In the face of the dilemma brought by traffic, what should we do? In fact, by re-understanding the key questions of traffic from a product perspective, we can get new answers.
First, the product characteristics determine the value of the flow
First, we need to understand what traffic is about and what is valuable.
Usually, when you talk about traffic, you talk about DAU (number of daily active users), MAU (number of monthly active users), but does this data really represent traffic? Another question that led me to think, why is it that the same 10 million daily active products have a completely different value?
We can look at a few examples.
The first is the application of weather, such as MJ weather, the daily active volume of tens of millions, the amount is very large, but if you want to monetize and distribute such a large amount of traffic, it is actually difficult to do. It's not a marketing issue, it's a matter of the product itself. Because although the user needs to pay attention to the weather every day, he only needs to spend 0.5 seconds and will not make more stops.
The second is the application of checking for violations. This is just needed, cutting to the user's pain point. Everyone cares about whether they have violated the rules, deducted points, and whether they need to pay fees, but why is it worth checking the traffic of violations? Later, we found a very delicate psychology, in the matter of checking violations, the user will never take the initiative to open, he would like this application not to appear for a year. So this usage scenario is completely passive.
The third example is MT, whose penetration rate of users across the network is also very high, but why is mt traffic not worth much? Because people still use it as a tool. A girl, spending half an hour fixing a picture, must quit immediately after getting it done. Although MT will encourage you to "share more directly", almost no one will share directly, and who would want to share a picture that is repaired at first glance? The user's action is generally to save, close the App, and then open WeChat to retrieve the album. So no matter how good it is, it only has the attributes of the tool, which leads to its limited commercial value.
Therefore, to judge whether the traffic of a product is valuable, we first look at the following elements: one is the number of users, that is, DAU; the second is the duration, depending on the user stickiness; and the third is the transaction attribute. A formula used to judge: traffic value = DAU× duration× trading coefficient
According to this formula, we can look at it in reverse, why is WeChat so successful? Why is its traffic so valuable? WeChat has 1 billion users, and the average user uses it for 90 minutes a day, what a terrible data. Why are today's headlines good? Today's headlines have accumulated more than 500 million users, and a user reads for 60 to 70 minutes a day, which is also terrible, so the user's use time is very important. The last point is the trading properties, which are easy to understand. A product with transaction properties that can directly generate transactions will naturally be more valuable in terms of traffic. For example, Taobao, although from the perspective of the total amount of the whole network, Taobao's traffic is not as good as WeChat, nor as good as Baidu, but every traffic it generates has transaction attributes, so Taobao's traffic is very valuable.
Second, the strength of product demand determines the cost of purchasing traffic
The characteristics of the product determine the value of the traffic, and the strength of the product demand directly determines the cost of purchasing traffic, after all, the cost of buying traffic for different products is not the same. The purchase cost of traffic is not reflected in the price of the traffic, but in the conversion rate. If a product itself is just needed, then the conversion rate of purchasing traffic must be high, and the traffic cost is relatively low.
For example, taxi, the product itself is to solve the strong needs of taxi users, then the advertising, that is, the conversion rate of purchase traffic, is high, and the corresponding customer acquisition cost is relatively low. Of course, taxi is not the lowest cost of obtaining traffic, the lowest is WeChat. Since the first day of its birth, WeChat has never bought traffic externally except for internal traffic from QQ.
So what products do people really need? Social networking is one, content information is one, and life services such as takeaway are also just needed. No matter which information client or takeaway platform is installed, most people have at least one mobile phone. The intrinsic value attributes of these products determine that the traffic costs they pay are not the same.
Let's take another negative example. There were a number of luxury e-commerce companies in those years, and now there is only one siku online market. Luxury e-commerce itself is a niche, low-frequency, high-priced, decision-making area, such product attributes determine that they are very expensive when buying traffic, because the conversion rate is low.
Not only luxury e-commerce, the traffic cost of the entire vertical e-commerce is higher than that of platform e-commerce. To put it bluntly, although the same traffic is bought, such as a dollar a click, the conversion rate of platform e-commerce may be 10%, while the conversion rate of vertical e-commerce may be only 1%.
From the above, we can also see that the cost of purchasing traffic is fundamentally determined by product characteristics, not by the delivery strategy. Since the characteristics of the product directly determine the conversion rate, can we draw such a conclusion: only popular, high-frequency, low-cost products are worth buying traffic? Because the purchase price of the basic traffic is similar, it is not the purchase price that really determines the cost of traffic, but the conversion rate, which determines the cost of customer acquisition.
I often see niche, low-frequency, high-priced, decision-making businesses that are also using the purchase of traffic to attract new customers, and such conversion rates are certainly very low, and it is likely to be unworkable in the end. My suggestion is that you can start from the product form and develop some popular, high-frequency, low-cost products to drive traffic. For example, IKEA, why does it sell ice cream for 1 yuan? Obviously, this is not profitable, but IKEA is very welcome to take advantage of this. Because furniture is a low-frequency, high-priced product, so IKEA needs to take out the furniture home, such as clothes racks, towel racks, slippers and those very low-priced foods, etc., the consumption frequency of these household products is definitely much higher. Pulling traffic through high-frequency, low-priced goods also brings profits to other aspects, and many smart merchants will adopt this strategy.
Third, the core function of the product determines the secondary distribution of traffic
If the product itself has a certain amount of traffic, do you want to do the secondary distribution of traffic? Products with a certain amount of traffic want to try to do the secondary distribution and conversion of traffic.
Why is today's headlines not moderate for advertising, and WeChat is very restrained about advertising? Is it that the moral level is different? Definitely not, because the core attributes of the two products are different. Today's headlines are essentially content products, the core is content distribution, but the most basic function of WeChat is communication, and social communication is its foundation. In other words, the conversion and distribution of any traffic must not be premised on sacrificing the core value of the product.
There must be such a judgment on the secondary distribution of traffic to see if it will affect the user experience and the core functions of the platform. WeChat is so cautious, desperately maintaining its value as a social communication platform, any product with a certain amount of traffic should also be the same, can not let the secondary distribution of traffic affect the core function of the product.