ll dive into,

• How you can judge your ideas better by using the spectrum.
• A crash course on markets.
• Your competitive edge for short-form content.

All to help you create better content for Tiktok, Reels and YT Shorts.

Markets Crash Course

You’ve definitely heard the term market thrown around before right?

The fitness market, the car market, the gaming market etc. Those overarching markets would be considered Mass Markets, because they hold dozens of sub-markets.

The Fitness Market has sub-markets like crossfit, bodybuilding, calisthenics etc. And those sub-markets have sub-markets. Bodybuilding has bodybuilding focused nutrition, bodybuilding focused training etc.

It can get really intricate.

Think of it all like a family tree with each branch being assigned an audience size. Generally the lower you go, the lower the audience size relative to the mass market.

That’s basically markets in a nutshell.

Now everyone inside a market will fall onto the spectrum of market sophistication.

The Spectrum of Market Sophistication

The two sides represent a markets state of sophistication.

From Unaware to Aware.

If you want the attention of a zombie, all you do is stand there and breathe.

But if you want the attention of John Wick here, you’ll have to put in a ton of effort to steal his dog.

(For those that haven’t seen the movies, John is hyper-aware and doesn’t really care about things unless you disturb his peace.)

For an IRL example, just look at the first year or two of Tiktok. Posting a picture of a ladybug would get 100,000 views — since everyone was in the Unaware state.

Today, people are creating mini-movies because over the years the market required more from creators. The market slowly realized, “hey everyone's videos are the same”, “they always say this to hook me in” etc.

The big issue here is that creators aren’t adapting to the change of sophistication in their market and continue to post things that “used to work” and hope things will eventually work out.

Hope is no beuneo.

You and your ideas have to move with the market.

So how can you use this spectrum to better judge your content ideas?

First find your Mass Market → then the sub-market your video is targeting → then you’ll have a rough TAM (total addressable market), which will help you estimate views.

Now you’ll have to dive into your sub-market and look at content currently being put out. Then gauge the markets sophistication level by determining the quality level your idea has to meet in order to get attention.

Now quality doesn’t mean resolution like 1080p or 4K.

Quality can mean the overall freshness of the idea, the intrigue in the script, how the video is edited, how unique the idea is and a plethora of attributes.

For example, I know you see 100s of videos of people yapping in their car for 5 minutes and somehow getting 100s of thousands of views — now you try the same thing and get zero. Well that’s because the sophistication level of raw talking head videos are incredibly high.

Today, you can’t do talking head videos unless you have a remarkable story, a unique personality, some sort of authority as well as a decent understanding of structuring your words.

So you’ll have to figure how to increase the quality of your idea to get attention from your sub-market.

• Can you find a new interesting angle on the topic? (This would increase freshness factor)
• Can you rework the hook in someway so it’s not the same thing people have been hearing? (Again increasing the freshness factor as well as intrigue)
• Can you visually tell the story better? (increasing production quality)

There’s tons of ways to attack ideas and make your audience actually enjoy what you put out, because at the end of the day it’s all about the consumer.

Now let’s tap into your competitive advantage.

Niche Knowledge

One of the greatest assets you have are the years of niche knowledge around a market and it’s submarkets.

You have a nuanced understanding of the community you’re trying to create for which helps with, identifying what people want to see, how they want to feel and their pain points. Making it easier to place them on the spectrum which then makes creating content easier.

That’s why companies and brands will hire social media managers and producers with an actual passion for their market because it’s legitimately an advantage. Then they just train them on technical skills like video editing and copywriting.

Summary

Now to say you actually did something productive today, let’s summarize.

You got a basic understanding of markets and submarkets, and how the lower you go the smaller the audience size becomes relative to the mass market.

Next, each market and sub-market has sophistication levels which determines how hard it is to get the attention of that market. You can get more attention by crafting stronger ideas, having better angles, better video quality etc.

And your secret superpower are the years of knowledge you have around a market and the passion you have for the community within.

If you have more detailed questions about strategy, video editing, scriptwriting, social media or literally anything at this point, send me an email, [email protected]

Have a good one,
Nishayne Lowe