5700 words on private domain traffic

In the private domain, real users are staying, but you still call them traffic. Do you want them to leave?

You should call users dad and customers dad, OK?

But in this article, in order to unify the conceptual language with everyone, I will still use the term private domain traffic .

1. What is traffic?

If you want to understand private domain traffic, you have to start with the word "traffic".

As everyone knows, my profession is an Internet product manager. From the perspective of commercial monetization, our Internet products are generally divided into two categories: "user-type products" and "traffic-type products".

User-oriented products pursue the ultimate functional experience and content experience, and then charge users directly by providing them with more attractive value-added services, such as membership fees, props fees, etc.

Traffic-based products are just the opposite. They generally do not charge users directly, but all functions are free.

Such products are generally not in a hurry to commercialize in the early stages, but instead pursue more installations, more registered users, and higher DAU.

As more and more people start using their own products and browse their own content, the user pool of this product will become larger and larger, eventually forming a platform-type user traffic pool.

In the early stages of this process, the platform will have some traffic support bonuses, and some people with a keen business sense will go to the platform to get some free traffic for commercial monetization.

Then after everyone discovers the commercial value of traffic on the platform, the cost of traffic will become higher and higher.

Eventually, when the product platform finds that selling advertisements is profitable, it will gradually evolve into a channel operator, relying on channel fees to realize commercial value.

The Baidu search engine we usually use is the ancestor of traffic-based products.

Many times when we want to search for something on Baidu, the search results on the first page are unbearable to read, as they are filled with advertisements.

There is also the Douyin that we often watch. We don’t need to pay any fees to shoot Douyin videos and watch Douyin videos ourselves, and the user experience is also very good. But gradually, when we are watching Douyin, we will start to encounter various advertisements, whether they are soft advertisements embedded in the video, or hard advertisements with direct "advertisement" prompts.

It is an indisputable fact that in traffic-based products, user data has become a commodity of the product platform and is sold to advertisers at a clearly marked price.

That’s why some people say that free is the most expensive.

2. Why should traffic be divided into private domain and public domain?

When a platform discovers that traffic can be sold as a commodity, it means that the pricing power of traffic is in the hands of the platform.

This means that there are buyers and sellers in this traffic market.

So later on, SEM, paid ranking and self-media placement came into being.

During the period of large-scale growth in Internet traffic, it was quite enjoyable to attract traffic through paid advertising, and there was no need to worry about user retention. Anyway, if old users left, I could still spend money to buy new users. There seemed to be an endless supply of traffic to buy on the Internet.

But today, this no longer works.

As we all know, there were only 720,000 new Internet users in China in 2020. How did this number come about? Maybe some primary school students have entered junior high school, and enlightened parents think it is time to give their children new mobile phones, so that's how it came about.

If you still do business in the old way of washing traffic, I'm sorry, the total traffic pool is so small, and your customer acquisition cost will become higher and higher.

So, now everyone is starting to become anxious about traffic. After all, all businesses need growth.

At this time, some people suddenly discovered that WeChat is China's largest traffic pool, and as long as you add someone as a friend on WeChat, you can reach him at any time without paying again.

Moreover, WeChat messages have first-class reach and an opening rate of nearly 100%, which is a natural advantage of WeChat as a national basic social platform.

So if we add all users to WeChat, do we no longer have to spend money to buy traffic from traffic platforms?

Wow, this is wonderful. Many people and companies that used to generate WeChat traffic in the early days seemed to have found the code to get rich and made a lot of money.

So the question is, how do we distinguish between traffic within WeChat and traffic from other volume-buying platforms?

We can simply divide the traffic into two parts, using private traffic to represent the free traffic within the WeChat ecosystem, and public traffic to represent the paid traffic of other traffic platforms.

3. Private domain traffic is the general trend

Judging from China’s current Internet access rate, the traffic prices of public domain traffic platforms are bound to become more and more expensive.

A few days ago, Mr. Guo Ping said in a live broadcast that the current marketing and customer acquisition prices, combined across all channels, are basically increasing by 50% each year. For example, if the cost of acquiring an effective user through advertising this year is 100 yuan, then this number will become 150 yuan next year.

Because traffic is a kind of resource. When there is no new growth in resources, it will become more and more expensive and difficult for you to obtain the existing resources.

