How to build a private domain traffic matrix to acquire a large number of customers?

The author and a good friend from a ToB company talked about how to acquire customers. In this article, I have organized the content to see how B-side companies acquire customers. The 6 steps explain the sequence and key points in detail.

Currently, ToB companies generally acquire customers in the following eight ways (ranked from most to least effective): Baidu paid promotion, sales, content marketing (practical knowledge/customer success stories/industry reports and other soft implants), hosting industry summits/salons, customer/friend referrals, official websites, upstream and downstream partners, and other third-party advertising.

What I want to talk about today is the 9th type, the private domain traffic matrix.

We are a "strongly operated" company without a marketing department or a sales department. In terms of the company's customer acquisition and communication, I designed a private domain traffic operation matrix to attract customers to actively seek cooperation with us, including major customers such as Procter & Gamble, China Taiping Insurance, JD Finance, Weishou/Weishi, and other business departments of Tencent.

Reduce content production costs through UGC content community → Distribute content on centralized traffic platforms to acquire new users → Accumulate in more than 20 "WeChat personal accounts" (each personal account has 3,000-5,000 friends) → Build user stickiness through community operations → Actively consult 300-500 customers for cooperation every month.

(As shown in the figure: Private Domain Traffic Matrix)

But the matrix is ​​not built all at once in one day. Next, I will explain to you in detail the sequence and key points of building ToB private domain traffic and how to achieve self-growth of corporate customers.

1. Content Community

Content is the most frequent demand of practitioners in various industries

Many ToB companies’ services and products have low-frequency demands, but people in the workplace have the need to read industry information/learn content every day.

When we started our business, we built a knowledge planet and required people in the company to break down an operational case of the WeChat ecosystem every day, output it to the planet, and use it as a planning inspiration library.

Later we discovered that our users (operation managers of various companies) generally have this information need and need to understand the various ways of playing in the industry when making operation plans (this is very important, user demand).

So we set up a payment mechanism and opened it to the public. The reason for setting a low threshold for paid subscriptions is, first, to enhance user stickiness. Users will read more frequently if they pay; second, we want to switch from PGC to UGC.

Operation rules: Users who post case analysis content in the community will be rewarded 9.9 yuan for 3.3 likes, 19.9 yuan for 9.9 likes, and 39.9 yuan for 19.9 likes; at the same time, they can also get a 24% share by inviting new users to join. This has encouraged many users to produce content independently, allowing our content community to operate independently.

In the early stage, through user self-propagation + continuous promotion on our personal account + official recommendation, we achieved 16,000 paid members without anyone dedicated to management, and the revenue exceeded one million (now, in order to accelerate the expansion, we have 1 full-time operator).

Later, when I talked about cooperation with different clients, they almost all mentioned that they had joined Planet a long time ago and learned a lot of operational cases.

Although everyone in the ToB industry knows that content is important, in order to write good content one has to be very knowledgeable about the industry and have good writing skills, and such talents are rare - I once searched for a year and couldn't find one.

It is difficult to output systematic professional content, but it is relatively easy to output fragmented content every day. Therefore, based on the content accumulated on the planet, it is classified, integrated and refined weekly/monthly, and then transmitted to the centralized traffic platform to obtain greater traffic.

2. Centralized Traffic Platform

Public domain traffic is like the vast sea of ​​stars

Why distribute content to a “centralized traffic platform”?

Centralized traffic platforms (Baidu/Toutiao/Zhihu/Weibo) have one advantage: a large number of users on the platform have already been labeled, and the algorithm will accurately distribute your content to target users; you only need to produce corresponding content based on the traffic distribution rules and population characteristics of each platform.

For example, the quality of content recommendations on Toutiao is very high. Many executives of large companies are using Toutiao to read industry information (purely personal speculation: I often receive Toutiao links from the heads of cooperative clients on WeChat saying "I saw your content on Toutiao", but I have never received any links from UC/Baidu). Content for executives should tend to be more abstract, such as industry perspectives and thinking frameworks.

But on Zhihu, there are more front-line working people, and the content produced should be more pragmatic, such as specific practical details in work, career growth, etc., which will get more reading and long-tail searches from users.

In addition, each industry has its own industry media where content can be contributed and distributed. Taking the Internet Operation Circle as an example, there are media platforms such as Renrenshishipinmiao, 36kr, and Huxiu.

First, their domain names have a very high weight in Baidu (each company’s Toutiao account also has a relatively high weight), and distributing content on these platforms can obtain more centralized platform traffic (unprofessional account makers have very little traffic); second, the industry media itself also has a very vertical and precise industry user group.

Therefore, distributing content on a centralized traffic platform is like setting a net to catch fish in the ocean. There is a steady stream of new users (the largest source of customers for many ToB companies today is still Baidu bidding), and by implanting the author’s WeChat account in the article/at the end of the article, users can be retained on the personal WeChat account.

