For B-side operations, how to generate private domain traffic?

Traffic problem

Traffic has entered the era of stock.

The new economy relies heavily on the Internet, and the growth of the Internet mainly depends on traffic. The formula for Internet traffic is the number of users multiplied by the user time.

The number of Internet users in China has basically not increased since 2017. The average time spent on the Internet by Chinese Internet users is 300 minutes. The number of users and the market have not increased, and the total traffic has not increased. It is difficult to achieve further growth.

From 2013 to 2015, the cost of acquiring an effective active user in the Internet circle was RMB 2-3, but now it is RMB 100, and the customer acquisition cost of some financial products is even over RMB 1,000.

This logic is the same as that of real estate. Real estate makes money not by winning in product design or model management, but more because the land is cheap, occupies the best market, and has the largest traffic, so it can make more money.

In fact, the Internet is virtual commercial real estate, and the land of the Internet is the users. For example, the cost of obtaining traffic by opening a Taobao store online and offline is almost the same. This is the logic behind the Internet giants turning to offline new retail.

In addition, the four giants BBAT (Baidu, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent) have taken 80% of the market share of the overall C-end traffic, far exceeding the traffic concentration of the four major Internet giants in the United States. Online traffic has reached its peak and is still controlled by the four giants, but the Internet cannot lose its growth. This is the fundamental reason why the giants have turned to 2B.

B-side traffic

The B-end is mostly competing in the existing market, seeking efficiency optimization, and there are limited tricks that can be learned from the C-end traffic.

When these routines such as fission, hot products, and private domain traffic are borrowed for B-side operations , they are usually combined with the characteristics of the B-side. Otherwise, you will end up like learning to walk in Handan or imitating others ugly.

For B-side operations, because the customer's decision-making chain is long, it is necessary to gradually solve the trust issues of products and services, involving brand promotion, market acquisition, sales lead acquisition, customer conversion, continuous maintenance, etc.

When there are more links, it involves the coordination of marketing, operations and sales. If you can't tell them apart, it will be a mess.

First of all, we need to focus on the first principle and maintain the core indicators of B-side operations at a certain stage. For example, user registration, sales volume, user repurchase, etc. are all core indicators that can be tried at different stages.

Characteristics of B-side traffic

Compared with C-end traffic, B-end traffic has the following characteristics:

1. Keyword SEO/SEM can only achieve limited results and is not applicable to complex B-side products/services.
2. Public traffic tends to be more about obtaining direct sales leads, and the cost of leads from media placement is becoming increasingly expensive.
3. Field sales are costly and difficult to manage, and recruiting channel agents can easily lead to a loss of control over the sales of complex businesses.

This is because, for the B-side, the more non-standard and complex the service, the larger the transaction amount, the more human communication is required, and the more difficult it is to achieve online. Of course, if you say that you can buy a house on Taobao, then I have nothing to say.

In the traditional sales method, companies need to advertise and be responsible for product quality. The sales team needs to know the benchmark companies in the industry, rely on personal relationships and credit to win over leaders with decision-making power, and rely on the credit endorsement of benchmark companies to win over small and medium-sized enterprises.

However, the current method of acquiring B-side traffic still relies heavily on personal relationships, with each having their own unique approach. The process is very non-standard and it is difficult to support the rapid advancement of B-side Internet business and achieve the goal of rapid large-scale replication.

Public traffic delivery is expensive, ineffective, and has slow conversions. What should we do?

Establishment of B-side private domain traffic

Private domain traffic is the way brand owners use various methods (for example, Taobao sellers include a brand WeChat account in the package, which is a common method of turning public into private) to divert customer resources to their own pool (usually a service account/WeChat group, personal WeChat account, mini program or own app, etc.), the core of which is to cultivate the relationship between the brand and the user.

In this private pool, users can enjoy the brand's services and discounts, and can also communicate with other users to form specific circles, deepening their understanding and recognition of the brand.

B-side sales are often based on trust. Trust has two levels, including trust in a company (corporate brand/product quality); and trust in people, such as trust in a salesperson, a client with connections, or a KOL, a big name in an industry.

This is highly consistent with the goal of establishing private domain traffic: to cultivate a trusting relationship .

B-side private domain traffic is built based on trust. It converts B-side traffic (users) online, carries them to the company's personal WeChat account/service account/mini program/WeChat group, and builds a trust system in an anthropomorphic way. It is a process of continuously converting users using standardized SOP processes .

Ladder of Trust

B-side private domain traffic can be roughly divided into four steps to achieve high user trust: customer leads - user sedimentation - conversion and transaction - continuous stickiness .

