Is Douyin’s private domain a false proposition? (one)

Massive Engine is the official marketing service brand of ByteDance, an advertising platform that integrates marketing resources such as Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua Video. In my opinion, the root cause is all traffic anxiety. Everyone knows that the current TikTok focuses on public domain reach rather than private domain accumulation.

00. What is private domain traffic?

Conceptual level:

Compared with public domain traffic, to put it simply, it means that there is no payment and the user's channel can be reached directly and for free at any time and frequency, thereby maximizing conversion, repeat purchase, and referral.

Application level:

It generally refers to the WeChat ecosystem, including personal WeChat, official accounts, WeChat communities, enterprise WeChat and even video accounts.

To a certain extent, the WeChat ecosystem does represent and define the term "private domain traffic", but does it mean that only the WeChat ecosystem can operate private domain traffic?

Obviously, all Internet traffic platforms do not agree, and Tik Tok is one of them! ! !

01. Why does Douyin have to develop private domains?

Let me first state my conclusion:

It is only a matter of time before Douyin enters the private domain. Why?

There are three reasons:

1. Everybody is doing it;
2. I had to do it;
3. I have to do it;

Let’s talk about the first one first: everyone is doing it;

At present, WeChat is the only one that can represent the concept of "private domain", but it is obvious that players in the industry have their own ideas. Here we take Kuaishou, a classmate of Douyin, as an example. Kuaishou's performance is particularly obvious.

For example, at the Photosynthesis Creator Conference a few months ago, Kuaishou has been emphasizing, and even deliberately emphasizing, Kuaishou’s private domain capabilities from beginning to end.

Let’s take a look at some private domain-related data officially released by Kuaishou at the conference:

1. Last year, the private income of creators on Kuaishou reached 40 billion yuan;
2. The penetration rate of Kuaishou’s private domain traffic remains above 70%, which means that among daily active users, 70% of users will interact with anchors and consume creators on private domain pages;
3. On average, each user spends more than 20 minutes on the Follow page. Of the 87 minutes that users spend on Kuaishou every day, nearly a quarter of the time is spent on the Follow page interacting with the anchors they already follow.
4. What will such interaction bring?

It will bring creators more than 80% of the live broadcast reward income; more than 70% of the e-commerce GMV, and even contribute more than 70% of the interactions and comments between short videos and live broadcasts;

5. Kuaishou e-commerce emphasizes the private domain repurchase logic based on trust and content. The average repurchase rate of Kuaishou e-commerce users increased from 45% in 2019 to 65% in 2020

All of the above content revolves around [private domain]. Let’s not discuss whether the name of Kuaishou’s e-commerce business is private domain e-commerce, community e-commerce or trust e-commerce.

But I also have reason to believe that when Douyin saw Kuaishou’s data and its vision for building private domain scenarios in the future, Douyin felt mixed emotions and it was impossible for it to be calm and not anxious.

Here is another example:

Everyone should still remember that WeChat was the first to launch mini programs a few years ago, but now let’s take a look at Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou, Baidu, and Alipay. Do they all have mini programs as standard to enable merchants or businesses on the platform to better serve users?

This means that for some decisions, it is not up to you to decide what to do or even whether to do it, but everyone is making them, it's that simple.

The same goes for [private domain]. Everyone is doing it, so of course I (Tik Tok) have to do it too.

Now, WeChat has taken the lead in private domain, and then Kuaishou vigorously promoted private domain, and now Douyin.

I wonder if mid-tier platforms such as Bilibili, Zhihu, and Xiaohongshu will also launch similar private domain operation tools in the near future. After all, no platform is willing to exist merely as a traffic-generating platform.

Let’s look at what we have to do:

In "11 Ways to Drain Private Domain Traffic from TikTok", I specifically shared why we should divert TikTok's public domain traffic to outside the site or to our own private domain as much as possible.

But, do you think Tik Tok is blind?

Of course TikTok can’t just sit back and watch. Who do you think I am? Just taking advantage of my traffic for free every day.

Therefore, Douyin has been very strict in cracking down on off-site traffic diversion. At the same time, Douyin also released new locations where traffic diversion is prohibited some time ago;

But the devil is always one step higher than the virtue.

