Reporter Wu Qing
Editor's Note / Since humans entered the Internet age, traffic has become a keyword because it means attention, influence and monetization ability; and in recent years, with the rise of self-media and live broadcasts such as WeChat, the concept of private domain traffic has begun to explode.
Private domain traffic, it can be said that it sprouted in offline stores and online e-commerce, rising in the WeChat era, and recently because live e-commerce has become a focus of attention and force for all parties.
According to the latest statistics of the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), as of June 2021, the overall scale of mainland Internet users exceeded 1 billion, the penetration rate of mobile phone netizens has reached 99.6%, and the average weekly Internet time of netizens is about 26.9 hours, and the Internet has entered the era of existing user operation. The space for new users to expand is limited, and the potential value of tapping old users is highlighted. It has gradually become a mainstream trend to start refined user management and reduce marketing costs through private domain traffic operations.
Nowadays, private domain traffic has become an important platform for marketing and monetization in the era of stock traffic, from the individual's public account and circle of friends to the traffic pool of the company's platform, which needs to be paid attention to and mastered. There are also more and more enterprises and individuals are building or have been building a private domain traffic ecology, but most people are limited to understanding and interest in this concept, but often do not know how to better play with private domain traffic and monetization.
In this issue of business cases, the reporter of China Business Daily explores the ins and outs of this popular concept with you, and digs the secrets behind private domain traffic.
1. The Word
What is private domain traffic?
The so-called private domain traffic, in layman's terms, refers to the fans, customers and traffic that the individual or enterprise platform has the right to dominate, which is the traffic that can be directly reached and reused. Its popularity stems from the disappearance of traffic dividends and the increasingly expensive price of traffic. Relevant information shows that in 2010, the average cost of obtaining customers online for a seller was about 37.2 yuan, and since then it has climbed year after year, reaching 486.7 yuan in 2019, an increase of more than 10 times. This also breeds a strong desire for how to get traffic and reach customers at low cost or even for free.
In the "2021 Private Domain Management Insight Report" released by Youzan and Harvard Business Review, four trends in private domain operation were mentioned: private domain has become an indispensable user reach and operation position; the long-term value of users has been highlighted as never before; the online and offline fields of retailers are rapidly integrating; and private domains are becoming the best test field for new brand/product incubation. These trends are highlighting the value and popularity of private domains.
In the view of Zhang Heng, director of community operations on the new list, there are three main characteristics of private domain traffic: it belongs to itself, can be reached for free, and can be used repeatedly. Youzan CMO Guan Yu believes that in the era of digital economy, the core goal of enterprises is to truly value and own the most valuable asset of "customers" from the height of property rights, and constantly improve their ability to create richer value for each customer. "If the consumer is compared to an asset, in the past, the merchant could only use it for a short time in the form of leasing, and through the private domain operation, the asset would become the independent property rights of the merchant." Guan Yu said.
Private domain traffic is relative to public domain traffic, public domain traffic is generally three categories, one is Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo as the representative of the e-commerce platform; the second is weChat, Weibo as the representative of the information flow platform; the third is the vibrato, Kuaishou and other representative of the short video platform. Each of these platforms is a complete ecosystem and a huge traffic pool, but the traffic is mostly controlled by the platform, which is difficult for individuals and enterprises to use directly.
Among them, WeChat circle of friends, user groups and enterprises WeChat, App, etc. can be regarded as the real sense of the "private domain", can be freely and repeatedly reached; and WeChat public numbers, Mini Programs and Taobao, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms, as well as short video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, as well as Weibo, Toutiao and other information flow platforms, although each account can also have a lot of fans, but the dominant power of traffic distribution is still in the hands of each platform, and can not be regarded as real private domain traffic, and most of them are counted as "mixed domains" in both public and private domains.
"Although it is a corresponding concept, the relationship between public domain traffic and private domain traffic is actually complementary, some like the relationship between 'big rivers have no water and small rivers are dry, small rivers have water and big rivers are full', big rivers are public domain flows, small rivers are private domain flows, and the former is the source of traffic for the latter." A person in charge of brand marketing of an enterprise that has operated a private domain e-commerce business told reporters that enterprises and individuals have left users in their own small rivers through effective maintenance and operation, continuously generated repurchases, and continuously introduced more people into the small river through drainage and spread of customer social networks.
To create its own private domain traffic pool, the benefits are obvious: compared to public domain traffic, private domain traffic to customers' stickiness and conversion rate are much higher, you share content information and product information can also easily and efficiently reach the crowd in the traffic pool; your fans and users will change from raw customers to mature customers, familiar customers may become promoters, to achieve fission marketing; and the people and data of these traffic pools can also dig out more commercial value, such as push advertising and live streaming.
