Analysis of the evolution of private domain traffic!

Public domain traffic and private domain traffic are a pair of relative concepts. Public domain traffic is collectively shared traffic, while private domain traffic is the traffic of a single individual. Why is private domain traffic becoming more and more important? In the future, how will private domain traffic change corporate marketing decisions?

In the past six months, a new term "private domain traffic" has frequently entered our field of vision. It appeared along with social e-commerce and WeChat business, but it is not such a local concept. In fact, it has quietly changed the entire marketing landscape.

On May 17, Baidu released its first quarter 2019 financial report, which showed its first loss in 14 years, which was also the result of the influence of private domain traffic. Therefore, we need to re-examine the marketing landscape and private domain traffic on a larger scale.

In this article I will answer four questions:

• What exactly is private domain traffic?
• How is private domain traffic prepared to evolve?
• What are the causes behind private domain traffic?
• How will private domain traffic change corporate marketing decisions?

1. What is private domain traffic?

"Traffic" is a basic concept on the Internet.

The "traffic" here does not refer to the traffic packages of China Mobile and China Unicom. The traffic in the traffic packages refers to the amount of communication data.

On the Internet, traffic refers to the number of visits to a website. The indicators commonly used in the past were PV and UV.

PV (page view) refers to the number of page views, which is the number of readings in the official account. But there is a problem here. It is very likely that a user visits multiple pages, or closes a page before finishing reading it. In this case, it is difficult to say that this is effective traffic.

So we use UV (unique visitor) more often, which refers to the number of visitors to the website. No matter how many pages you open, you are counted as one person.

Simply put, traffic is how many people visit your website, official account, app, and online store.

If you think about it from a broader perspective, traffic has nothing to do with the Internet.

TV stations also have traffic. At 8 o'clock on New Year's Eve, people bring their small stools and sit in front of the TV to watch the Spring Festival Gala, so the Spring Festival Gala has the largest traffic in the world at the same time.

There is also traffic on the pedestrian street. Whenever you go to Chongqing Jiefangbei Pedestrian Street, there are crowds of people from all over the country.

Traffic has existed for a long time, but people only became aware of this term because of the rise of the Internet.

So who does this traffic belong to? Who can cash it out?

For a website, the traffic belongs to the website owner. Taobao’s traffic belongs to Alibaba, and Baidu search traffic belongs to Baidu.

For TV programs, the traffic belongs to the TV station. The traffic of the Spring Festival Gala belongs to CCTV.

For pedestrian streets, who does the traffic belong to? It belongs to the people and is publicly owned.

When we look beyond the Internet and define traffic on a larger scale, it becomes simple.

Traffic refers to the number of visitors to a specific area online or offline.

We also found that there are two different types of traffic for pedestrian streets and TV stations, so we can divide the traffic into two categories according to ownership: public domain traffic and private domain traffic.

• Public domain traffic refers to traffic that does not belong to a single individual but is shared by the collective .
• Private domain traffic refers to the traffic belonging to a single individual .

However, in reality, absolute public domain traffic does not exist. Every area has a supervisory unit. For example, a pedestrian street has a pedestrian street management committee. When you open a store on the pedestrian street, you have to pay rent to the management committee. Even parks have management offices, and you have to pay rent for setting up stalls.

Public domain traffic and private domain traffic are not absolute concepts, but relative concepts.

A shopping mall is opened on a pedestrian street. The traffic in the mall is private traffic relative to the pedestrian street, while the traffic on the pedestrian street is public traffic relative to the mall.

Taobao is opened from Baidu search results. The traffic in Taobao is private domain traffic relative to Baidu, while the traffic in Baidu is public domain traffic relative to Taobao.

Let’s analyze it further.

When you open an online store from Taobao, the traffic in the online store becomes private traffic relative to Taobao, while the traffic from Taobao becomes public traffic relative to the online store.

The traffic of official accounts is private domain traffic relative to WeChat, and the traffic of WeChat is public domain traffic relative to official accounts, but the traffic of WeChat is private domain traffic relative to Apple IOS.

Previously, we have seen many articles defining private domain traffic, and most of them are based on the local areas of e-commerce or self-media relative to Taobao or WeChat. For example:

Private domain traffic is the traffic that merchants can control themselves, which is what we have been emphasizing in the past year. For example, traffic introduced by channels such as Weitao traffic, live broadcast traffic, and group chat are collectively referred to as private domain traffic, and Weitao is a very important entrance among them.

The definition of private domain is traffic that is independently owned by a brand or individual, can be freely controlled, is free, and can be used multiple times. The private domain is usually presented in the form of personal WeChat account, WeChat group, mini program or independent APP.

