New ways to play in the private domain of Douyin enterprise accounts

In 2019, the concept of private domain was proposed. Due to the bottleneck of public domain traffic and the expensive traffic customer unit fees, businesses and enterprises have begun to focus on secondary conversion and continuous monetization after the traffic comes in. The traffic era has gradually become a "retention" era, and private domain operations have increasingly become a key layout for corporate business operations.

In late July this year, at the Douyin Enterprise Account product launch conference of Bytedance, the 2.0 upgraded version of Douyin Enterprise Account was released, and the concept of "Douyin Private Domain" was proposed. Mu Jianxin, head of its corporate business operations, said: "Douyin Private Domain is a new growth point for Douyin's business, and it is also a fan-centered business flywheel." This marks that Douyin has officially entered the private domain. On this basis, Douyin Private Domain has given full play to the energy of fans.

On the merchant side, in the "traffic to conversion" model, companies are facing challenges such as difficulty in acquiring customers in the private domain, long user conversion cycle, and high operating costs. On the other hand, Douyin’s daily active users have reached 600 million. This huge traffic pool is undoubtedly a huge business gold mine for merchants, and fans naturally become the key to companies’ long-term growth in Douyin’s business. Therefore, in my opinion, it is inevitable that Douyin will start to enrich the construction of its "private domain".

In Douyin, a traffic hub, "Douyin Private Domain" can not only provide traffic replenishment, but also foster single and multiple conversions after traffic is acquired under the content ecology. For all kinds of businesses, "Douyin Private Domain" can help companies break through the current situation where orders gradually decrease after traditional traffic is exhausted. In addition to traditional private domains, "Douyin Private Domain" has also brought new growth to companies.

1. “ Douyin Private Domain ”, based on Douyin’s short video advantage

For corporate merchants, private domains effectively help companies reduce customer acquisition costs and improve business conversions. In the past, most companies relied on information flows and platform through trains to acquire users, but they only monetized based on the platform's traffic, making it difficult to guarantee subsequent continuous conversions. Through private domains, companies can accumulate users in their own traffic pools and directly communicate the latest activities to all users, saving the large amount of advertising costs in the middle.

However, the content carriers of traditional private domain operations are more based on continuous monetization based on graphic and text content, and one of the advantages of Douyin’s private domain lies in its native video environment. Presenting content through video can better and more vividly demonstrate product features and scenario-based user needs and pain points, make the content more emotional, and transmit information more efficiently. It is more immersive and natural for cultivating users' long-term interest and stimulating their ultimate conversions.

According to the data from the "2021 Douyin Private Domain Management White Paper", the total number of Douyin corporate accounts has reached 8 million ; as of June this year, the number of Douyin corporate accounts with more than one million fans has increased by 165% year-on-year; in 2020 , the average daily viewing volume of corporate account commercial content exceeded 20 billion , and the monthly playback volume in June this year increased by 82% year-on-year .

In the prosperous short video ecosystem of Douyin, users' recognition of the value and favorability of Douyin corporate accounts are also constantly increasing, and are accelerating the impact on users' consumption decisions. According to the data in the white paper, among the active users of corporate accounts who have shopped on Douyin, more than 40% believe that the high-quality content released by Douyin corporate accounts can enhance users' desire to buy; more than 30% of users agree with the content of Douyin corporate accounts, and their favorability towards the products has increased, which directly affects users' later long-term consumption decisions.

As a phenomenal platform in the domestic short video field, Douyin helps companies to retain users in corporate accounts through short videos and live broadcasts, and then cooperates with platform marketing tools, e-commerce ecology, local business capabilities, etc., to open up a complete marketing path . This private domain system based on the short video ecosystem has demonstrated its ability in value conversion. From January to June this year, the number of clicks on Douyin's shopping cart increased by 77%, and the closed-loop GMV of Douyin's enterprise account in the first half of 2021 increased by 92% month-on-month.

2. Why should you create a Douyin corporate account? How is it useful ?

The rapid growth in the number of Douyin corporate accounts, from 5 million in November last year to 8 million in July this year, I think has demonstrated the choice of enterprises . In addition to its native video ecosystem advantages, Douyin Enterprise Account is also working hard to become "better to use" in terms of functions and experience.

