4 strategies for private domain marketing

In the era of "traffic thinking", we are eager to attract new users; in the era of "super users", we serve existing users well.

How do you understand this sentence? The key is: capture new users, turn to old users, and focus on old users .​

Many people think about how to attract new customers and how to acquire new customers every day, but ignore their old customers. In fact, what we should think about now is: how to provide high-quality services to old customers, manage relationships with old customers , and then bring in new customers through their word-of-mouth. This is the more long-term business logic.

The real focus of the "super user" model is "relationships". Turning inward, serving super users well and building a city well, there will be no shortage of people coming to join us.

1. The core of private domain is to build relationships with users

The value of a user lies in his willingness to establish a certain relationship with you. There are three steps to monetize private domain traffic: turning users into fans, turning fans into channels, and turning channels into communities .

These three transformations are essentially a process in which the relationship between you and users goes from having no relationship to having a unilateral relationship, then from a unilateral relationship to a bilateral relationship, and finally to a multilateral relationship.

Multilateral relationships mean that users take the initiative to organize activities, topics, and even related transactions related to you with other users. It is becoming increasingly difficult today to generate transactions without building relationships with users, which is also the reason why traffic is becoming more and more expensive.

The relationship between you and the users constitutes the interaction of interests between you and the users . It’s easy to make connections, but it’s not easy to build relationships. Many people who work in the private domain do not treat users as human beings at all, but as traffic, as leeks to be harvested.

However, users can be managed but cannot be privately controlled . Managing users means putting users at the core, and the premise of building relationships is to create user value.

Smart user management is driven by values, encouraging user participation and allowing them to gain a sense of value and even belonging through interaction . Successful examples include the Harley Club, Xiaomi Community, and "Apple Fans" Community.

2. Establish a private domain closed loop based on the user ecosystem

To establish long-term and stable relationships with more users, we must pay attention to the entire user life cycle .

Judging from the current industry trends and development, "private domain traffic" needs to be based on user ecology, rather than just relying on the community. It should include community operations, community activities, membership systems, points systems, community operations, and IP operations to form a closed loop.

1. Screening of seed users suitable for KOC

Relationships can become channels. For users with specific attributes and stickiness on their own platform, they can be mined, given "empowerment" and traffic diversion , turning them into "platform KOL, KOC" to drive platform consumption.

How to build the “cold start private domain traffic construction work”? There are probably the following aspects:

Conduct questionnaire surveys for target users . The specific content of the survey can involve "building private traffic groups", "beauty categories", "family life categories, etc.", and find experts on the site to develop empowerment plans. For the survey questionnaire and registration process, you can use Qianliao's user information collection tool.

Name, address, identity information, talent, presence or absence of social accounts on other platforms, number of fans, etc., user information collection tools (such as: Qianliao user information custom collection system) should all be counted, making it convenient for operations personnel to screen and become official experts , enter private domain traffic to assist in community management and guide community interaction, and through official training and participation in regular empowerment plans, they can become platform-based KOLs and KOCs.

2. Create strong links with users through the community

No matter what kind of platform you are building, whether it is directing traffic from a single brand to an IP, or building a community or a private domain, it is inseparable from three words: "people, goods, and place". This is true for the education industry, as well as the fast-moving consumer goods, medical beauty and other industries.

The private domain 2.0 era pays more attention to the "place". There needs to be a place to undertake/produce UGC content , improve the user life cycle, allow users to speak independently and realize value.

This is an open era, and everyone is eager to share their professional knowledge or experience.

Connecting users is the biggest advantage of private domain community tools (such as Qianliao Fan Circle) :

• User retention is improved through endorsement by circle leaders/KOLs.
• In addition to circle owners sharing content, users can participate in the production of content .
• These content-producing users complete circle building together with the circle owners, thus establishing a stronger connection with the circle owners .

If we need to "take action" in this field, we should not ignore the production of user content and just focus on output. We should "play with users" and work hard to discover the experts among users .

The first point is to screen out KOLs and KOCs belonging to your own platform from the old user layer. Short-term operations can be operated in a community manner, while in the long term , the "community + community" method should be used to allow the selected KOLs and KOCs to "share" on the platform and make the community hot.

Basic community building gameplay recommendation:

1) One-week check-in activity

Initiate a "one-week check-in event" in the community. The event will be launched within the community first, and the check-in address will be "conducted in the community".