So, at this time Douyin thought, since it can’t be blocked, it’s better to let it flow.

Aren’t you going to divert traffic to the private domain?

I might as well help you build your private domain so you guys don’t have to waste your time.

Isn't the purpose of your traffic generation to retain users for long-term operation?

Okay, now stop draining the traffic.

Our Douyin itself provides private domain traffic management tools and solutions, and the private domain management tools provided can also significantly reduce your operating costs and improve operational efficiency and conversion rates.

Finally, we must do

The official definition of Douyin’s private domain in the Douyin Private Domain White Paper is:

Douyin private domain refers to enterprises operating private domain traffic on Douyin through [Enterprise Account];

It can be seen that all the private domain solutions of Douyin are based on the enterprise account (officially called Enterprise Account 2.0). As the name suggests, the enterprise account is for corporate users and merchants.

On the one hand, the core of e-commerce business is still the supply chain, goods, and merchants. This can be seen from the launch of Douyin Stores to achieve a closed loop of the e-commerce ecosystem on the Douyin side. After all, if even the store is not on Douyin, how can there be a closed loop?

Douyin is very determined about its e-commerce business. There are even reports that Douyin plans to make 3 trillion yuan in 3 years.

On the other hand, from the perspective of advertising business revenue, compared with influencers, enterprises’ advertising placement is not only stable but also larger in volume.

If we can use Douyin's private domain business to bind merchants and enterprises firmly to the Douyin platform, the e-commerce business and advertising business can be guaranteed. Isn't that great?

So for Douyin, on the one hand it can retain users and traffic, and on the other hand it can increase the platform's revenue. It's killing two birds with one stone, so why not do it?

So, my conclusion is that Douyin is doing private domain:

1. Everyone is doing it; 2. I have to do it; 3. I have to do it too.

After talking about Douyin, let’s talk about businesses.

02. Why are businesses paying more and more attention to private domains?

I mentioned several reasons in "Why Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya started to deploy private domain traffic". I wonder if you still remember them:

1. Data traffic is getting more and more expensive

Today's traffic is always a little bit more expensive than yesterday's, and today's traffic is always a little bit cheaper than tomorrow's.

For any Internet platform, the underlying logic is traffic economy, exchanging users for revenue.

By using traffic to dominate the market, the profits are “bridge tolls”, “road money” and “traffic tax”;

Since most platforms purchase traffic based on bidding logic, the price of advertising is determined based on supply and demand. As more and more competitors enter the market, the cost of acquiring traffic and reaching users on the platform will become higher and higher.

For example:

For example, normally we may only need to spend 10 yuan to buy 10 users to the live broadcast room, but on days like 618 and Double 11 when there is a rush for traffic, there are more people than porridge, so the price will naturally rise. It may cost 100 yuan or even more to buy 10 users to the live broadcast room.

Who can stand this?

According to industry insiders, even Luo Yonghao, who is signed to Douyin, spends an average of millions to purchase traffic for each live broadcast room.

In addition, Simba, who claimed to be the son of a farmer and single-handedly purified the chaos of live streaming sales, even complained in the live broadcast room that he spent 20 million to buy traffic, but there were only 800,000 users in an hour.

This means that the good old days of relying on advertising to gain traffic and orders will gradually become a thing of the past.

If the traffic can only be used once and cannot be recycled, it will be the most expensive. How can we reuse the same wave of traffic?

The answer is naturally to settle in the private domain.

2. Traffic belongs to the platform

It’s a bit heartbreaking to say, but it’s the truth. From the beginning to the end, the traffic on the platform, or to be more precise, the public domain traffic, belongs to the platform.

The power to distribute traffic is firmly in the hands of the platform and cannot and will not belong to any top figure or expert.

Even if you gain new users and fans in the public traffic pool through short videos, live broadcasts or advertising, these fans in the public domain (including Douyin) do not completely belong to you, but are only inherent users of the platform.

In fact, it makes sense if you think about it this way:

On the one hand, we cannot allow those top Vs to hijack the platform. The platform also has the final say on traffic distribution, and this is especially true for Douyin. If you cannot continue to produce high-quality works, you will not be given traffic.

