Private domain traffic methodology!

In this article, we will share from the following perspectives:

1. Four types of store traffic after actual investigation
2. Synchronous retention of online communities and offline stores
3. Strengthen the store manager's image and complete brand recognition migration
4. How to understand the difference between online and offline "fields"

1. Division of store traffic

The construction of a private domain requires a certain amount of user traffic accumulation as support. For the construction of private domains for offline stores, we first need to solve a problem: What types of users are there in the store? Which ones are suitable for importing into online private domains?

Based on the current status of the tea brand's offline franchise stores, offline field research, and in-depth communication with store managers and shopping guides, we will import private domain traffic and divide it into four main parts and corresponding strategies:

1. Natural store traffic

Usually store managers will do research before joining, and the natural traffic user groups of different stores vary greatly.

This includes scheduling users' purchasing intentions after they enter the store and importing private domains, which requires the store manager to take the initiative.

In terms of execution actions, we mainly target two types of users (purchased/non-purchased), and design targeted language to invite users to add the company’s WeChat account and join the community.

Use product trial activities and tea knowledge sharing as guiding bait, emphasizing the in-depth service value after adding.

2. Seed flow

Seed traffic generally refers to old customers or returning customers in the store. They usually have basic trust in the store brand and products, or believe in the character of the store manager and shopping guide.

It is relatively easy to import these users into the private domain. In terms of specific operations, we will reach out to users through conventional forms such as promotion in WeChat Moments, 1v1 private chats, etc., guide them into the group, strengthen their brand and product awareness, provide more high value-added services, and attract them to visit the store again or bring new users to the store.

3. Referral traffic

Due to the social nature of offline stores, during the actual research process, we learned that traffic from referrals and recommendations from old customers accounts for a very large proportion.

They all have potential consumption needs, but their knowledge of stores and brands is relatively weak, and they usually have the mentality of trusting friends and giving it a try.

After these users are introduced into the private domain, there is a higher probability that they will develop into deep users and increase their order values.

The specific private domain strategy will use in-depth 1v1 private chats, red envelopes, product knowledge and other hooks through store managers and shopping guides to invite users to the store for tasting and trial, and provide the same level of service rights as old customers.

4. Activity flow

Compared with the first three types of traffic, there are more methods that can be tried in terms of event traffic, such as weekend activities, holiday activities, store anniversary activities, etc. held by stores.

Usually we reach users through store posters, community invitations, etc. At the same time, we can introduce fission methods to obtain more traffic, and use recharge discounts, red envelopes and other baits to direct more traffic to corporate WeChat and communities.

At the same time, the activity traffic here needs to be carefully defined. The traffic within the area (near the store) is more likely to arrive at the store, while the traffic outside the area focuses more on making more people aware of the brand itself.

By continuously expanding the store’s private traffic pool around the above four types of traffic, the premise for subsequent operational actions will be in place and the foundation of the private domain model will be solid.

From a big picture perspective, there are really only so many strategies that can be adopted after the introduction, and what is important is to include as many details as possible in the specific SOP.

During the process, we will also continue to screen out some influencing factors based on the characteristics of each type of store, including but not limited to: Is the store located near a residential area? What are the differences in operating focus compared to franchise stores in large supermarkets? How to reduce the burden on store managers as much as possible, etc.

After ensuring that this model works on the traffic side in one store, we can consider reusing it in other stores.

2. How to increase store visit frequency through social media retention

Based on past project experience, in the private domains of some retail stores, the number of repurchases within 3 months for users who joined the groups was 3.6 times higher, and the cumulative repurchase amount was 7 times higher than that for users who did not join the groups.

The reason is simple. In the past, people would only think of buying something when they passed by a store, but now, even if they accidentally saw a group message, it would stimulate their consumption demand.

Online business needs to be fed back to offline business, especially for franchise stores. The enthusiasm of store managers must be driven by the actual customer flow to the store. Therefore, our subsequent actions mainly have three prerequisites:

1. Do not engage in sales activities within the community, and build a themed, content-based community
2. Ensure the value and humanity of information within the community, and avoid users forming a perception that the community has nothing to do with me
3. Free up the store manager's time as much as possible and reduce the store manager's operational execution workload and difficulty

Only excellent content can maximize the retention of the community and the formation of users' opening habits. This is the most critical step to ensure that the traffic is truly effectively taken over and operated by us, rather than just a bunch of communities and false prosperity.

At the same time, our core goal is store visit rate. The quality of this indicator will directly determine the degree of cooperation of franchise store managers with community-related operations and the "positive and negative feedback" they receive after execution.

Therefore, our goal is to create a "content-based community", avoid forcing orders within the community, and ensure the opening rate of the community.

So in terms of the community dimension, we first need to clarify two things:

First, make it clear what kind of help the brand can provide to the store. For example, in terms of user benefits, after spending over 500 yuan in the store, you can get a gift box from the brand.

For example, for member users who recharge in the store, their membership day discounts will become more affordable, while not affecting the price system set by the brand.