3. Mediaization of Official Accounts

"Neutrality" creates potential energy difference

Official accounts are a form of "new media". One of the natural advantages of the media is its "neutral" attribute (Ali has invested in a large number of industry media since its early days).

However, many companies have not made good use of this advantage and simply set the company name = public account name and product name = public account name. No matter how informative the articles you publish are, users will be instantly distracted as soon as they see the "public account name". There are vested interests, which increases the resistance for users to share.

Therefore, we divide the positioning of our public accounts into two categories: self-operated media and product public accounts.

Official accounts related to companies and products: only need to provide content related to the services, benefits, and practical operations of the product itself, provide users with better value-added services, and complete the mission of increasing user stickiness and better encouraging user word-of-mouth communication.

The public account with media attributes: In-depth Selection of Operations (focusing on the review of practical cases in the operations industry) continuously provides users with high-value content and builds media potential in the industry by publishing deeply reusable practical cases (the content source is provided by the community) and industry opinion articles.

Holding an industry summit in the name of the media will have more credibility and communication power; relying on its own media traffic, it is easier to integrate and leverage partners upstream and downstream of the industry chain to promote customer referrals to each other; at the same time, the operators of the media public accounts also need to independently plan fission and fan-increasing activities such as "industry dry goods information packages" and "giving away professional books".

The precise traffic brought by the spread of "neutral" high-value content in the WeChat circle can also be deposited on personal accounts, bringing more endorsements to the personal account personality.

4. Personal Account

The carrier with the highest retention rate and reach rate

The reason why we direct all traffic to personal WeChat accounts as a transit station for traffic is that the current average opening rate of service accounts across the entire network is below 10%, and that of subscription accounts is below 2%; but the opening rate of personal account Moments is above 80%.

This is also the reason why WeChat private domain traffic (in a narrow sense: WeChat personal accounts) has become so popular this year. WeChat personal accounts are the carriers with the highest old customer retention rate and multiple free information reach rate among all Internet carriers.

After the traffic is gathered, the success or failure of the "personality" operation of the personal account determines the effectiveness of diverting traffic to other businesses.

Taking us as an example, our personal account needs to give people the impression of being an “expert in the operation of the WeChat ecosystem”; the content posted in the Moments is mainly supported by six dimensions, such as useful articles, industry perspectives, daily life and work trivia, and personal/company achievements.

There are two main assessment indicators: the number of likes and comments on the content in the Moments, and the reply rate of friends (the reply rate of your friends when you actively comment on their Moments); another auxiliary indicator is the number of paying users who promote Knowledge Planet in the Moments, and the use of the ability to bring goods to indirectly verify the user's trust in the personal account.

For example, we publish good and informative articles every day to continuously give users a sense of gain; we publish our own professional suggestions on hot topics in the industry (such as WeChat banning external links); we intersperse interesting trivia about real people in life/work, as users like to make friends with real people rather than robots; we also publish on-site photos of individuals giving speeches at industry summits; and we publish information such as the company’s cooperation with well-known companies to enhance professionalism.

Through multi-dimensional information presentation, while shaping your "expert persona", you can continue to create value for users and output your values, allowing customers to go from "knowing you" → to "trusting you" → to "respecting you" → and finally to "following you".

Instead of remaining silent in the circle of friends at ordinary times, when the business needs to be promoted, directly post hard advertisements: screenshots of XX customer's transaction, links to limited-time group purchases.

According to our previous tests, the conversion rate of paid courses promoted by personal accounts that are well operated in the WeChat Moments is 15 times higher than that of accounts that are not operated in the WeChat Moments.

Imagine if your "personality" is a teacher/expert: then every time you propose a solution to a user, he will be eager to use it immediately; if your "personality" is a salesperson: for every word you say, the other party will consider how much money they need to pay.

5. Community

Humans are social animals

Birds of a feather flock together.

For every vertical industry, “network communication within a circle” is the second most pressing need besides “content information”. In some industries, the need for “circles” is even higher than that for “content”.

Based on users' need to connect with others, we have designed a community self-operation system based on cities, consisting of "community think tank → group administrator → group owner → city president".

Without investing full-time operation staff, we established "industry exchange groups in the same city" in 20 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen (we have tested the theme communities of multiple dimensions such as industry, occupation, hobbies, and city, and the only ones that can survive for more than 2 years are the "industry + city" dimension groups, which will not be repeated here.)

Taking advantage of the geographical location in the same city, we hold "offline salons" every month (which can leverage physical sponsorship/online media rights exchange from upstream and downstream partners in the industrial chain), which greatly enhances the stickiness and identity of community users, and holds industry summits with thousands of people together with first-line media to establish brand influence. At the same time, the "community" itself has become a source of new traffic, which in turn brings new traffic to the personal account matrix.