On the other hand, users need to be able to constantly discover fresh content on the platform, and new creators or small and medium-sized businesses need to be given opportunities to break through and emerge.

The platform should tell all participants that here, newcomers always have opportunities.

Wow, Amazing

3. Traffic cannot be retained

Friends, have you ever thought about what the essence of traffic is?

The essence of traffic lies in two points: one is the flow of people, and the other is retaining people, that is, attracting new users and retaining existing users.

However, we cannot retain traffic. It is impossible to use today’s traffic to achieve conversion and create value in a month.

For example, when selling goods through live streaming, the transaction is completed on the spot, and if you miss it, you miss it.

Otherwise, for any brand or enterprise, it is a must to deposit traffic into private domains.

Only then can we achieve conversion of today’s traffic in a month.

In addition to the above three points, I have summarized three new points about Douyin itself. Please continue reading:

4. Having money may not solve 100% of the problems

As mentioned above, traffic will become more and more expensive, and perhaps some businesses or companies will stand up and say:

I have plenty of money and a large budget to invest. Any problem that can be solved with money is not a problem for me.

Generally speaking, it is true that money can make the world go round, but sometimes money alone is not enough.

Let me give you an example of advertising:

When we browse Douyin, an advertisement will appear every few videos, and there will be N multiple businesses competing for the display of this advertisement. Of course, in the end only one advertisement will win and be successfully exposed.

But the decision of which bidding ad will be exposed is not simply whoever spends more money will be exposed.

The bidding advertising formula will calculate an oCPM value.

If you haven't heard of it, it's okay, you'll understand it once I explain it.

oCPM is a value used by the platform to evaluate how much revenue a merchant can bring by displaying the advertisement one thousand times. The system will sort the values ​​obtained from all advertisements from high to low. Of course, the larger the value, the greater your chance of getting exposure.

The oCPM value calculation consists of three indicators: estimated click-through rate, estimated conversion rate and the bid price we set.

It can be seen that price is only one of the factors. If our estimated click-through rate and estimated conversion rate are very low, we will not be able to make the bid even if we bid high.

To sum it up in one sentence:

What Douyin needs is advertising creativity that does not affect user experience while being able to drive GMV growth.

If you think about it carefully, it makes sense. Otherwise, if money is all that matters, with more and more marketing accounts entering Douyin, can Douyin go far if it loses its content foundation?

The whole screen is filled with ads saying "Only 9.9 yuan with free shipping". Isn't this killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?

5. Tik Tok’s involution is everywhere

Involution is not only reflected in the cost of buying traffic, but also in other aspects.

For example, in terms of commodity prices, on the one hand, in order to attract fans to stay by offering welfare benefits, merchants successfully manipulate the algorithm and block the live broadcast square, where gold jewelry is sold at very low prices.

You sell it for 18.8 yuan, it sells it for 8.8 yuan, and I sell it for 8.8 yuan and include free shipping. There is no lowest price, only lower prices.

For example, in the past you broadcast for 4 hours a day, others broadcast for 10 hours, you broadcast for 18 hours, and others even broadcast for 24 hours (called a never-ending live broadcast room).

Another example is the setting up of the live broadcast room. At the beginning, people just broadcast casually, then they used green screens or professionally built live broadcast rooms. Then a few days ago, I saw a merchant selling down jackets directly set up the live broadcast room in the snow and ice of Tibet.

Involution is everywhere, and this is also a realistic problem that businesses have to face under public domain traffic.

6. The traffic growth bonus is gone

Douyin's DAU has grown from 300 million to 500 million, then to 600 million, and will grow to 800 million in the future. The growth of traffic will become slower and slower.

But for Douyin, there will be more and more players competing for traffic, and what these companies and big players lack the least is budget, and they are all rich.

They all need traffic. If it were during the bonus period of traffic growth, this would not be a problem, but it is different now. There is only so much traffic in the market, and it is obviously not enough for everyone to share.

What should I do?

Is it possible for the platform to provide bubble traffic?

And as time goes by, for the same cost, either the traffic becomes more expensive or the quality becomes worse.

It’s not that the platform is too complicated, but it has to be done this way.