The benefits here are essentially to reduce the execution costs and thresholds for store managers.

If the store manager's execution ability cannot be ensured, all subsequent top-down planning will be empty talk.

At the same time, the distribution of welfare benefits can itself be understood as the brand's support for franchisees and a market-oriented brand behavior, which is a win-win measure.

On this basis, the store manager himself needs to play a role in maintaining emotions, providing product consulting services, active interactions, creating topics, establishing an atmosphere, and increasing trust in the community.

Based on our past experience, this link is more dependent on the personal charm of the store manager himself, as well as the matching degree between the store manager and the surrounding people.

Our operations staff will prepare a set of standard SOPs and content libraries to facilitate store managers' implementation, and the cognitive threshold is very low.

In actual practice, store managers are mainly responsible for the following types of operations in the community:

First, value output.

Such as sharing product knowledge, health knowledge, etc., the purpose is to provide professional knowledge content to community members, improve value output, and increase users' enthusiasm for opening group chats.

Second, regular movements.

Based on user behavior habits, we send information and popular science in the morning and evening. The purpose is to provide community members with the latest news, stimulate activity, and make people develop the habit of opening the community at a fixed time.

Third, users can participate in welfare activities.

From Monday to Friday, we hold some flash sales and coupon activities in the community from time to time, find lucky users through raffles, small games or red envelopes, and invite them to the store. This will help users develop habits and increase the probability of them visiting the store.

Fourth, organize offline activities such as product seminars.

Combined with some activities (lucky guy gets free private room coupons, interactive chain games, etc.), we ensure that the store manager can give users an experience that goes beyond the online experience in offline scenarios.

The first two feedback chains are relatively long, while the last two can usually directly drive users to the store.

Under normal circumstances, users are most concerned about product prices and the desire to get a bargain.

With the stimulation of red envelopes and coupons, users can feel the sincerity from the store and have sufficient mental support to visit the store. This is the logic of visiting the store for high-frequency daily necessities.

Offline store users of the tea category are less price sensitive, and store managers themselves also pay more attention to the operation of high-net-worth user groups, because this is the simplest and most effective way to drive store consumption and promote the revenue of stored-value businesses.

Based on this premise, we need to consider more about how to provide added value so that high net worth individuals will feel fresh, interesting, and willing to come and take a look and kill their free time.

For example, invite them to serve as product experience officers. When new products are added to the retail store, they can actively encourage users to come to the store to taste and experience the products . This allows users to feel the store's care and have an emotional experience of "thinking of you when there is something good."

Then in the specific project, we can divide the actions into two categories:

1) Based on our past experience in projects with high-priced products, online exchanges are an effective means of mobilizing user participation.

This is mainly reflected in product-related content. Store managers invite users to the community through friendship or interests to share their own processes, experiences, and feelings in the form of pictures or text.

Let users become the store’s KOC invisibly. Person-to-person introductions are always the most efficient way to build trust.

At the same time, in the active interactions in the exchange community, preset hooks are embedded to guide users to the store, such as interactive games. With the help of user sharing and game participation, the store manager randomly draws lucky users.

This is all to prepare topics for later 1v1 private chats with users, as well as to send red envelopes to attract users to come to the store to taste, listen to user feedback, and purchase products.

At the end of the online exchange meeting, you can embed the traffic leads for the offline exchange meeting.

2) Based on the operation plan of the retail stores, we will set up offline tasting activities to further encourage store managers to organize users in the community to participate in the store.

This is the most direct way to increase the user visit rate. It is also beneficial for store managers (including shopping guides) to better grasp user preferences, enhance the dialogue and communication between store managers (including shopping guides) and users, and help conversion.

The activities focus on selecting the afternoon time period, and the content usually revolves around the store manager's sharing, explanation, tea tasting and meeting friends about a certain type of tea, or inviting relevant endorsed tea artists to the store to give lectures.

The latter can be provided with direct resource support by the brand, and at the same time ensure that the franchisees and the brand are in the same mind.

The topic interactions and content records during the offline tasting sessions can also be integrated as a stable operational content output terminal, and reused by operators in stores and communities in other regions.

In addition to the tasting session, the store manager can also provide one-on-one offline services, that is, providing private rooms for high-net-worth users, especially for middle-aged and elderly consumer groups.

The cost of private rooms for stores is zero most of the time. In addition to improving store retention, it also greatly increases the probability of customers buying more tea.

In addition, private room services can extend many service chains.

For example, it provides services such as storing purchased tea in stores (similar to izakayas), accumulating consumption, and binding the existing online points system with the rights and interests of private room time.

The purpose is to encourage users to come to the store as much as possible, build a perception of "resting place" in the minds of users, and create a third space exclusively for users to meet friends and chat.

After ensuring high frequency of store visits and long stay time, more subsequent activities, posters, and small marketing methods will have a higher probability of success, while providing more revenue potential for brands and franchise store managers.

To sum up, we need to ensure that there is good content for users both online and offline.

