Is it a good thing that private domain traffic is concentrated on WeChat marketing?

Ever since the concept of " private domain traffic " became popular, WeChat has become synonymous with "private domain traffic", as if private domain traffic cannot be generated without WeChat. This idea is very dangerous and may even be detrimental to the long-term development of the Internet industry.

There are two signs to judge whether a phenomenon has become popular in the Internet industry: one is whether a bunch of public accounts have started to change their names to cater to hot words, and the other is whether there are more courses and training related to the circle of friends.

This year, "private domain traffic" is very popular in the entire marketing and Internet circles. Unlike previously popular concepts, "private domain traffic" is somewhat old-fashioned and inseparable from micro-business, WeChat marketing, and personalized IP. This may also be related to the fact that there are no hot spots this year.

Many explanations about private domain traffic can be summed up in three words: "play WeChat." Many tools related to private domain traffic are also designed to better serve WeChat operations. Since WeChat is already minimalist enough, adding a plug-in is simply to make it easier for companies to incubate more WeChat accounts for unified operations. Many companies have been inspired by private domain traffic and have resolutely started the rhythm of comprehensive "micro-business".

Three years ago, I wrote an article advising companies not to focus on subscription accounts as new media operations, but to conduct business in the form of private WeChat accounts. I can be regarded as one of the first supporters of private domain traffic.

Nowadays, private domain traffic has begun to become common under the situation that enterprises are generally facing tight budgets. It is necessary to sort out private domain traffic from the perspective of Internet industry trends, point out the unfavorable aspects of the current private domain traffic trend, and explain some potential favorable phenomena, so as to strive to make private domain traffic a win-win rather than a lose-lose situation.

The essence of private domain traffic - "decentralized empowerment" and "low-cost and high-efficiency traffic"

Compared with "public domain traffic", private domain traffic emphasizes more on the independent control of its own marketing and communication. Private domain traffic can be used repeatedly and does not require paying traffic promotion fees to the platform. Traffic is the survival resource of the entire Internet industry. Without traffic, it is impossible to form an ecosystem. Almost all developers and participants in the ecosystem hope to have traffic that can always be obtained at a lower cost, and drive product innovation based on this "smell", which ultimately determines the competitive landscape of products among Internet companies.

When Ma Huateng attended the Fortune Global Forum on December 6, 2017, he encountered a question - "How do you view the competition between Tencent and Alibaba?" At that time, Ma Huateng believed that the nature of Tencent's empowerment and Alibaba's "empowerment" was different. His words are still appropriate for understanding the essential difference between private domain traffic and public domain traffic!

"As an enabler, I think the final outcome depends on the security of the enabled. If 100% of my channels are in your ecosystem, my fate and profits will be in the hands of others. From the perspective of the final empowerment, the security, fate, and profits of the enabled are all in the hands of centralized enablers. We are a decentralized enabler."

"Decentralized empowerment" means that the platform provides enterprises, self-media and individuals with infrastructure to build their own private domain traffic. Ma Huateng also made a famous metaphor at the time:

"For example, when building a house, we don't rent it out. Instead, we invite you to build the house. Once the house is built, it's yours. Your customers and fans are all yours. You don't need to pay monthly rent, and there's no need for annual price increases."

Let’s review why browsers and search engines went downhill after the rise of Apps?

In the past, browsers and search engines were actually the public domain traffic entrances to websites. If the website did not have traffic diversion, there would basically be very little traffic. Although there were email subscriptions and the like at the time, corporate sites and webmasters still had to repeatedly pay traffic fees to search engines and portals in order to have traffic.

In fact, Apps cannot compare with browsers in terms of the speed of obtaining information. However, compared with browsers and search engines, Apps are equivalent to opening up their own "private land" on the mobile Internet operating system, and even the data has private sovereignty, which allows entrepreneurs to create their own unique business models based on Apps. That is why there is an "App development fever" and an "investment boom" for Apps.

Although the App is "decentralized", it is difficult and costly to develop and operate. After the traffic quickly becomes concentrated, the cost of acquiring customers is getting higher and higher. Enterprises and individuals regard "official accounts" as the second "private domain traffic" pool. Operators of subscription accounts do not need to pay transaction commissions to Tencent to obtain traffic dividends from WeChat.

As a result, many long-tail merchants on e-commerce platforms have transformed into micro-businesses and content e-commerce. However, many WeChat subscription accounts focus more on marketing and less on content output, and their fan stickiness is insufficient. Only a very small number of differentiated subscription accounts can ultimately survive.

It has to be said that from 2015 to 2018, it was precisely because of the weakness of WeChat subscription accounts that short video platforms and information flow information platforms had a vigorous growth space to obtain user traffic based on recommendations based on user interests.

