Private Domain Operation: A Second Breakthrough Behind Traffic Anxiety

It is becoming increasingly difficult to attract new customers, the marketing budget has been cut again and again, and the cost of acquiring customers is constantly increasing. What are the pitfalls that the market and operations teams have repeatedly fallen into?

With KPI assessment in the forefront and ROI being frequently asked, 996 cannot solve the growth anxiety in the market and operations. However, recently everyone has been excited and showing a sad face because they have heard of a very popular new concept - " private domain traffic ".

What is private domain traffic?

Although the Internet is the birthplace of hot memes and concepts, "it's better to have them than to have them absent." So let’s first talk about what is private domain?

This is a relative concept, "private domain" is relative to "public domain". The public domain refers to the traffic channels collectively shared by all corporate brands. Some of them are free, but more are one-time traffic platforms that require payment through marketing tools, such as Baidu Search, Toutiao, etc.

Private domain traffic refers to the traffic that companies can control and distribute themselves, such as their own apps, their own WeChat public accounts, corporate Weibo accounts, WeChat communities, and personal WeChat accounts.

Demystifying the hot private domain

Private domain traffic, the term is new, but the gameplay is too familiar.

English enthusiasts share their learning check-ins in their Moments every day, which is one of the private domain methods of online education.

Merchants on the food delivery platform will put a small card in the bag you receive, with warm words inviting you to give a good review, and will give you a 5 yuan red envelope after adding WeChat;

After you successfully shop, the Taobao store owner will invite you to join the store fan group, where the latest discounts and new models will be available. Don’t miss this opportunity.

The skewers restaurant in the fifth district of the Steel Pipe Factory near my home encourages you to add the owner on WeChat and share his tweets to your circle of friends, so that you can get a chance to get a discount wheel when you check out.

Whether it is an English learning application with its own APP, a store that uses official accounts and WeChat/Taobao fan groups, or even a skewers restaurant that reaches customers’ social circle of friends. We can see that the essence of private domain traffic is social user relationships, which is a kind of user thinking.

The private domain is actually based on user thinking, integrating various existing traffic, including offline traffic and one-time traffic previously purchased from the through train.

The concept of private domain is more like a combination and encapsulation of the original channels. The private domain traffic that everyone is talking about now is still dependent on the public domain traffic platform. The infrastructure stability and rule adjustments of the public domain can affect the survival and specific operation of the private domain at any time.

It should be noted that private domain traffic can be divided into strong-relationship private domain and weak-relationship private domain due to different degrees of restriction on parasitic platforms.

With the company’s own APP, private WeChat account and various communities, it is possible to communicate with users in a timely manner, reuse them repeatedly, and have a great deal of control over management and operations.

However, for WeChat public accounts, Weibo, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu and popular short videos, they all follow a user subscription model, and users may not necessarily watch your content every time after following you. On the other hand, the size and quality of this part of the traffic is often very volatile due to changes in platform rules.

Establish and operate private domain traffic pool

The premise of private domain operation is to establish the company's own private domain traffic pool. There are three main sources of traffic: one is to pay to divert traffic from public domain traffic, which is what we often call attracting new customers; one is to divert traffic from other people's private domains, such as from cooperative enterprises related to the industrial ecological chain; the last one is to conduct traffic fission in one's own original private domain through interests and creativity.

Users are traffic, and operating a private domain is ultimately about operating user relationships.

Private domain user operations based on social relationships can be mainly divided into three identity roles. One is a shopping assistant similar to a customer service robot, one is a topic expert as a community manager and topic host; and the last is a KOC (key opinion customer) who influences users to buy with a friend’s emotional care.

Operational services for users, whether it is the interest stimulation of community management or the creation of KOCs to guide users to plant grass, this is also the specific manifestation of the refined user operation we have always advocated.

In fact, the currently popular social e-commerce basically relies on private domain operations to attract new users and increase user traffic, which is mainly reflected in the survival and monetization of relying on social relationship chains. Only when more users actively (or are tempted by benefits) participate in the entire operational marketing process, exponential growth and traffic activation will be possible.

It can be seen that social relationships based on users have become the most essential existence of private domain. This requires us to adhere to the first principle of user-centricity in the operation of private domain traffic.

Fully understand the core profile of your product users, analyze user behavior data, understand their consumption and interest preferences, and achieve retention and conversion of private domain traffic through various effective interest temptations.

Therefore, the key to private domain operations is how to effectively retain traffic and activate users.

The real private domain is to master user data assets

As mentioned earlier, there are strong relationships and weak relationships in the private domain. The difference between strong and weak lies in the depth of involvement and freedom of control in operations management, so as to utilize subsequent user behavior data.

Therefore, we suggest that when you are building a private domain pool, public accounts and WeChat groups are just stepping stones. It is best to enclose all users in your own APP or mini program and have complete control over the users. This is the real exclusive traffic.

The reason why we emphasize the use of our own APP or mini-programs as the final way to solidify private domain traffic is that it is difficult for communities that are parasitic on third-party platforms to open up user data. Without mastering user data assets, there is no way to truly own a private domain.

The advantage of owning your own platform is that all user-based marketing and operation strategies will eventually be implemented on your own platform, forming a closed loop of operations and marketing.

Luckin Coffee is a good example of private domain operations. We mentioned in previous articles that Luckin Coffee has always implemented all promotional marketing on its own APP and mini-programs, allowing users from different channels to eventually settle on its own platform to complete the entire process of ordering, payment and sharing.

Through lean operation platforms such as iResearch Argo, we can track user sources through data analysis, identify the channels our private domain traffic comes from, and then evaluate the user conversion effects of these channels.

In addition, companies whose user traffic lands on their own apps or mini-programs can achieve finer operational granularity because they have sufficient data permissions.

For example, we can also make more detailed divisions of user groups within the private domain. The maternal and infant user groups are divided into groups based on consumption capacity, consumption frequency, and consumption activity. The purpose of achieving user segmentation is to provide personalized promotional content to different users in private domain marketing.

Of course, we don’t have our own platform yet, and we can also use data analysis skills in specific operational marketing work. The most basic and simplest function is to track advertising sources through UTM and determine channel quality through transaction conversions of users from different sources.

The specific practice is that in community operations and information flow delivery, we can also generate exclusive UTM to track the effects of each QR code on the marketing poster and the shopping guide link on the guide. For specific operations, please refer to "How to use utm parameters to track advertising sources? 》

As mentioned earlier, the essence of private domain operations is the operation of users. A true private traffic pool can only be considered as truly controlling the private domain if you have control over your user data assets. Data analysis based on user behavior helps us verify results and provide decision support during the operation process.

The refined operation platform iResearch Ark can help enterprises gain insights into user portraits, realize data analysis, user segmentation and closed-loop operations.

Author: Struggling

Source: Analysys International (ID: enfodesk)