Private domain traffic refers to vertical field traffic that is more accurate and has a higher conversion rate, which needs to be obtained through sedimentation and accumulation. The main examples include users who add WeChat through WeChat public account content tweets, users who join WeChat Moments groups through sharing, Taobao live broadcast fans, etc.

2. Private Domain Traffic Fission

After reading the above part, you may have discovered that private domain traffic is not a new concept and has existed for a long time. But why is it brought up now and received so much attention?

The reason is that the private domain of private domain traffic is fissioning layer by layer, and the smaller private domain after fission has reached the personal dimension. Then we suddenly feel its presence strongly.

3. Top private domains are divided

In the past, CCTV, the top private domain traffic source, could reach almost every Chinese person. As long as you could sing a song on CCTV, you could become a national star, and as long as you placed an advertisement on CCTV, you could become a nationally renowned brand.

At that time, countless companies spared no effort to use up all their funds and foreign debt to compete for the CCTV bid, because it was a gamble that was sure to win.

(The man in red is Shi Yuzhu)

Countless brands have become popular by leveraging CCTV's powerful private domain traffic. The most representative of these are probably Qin Chi Wine and Aido VCD.

In 1995, Qinchi, a small state-owned enterprise in Linqu County, Shandong Province, won the "crown" with 66.66 million yuan, and its revenue reached 980 million yuan the following year.

In 1997, 28-year-old Hu Zhibiao of Aido VCD won the title of "Bidding King" with 210 million yuan, and achieved a revenue of 1.6 billion yuan that year.

However, products that relied on traffic to boost their popularity could not stand the test and lacked product strength, which ultimately led to the bid winning company ending in failure.

On November 18, 2013, the 20th CCTV Tendering Conference was still held at the Media Center, but this time there were no inflatable arches, no balloons, and no various banners. Everyone could feel the coldness and depression. At the same time, this is the first time in CCTV's history that it will not release bidding data to the public because the data is really not good.

This is a turning point in CCTV's traffic model, and the fundamental reason behind it is the decline in traffic. Today, CCTV’s advertising revenue has fallen out of the top three and is even lower than JD.com’s advertising revenue.

Where did CCTV’s traffic go?

Divided up by new types of private domain traffic owners. They are Baidu, Taobao, WeChat, JD.com, Tik Tok, iQiyi...

Although their traffic is far less powerful than CCTV's in the past, they have become public domain traffic in their respective private domains.

Private domain traffic like Baidu, Taobao, and WeChat is so large compared to the small private domains on their platforms that it makes people feel like a public domain. Just as China is so big that we feel it is a public domain, but compared to the earth, it is obviously a private domain, and compared to the universe, it is an extremely small private domain.

But like CCTV, they are also being divided up in the process of private domain traffic fission.

4. The private domain of the Internet continues to be divided up

Since the rise of mobile Internet and smart phones, the powerful private domain Baidu has become less effective.

In the PC Internet era, Baidu is everyone’s gateway to the Internet. If you are too lazy to remember the URL, just search it on Baidu. All websites, including Alibaba and Tencent, must be very friendly to Baidu.

A popular word at that time was "SEO" - search engine optimization. What to optimize? Optimize your website so that Baidu can better index (find) your website.

When users search for relevant keywords, there is a greater probability that their website will be displayed, and then the website will be opened and become their own traffic.

In order to gain the upper hand, people are even willing to spend a lot of money to directly purchase Baidu's front-row VIP position. This gave rise to another term "SEM" - search engine marketing, which ensures that when users search for keywords, they will be able to see their website in the front row of the first page.

Although it costs money, it is much faster than SEO, so some hospitals like to use this method to promote their products, which also created Baidu’s core business of "bidding ranking".

However, in the era of mobile Internet, people rarely open browsers to view content, and naturally rarely use Baidu search, because everything you want to see is in one APP after another, and you can open it directly by clicking on the icon, which is a much better experience than that of a web page.

For example, if you want to chat, just open WeChat; if you want to watch a video, just open iQiyi; if you want news, just open Toutiao; if you want to buy something, just open Taobao. There is no need to open the browser, search on Baidu, and then click to open.

You may wonder why Baidu doesn’t continue to index content from WeChat, iQiyi, Toutiao, and Taobao on mobile phones? In this way, everyone will open Baidu first.

Because they don’t want to!

WeChat, iQiyi, Toutiao, and Taobao have found that users no longer go through Baidu, but directly reach their own apps. So there is no need to be friendly to Baidu, at least on mobile phones. So even if Baidu wants to index their content, they won’t let Baidu index it.