Sales leads are obtained through multiple channels, both online and offline. Including sales agents, account managers, field sales, SEO/SEM, advertising, email sales, telephone/SMS marketing, and text messages, these are all B-side marketing methods, and can all be regarded as ways to obtain B-side traffic, and can also be regarded as ways to obtain sales leads (potential users).

When a sales lead is obtained, the information conveyed by phone or text message is limited in form and is considered a breakthrough sale. Maybe at the end of the phone call he will say: Then add me on WeChat and I’ll send you the information.

Or, when a business has been concluded, people still hope that the customer will stay. In addition to hoping that users will register on Internet products, operations also need to make preparations for active, passive, and scenario-based communications.

The famous "Six-Touch Theory" in marketing means that if you can reach a customer six times, you have a high probability of converting him.

How to calculate 6 times?

Making a phone call counts as one time; sending product information or customer cases counts as one time; posting a comment on WeChat Moments counts as one time; giving him a product demo also counts as one time; sending a promotional poster also counts as one time. Just chatting when you have nothing to do counts as well.

The content used for each reach is different, which is essentially switching the same content into multiple forms and redistributing it again.

No matter how small a company is, it has its own brand/IP. Building individuals into expert IPs will be a sure win.

Once customers are settled on WeChat, you can proactively push information and chat with them. You can also use the powerful tool of Moments to repeatedly strengthen the influence through the creation of personalities.

Even with strangers, basic trust can be built over time through constant and subtle contact.

Some people said, I also set up a group, but why did it die in the end; I also directed traffic to the official account, but no one reads the official account; I also asked users to register, but the push messages were useless.

This is because private domain traffic needs to be carefully cultivated.

B-side traffic focuses on quality

The quality of traffic is divided into two aspects: one is the traffic itself, and the other is whether the traffic is suitable.

When the first round of traffic comes, the path it takes determines the quality of the basic traffic.

Here are some typical examples:

• When buying vegetables at the market, you can scan the QR code and get a free cabbage for three yuan each. This has attracted a large number of users.
• Create a business group, drag people you know and don't know into the group, and the group dies after the red envelopes are given;
• There are countless offline industry conferences, and each conference will have a group, which will be lively for a while, and then quiet down;

When you do this casually, have you ever thought that it is too careless to post such a "fish pond" without screening, without any threshold to join, lacking continuous maintenance, and only publishing the information that you hope to spread.

To manage private domain traffic well and build a good "fish pond", it is necessary to carefully cultivate it from the beginning, starting with seed selection. Seeds mixed with mud and sand will pollute the entire pond.

With precise seeds, the quality of this "fish pond" still needs to be carefully cultivated through operation, communication, maintenance and business realization.

The process of waiting for the fish to grow is the process of building trust, which requires great care and patience. Most of those who harvest in waves without nurturing will become a pool of “dead fish traffic”.

Tips for "raising fish" in traffic pools

The pond cannot only have the voice of the pond owner, as users will be very disgusted by this. The development of UGC user communication is the prerequisite for pond diversity, and UGC is also the basis for establishing the group leader/online distribution system.

The pond owner can try to operate various activities to establish industry visibility and credibility. Even if he leaves an overwhelming impression, it is much better than being unknown.

The hook of fission needs to be carefully crafted, mainly based on "virtual" items. For example, for common data reports, because the marginal cost is low, the cost of issuing one more is almost zero. The marginal cost of physical goods is high, and subsidies are almost useless in increasing the stickiness of B-side users.

The advanced stage of marketing is word of mouth. Keep making good products and services. If users recommend your products or services by word of mouth, then congratulations, you have reached the highest level of communication.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that in reality, in private domain traffic operations, operators do try to reach more customers. However, when the timeline is extended to several months, most of the unconverted users may be forgotten after being reached two or three times.

This may require the use of a more segmented SCRM (Social Customer Relationship Management) social customer relationship management system to tag and follow up, and the use of automated marketing SOP process execution to continuously make conversions and improve the user's life cycle value.

It’s better to develop your own tool because there is no all-encompassing product yet. Just do as much as you can with the money you have.

After saying so much, you may say that you don’t understand, and that’s okay. Because I recently learned a famous saying, "The size of your butt depends on the size of your pants." B-side private domain traffic is just a tool, and it is a more important methodology for positional warfare against established companies.

Operations are still centered on practical applications. If I give you a missile and you don't know how to fire it, you still won't be able to hit anyone. Therefore, fission, hot products, private domain traffic, etc. may not be useful.

In addition, I recently learned another famous saying: "Do it first, then talk about it." No matter how much you understand or how much you think, it is useless. You won’t feel it unless you do it once. The successful experience in operations is gained through trial and error.

Author: Zhang Fan

Source: "Thinking Soup" (ID: ideasoup)