So you see, on the one hand, Douyin has to do it, and on the other hand, merchants also have to do it, unless you can be very sure that future traffic and growth can be sustained, but this is obviously impossible.

So combining these two parts, my conclusion is:

Douyin officially announced its private domain strategy:

The arrow is on the string and must be shot

04. What are the advantages of Douyin in private domain?

1. Short videos are easier to build trust with users

Whether you are operating a private domain or not, you must be familiar with these high-frequency words:

IP, character creation, emotional relationships, warmth, etc.

Douyin, which is based on short videos and live broadcasts, is obviously the best entry point for merchants or companies to build IP personalities.

For example, when businesses or companies use short videos or live broadcasts, they can let their employees express themselves in front of the camera or broadcast factory scenes in the live broadcast room, which can obviously establish a trusting relationship with users faster than pictures and texts.

For example, some businesses directly move the factory production scenes to the live broadcast room to create a factory persona that is the source of the factory and offers high quality and low prices. Some companies directly use short video content to create the persona of a boss with 20 years of industry experience, a buyer, who is professional and down-to-earth.

Once a trusting relationship is established with the user, subsequent conversions will come naturally.

The deal was done because of trust.

2. Shorter conversion path

I shared in "Hongxing Erke Wins in the Live Broadcast Room":

Two years ago, in the traditional Internet context where there were no live broadcast rooms, the communication scenarios (such as Weibo, WeChat, etc.) and the consumption scenarios (such as Taobao, Jingpin, offline stores, etc.) were separated from each other.

Users have an alarmingly high churn rate when they switch from communication platforms to consumption platforms.

This results in that although the company has gained a lot of reputation and goodwill on Weibo and WeChat Moments, in the short term, the reputation cannot be immediately reflected in the business data performance.

All the goodwill and reputation only remain at the communication level.

Douyin itself is a content dissemination platform, coupled with a seamless live e-commerce experience, whether it is Hansu that proactively terminated its contract with Kris Wu or Erke that donated 50 million supplies to Henan, it has led users to engage in wild consumption in the live broadcast rooms.

They all use the [live broadcast room] to carry the [short-term] explosive user [word-of-mouth and traffic] and directly form the final [sales conversion].

The company can also continue to operate the transactions and settled users in the long term. Now that Douyin private domain provides so many business tools, it is obviously the final assist.

3. Refined operations

Since traffic comes from different channels, its quality is different, and the difficulty of conversion is also different.

This is also the necessity for businesses to carry out refined operations, and the importance of refined operations to private domains is self-evident.

The 80/20 rule exists in every industry and field, and the same is true for business: 20% of users generate 80% of revenue.

Therefore, merchants or enterprises should focus their operations on the minority 20% of high-value users.

However, the cost of refined operations is bound to be relatively high. First, it refers to the time cost, and second, it refers to the operating cost. So how can we reduce costs and increase efficiency?

Douyin Private Domain also provides solutions, providing companies with a variety of ways and scenarios to reach users, such as homepage, subscription, private messaging, group chat, etc.

However, all application-level operation tools in Douyin’s private domain operation system rely on an underlying logic - user stratification.

Only with clear user segmentation can merchants know which users are high-value and which users they should focus on.

For example, in the Douyin private domain system, when users interact with corporate accounts, they will automatically enter the user stratification growth path of "potential fans-passerby fans-favorable fans-true fans".

Users will go from being potential users to entering the private traffic pool of an enterprise or merchant, placing orders and repeat purchases, and then to recommendations and referrals, and their trust relationship with the enterprise will continue to heat up.

At the same time, relying on the backend capabilities of the enterprise account, Douyin Private Domain can accurately identify, mark, and screen users, quickly reach the target user groups, provide targeted services, and realize refined operations.

If we have to use one word to summarize refined operations, it would be:

Thousands of people, thousands of faces

Show different content to users at different levels and achieve the same conversion.

05. How to implement Douyin private domain

This part includes three points. I mainly took the content of the white paper. One is the three-domain traffic of Douyin; the second is the four application scenarios; the third is the implementation of the four major industries. Let’s take a look at it in detail:

1. Douyin three-domain traffic:

Douyin divides its traffic into three parts: private domain, public domain, and commercial domain. Based on the integration of the three domains of traffic, the better the private domain management effect is, the more it can reversely affect the public domain and commercial domain, and obtain better quality traffic;

Those who engage in private domain training call these three traffic pools: three-domain resonance. . . Oh my god, this definition is more touching than the official TikTok one. . .