In addition to having a clear mark on the surface of the account, the certified Douyin corporate account can also enhance the account's authority. When users search for keywords, the certified corporate account can be displayed with higher priority, increasing exposure and attracting attention. For corporate accounts, adding Blue V certification can also make users trust the product more and provide a trust endorsement for the product.

The newly released Douyin Enterprise Account 2.0 provides companies with better solutions for private domain operations through fan stratification tools, rich user communication management functions, and a complete set of smart business systems.

The fan stratification is very clear. Different levels are divided directly according to the degree of intimacy between users and corporate accounts, allowing companies to more clearly understand the proportion of their fan composition, and thus adopt more targeted communication strategies for fans of different intimacy levels, thereby promoting conversion more effectively.

In terms of communicating with users, through private messages, subscriptions, fan groups and other methods, combined with the operation of short videos and live broadcast rooms, companies can communicate with users more closely and first-hand. According to the data released in the white paper, there are currently more than 650,000 companies that have created fan groups on Douyin and remain active. On average, more than 4 million companies receive approximately 150 million private messages from users every week.

At the same time, in order to determine the direction of business growth, the intelligent management system conducts standardized quantification of the entire chain of business status-goals-operations-results. After the enterprise sets its business goals on the platform, the system will comprehensively consider the current business status and interim goals to provide the enterprise with intelligent business strategy support and detailed task decomposition, as well as interim data and review of business results. This is very valuable for operators of small and medium-sized enterprises, and can be said to directly help enterprises save the cost of building data analysis systems and operational strategy consultants.

3. The importance of Douyin private domain to enterprise development

One of the issues that is increasingly giving companies headaches about private domain operations is that it has become difficult to acquire customers. In the previous two points, we analyzed the "conversion management" problem in the back-end link. Finally, let's talk about how to solve the problem of "open source customer acquisition".

We know that the traditional private domain model is relatively closed. It needs to direct traffic to the community built by itself through content platforms, e-commerce platforms, advertising, offline marketing activities, etc., and settle it into its own traffic pool before it can become private domain traffic. There will be a platform conversion process in the middle, and it will inevitably cause losses. In addition, in the operation of private domain traffic, only those who truly become your users can see the content you launch. Exposure will be limited to the free private domain user range, and external users cannot be directly reached. No matter how well the private domain is done, it can only rely on word of mouth to influence acquaintances, and cannot directly improve the exposure efficiency of the public domain. It can be said that private domain conversion and customer acquisition are two relatively separate parts.

In the "Tik Tok Private Domain", we see a different idea - connecting the public domain, commercial domain (the traffic brought by commercial advertising), and private domain, and viewing them as a whole.

We understand that Douyin's traffic advantages and recommendation mechanism provide companies with strong customer acquisition capabilities. Based on Douyin's unique recommendation mechanism, in public scenarios such as short videos and live broadcasts, fans who have already followed a corporate account are more likely to see the content of this corporate account. And because they are fans, they are more likely to interact with the video content by forwarding, liking, and commenting, thereby further driving the system to recommend the video to a larger traffic pool and be seen by more people who are not currently following the brand. In addition, based on their own fans, when enterprise account operators deliver commercial advertisements such as DOU+, they can directly deliver them to their own fans or expand similar population packages based on the characteristics of existing fans, thereby making the effect of commercial advertising more ideal.

Simply put, through the operation of Douyin corporate accounts, we can not only expand the fan base and enhance user stickiness, but also enhance the efficiency of diverting traffic from the original public domain to the private domain, making business better and forming a positive compound interest, promotion and cycle.

at last:

When a platform product is launched, a series of benefits and discounts will be introduced in the early stage to attract more people's attention, settlement and use. Douyin Private Domain has also provided billions of traffic support and recruited 8,000 service providers to jointly build services for enterprises. It can be said that for enterprises, it is a good time to enter the market. The sooner they catch this ride, the better the profits may be for enterprises and merchants.

Author: Liu Zhixing

Source: Liu Zhixing