Many entrepreneurs will evaluate the private-domain product carrier apps and subscription accounts that focus on decentralized empowerment as "tasteless to eat, a pity to throw away". The reason is not because they are not private enough, but because their conversion efficiency is relatively low. Therefore, WeChat accounts have now become the easiest to operate.

We can also say that today, private domain traffic is actually becoming more down-to-earth and less technical! Anyone can get started, it just takes a little more time, but will this make the Internet better?

Private domain traffic trend: Directing all network traffic to private WeChat marketing has endless drawbacks

At present, many private domain traffic trainings basically place the landing of traffic on private WeChat accounts, and encourage people to create a fake identity, which is euphemistically called an "IP".

As for how to direct traffic to private WeChat accounts, the usual practice before was to place content on information flow channels and attach WeChat contact information. However, since many information flow platforms such as Toutiao and Baidu place WeChat or watermarked content, some content cannot be sent out, and even if it is released, it will not be recommended; therefore, many private domain traffic gameplay can only be "split" within the WeChat ecosystem, and the trend of circle of friends marketing has become popular again.

The reason why private domain traffic has been micro-businessized may be related to my attention and contact with the "Micro-business Godfather" Gong Wenxiang.

In early November 2018, Gong Wenxiang went to Hangzhou to visit financial writer Wu Xiaobo. Wu Xiaobo Channel has been promoting the "New Craftsman Plan". Given the shrewdness of a Hubei native like Gong Wenxiang, he would naturally not join another platform built by self-media.

It is not known whether the meeting between the two self-media bosses influenced each other.

In his speech at the end of the year, Professor Wu Xiaobo mentioned that "private domain e-commerce", "membership system" and "circle social networking" will become the three major business model innovations in 2019, which is almost a theoretical summary of the advanced gameplay of WeChat business.

Gong Wenxiang also started his own year-end paid speech show in 2018, and claimed that only Wu Xiaobo, Luo Zhenyu and Gong Wenxiang were capable of doing this in China. It is not easy to get the micro-business tycoons to be willing to be the third.

The reason why Gong Wenxiang is so willful is that he has more than 30 private WeChat accounts that are fully filled, and all of them are precise traffic based on micro-business. He then sells the traffic within these private WeChat accounts in the form of micro-business-based communities, training, meetings, etc. For him, "private domain traffic" is equivalent to "private WeChat". Although many of these WeChat accounts are operated by a team, the content that floods the friend circle is indeed from his hand, and his strong monetization ability can be regarded as "a wonder".

The reason why private domain traffic is concentrated on WeChat instead of other platforms such as Toutiao, Baidu, Weibo, Zhihu, etc. is actually because:

1. WeChat is a national application. Every Chinese Internet user has WeChat.
2. Able to build a relatively stable social relationship chain, making it easier for users to build trust;
3. WeChat Pay helps close deals. Only WeChat can meet these three conditions together.

Except for grassroots self-media with particularly large traffic, which can receive traffic subsidies from the platform, most self-media, especially text-based self-media, use WeChat as their main battlefield, and other information flow platforms or media publishing channels as "energy fields."

For marketers who pursue private domain traffic, they often direct traffic outside of WeChat into WeChat, and do not direct WeChat traffic to Weibo, Toutiao, Zhihu, Alipay or Xiaohongshu. Once this practice of using private WeChat as the only landing carrier for private domain traffic is widely promoted, it will directly hollow out the survival basis of all mobile Internet products. How can you explain this?

On the one hand, once a platform has large-scale traffic, a group of people will run over to find ways to "attract traffic" to add WeChat; for example, Duoshan and Feichat, which were developed by ByteDance, were born as a counter-measure to WeChat. With this deep-rooted private domain thinking, it is basically difficult for such products to succeed.

Among many information flow products, self-media are also trying to implant private WeChat accounts to "grab traffic." Since many content sources are duplicated, the author believes that no more than three information flow platforms will survive in the end.

After some "brainwashing" in private domain traffic training, some big Vs on Kuaishou, Douyin and Zhihu are also full of anxiety, trying to find ways to direct their fans to private WeChat accounts or communities . This "poaching" method is "cutting off the source of funds" for traffic platforms. The traffic of mobile phone users increases and decreases among various platforms, and the flood of private domain traffic makes it difficult for many products to build a traffic ecosystem.

On the other hand, WeChat has also been deteriorating due to this "private domain traffic" marketing trend . Friends who insist on posting to Moments every day should have the same feeling. The likes and comments rate of WeChat updates are actually not as active as two years ago when there were 2,000 friends. The number of readings of public accounts brought by Moments sharing is also getting lower and lower.