For example, if a user purchases a product offline or on the Taobao platform, if the enterprise does not actively communicate the "link", after the purchase is completed, the customer will "disappear" or return to Taobao and other platforms, and the competitor will launch a better product and a greater discount The customer will leave. But if you add WeChat, join the group or become a fan, and establish a link of trust and emotion, it is equivalent to a convenient and free promotion channel. New products, advertisements, discounts and other information can be more convenient and efficient to reach customers. Although there may not have been an order at that time, after seeing the actual effect and promotional information in channels such as the circle of friends and live broadcast, it may be silently placed.
"In general, the larger your private domain traffic pool and the more users you link to, the lower your marketing costs and the higher your conversion rate." Zhang Heng said that the more emotional links and interactions with users, the stronger the stability of customers, and the more difficult it is to lose.
According to a report by Tencent and BCG, the CRM (customer relationship management) of many offline stores has shifted from traditional phone + store + SMS to social private domain operation, and the number of effective interactive customers can increase by 1.5 to 2 times, the communication efficiency can be increased by 3 to 4 times, and the average interaction time of a single time is increased by 2 to 3 times.
Originally, you needed to constantly call and "harass" the other party to talk to you, and now you can let the other party take the initiative to find the door as long as you send a circle of friends or live broadcast. From the original "500 calls, 20 feedback" to "500 friends, 50 to 80 often interact", from "often can't get through the phone, hang up without saying a few words" to "anytime, anywhere, a variety of forms of chat". Compared with the original harassment, the current interaction is more like a friend sharing interaction, more intimate and more efficient.
2. Law
How do I operate private domain traffic?
Since there are many benefits of private domain traffic, whether it is an individual or a platform, they all want to manage their own private domain traffic, so how to play with private domain traffic?
Guan Yu believes that the key to doing a good job in private domain operation lies in three links. The first is the accumulation of private domain traffic, which can be called "private domain property rights"; secondly, the degree of value creation of customers, which can be called "single customer value"; and finally, the recommendation effect of old customers, which can be called "customer recommendation rate". The three are interlinked to form a "private domain triangle" model with praise and refinement.
"First of all, through articles, notes, short videos, live broadcasts and other word-of-mouth content, we will continue to establish 'interest connections' with more target customers, expand the 'breadth' of private domain connections to accumulate traffic; secondly, through community operations, membership operations and other means and repeatedly build 'trust connections' between customers, promote customer repurchase, enhance the 'depth' of operations, that is, 'single customer value'; and finally through distribution, preferential treatment, fission and other means, establish 'interest connections' with customers, form secondary and multiple transmissions, and improve the 'customer recommendation rate'." Guan Yu said that in the end, the area of the private domain triangle continues to grow, and the company's ability to operate customer assets continues to increase.
First, the goals and customer groups of individuals and enterprises are clarified, and then various activities are carried out on various relevant channel platforms to attract precipitated traffic.
Usually the way of drainage, individuals and various platforms will vary. For example, most personal account platforms will precipitate fans by optimizing and improving content and providing valuable viewpoint information; while merchants and enterprises are induced through various interest inducement methods such as promotions, discounts, spikes, lottery, and new product trials. There is also a common way to drain traffic, that is, to directly spend money to buy traffic through auction rankings, advertising spaces, etc.
Generally speaking, each platform has its own traffic distribution mechanism and platform promotion period, so for the algorithm mechanism of each platform, the use of the promotion window period of different platforms, with the help of celebrity effect, planning keywords, hotspots and content will achieve better drainage effects.
Taking the perfect diary that rises by private domain operation as an example, the first thing is to cooperate with KOLs (key opinion leaders) on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, through a small number of head KOLs to drive the momentum, a large number of waist and primary KOLs relay to form a platform phenomenon-level sound, to create a hot selling situation of stars, talents, and celebrities using perfect diary products. At the same time, in addition to daily sales, the salesman in the offline experience store also guides customers to add WeChat friends through preferential benefits; also after placing an order online, they use benefits to guide buyers to add WeChat. Online and offline drain each other, and customers who occasionally and potentially trade in the private domain are constantly precipitated.
Importing traffic into the pool is only the first step, because there are many private domain traffic pools, and there are many preferential offers for various activities, and there is no good daily operation of traffic, and the traffic that is hard to pull in will also be lost in minutes.
A person in charge of brand marketing told reporters that the key to creating private domain traffic is not to use any carrier and way to do it, and the most important and difficult thing is the change of thinking mode. From the boss to the operation team employees must accept the new retail model, from product thinking to user thinking.
Therefore, the operation of private domain traffic must first be clear, and the private domain traffic you pull in is not only a potential customer, but also a person with various needs and ideas. "The core of private domain traffic is user relationship management, to make them believe in you, and willing to look at your circle of friends and information, do not think that it is a machine that pushes advertising and promotional information every day, but a professional and valuable, life-aware, emotional friend." The above-mentioned head of brand marketing said that they should provide them with professional and valuable products, services and solutions, so as to precipitate real high-quality traffic.
