How can e-commerce companies operate Douyin private domain well?

With the rise of live streaming platforms and short videos, traffic has also migrated to short video platforms on a large scale, such as the Douyin we are using now. More and more people are starting to do business on Douyin. Whether it is promoting e-commerce sales on Douyin , store visits, or customer forms, the first thing to do is to gain traffic before you can do business.

In the process from traffic to business, we will connect a large group of users, such as: those who have interacted with you, followed you and become your fans, those who have bought our products or made transactions, etc. These are all sources of our traffic and the basis of our business. When we gather these people in a traffic pool that can be re-marketed, they become our private domain group, that is, the private domain traffic of the enterprise. Taking the e-commerce industry as an example, this article is divided into two parts to explain how to use Douyin to operate private domain traffic.

When the e-commerce industry promotes Douyin, it will obtain traffic through payment. It can obtain traffic through content and delivery. It can obtain public domain traffic through content such as short videos and live broadcasts, and obtain paid commercial traffic through delivery such as feed ads and Dou+. We call this public domain traffic. So what is private domain traffic? As the name suggests, private traffic is your own traffic. It does not require re-payment and can be used to re-market to customers. For example, among the users who come from paid traffic, we establish a traffic pool that can be re-marketed. They are our private traffic. Compared with public traffic that relies on platforms and continuously purchases traffic, the cost of acquiring customers with private traffic will be lower. Private traffic can be marketed multiple times and can be used repeatedly without increasing costs.

In the private traffic pool, fans can make direct purchases and generate repeat purchases, thereby bringing in new business, or they can bring in more business by attracting new customers. It can be said that the private domain is a new source of business for the e-commerce industry. When doing private domain business on Douyin, the first thing is strong customer acquisition. Douyin's traffic scale is undoubtedly among the top three short video platforms. In addition, Douyin's simple follow-up relationship makes it easier to acquire customers in Douyin's private domain . The second is the positive cycle of traffic. The better the private domain is managed, the more efficient it will be to gain fans in the public and business domains. The third point, which is also the most important for companies, is efficiency. For example, in the Douyin app, each industry can use a variety of contact channels and contact methods to further achieve simple and funny conversions. As the cost of acquiring customers through public domain traffic continues to rise, companies doing business on Douyin are paying more and more attention to how to play in Douyin's private domain.

Reasons for creating a private domain for Douyin:

Internet users’ behavior is changing: The Internet and digital economy are accelerating

According to the 2021 China Online Audiovisual Development Research Report, the average daily usage time of short videos is 110 minutes per person, the total number of online e-commerce live broadcasts in half a year has exceeded 100 million, and the scale of online audiovisual users has reached 944 million.

Short videos and live broadcasts continue to integrate with e-commerce, catering, tourism, beauty and skin care industries, continue to expand their dissemination scenarios, and gradually replace some app applications, such as some news and information platform networks. According to reports, as of December 2020, the number of Internet users in China reached 989 million, an increase of 49.15 million from June. Among them, 20.4% of Internet users used short video apps when they first went online. Statistics show that short video apps have contributed nearly 10 million new Internet users. In an era with such a large number of netizens and increasing competition, Douyin private domain is no longer a marketing model that is icing on the cake, but an operation model of Douyin private domain that companies must do and must pay attention to.

Let's look at the online retail sales data. According to the data report of the National Bureau of Statistics, among the retail sales of consumer goods in 2020, the online retail sales of physical goods reached 9.76 trillion yuan, an increase of 14.8% year-on-year compared with the retail sales of physical goods in 2019. It can be seen that the role of online retail in promoting consumption continues to increase.

(Figure 1: Online retail sales share, data source: National Bureau of Statistics)

The development of Douyin is changing: starting to lay out Douyin private domain traffic

At the launch conference of Douyin Enterprise Account held at the Juliang Conference at the end of July this year, Mu Jianxin, head of corporate operations, said at the conference: "Douyin's private domain traffic is a new addition to Douyin's e-commerce and development, and it is a fan-centered growth point." This can actually be regarded as an "official announcement" that Douyin has begun to deploy private domain traffic operations.

Question: Why does the short video app Tik Tok need to develop a private domain?

According to statistics in the data report, the number of Douyin corporate accounts has reached nearly 10 million. With the rapid development of the short video platform, various companies and businesses have accelerated the pace of entering Douyin and have greatly increased the manpower and material resources for the later operations of short videos. The number of certified corporate accounts with more than one million fans has increased by 165% year-on-year.