This embarrassed Baidu, so it was forced to start creating its own information flow. It spent 1 billion to promote its own APP during the 2019 Spring Festival Gala, and spent a lot of money on Baijiahao and Xiongzhanghao, hoping to establish its own powerful product and content system on the mobile terminal.

Baidu has been cut off, users no longer go to Baidu, Baidu's private domain traffic has decreased, and companies' marketing investment in Baidu has also decreased.

Since 2015, Baidu's revenue growth has slowed down significantly. In the past two years, the proportion of Baidu's advertising revenue has continued to decline. In the first quarter of 2019, the financial report showed the first loss since its listing in 2005.

In the era of mobile Internet, content is king. Only content can attract users, not search convenience.

Behind content being king is product being king. The content of WeChat, Taobao, and Douyin is produced because of powerful products.

5. The rise of micro-private domains

As the slogan of the WeChat official account says, "No matter how small an individual is, he or she can have his or her own brand."

With the rise of WeChat official accounts, WeChat’s private domain traffic has been further split into tens of millions of official accounts. Each public account is a small private domain traffic. Because of their fans' attention, each of their tweets can reach users directly, thus achieving exposure.

But that’s not all.

Starting with personal overseas shopping, people discovered that everyone can become a successful businessman. With the rise of WeChat business and the promotion of Pinduoduo, we discovered that each individual’s circle of friends is actually a tiny private traffic pool.

As a result, WeChat’s traffic was further divided into private traffic for hundreds of millions of users.

The same is true for Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin. Their private traffic is divided up by countless KOCs (amateur bloggers), internet celebrities, and your friends around you.

This is the rise of extremely small private domain traffic.

It is precisely because of the gorgeous transformation of our friends around us that we realize the existence of private domain traffic. Because the extremely micro private domain traffic has reached the smallest dimension, it is very close, small and specific, and no longer feels like public domain traffic like the extremely large private domain traffic.

Although the extremely small private domain traffic is small, its efficiency is very high.

On January 16, 2018, NetEase Cloud Classroom launched the “New Year Operations Class”.

It is sold for only 39 yuan, and through the model of 60% profit from first-level distribution + 30% profit from second-level distribution, it has mobilized a large number of WeChat users to monetize their own private domain traffic. It went online at 8 p.m. on the 16th, and in less than 16 hours, more than 130,000 copies were sold.

An ordinary user can use his or her own circle of friends to distribute private traffic and earn more than 700 yuan in revenue in one night.

Don’t understand this as the rise of knowledge payment. It has little to do with knowledge payment. The courses here just act as a transformation tool.

Therefore, more and more companies are choosing to invest in personal private domain traffic. Although it is much more troublesome than placing ads directly on WeChat, the effect is much better because in addition to purchasing traffic, there is also trust endorsement.

Private domain traffic has been continuously fissioning and sinking in the past 20 years, and this trend will continue. More and more large private domain traffic will be disintegrated by small private domains.

6. Causes of private domain traffic fission

Who is the driving force behind private domain traffic? What causes the continuous fission of private domain traffic?

Through all the surface phenomena, there are three core factors that cause the fission of private domain traffic:

• Infrastructure - Internet
• Traffic Carrier - Products
• Mutable Objects - Users

(1) Infrastructure: Internet

The biggest change in today's Internet compared to the Internet in the past is real-time connection.

Therefore, I call today's Internet "Internet +" and the past Internet "traditional Internet".

The typical feature of traditional Internet is "surfing the Internet". Turn on your computer, connect to the Internet, and start surfing.

The typical feature of Internet+ is "real-time online". All people and equipment, even stores are permanently connected, and we can connect to every node at any time.

This enables companies to reach users at any time. There are so many ways and means. QR codes, mini-programs, live broadcasts, groups, Moments, stores, official accounts, programs, communities, articles, and even smart cars, land sales, wifi, and payments can help companies reach their target users.

Enterprises no longer need to rely on Internet access - browsers, search engines, navigation websites, portal sites, and they no longer need to rely on traditional media or offline stores.

You can establish connections with users at any time, and the connection with each user is an autonomous and controllable traffic pool, rather than the traffic allocated to you by public domain traffic.

Therefore, the Internet provides the underlying basic channel for building private domain traffic.

(2) Traffic carrier - product

Nowadays, even a small restaurant knows that it needs to establish connections with users and operate long-term through official accounts or WeChat friends to retain users who have dined there. So the product at this moment is no longer a certain dish, but this restaurant, this store.

Such a product will not just be a simple commodity (dish) for trading. The life cycle of the commodity will be extended, extending to the usage process after purchase, or even to the point where you no longer use it.