This requires human insight and the fine division and operation of the community, as well as a delicate balance between the information and value content of the event.
Taking the typical private domain of the circle of friends as an example, in the view of Zhu Zhongyu, co-author of "Private Domain Traffic" and CEO of Shanghai Weiyuan, the revitalization of the WeChat circle of friends needs to create an IP-based personality, and the information of the circle of friends should be planned hierarchically, the first type is interesting light information, the second type is knowledge information, the third type is customer feedback information, and the fourth type is advertising promotion information, so that the interesting and valuable information for users can not be blocked and deleted by users, in order to effectively reach users.
Suppose that there are 100 people in A's private domain traffic, all of which are highly active, then the effective rate of private domain traffic is 100%; suppose that B's private domain traffic has 1000 people, only 50 people are active, and the others are "zombies", and the effective rate of private domain traffic is only 5%. Therefore, for private domain traffic, quality is more important than quantity.
This requires a good label layering for each user and fan, for example, on the e-commerce platform, it can be divided into heavy users, purchasing users, potential users, and concerned users. Then carry out accurate touch and promotion to maximize the reach effect.
"It's also important to do a good job of daily maintenance." Zhu Zhongyu said that no matter how big or small the platform and individuals can do a good job in private domain traffic operations, but different private domain gameplay will be different.
Usually, there are three main ways to play private domain traffic, the first is a shopping assistant, usually suitable for start-up brands, department stores and other sales ends, suitable for cost-effective, high-frequency shopping consumer goods, such as Watson's offline store daily promotions. The second is a private consultant, which is generally more suitable for customers with high unit prices in the fields of jewelry and jade, supercars, luxury houses, as well as education, fitness, insurance and other industries. These areas have high personalized requirements, high privacy, high value of loyal customers, pay attention to one-to-one professional services, authoritative guidance and trust relationships, and are easy to achieve the effect of one transaction and lifelong repurchase. The third is the field expert, suitable for all kinds of consumer groups with obvious characteristics, such as various "professional / lifestyle" categories, based on common interests, fields, etc. to form a variety of communities, in the community to disseminate professional advice and activity information, organize online and offline group activities, and eventually become sales lists and brand amplifiers.
Of course, this is only a rough division, the reality will be more complex, in real life, are a variety of ways to play parallel, but each has its own focus.
3. Surgery
Monetization of private domain traffic
For the vast majority of individual and enterprise platforms, the ultimate goal of building and operating a private domain traffic pool is to better monetize. In fact, on the other hand, monetization is a natural process and reward after you operate private domain traffic.
In terms of the usual monetization methods, individuals and businesses will vary. For example, the monetization methods of personal private domain traffic pools, including soft text, information flow advertising, micro-stores, live streaming with goods, etc. For merchants and corporate brands, more by enhancing brand exposure and brand image value, as well as providing product preferential information, etc., it points to guiding customers to spend orders, including implanting advertising, selling goods and services, knowledge payment, live streaming monetization and so on.
Long Gonghuo, author of "High-end Operations", believes that the three elements of trust, demand and purchasing power must be met in order to produce real transactions (traffic monetization). So in the first phase, two things had to be solved through a series of blockbuster videos: building trust and stimulating demand. This requires that the content and information you provide are sufficiently sophisticated and professional, and the target group attributes of the target group are clear and accurate enough.
Specific to the way to induce users to place orders to monetize, such as various preferential discounts, group lottery, limited seconds, new product experience, birthday discounts, etc. However, some content standards can still be unified, such as the need for online and offline activity interaction, online promotions to strengthen the guidance of customers to the offline consumption experience, unified output content and image to complete the IP creation, while through the community link online and offline, the establishment of a repurchase rate and order volume as the core of the assessment system, to complete the private domain traffic closed loop. Finally, a replicable and self-driving operation system is formed.
At the same time, after the private domain traffic pool is established, the introduction and operation of various trading platforms is an important part of improving the monetization ability. There are many of these platforms, for enterprises and merchants, there are brand stores on platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, Douyin Kuaishou, etc., which can also be large numbers on information flow platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, and can also be accounts on O2O trading platforms such as Meituan and Ele.me. These platforms have a huge consumer group and their respective customer base, whether it is a business or a business individual can be fully utilized.
According to Zhu Zhongyu, a "post-90s" led a team of 20 people, using 100 WeChat personal accounts to provide users with hotel reservation services, their private domain traffic was first attracted from the public domain traffic pool, playing the price is cheaper than Ctrip, special service and other appeals, the WeChat personal account is built into a reservation call center, one-on-one service. The hotel prices it gives are similar to those of Ctrip, but the special feature is that it offers free breakfast coupons, even wayward check-out coupons, and sometimes coupons. Based on this personalized service and preferential treatment, this small team achieved a yearly turnover of 80 million yuan, and the proportion of repurchase users reached 80%.