Private domain traffic entrance:

Short videos followed by fans on Douyin (follow page/homepage), live broadcast information flow, and private traffic from various platforms outside the site (such as WeChat private groups);

Public domain traffic:

Public domain traffic is free traffic, including short video recommendations, live broadcast square, same city, Douyin challenge, search bar, live broadcast list and other entrances.

Business domain traffic:

That is, paid traffic, which requires additional payment to obtain. There are also different paid promotion products, such as brand advertising, Dou+, Qianchuan, etc.

2. Four major scenarios to reach users:

Douyin Private Domain provides enterprises with four contact methods and application scenarios, including homepage, subscription, private message, and group chat;

Corporate homepage: a business card that helps companies establish a good corporate image and build a private domain traffic sedimentation window:

Enterprise private message:

Through private message menus, automatic customer replies, and manual customer service replies, we help companies provide extremely considerate services in private domain scenarios and enhance fan trust and transaction conversions.

Enterprise subscription account:

Similar to WeChat official accounts, subscription accounts can also be associated with business tools, such as coupons, embedded live streaming appointments, and shopping carts, in order to achieve more efficient conversions. Fans can place orders immediately and complete conversions directly (this is a bit ruthless).

But unlike public accounts: Douyin subscription accounts can only push 8 times a month, once a day (WeChat subscription accounts can push every day within a month);

There is a threshold for the subscription account function, and you need to have more than 100,000 Douyin fans to get it.

At first, I searched for a long time but couldn’t find the entrance to the subscription account. Later, I found out that Douyin requires you to follow a corporate account to subscribe.

Enterprise group chat, this feature has been launched for a long time. Compared with ordinary WeChat groups, it has the following additional features:

Automatic welcome message, 10 administrators can be set, entry threshold can be set, automatic reminder when broadcasting, automatic sharing of works to the group, group number (directly search on Douyin to apply to join), etc.

I personally am very optimistic about the refined operational attributes of enterprise group chats. Enterprise groups are also a very good tool for screening target user groups. Sometimes the higher the threshold, the better. Let me share a case that Dawei saw Teacher Kuang share before:

It is said that this merchant has accumulated a group of high-end female users on Douyin. How would you operate it?

You know, the more high-end the users are, the more they desire private circles and space, so the merchant cleverly set an extremely high threshold for entering the Douyin group.

The entry threshold they designed is "Fan Level L9".

What is L9? To popularize it to the old irons:

No matter how you operate it, whether it is to control the viewing time, send gifts, or share the live broadcast room, no matter how you do it, the intimacy value of fans at levels 1-8 can only increase by a maximum of 420 per day.

This means that if you want to join their Douyin group, you must stay in the live broadcast room for 31 days.

My bride, my fourth aunt! ! !

This hard condition directly blocks colleagues and freeloaders who want to come in to attract traffic, greatly reducing the team's community operation and maintenance pressure, while also ensuring the quality and loyalty of fans joining the group.

According to the concept of user stratification mentioned above, this is definitely a true fan. . .

Isn’t the subsequent transformation very efficient and simple?

Therefore, with the support of these refined operation tools, the cost of merchants or enterprises operating private domains on Douyin can be greatly reduced and efficiency can be improved.

3. Four major industries are implemented

The white paper provides implementation plans for four major industries (high and low frequency + high and low degree of onlineization):

Representative corporate cases are also analyzed in detail, and businesses can even copy their homework directly.

I will not go into details about other cases here. Please study the cases in the white paper carefully.

I thought about it and realized that this Douyin private domain post could be written up to 10,000 words. I was afraid that my friends would be too tired to read it, so I divided it into two articles. The last three parts can also be independent chapters. I will post them in a few days:

1. What problems will exist in Douyin’s private domain?

2. My understanding of private domain

3. WeChat’s attitude towards private domains

Author: Meng Dawei

Source: Meng Dawei