Check-in activities will increase the overall activity of the community and increase user stickiness . At the same time, high-quality content can also be recommended to users on the list within the topic.

Examples: the morning check-in activity in Yunlue Learning Circle and the reading notes check-in activity in Gongzhi Classroom.

2) Showing your certificate adds a sense of ceremony

Community operation also requires some sense of ritual. In the early stage, electronic certificates can be issued to users after they pass an activity or assessment, allowing them to "show off their certificates on the platform" , which is also an interactive strategy.

Example: Organize users to share their commemorative certificates in the circle.

3) Sharing the latest useful information

Compared to WeChat groups, one advantage of communities is that they allow for the accumulation of information . Providing first-hand information is also one way to enhance the sense of value of the planet.

Whether it is knowledge or data documents, the essence is information. Provide users with the latest industry information and practical materials to help everyone improve their operational skills, and users can also provide information to each other.

At the same time, it can provide resource matching services, and the essence of resources is actually a kind of information. Therefore, it is necessary to use "exclusive first-hand information" to enhance the sense of community value .

4) Set rewards to increase user engagement

If users do not participate in the co-construction of this community, then this community will become a self-entertainment for the circle owner, and users will not be able to gain a sense of value or even belonging from the interaction. The most direct way to enable users to effectively participate in community interactions and actively produce high-quality content is to reward them with cash .

In addition to directly sending red envelopes as rewards, you can also design resource rewards such as "private community tickets" and "live broadcast room membership cards" to make users feel more fulfilled .

3. "Membership" and "points" are the links to promote consumption

Many platforms have a "membership system", but they are all one-time deals and lack systematization . What is the systematization level? It means that when a user opens a membership on a certain platform, can he or she get "points" for the amount spent.

At the same time, is there a full-link task setting for obtaining "points", such as daily community check-ins, daily community "posting pictures and texts", daily sharing on WeChat Moments, and reaching a certain number of points can be exchanged for gifts or even get a promotion in rights and interests.

Let users feel like they are "leveling up and fighting monsters" every time they make a purchase, and as consumption continues to increase, the "rights and interests" unlocked are also different . Coupons, offline experiences, distribution rights, birthday gifts, content creation awards, etc. can all be used as additional membership benefits.

This will form an "addiction model", which is also one of the most important means to increase user life cycle and retention.

There must be a "level system" among members to facilitate user promotion. So how should the level system be set up?

The conventional way is to set it according to the three dimensions of "ordinary membership", "senior membership" and "exclusive membership". A simpler way is to set it according to "month, quarter, and year" .

Example: Excel Academy has developed a wealth of professional courses to meet the learning needs of different students. Excel students will be VIP\SVIP members for life, one-stop learning of Excel, 30-year membership, more than 3,000 people have opened and recommended, and you can learn all courses at will.

4. Build a "distribution" fission model

Now is an era where everyone can share, and we must speed up the construction of the platform's "distribution strategy."

There are several distribution strategy models to choose from:

1. Become a platform-incubated KOL and directly obtain "distribution rights" .
2. Through relevant task mechanisms (such as checking in for a few days, consuming X courses).
3. The distribution model for purchasing membership benefit packages (199, 299 packages, and then activation) does not rely solely on an activity fission and new customer acquisition methodology, but is a complete system. For example, after becoming a KOL, you can invite a few people to form a fan group , and you can upgrade to a certain level based on the number of fans in the fan group.

By building a "distribution" fission model, the platform only needs to make good products (courses) from the supply side. This will achieve a win-win situation , stabilize the platform's C-end and small B traffic, and secondly provide empowerment. 

3. Conclusion

In the past, the focus of marketing competition was on control of channels. The future is in control of your relationship with your users . Relationships are channels, and relationships are the core of today's business.

When reconstructing the marketing model, we must first create user value. Do a good job of retention before talking about traffic. If retention is not done well, no matter how much traffic you have, it will be like sand in your hand, which you cannot grasp or retain.

If you want to establish a long-term and stable relationship with users, you must build a closed loop of private domain traffic on the user ecosystem. This closed loop directly determines the user life cycle of the platform (brand) and controls the core consumer lifeline of the brand.

Author: Xiaobing who loves to study

Source: Little Cake by Love Research