(Figure 2: Number of industry enterprise accounts, data source: Massive Arithmetic)

From the current trend, we can see that Douyin's move to strengthen its private domain is a natural move. With such a huge number of fans, if merchants and brands want to achieve long-term development and maintain monetization, Douyin's private domain traffic and account operations must be refined, and the Douyin platform will also launch corresponding products and operation systems.

The market environment is changing: private domain operations have become an inevitable choice for enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency

With the digital transformation and upgrading of merchants, the cost of acquiring customers continues to rise, and customer retention is difficult. Excluding product costs, logistics costs, personnel costs, and advertising costs, the profits of most merchants have fallen sharply. In addition, the offline economy continued to be damaged by the epidemic last year. As a result, more merchants have begun to accelerate the layout of private domains and speed up the transformation to online marketing. As of this year, Douyin's private domain is still the main way to grow. No matter whether it is a new industry or a traditional industry, more and more businesses pay attention to private domain traffic operations, and shift the competition from initially paying for public domain traffic to attract new users and increase conversion volume to private domain operation conversion, thereby reducing the overall investment cost.

(Figure 2: Industry advertising CPM costs, data source: QuestMobile Research Institute 2020)

What is Douyin private domain?

Private domain traffic is a term that merchants and operators often plan and talk about. So what exactly is private domain? From the birth of the concept of private domain to the present day, the industry has not had a unified and clear definition of private domain traffic. The meaning of private domain can be understood literally, which is the traffic within Douyin. The ownership belongs to the merchant, and it can be directly reached through multiple marketing campaigns and achieve continuous conversion. This is the private domain. In comparison, typical private domains are WeChat/corporate WeChat personal accounts and groups, as well as enterprise-built mini-programs and apps, and the fan groups currently available on the TikTok platform.

How to create Douyin private domain?

"Private domain" has been a very popular term in the Internet industry in recent years. From 2017 to 2018, the traffic dividends of some e-commerce platforms gradually faded, the growth rate slowed down, and the traffic of some e-commerce platforms even declined. The growth rate peaked, it became increasingly difficult to attract new users, and the current situation can no longer meet the growth needs. The private domain is to tap into new growth points for greater value. This also shows that establishing a good private domain system and maintaining private domain users has become one of the factors for the smooth transformation and long-term sustainable development of current businesses. Doing a good job in private domain can directly bring merchants repeat purchases, multiple conversions and other benefits. Compared with the ever-increasing customer acquisition costs, the efficient conversion of private domain has attracted countless merchants to enter the market. At this time, problems continue to emerge, and the private domain operation model is fixed. Many merchants are fully invested and finally it becomes a stagnant water. Problems such as difficulty in building private domain and difficulty in converting private domain follow one after another. How to explore new breakthroughs in Douyin's private domain operations? Topics related to catering and food have always been very popular.

(Figure 3: Viewing and purchasing data of various types of food, data source: Feigua Data)

Let’s take a look at an example of a Douyin account – Mengdada Coconut Chicken.

As the name suggests, this is a specialty food account. The topic of food has always been very popular and is closely related to our daily lives. It has 338 fans. The overall shooting style is based on the actual production process. The delivery boy is used for efficient and relaxed shooting. The comment area actively interacts with users. The account is also certified with a blue V video account, and the homepage reflects the business hours, store address and contact number.

Mengdada Coconut Chicken Restaurant uses point-to-point flow for its advertising. Its store exploration-themed content is very popular among users. Users pay close attention to local specialties and restaurants. If online traffic-generating content is well done, it can directly influence users’ consumption decisions.

Mengdada Coconut Chicken promotes its products with the purpose of purchasing them in the store. During the live broadcast, people can follow the host to become a fan, participate in comments, and like the live broadcast to receive universal coupons, which can be directly deducted after offline in-store consumption. According to statistics after the live broadcast, the number of viewers was 554.5w, the total number of buyers was 26,000, and the sales volume of the top-selling product was 12,000. The praise rate after offline in-store consumption was as high as 97%. The number of users visiting the store was basically greater than 2, and the number of people visiting the store was 2-3 times the number of consumers. This is a long-term process of attracting new customers and continuous conversion. For a Douyin account with only 300 followers, the data from this live broadcast can be regarded as a victory in the first battle, giving Coconut Chicken a small exposure.

(Figure 4: Mengdada Coconut Chicken sales, data source: Feigua Data)