Based on the free city community, we have also been testing value-added services such as paid memberships based on user needs in the past two months.

Using a low-threshold "payment rate" to assist in testing operational results: on the one hand, it indirectly reflects the operational quality of the "personal account matrix"; on the other hand, if a department is a "cost department" in the company, its voice may not be as strong as that of a "profit department".

When an operations department becomes profitable, it can provide more financial incentives to its executives.

However, the "North Star" indicator of the entire operations department remains: the brand potential brought by personal accounts that continue to create value for users.

Summarize

The entire operation system is designed based on the user demand funnel and life cycle, and we insist on creating value for customers first, ultimately achieving the same effect as "owing Stephen Chow a movie ticket". When users have "enterprise service" needs, monetization will be a natural result.

When a customer enters the "monetization" loop, the only indicator is: customer success.

Each “customer case story” can serve as a reverse endorsement of the company’s trust, forming a closed loop of business growth flywheel. For example, our “referrals from old customers” have accounted for 1/3.

Many times, it’s not that there are no methods, but that we always hear about new methods on the market, and every time we rush in, we only try them out briefly, and then give up when we feel they don’t work.

The core idea is: where are your users? What do they need/want? Which requirement am I/my team good at?

Just choose one point and keep working on it until you have achieved perfection before considering the next one.

PS Here are some wild examples to inspire your imagination:

1) Sales personnel from technology outsourcing/agent operation companies acquire customers on Boss Zhipin. They put their resumes showing their past achievements in new media agency operation/technology development for other companies, and privately chat with CEOs of small companies one by one to sell products (last year I even encountered a pornographic account on Boss Zhipin trying to sell me pornographic products).

2) Friends who have public accounts will definitely find that the most frequent messages in your background are advertisements asking you whether you want to increase your followers. Some of them are caused by the plug-ins/editors you use exposing your public account ID and sending you targeted push notifications; some of them are caused by crawlers you have written yourself, which push fan-increasing ads in batches to accounts that update related articles.

3) If you are selling software/system, you must pay attention to: recruiting agents. In China, there are a lot of "people with some money" or "people who make money locally by relying on connections/resources" (the lower you go, the more important it is to have personal connections). Even if you set up a subsidiary locally, you cannot compete with the connections that the agents have had in the local area for a long time. I know a company that has developed software similar to wetool (wetool is free), which relies on agents to sell to traditional merchants and has an annual revenue of 20 million. Secondly, several Internet data companies I know have expanded their marketing by poaching marketing managers/key account sales from Huawei and financial software companies such as UFIDA and Kingdee, and monetizing the key accounts they have accumulated previously within the company.

4) Speaking of franchise, here’s another piece of data: a company that specializes in attracting franchise for offline stores has an annual revenue of 5 billion (basically you pay tens to hundreds of thousands, and you can open a store in a hands-off manner, with the brand taking care of all the processes). In fifth- and sixth-tier cities, the mortality rate of these franchise stores is as high as 90% (the mortality rate of the catering industry in Shenzhen is 50% per year, and many local self-media outlets survive by relying on advertising from newly opened businesses/old customers no longer invest). The way to attract traffic is to post tutorials or tips on how to open a coffee shop/milk tea shop/breakfast shop, how to set up a street stall/do small business and other money-making related content on centralized traffic platforms such as Baidu, Douyin/Toutiao, and then direct traffic to personal accounts or fill in mobile phone numbers for sales and transactions.

5) If you are a traditional enterprise, you can pay attention to two channels: one is Alibaba (there are a lot of manufacturers/traders). A previous customer contacted them one by one through private messages for sales; the other is the traditional local chambers of commerce/industry associations. The presidents of these chambers of commerce/associations are the key nodes of resources and connections, and some executive presidents (the ones who actually do the work) are actually relatively poor (compared to the CEOs of member companies), and they also want to make money very much, but they need to make money decently (at this time, if your product/service is more advanced and effective), there can be a lot of room for cooperation (such as convening a large number of entrepreneurs to attend classes).

6) For example, if we develop a "group buying SaaS" tool, we will not rely on the sales team to sell it to the outside world, but will promote the product to the market through event operations:

1. Design a "fission function" in the product: the usage time of the product needs to be paid, but the usage time of both parties can be increased by inviting friends to experience it;
2. Launch a one-week "Preparing for Double 11" online training camp in the circle of friends, share event planning experience in the group → help potential customers sort out event ideas → create their own Double 11 group buying promotion activities for free;
3. Operation monitoring shows that if an average of 100 users visit the "group buying" activity page created by one customer, 3 new customers can be converted to create new activities through the "I also want to create an activity" advertisement bar at the bottom of the activity H5;
4. Among 10 customers who successfully held events (success definition: more than 30 paying users for the event), the conversion rate of paying for the premium version was 60%;
5. Operations continuously help customers of newly created activities succeed, forming a positive fission cycle.

above