Once we shift from selling goods to operating products, traffic will naturally arise and be attached to the products.

The product comes with its own traffic, and the more operations you perform, the more traffic you will get.

From this, we can see a common mistake made by a large number of companies. Almost all companies will open public accounts for their products or companies for promotion and marketing, but if the public accounts are contracted to the marketing department to operate independently, separate from the products made by the product department, then it would be wrong!

The official account is not a pure marketing window. Its more important role is to establish long-term connections with users. Maintaining connections depends on continuously creating value for users, especially the added value in the process of users using the product. Therefore, the official account and the product are integrated into one, and together they form a product that provides continuous value to users.

Therefore, the product provides a carrier for building private domain traffic.

(3) Mutable objects - users

Materials are now extremely abundant, and there is a serious surplus of similar products to choose from.

This makes it difficult for users to stick to one brand or one product, and random consumption becomes more frequent. As the long tail within a category becomes longer and thicker, each small brand is likely to have its own user base.

This means that every product has the opportunity to gain traffic, instead of all users being captured by a super large private domain for a long time as in the past.

The convenience of the Internet makes the user migration cost almost zero.

With just a few clicks, you can switch from one platform to another, from one store to another, and from one product to another.

This further increases the flow of users between various private domains. Therefore, the threshold for small private domains to obtain traffic has been lowered.

Therefore, the user side is also actively promoting the construction of a private domain traffic pool.

Three elements for building private domain traffic

The continuous changes in the three elements of private domain traffic construction have jointly created today's private domain traffic landscape.

7. Future Marketing Dominated by Private Domain Traffic

The above three elements provide us with ideas for planning future marketing.

First, don’t think of the Internet as a destination for marketing, but rather as a tool for building user connections.

What's the meaning?

In the past, people viewed the Internet as a media, and advertising on the Internet was just like advertising on TV stations. This was treating the Internet as another marketing window.

But today's Internet is no longer a user terminal, but a tool for building various connections, so it is called "Internet +".

For example, you spend 200,000 yuan to place an advertisement on WeChat Moments. If you regard it as a destination, you will allow users to directly convert and purchase. If you regard it as a connection tool, you will combine it with other tools, such as official accounts, groups, and even distribution, to establish a weak connection with users, and gradually convert them into purchases and repeat purchases in the process of your long-term user operation.

The purchase at this moment must be based on your understanding of him and the most suitable product for him, rather than the temptation of low price.

The more you understand your users, the stronger your private traffic will be, the closer the relationship between you and your users will be, the lower the marketing costs will be, and the higher the marketing effectiveness will be.

Second, don’t waste the private traffic in your hands, keep it and operate it.

The saddest thing about a business is that users are using your products, but you cannot reach them. Because you never considered establishing a private connection with him.

Although many of our companies have good products, they only have a one-time encounter with users. As a result, they are always worried about acquiring customers and are always spending money to purchase traffic.

In fact, it is easy to retain users as long as you use your brain, but you have never thought about doing this.

Some of them were thought about, but the actions were extremely disgusting.

As soon as a user buys your product, you ask the user to follow your official account and start a continuous advertising bombardment.

If this isn't disgusting to users, then what is? Do you want me to pay attention just to make me buy things?

Please be careful, figure out who are potential users and who are existing users, tailor-make operation plans for them, and make them feel that your operation is valuable, rather than being treated as leeks and repeatedly harvested.

Third, there is no need to waste money on big platforms, but to find accurate private traffic.

There is a famous Goldbach conjecture in the marketing world: "I know that half of my advertising expenses are wasted, but I don't know which half." I think half is an understatement, as there are many ads with conversion rates of less than 1%.

I often see this kind of inexplicable advertisement. A name never seen before, a company never seen before, a product never seen before. I don’t know what purpose to convey, I don’t know how to buy, and I don’t know the value of the product. The effect of this kind of advertising can be imagined.

Before launching marketing campaigns, think clearly about your purpose and choose the traffic channels you want to win more purposefully.

I think: public domain traffic is suitable for branding, while private domain traffic is for conversion.

Finally, I must emphasize that private domain traffic is not a hot topic. No matter how many people you see talking about it this year, please stay calm.

Private domain traffic has been around for a long time and will continue to split. All you have to do is recognize this trend and choose a marketing method that suits you.

Don't get excited and start building your own private domain traffic. Before you build, please think about the following three questions:

1. Do you really need to build your own private domain traffic?
2. Do you have the ability to build your own private domain traffic?
3. Have you thought clearly about the three elements of building private domain traffic?

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: Ai Laosi

Source: Ai Lao Si