Also taking the frequent scenes of daily life restaurants as an example, in the past, customers left after eating, and then they could only wait for the rabbit and wait for repeat customers to come to the door. However, after the store manager guides customers to add WeChat and join the community through discount offers, etc., they can reach these customers by updating the content of the circle of friends, etc., and through the activities themselves to strengthen the interaction such as likes and comments, new customers gradually become repeat customers, and strangers become their own people. In this way, on the one hand, it increases the exposure in customers, which is equivalent to often evoking the consumption memory of customers, and the probability of coming back to eat is high; and in the low peak and free time of the restaurant, more preferential treatment is given to friends and fans, which not only alleviates the peak dining tension, but also increases revenue.
As an Internet catering brand that has risen in recent years, Taier Laotanzi Sauerkraut Fish is also achieving rapid growth through this private domain operation. According to reports, in 2020, through this kind of operation activity, they sent a total of 150,000 small dishes, according to the average customer unit price of 88.4 yuan, which alone brought them more than 13 million yuan of income.
In addition, in addition to the traditional guidance of consumption orders, the use of private domain traffic for live streaming with goods to monetize, more and more become a common choice. At present, live streaming platforms can be roughly divided into three categories: traditional live broadcast platforms such as Taobao Live, short video live broadcast platforms such as Douyin Kuaishou, and various vertical live broadcast platforms such as alcohol. Differences between platforms can also create differences in gameplay and monetization.
For example, Taobao live broadcast belongs to the centralized e-commerce platform, in the past, small and medium-sized businesses and anchors are more difficult to obtain traffic tilt, the general traffic operation model has three, one is to cooperate with the talent, through the influence and fans of the talent to drain and cash in; the second is to find MCN agencies (internet celebrity brokerage agencies) to operate on behalf of the trained people of their own subdivision categories; the third is the store itself live broadcast, the store itself needs to have a certain private domain traffic precipitation and brand effect, through high-quality products and discounts to drain and monetize.
Guan Yu believes that around the private domain triangle, the most basic core capability is the ability to create better products and better services. Every merchant who attaches importance to products and services, every brand manager must always attach the most importance to products and services, and everyone has their own methods and best practices.
Zhu Zhongyu said that private domain traffic operation is ultimately to strengthen the conversion, repurchase and fission of paying users, there are some common models and methodologies behind it, the premise of private domain traffic is to have a human touch and personalized IP, establish a strong relationship of trust with customers through daily interaction, and there is no shortcut to output without input.
observe
Behind the private domain traffic fire
Behind the rise of the private domain is the growth anxiety of enterprises and the disappearance of traffic dividends. At the same time, it represents the beginning of the transformation of thinking from traffic harvesting to user management. The rise of private domain traffic also means that the management of users has entered the era of "refined" operation from "rugged", whether it is platforms, merchants or individuals, more refined operations are needed to achieve the goal of cost reduction and efficiency increase.
It can be said that in this era of stock competition of traffic, the ceiling of new user growth looms, and the value of continuously tapping old users has gradually become the consensus of society. Private domain traffic operation is certainly not the standard for all enterprises, but it must be something that all enterprises need to learn and understand. Because it is an optimization strategy for marketing monetization in the era of stock traffic, it is also a tactical play method that brands and individuals must pay attention to and master in the future.
After stripping away the cocoon, the essence of private domain traffic may still be customer relationship management, but compared to the previous customer management more customer service-based communication services, private domain traffic operations need more experts, because users need more professional and valuable information sharing guidance, more professional answers, so the need for private domain traffic professional IP image to create, they may be health consultants, beauty experts, financial experts, etc.
The sales conversion of private domain traffic is based on customer trust, reliable products, and efficient services. Therefore, adding customer WeChat, building WeChat groups or fan pulling new is only the first step, and the subsequent operation and service determine whether the sales can be converted and long-lasting.
In the final analysis, the operation and realization of private domain traffic is more of a technical thing, and good products and models are the foundation. Whether it is knowledge payment, professional services or physical products, the core is whether the product and service itself are good enough and attractive, including the quality, price, brand and so on of the products and services themselves. The products and services themselves are not good, no matter how much traffic and good operation, they will also become passive water and rootless roots, and the effect of conversion and repurchase will not be good.
Therefore, the operation of private domain traffic is a systematic project, not only a department or a group of people's things, in the whole process, the quality of goods and services, their own brand value, publicity, operation conversion and other factors are very important, so the operation of private domain traffic requires the cooperation of all departments of the company, but also the cooperation of all parties in society.
The articles in this edition were all written by Wu Qingcai, a reporter of this newspaper