Even if new traffic platforms emerge, the platform dividends will become smaller and smaller. It’s nothing more than the users of this platform moving to that platform for the sake of novelty.

From official accounts to Douyin, and then to today's video accounts, the bonus window is getting shorter and shorter.

All public domain traffic will ultimately compete on ROI. When your customer acquisition cost is higher than the product profit, there is only one outcome: the company goes bankrupt.

How to break the deadlock?

It seems that there is only one way left for everyone, which is to settle all users in the WeChat ecosystem and fully embrace private domain traffic.

In today's business society, private domain traffic has become the biggest variable for corporate growth. If private domain traffic is used well, it can even bring a company back to life.

Luckin Coffee’s capital scandal was so serious that it was delisted. But it survived and lived well, all thanks to its private domain traffic strategy of "WeChat community operation".

Operating private domain traffic is no longer an optional question for business operations, but a must.

Because if your peers all start to do private domain traffic, and you don’t do it, your users will slowly be sucked away, and when you react, it may be too late.

In the future, I may want to buy a pair of sneakers, then my exclusive service brand will holographically project its sneakers in front of me, and then a waiter or AI will show and introduce the advantages and features of each pair of shoes to me, such as this pair is a celebrity limited edition, this pair is more suitable for your sweaty feet, and the third pair is recommended by your friend.

Then I said I wanted the pair recommended by my friend, and the other party placed the order for me. A few hours later, the drone delivered them to me.

In the future, traffic has become so inward-looking that brands are even willing to provide full-service to each customer on a one-to-one basis.

Traffic has the word "flow" in it. It passes through you and then flows away.

But the private domain user thinking means that I want to do business with this user for life. I am even willing to assign a dedicated personal assistant just for you, who will understand all your habits and solve all your eating, drinking, defecating and urinating problems.

4. Do offline industries also need to play in the private domain?

You don't even need to answer this question with your mouth. Just look at what everyone is doing now and you'll know.

In the past, many people doing offline business looked down on online Internet games and were disdainful of online traffic and private domain traffic.

What people look at are site selection, product selection, and operation, among which site selection is the most important.

However, with the development of O2O and industrial Internet, we can no longer distinguish between online and offline, whether we are selling goods or services.

Now when people talk about going out to play, whether it is to eat, sing karaoke, get a haircut, get a massage, or find a hotel or tourist attraction, do they all need to use products such as Meituan, Dianping, and Fliggy? So which store is ranked in front and which is ranked behind? Who has the final say?

You taste it, you taste it carefully.

What do you think is the business model for this type of product? Are they user-based products, traffic-based products, or both?

As long as your business relies on the public domain traffic on the platform, you will inevitably face increasingly expensive traffic fees. The traffic will inevitably become more and more inward-looking, and the ROI will inevitably become lower and lower. This is the natural development law of the traffic platform.

Okay, you said I am a well-known catering brand, I don’t need to rely on online platforms to drive traffic to me, my own brand brings its own traffic, no matter where I open the store, I don’t have to worry about a lack of customers.

Is Xibei Youmian Village famous enough?

McDonald's and KFC, are they famous enough?

At the end of 2019, the new coronavirus pandemic broke out suddenly. When this black swan disaster strikes, who can escape the disaster?

"We lost 700 to 800 million yuan during the Spring Festival, and our monthly employee salary expenditure exceeds 150 million yuan. We won't be able to survive more than three months if this continues."

These are the exact words that Jia Guolong, chairman of Xibei Catering Group, said in front of the camera.

The outbreak of the epidemic and the disappearance of store traffic have sounded the alarm for all those doing offline physical business.

Although the domestic epidemic has been contained now, many users have already developed the habit of online consumption and online group buying.

Everyone realizes that in order to move their business to the Internet, they need to start building their own private traffic pool.

So we see that after the epidemic, major offline physical brands have begun to develop their own private domain traffic, especially regional businesses such as office buildings and residential buildings that rely heavily on repeat purchases from old customers.

Because the total user traffic in the business district is limited, if your peers have developed private domain traffic and are doing well, then this part of private domain traffic may never appear in your store again, or even in the natural public domain on which you depend for survival.

Supermarkets, restaurants, clothing, beauty salons, and other industries will not be spared.