According to data from QuestMobile over the past two years, ByteDance can basically take away 3% of the total user time from Tencent's total traffic every year; and the fundamental reason for the decline in WeChat traffic is not the loss of users, but that users really don't like to browse Moments that much. There are too many micro-businesses and marketing operations that target private domain traffic, making the Moments of Moments no longer a simple place to share life and promote communication.

This is why WeChat officials have recently banned a large number of accounts. Some time ago, I deleted a lot of private WeChat accounts that were promoting blockchain tokens. Usually, there was no interaction at all, and they were so active that they didn’t seem like a single person. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

No Internet traffic platform has ever welcomed micro-businesses. Doing micro-business under the guise of private domain traffic is a lose-lose situation for Internet products and WeChat itself. Although some private traffic accounts will make profits in the short term, in the long run, as WeChat traffic declines due to its increasingly marketing flavor, Tencent will launch a "traffic limiting" mechanism in the Moments targeting personal marketing accounts in the future, and the entire private traffic methodology will fail. Now we can either pray that the decline will be slower or update our marketing thinking. As the saying goes, “If the skin is gone, where will the hair stay?”

The concentration of private domain traffic in WeChat is like a Thanos glove, which will destroy the entire Internet universe, including WeChat itself, because the current direction of private domain traffic is to attract other traffic platforms and destroy other traffic ecosystems. However, the power of private domain traffic cannot be ignored. The only way to maintain this balance is for each Internet platform to do more private domain traffic.

Private domain traffic is a trend across the entire network. WeChat is not the only landing platform. The more the better.

It is understandable that users demand to enjoy traffic dividends for free at low cost. More and more platforms attach more and more importance to the spontaneous and independent operation of traffic by participating entities, which reflects the win-win thinking of the platform and content producers, developers or merchants; it does not simply emphasize that the platform must distribute traffic and collect commissions.

According to the reliable Axing's observation of the Internet industry, there are two major directions for operating private domain traffic on traffic platforms other than WeChat:

1. Public domain traffic platforms focus on highlighting the traffic of followers, mixing public domain traffic with private domain traffic, and compatibility between the interests of the platform and individuals.
2. A SaaS platform that builds a private domain traffic base for enterprises or individuals, and implements merchant operations in the main form of mini programs.

Taking short video platforms as an example, Toutiao’s two main products, Douyin and Toutiao, have always been interpreted as "public domain traffic" with strong platform operations and centralized empowerment. Works recommended by the system have relatively higher traffic, which leads to unstable traffic of content uploaded by UP hosts and self-media.

Now in Tik Tok, users can directly click "Follow" and then swipe down to follow any video. The short videos they see will be displayed according to the posting time of the UP they follow, rather than the system's popular recommendations. This subtle change to the product has led to the stabilization of UP traffic. Currently, some of the internet celebrities that Axing follows have significantly increased the amount of short video advertisements they have taken. Toutiao has also opened circles for big Vs, from "traffic" to "retention".

▲Users can click on the short video in "Follow" and scroll down to see that the short video is no longer recommended by the algorithm. Only followers can post videos. This is the private domain traffic bonus released by Douyin to UP masters.

There is also a small episode here. At the beginning of the year, I wrote an article titled "The Crossroads of Video Self-Media". The sentence in the article, "Kuaishou is an amplifier that multiplies Wechat business exponentially", was quoted by the media, which prompted Kuaishou PR to communicate with me in a small window, indicating that they did not want their friends to divert traffic to WeChat. Although it does not block the trending behavior like TikTok, it does not encourage friends to engage in micro-business and stays away from it.

In fact, Kuaishou is a platform that combines platform-recommended traffic and the Internet celebrity’s own private traffic very well. It is not as simple and efficient to direct traffic to WeChat to create paid communities as it is to start live broadcasts and rewards. This is also the reason why the mid-level Internet celebrities on Kuaishou are stable. They regard the Kuaishou account as their own private traffic pool.

In the field of e-commerce, the first batch of private domain traffic explorers were forced to escape the "traffic tax" of e-commerce platforms (commissions). However, the prosperity of WeChat business did not hinder the development of Alibaba's e-commerce. The biggest difference between e-commerce and personal self-media is that it is highly dependent on the shopping promotion atmosphere and scenes of the mall. Although Taobao has always relied on the product search model within the platform as its profit model, it has focused on becoming an internet celebrity and building a Weitao community atmosphere since Double 11 in 2015.

Zhang Yong encouraged Taobao merchants to build their own private traffic pools at Alibaba’s first internal management meeting in 2016:

"We should encourage businesses to operate their private spaces, and we should also encourage all business teams to create private spaces on wireless networks, operate the business's own traffic, and operate the traffic of celebrities' own accounts. I think only in this way can such a small mobile phone screen carry the expectations of a large room of us."

