In-depth analysis of how to play “private domain traffic”!

When building private domain traffic , we must understand four issues:

1. The difference between private domain traffic and public domain traffic;
2. How to build private domain traffic?
3. What problems can private domain traffic solve for entrepreneurs?
4. Thinking about building private domain traffic (risk or uncertainty)

1. The difference between private domain traffic and public domain traffic

I believe that entrepreneurs all have a common problem, which is that the cost of acquiring customers from top traffic sources such as Baidu and Taobao is getting higher and higher, a lot of money has been spent on advertising but to no avail, and everyone is complaining about the year-round advertising costs.

More and more platforms are beginning to pay attention to the construction of private domain traffic pools. As the name suggests, the private domain belongs to you. These traffic can be reused repeatedly without any charge.

As the conflict between advertisers and entrepreneurs intensifies, private domain traffic has emerged. I generally define its main form as a three-dimensional combination, namely "own store + circle of friends + WeChat group".

To summarize the comparison between the two:

• Private domain traffic mainly comes from a series of self-media platforms such as official accounts, WeChat groups, personal accounts, and Toutiao;
• The advantages and features are: user privacy, reusability, free and timely access.

Public domain traffic is mainly controlled by top traffic hosts such as Baidu, Taobao, and JD.com; users need to pay, and there is a lot of uncertainty (whether they will browse/retain/pay/repurchase, etc.)

In fact, the biggest difference between private domain traffic and public domain traffic is the final destination of fans.

2. How to build private domain traffic?

From the existing media tools, we can conclude that the more closed the market is, the more centrally users can be managed, the higher the stickiness with users will be, and the higher the user loyalty will be. Compared with open platforms such as public domain traffic, the uncontrollability of user behavior and speech increases our customer acquisition costs.

Let’s analyze the advantages of each channel among the existing media tools, mainly comparing WeChat personal accounts, APPs and WeChat work accounts.

WeChat personal account: It is about importing users into WeChat personal account through operational behavior. It is estimated to be the lowest cost operation at present. I believe that everyone has tasted the sweetness of it, so I will not elaborate on it here. Due to the closed nature of personal WeChat accounts, real-time communication with users can be achieved, and monetization purposes can be realized through Moments, etc. It is also possible to gain the trust of users through the shaping of personal IP and improve user loyalty to a higher degree.

app: Not suitable for all entrepreneurs. Although the APP environment is relatively closed, it is not suitable for all entrepreneurs due to the large initial investment.

WeChat official account: WeChat official account is no stranger to everyone. I believe every company will open one. However, with the continuous revision of WeChat, the entrance has become deeper and deeper, and the stickiness with users has gradually decreased.

To sum up, WeChat personal accounts are good carriers of private domain traffic.

3. What problems can private domain traffic solve for entrepreneurs?

Delving deeper into private domain traffic actually solves the problem not of how to get the traffic, but how to retain it.

In the traditional operating model, we focus too much on new or one-time consumption and ignore the continuous empowerment of users. As traffic costs gradually increase, what we should think about more is how to retain these hard-earned users to the greatest extent possible.

First of all, building a private traffic pool can help us improve the lifetime value of users.

A friend told me that he had a large amount of user data but didn’t know how to digest it. My suggestion is to direct users to your personal WeChat account, so that what you have in your hands is no longer a piece of data, but a real person. After establishing connections with users, the repurchase rate of old customers will increase to a certain extent. Through effective operation and maintenance, the average order value and gross profit margin of old users can be increased, and even fission behavior of old customers bringing in new customers can be achieved, thereby increasing the lifetime value of old users.

Secondly, it can improve the return on investment.

Those who run businesses know that we must pay a certain price to acquire traffic. By building a private traffic pool to better operate and maintain users, we can extend higher value. For example, we place some advertisements on the top traffic hosts, use low-profit products to improve conversions, and use a series of operational behaviors such as gift giving and coupon distribution to direct users to personal WeChat accounts, and then use high-profit products to bring repeat purchases and higher conversions. The entire marketing process greatly reduces the user's customer acquisition cost, and the traffic can be reused without the need to pay other fees.

4. Thinking about building private domain traffic (risk or uncertainty)

In fact, if you have studied the Internet landscape, it is not difficult to find that private domain traffic has begun to emerge as early as 2017.

It entered a period of vigorous development in 2017-18, with the emergence of a series of brands such as Perfect Diary that excel in building private traffic pools, while at this time there are still a large number of entrepreneurs who are obsessed with attracting new customers.

In 2019, it can be said that private domain traffic has become an issue that every entrepreneur is paying attention to. More businesses and merchants have begun to study this issue. As we all understood when we were young, "one monk carries water to drink, two monks lift water to drink, and three monks have no water to drink." The result of a large influx of users is bound to be a competition for traffic pools. Moreover, most of the current operating methods rely on the WeChat ecosystem. If WeChat takes control, I believe it will be even more difficult to build private domain traffic.

Judging from the trend, it is necessary to prepare for building private domain traffic as early as possible. As more companies join in, the risks and benefits will become more uncontrollable.

For example, Taobao has begun to pay attention to such behavior. After directing traffic to WeChat, if transactions are completed on WeChat, it will inevitably affect its revenue. By stopping such behavior, private domain traffic will find it more difficult to survive.

For example, in 2019, WeChat took strong measures to crack down on traffic trafficking and increased penalties for a series of behaviors such as excessive marketing. Imagine that if the thousands of WeChat friends you have worked hard to accumulate are blocked, you can imagine how great the loss would be.

Author: Field Notes

Source: Field Notes