Private domain traffic is the biggest variable in the future business world.

5. WeChat for business and WeChat for personal use

Why use corporate WeChat instead of personal WeChat?

In fact, private domain traffic originates from personal WeChat. Many micro-businesses, Taobao agents and companies regard personal WeChat accounts as their own private domain traffic pools and have accumulated many accounts to monetize their business.

But, precisely because of this, Tencent has decided to clean up personal WeChat accounts.

Why?

Because in the closed traffic ecosystem of WeChat, it is too easy for bad people to do bad things.

All black and gray businesses, even illegal businesses, have found their own way to make profits through personal WeChat.

However, this comes at the expense of the experience and feelings of all C-end users.

The WeChat team will not sit idly by and watch their product platform become corrupt and the content environment continue to deteriorate.

There is a reason why so many product managers worship Zhang Xiaolong as a god.

Some people say that WeChat is the guardian of the wheat field. It protects users like it protects the wheat field. It does not allow people to cause any trouble. Ensuring the C-end user experience is WeChat’s product value.

Our users are willing to stay on WeChat every day to socialize with friends and family, spend time on WeChat, consume content, consume goods, and check their Moments every day, all because of WeChat's restraint and non-disturbance.

Nowadays, there are many people doing marketing, messing around, deceiving users, and harassing users on WeChat, which has seriously damaged the user experience of C-end users. This goes against the platform's values, so the platform will inevitably take action against personal WeChat traffic pools.

Block accounts in large quantities, and at the same time reduce the number of new WeChat accounts that can be registered with one ID card.

It is useless to maintain an account. Even though Perfect Diary has taken the personal WeChat account maintenance strategy to the extreme, thousands of personal WeChat accounts have still been blocked.

With one letter after another, those people who used to cause trouble on personal WeChat have now become more obedient.

Then what?

Vigorously promote WeChat for Business, vigorously expand the ability of WeChat for Business to link with personal WeChat, and then guide everyone to use WeChat for Business.

Don’t you want to use WeChat to play with private domain traffic?

Then I will let you play, but don’t play it secretly. Let’s put the rules of playing private domain traffic out in the open and play together.

In other words, I allow you to play, but only if you abide by the platform rules.

In corporate WeChat, the cost of cheating people is very high. If you want to do business, your name must be followed by the name of your company. You cannot pretend to be some random identity to cheat people out of their money.

If you cheat and your customers report you, I will shut down your business directly.

The cost of authenticating a corporate WeChat entity is much higher than the cost of registering a new personal WeChat account.

Therefore, when you do business on WeChat for Business, you must be honest and abide by the platform rules.

Businesses want to harass customers endlessly, while customers want to pursue personal privacy and user experience.

Enterprise WeChat strikes a balance in the middle. On the one hand, it satisfies users, and on the other hand, it allows businesses that abide by platform rules and do business legitimately to reasonably build private traffic pools.

By the way, its own industrial Internet plan was also successfully implemented.

Tencent's promotion of WeChat for Business has achieved a dynamic balance among enterprises, users and platforms, which is truly amazing.

In fact, Tencent has always wanted to engage in the real industrial Internet and do ToB business.

But Tencent's genes are really not good at this. ByteDance is very powerful, Alibaba has new retail, and Meituan and Didi started out with the real economy. Tencent is very anxious. In fact, Tencent has no foundation in this area.

Alibaba acquired Intime and RT-Mart, and also has Hema Fresh. It can be said that all kinds of offline assets have gone into the pockets of Alibaba and Meituan.

But Tencent has now found an opportunity to fight back. RT-Mart belongs to Alibaba, right? But by 2022, all the counter ladies and shopping guides at RT-Mart will probably use WeChat for Business to maintain customers.

You can buy those physical assets, but these virtual assets are all with me, haha.

Therefore, Enterprise WeChat is a very important strategic product of Tencent.

We feel that WeChat for Business is difficult to use and that many permissions are not given. We do not feel that Tencent attaches great importance to WeChat for Business. However, it is precisely because Tencent attaches so much importance to WeChat for Business that it must be extremely cautious and cannot allow the ecological environment to deteriorate prematurely.

If all permissions are released, those involved in illegal and gray industries will inevitably come first to wash traffic. It seems that the entire ecosystem is prosperous, but C-end users will soon get annoyed and lose trust, and Enterprise WeChat will die.