On the Taobao homepage, stores that users follow are given priority traffic display.

Among the e-commerce platforms, the one with the most prominent "decentralized empowerment" attribute is "Little Red Book". The fan stickiness of the UP hosts it follows is relatively high. In May this year, Zhai Fang, the founder of Little Red Book, told the media that it would not use advertising commissions as a way of making profits.

If the KOL has already formed a good atmosphere of fan attention on the decentralized empowerment platform, it would be unnecessary to import it into WeChat. Last year, many people regarded Pinduoduo's social group-buying fission method as a model of private traffic e-commerce. In fact, in order to control traffic more independently, Pinduoduo actually focused on its own App rather than the WeChat ecosystem.

(The first and second on the left are Taobao’s priority presentation of merchants that users follow, which is also the platform’s support for merchants’ private domain traffic;

The first one on the right is the Xiaohongshu follow-up column, which is convenient for increasing the click-through rate of UP’s fans)

More small and medium-sized enterprises and merchants hope to obtain private domain traffic on mini program platforms and self-built mini program platforms. The former mini program platforms, such as the mini programs of Baidu App and Toutiao App, can be followed by users and can be repeatedly seen for free in the search bar and the user's "my" homepage. In fact, it also belongs to the public domain traffic platform. The importance of private domain traffic operated by self-media can be realized repeatedly for free. This is the biggest bonus of the mini program boom. The decentralized mini-program platform mainly refers to the "WeChat mini-programs", which are either self-built or developed by WeChat ecosystem merchants.

(▲The left picture shows the Baidu App mini program, and the right picture shows the Toutiao mini program, which can be understood as the private domain traffic support for the operators of these mini programs)

Different industries will have different private domain traffic to B-type solutions. For example, in the education industry, "Xiaoetong" is a SaaS service provider that builds mini-programs for self-media to engage in knowledge economy and educational institutions to build knowledge stores. It also provides merchants with a series of tools such as clocking in, invitations, and commissions to obtain social traffic within the WeChat ecosystem due to the spontaneous fission of users.

For example, in the field of real estate transactions, "Fangduoduo" provides brokerage company merchants with a real estate transaction mini-program store, and connects the traffic with the broker mini-program personal business card of the broker merchant. This kind of self-operated mini-program online store can save huge port fees compared to advertising traffic platforms. The author believes that these SaaS tools can help merchants serve users more professionally and efficiently. Since the SaaS service providers that build these private domain traffic adopt a one-time software fee model, merchants have autonomy over their own business data.

(▲The first picture on the left is the CMO Business School applet;

Figure 2 is the Captain Science applet, which provides technical support for Xiaoetong;

The third picture on the left is the Fangduoduo mini program. The celebrity online stores are all personal online stores of brokers;

Figure 4 is the broker’s online store “dynamics”, similar to Moments, provided by Fangduoduo’s technical support)

Private domain traffic is a new trend in the entire mobile Internet, and it is not unique to WeChat. Focusing on enabling participants within the platform to obtain traffic more efficiently and empowering them is itself a more stable platform model with greater corresponding commercial value and is more favored by customers and the capital market.

Conclusion

Private WeChat accounts as private traffic carriers are more suitable for monetizing small, beautiful, and individualized fans, but they cannot more efficiently undertake industries with more diverse scenarios and more complex business volumes. Such private traffic is not a panacea at this stage. Completely equating private domain traffic with the operation of private WeChat is actually the same as micro-business, no matter how real a private marketing WeChat account a company operates may look.

It is still impossible to truly become friends with users. Users are becoming more and more annoyed by the marketing screen-sweeping and sales-style interruptions in the circle of friends. If you love WeChat, you should do marketing in moderation. In fact, this kind of private domain marketing bound to private WeChat accounts is not as advanced as the three words "circle of friends". Friends are not traffic, and the circle of friends is not a "traffic pool". Let business be business, traffic be traffic, and friends be friends.

More and more content platforms, e-commerce platforms and mini-program platforms attach importance to "private domain traffic" and encourage platform participants to attract fans and enjoy traffic dividends. While empowering participants, the platform's own traffic ecology is often healthier and the corresponding business model is naturally more mature.

Compared with public domain traffic platforms that centrally distribute traffic, private domain traffic is more in line with "human nature" and can better activate the enthusiasm of broad participation. Private domain traffic should be everywhere on various mobile Internet traffic platforms, not just WeChat. Only then will the entire Internet industry usher in long-term vitality. Otherwise, it will enter a dead end and will be drinking poison to quench thirst!

1. Is the popular “private domain traffic” really that powerful?

2. 9 thoughts behind private domain traffic, fission, and sinking market

Author: Reliable Axing

Source: Reliable Axing