Let the operator work together with the store manager and community assistant. The community assistant is responsible for collating user feedback, promoting brand content, and creating the atmosphere for daily community interactions, which adds icing on the cake for community operations.

Good content serves users, social content drives users, and the charm of store managers binds users, providing a foundation for conversion and support for online and offline retention.

In terms of tools, we can give full play to the various functions of WeChat for Enterprise tools. From communities, 1v1 daily chat content, and user in-store behavior, we can gradually deepen our understanding of users and label various types of users.

In this link, we need to continue to strengthen the store managers' perception of the value of the "high net worth user label" and let them realize that this matter can really bring direct economic benefits, rather than just talking about "long-termism."

As we all know, community operation is a very heavy and non-standardized job, and franchise store managers will definitely carefully weigh the input-output ratio.

It is inhumane to let the store manager label all users in the community without the support of operational staff, because his core revenue source lies in the key 20% of the population.

On the basis of understanding this matter, reduce the store manager's execution scope, provide a labeling methodology, and enable him to complete labeling based on multiple aspects such as user's product preferences, consumption amount, user gender, user age, purchase purpose, and purchase intention.

Store managers must have a clear understanding of top users, provide them with targeted services, and set up new anchor points to attract users to the store.

Then, make the label system "backward compatible" and reuse the framework for 80% of users. When the cooperation relationship with the store managers is further improved, guide them to screen out the 20% of potential users from the 80% of users.

For online matters, traders and operations personnel are responsible for ensuring that the SOP and operating thresholds are extremely simplified. This requires continuous optimization of the system and the construction of a content library so that store managers who are willing to cooperate can send content directly, providing assistance at the "content middle platform" level.

When it comes to offline, we need to fully consider the interests of the brand and franchisees, ensure that the store manager always feels that we are on the same front, and prioritize execution of actions to ensure timely feedback.

3. Strengthen users’ memory of the brand

For products such as tea that have their own cultural attributes, the store manager's empathy and personal charm play an important role in the operation process, running through the entire process of traffic generation, retention, and offline.

Therefore, it is particularly important to strengthen the store manager’s personal image and social media posting skills.

First of all, a professional personality is necessary for the packaging of the store manager. We need to establish users’ perception of the store manager’s professionalism, and let users feel the store manager’s business value based on content such as avatars, introductions, and updates on WeChat Moments.

However, the interaction in the store is a human-based interaction, and the creation of personalities must be based on our framework to refine the personal style of each store manager and assist them in presenting it.

On this basis, the store manager's subsequent actions such as social sharing, 1v1 Q&A and conversions will be smoother. In our actual operation process, we will find two phenomena:

1. Most users are not willing to show that they "don't know something" and ask directly in the group, and prefer 1v1 communication
2. Users who have established 1v1 links are more willing to respond to operators in the group

The high frequency of phenomenon 1 usually indirectly confirms people’s opening rate of the community and their interest in the topic.

At the same time, the user mentality of being unwilling to expose ignorance in public and participate in public discussions is understandable, but often ignored by community operators.

Phenomenon 2 provides us with some new possible directions for activating the community, and also becomes an effective argument for us to strengthen the digitization and warmth of 1v1.

When it comes to private chats, operations staff will still follow our SOP to conduct follow-up visits, but can also be more flexible and humane, and more focused on brand maintenance and tone.

The core purpose of our online end is to ensure that users can gradually transfer their personal trust in the store manager to systematic trust in the brand, achieving a "love the house and love the dog" type of influence.

Looking back at the entire model, it can be summarized as follows:

• Online store managers use private domain communities to pass on activity information to users leaving the store and conduct daily seeding of offline
• Offline store managers provide face-to-face targeted services to customers who enter the store, inviting users to weed out

From a long-term perspective, whether it is the private domain traffic SOP or the store manager community operation SOP, it can be copied and executed by stores, and brand products can be recommended to users in the community, strengthening users' memory of the brand and increasing users' loyalty to the store and brand.

4. The synergistic value of online and offline “venues”

The private domain operations of offline retail stores do not go beyond the framework of "traffic + trust + content". At least we have not found any conclusions from such franchise brands that are beyond our understanding.

However, compared with pure online operations, we need to consider more fully how to make good use of the advantages of offline stores’ “human touch” and “low trust threshold”.

No matter how well the online environment is constructed, problems will arise if the offline environment is not properly controlled.

For stores, private domain is a strategy to reduce costs and improve efficiency by promoting return visits and repeat purchases, allowing users to continue to become familiar with the store outside the store.

But in the end, the most important thing is still the operation of the store itself, coupled with the store manager's full commitment to this matter.

In order to win the long-term support of users, both online communities and offline stores need to be supported by more outstanding content and activities, and like franchise stores, store managers are also needed to act as a bridge to connect them.

The "goods" are the same, and the "people" revolve around the store manager.

Operations personnel only need to complete field research and establish a good mechanism to ensure that the online and offline "fields" can be smoothly migrated and synchronized, ultimately driving overall conversion.

Author: Zero One Fission

Source: Zero One Fission