The platform is trying to balance the relationship between the two ends.

Precisely because of WeChat’s restraint, we should have more confidence in WeChat for Business.

6. WeChat for Business and TikTok

Today, Douyin is synonymous with public domain traffic, and WeChat is synonymous with private domain traffic.

So what is the biggest difference between Douyin and WeChat?

Tik Tok is a platform that has reaped all the traffic dividends. The platform does not care about the stay or departure of any internet celebrity IP. As long as there is a steady stream of new content, ordinary people can also produce hits and become new internet celebrities.

Tik Tok’s traffic distribution mechanism is like horse racing. Whoever has good content will have traffic. If you fail to produce good content, no matter how many fans you have, they will not be yours.

Therefore, those who work on TikTok are caught in the internal competition of content and traffic, and everyone is very anxious.

WeChat, on the contrary, respects every brand more and allows everyone to make money.

In the WeChat ecosystem, your fans are your fans. If your fans no longer like you, they can unfollow you or delete you as a friend. This is the user's own choice, and the platform will not over-regulate through algorithms.

Many years ago, the ROI of public domain traffic platforms was 20. Many people flocked in, and then slowly the ROI became 0-3. Only 1%-5% of people could achieve a ROI of more than 3, and the rest were cannon fodder.

Therefore, Professor Guoping said that the final outcome of the public domain traffic platform is to become chicken ribs, which are tasteless to eat and a pity to throw away.

Summarize

If 2020 is the first year of the development of private domain traffic, then starting from 2021, building a private domain traffic pool will become a normalized operating method for brands and a standard feature of every brand.

Private domain traffic will need to develop for at least another twenty years. Twenty years later, WeChat may no longer exist, but private domain traffic will definitely still exist.

The rise of private domain traffic in the entire network is inseparable from two major backgrounds:

The public domain traffic of the entire network has peaked, and the traffic has begun to roll inward, and the competition for ROI has begun;

In the era of the epidemic, offline traffic disappeared.

And a necessary condition:

Tencent's official strategic support for WeChat for Business.

Also, I hope that everyone will stop using traditional traffic thinking to do private domain business, because only with extreme user thinking can private domain operations be done well.

<Private Domain Knowledge and Action> Trial Operation

At the end of the article, please allow me to add a little personal opinion.

With the rise of private domain traffic, many companies are excited but also confused.

The rise of every new concept and new industry will bring new confusion to enterprises. What bosses are thinking now is that private domain is important, and I understand it, but then what?

How to implement and operate private domain traffic? What should I do?

Therefore, we need a group of pioneers to open up the way, help everyone develop tools, solutions, successful cases, and help companies truly implement private domain traffic.

In this process, new industries and new positions will emerge, such as SCRM product managers, private domain operators, community operators, and so on.

I am now an SCRM product manager on the road.

On this road, I often feel lonely, often encounter problems that I can't find answers to, and often want to share some information and exchange some ideas with others.

So I want to create a communication group only for private domain practitioners, so that we can keep each other warm.

This group is completely free, but there are two small threshold requirements:

You must be currently engaged in private domain operations-related work (those who are waiting, planning to change careers, or planning to look for a job are not considered);

You should contribute at least two valuable contents to everyone in the group every month, such as industry information, reports, opinions, knowledge, etc. If you really don’t have anything, sending red envelopes will count.

You need to prepare a down-to-earth and non-exaggerated self-introduction. Don't say that you have operated something if you have participated in it, and don't say that the company's business is yours. The exaggeration in the operation and marketing circles is too serious. But in this community, I hope everyone will take off their masks and show their truest selves.

During the trial operation phase of this group, I plan to only release 20 places to join the group. If the group is still alive by late September and achieves the results I expect, I will continue to release places to join the group.

The name of the community is <Knowledge and Action in Private Domain>. I hope that we can have knowledge and action and integrate knowledge and action on the road of private domain operation.

If you are interested in joining and becoming a co-builder of the community, you can scan the QR code below to add me as a WeChat friend. Then carefully write a self-introduction and the reason for joining the group and send it to me. After it is reviewed, I will send you an invitation to join the group.

Author: Jiaxing's Growth Notes

Source: Jiaxing's Growth Notes