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

Private domain traffic should be one of the hottest concepts in the marketing circle this year. When friends in the circle chat, if someone cannot say a few words about relevant topics, then he will be "left far behind his peers." But is private domain traffic really that powerful? Actually, it’s not necessarily the case.

1. Is private domain traffic very advanced? no

First of all, what exactly is private domain traffic?

Although no expert has given a clear definition yet, people generally understand it as "private traffic that you can control", that is, traffic that you can use repeatedly and seemingly without increasing costs, such as Moments, WeChat public accounts, mini-programs, APPs, etc.

The opposite of private domain traffic is "public domain traffic", that is, this traffic is not your own, but is purchased on other platforms with money, and most of it is one-time traffic, such as Taobao's through train, Moments ads, and patch ads on video sites.

You spend money once for this traffic, and you get the traffic once. Once you stop paying, the traffic will also stop.

According to this logic, here is a question: who has the deepest understanding of private domain traffic and uses it most frequently?

Of course it is WeChat businessmen, they are the greatest pioneers of private domain traffic.

But if you have experienced the period around 2012 when WeChat public accounts became extremely popular, then you may feel familiar with this so-called “private domain traffic theory”.

The concept of micro-marketing became popular around 2012, and the situation was similar to the current "private domain traffic". At that time, when micro-marketing was promoted, whether it was LBS or micro-websites, the most common argument was " The biggest advantage of micro-marketing is that it locks users and traffic in one's own hands ."

This is indeed a major advantage of brand micro-marketing, and it just hits the hearts of some small and medium-sized business owners.

Because the biggest difficulty for these business owners is the difficulty in obtaining traffic and the high cost of acquiring customers, "having both users and traffic in their own hands" is exactly what they dream of.

So in those years, companies big and small all had their own official accounts. Some companies even had insufficient staff, so they would use administrative staff or secretaries to fill in the gaps.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The currently popular "private domain traffic" is actually very similar to the popular micro-marketing in the past few years, except that different platforms such as Douyin, mini programs, and APP have been added. The core of it is the autonomous traffic mentioned at that time.

I will still recognize you even if you change your alias.

2. Is private domain traffic very cheap? uncertain

When people talk about "private domain traffic", there is another very clear point: cheap.

It may indeed be cheaper, but not as cheap as everyone thinks.

I had the honor of working as a brand manager for a large international education company. The strategy given by the company’s marketing director at the time was to build a private traffic pool.

We have established a large number of account matrices including Weibo, WeChat public accounts, WeChat private accounts, Toutiao, Zhihu, etc. that include and do not include brand names, and then rely on a large amount of high-quality content output to attract target consumers, and from time to time, we publish soft articles or advertisements in the name of the brand or a third party.

At that time, several of our accounts had already ranked among the top 10 in their respective industries. With just one public account platform, we were able to capture at least hundreds of thousands of targeted customers.

In today's terms, this is private domain traffic, and we have also achieved good monetization from this private domain traffic.

On the surface, this traffic is free and can be used multiple times, which is of course true.

However, you should know that behind these accounts is a huge content team and operation team, and a large number of consultant resources need to be mobilized for cooperation.

In a place like Shanghai, a good content editor costs at least 8,000 yuan, and one account is equipped with at least four people, so the labor cost alone is more than 30,000 yuan per month.

In other words, the traffic of this account is actually what you buy at a cost of more than 30,000 yuan per month. The traffic can be used repeatedly, and your salary also has to be paid monthly.

The same principle applies to private traffic platforms such as mini programs and APPs. The salaries of programmers, designers, operators and other employees are actually spending money to buy traffic.

Another point is that "private domain traffic" is actually quite difficult to serve.

First of all, the first question is whether your content gives users enough reasons to stay and open it.

Whether the content operation capability is sufficient is very important. If you only post advertisements, then your fate is to be blocked and unfollowed.

Secondly, it is difficult for a marketing department or new media department alone to activate a mature private traffic pool. It must have cross-departmental cooperation in a wider range, such as the participation of customer service, sales, consultants, etc.

So, how can we mobilize resources across departments to serve private domain traffic well?

For example, in our previous education industry, if we wanted to serve students well through private WeChat, the professional knowledge of the marketing department or new media department was definitely not enough. We had to mobilize the teaching department or consulting department to bring real value to students.

So how can teachers, whose performance evaluation indicator is based on teaching level, be expected to serve students who have not yet paid (or even will not pay) well?

This tests whether the person in charge is strong enough and whether the incentive mechanism is perfect.

The reason why Haier's new media developed so rapidly back then was because it attached enough importance to it at the strategic level. As early as 2014, Haier announced that it would abandon traditional magazine advertising and turn to new media.

This is the strategic basis for their efforts in new media.

In addition, it is difficult to establish private domain traffic immediately. If it is established from scratch, it will take at least two months or even longer incubation period to bring some profits.

So can the decision-makers give the team enough growth period and strong support to test the waters?

Also, traffic will not come out of thin air, it must be directed from other directions, at least the first batch of "seed fans" must be directed from other directions.

What is more crucial is how to retain and activate the traffic you attract. If you fail to take good care of the traffic, it will run away or become dead traffic sooner or later.

Can we check how many of our WeChat public accounts and Moments have been blocked? Who doesn’t have a few dead WeChat groups?

So the topic is back again. If you want "private domain traffic", you must have a strong content and operation team. Without an operation team, how can you talk about utilizing private domain traffic?

Private domain traffic is not what many bosses think it is. By pulling people who enter the store into the circle of friends, the so-called private domain traffic is created.

3. Private domain traffic is actually just integrated traffic

Today's mobile Internet traffic is basically constant.

Under the premise that the Internet dividend disappears, there are only so many people surfing the Internet, and there will not be a big increase in the short term, which means that the total amount of available traffic is fixed.

It will neither generate new traffic nor disappear. It is just that competitors snatch this traffic away and convert it back and forth.

So if you want to get a lot of traffic, you must exchange it for a lot of resources. When you don’t have resources, your traffic will go away and go to other places.

For example, you can exchange your content, like high-quality content accounts such as Visual Journal and New World View; exchange your creativity, such as Durex’s wonderful hot creative ideas, etc.

When your high-quality content or brilliant creativity is gone, the traffic will also go away.

There is also an exception, that is, Internet products have discovered a new traffic pool through innovation. For example, the rise of official accounts, or the emergence of live broadcasts and short videos, have formed a new traffic pool.

The traffic in this depression is relatively cheap, and you can harvest a batch of traffic at a lower cost in the early stage.

But over time, the price of this traffic will inevitably return to the average level.

So let's look back at private domain traffic. Its essence is not to create a new traffic pool, but to integrate the original traffic such as offline traffic and through-traffic traffic into the private domain pool.

So after the traffic enters the private domain pool, you still need to continue to provide valuable services to users. Since providing services will inevitably incur another cost.

It is impossible to get traffic out of nothing.

4. Build private domain traffic tomorrow?

When I talk to a business owner, the most common scenario is that they often say, "Isn't it just private domain traffic? I'll ask the marketing department to build it tomorrow."

It is easy to create an account or even build a small program, but as mentioned above, the biggest problem is how you retain and activate traffic.

Can the current staff do a good job in content and user operations? What if they are not capable enough? Give them the right to recruit people? How many people can you recruit? Is there an incentive mechanism for establishing private domain traffic? Why should they abandon the long-established sales method and develop a new one?

Diao Ye once said, "Strategy guides operations, and operations guide the team."

When you do not give real support to "private domain traffic" at the strategic level, the specific operational direction will not focus on private domain traffic, and the team will not implement it seriously.

The result is that your so-called private domain traffic is bound to flow into those useless decorative accounts, which are tasteless to use and a pity to discard.

Therefore, if you want to make private domain traffic truly available, you must attach importance to it strategically, or at least from the perspective of market strategy. Only in this way can you build a suitable operating system, and then configure a team under this system, and then the team can truly execute.

And those leaders who think that private domain traffic is just about recruiting a few people and creating a few accounts may end up getting just a few zombie accounts.

Related reading:

1. Product operation and promotion: How to compete for traffic?

2. Community Operation丨The essence and gameplay of "private domain traffic" in 2019!

3. Product operation: 2 major ways to get started to accurately capture private domain traffic!

4. Promotion and marketing: A brief discussion on vlog’s brand marketing and traffic monetization!

5. User operation: user growth in the post-traffic era!

6. Online marketing promotion: How to spend big money? Fine-tuned operation of large traffic!

Author: Yu Ji

Source: Copywriter Yu Ji