Understanding Private Domain Traffic in One Article (with Case Model)

In the past two years, private domain traffic has been widely circulated, and many companies have gradually begun to use private domain traffic to operate users, especially to operate communities on WeChat, which can more accurately locate users and achieve conversions.

01 What is private domain?

What is private domain? Why do we need to do private domain? How to do private domain well?

In the past two years, with the rise of WeChat community marketing, a hot monetization model has emerged on the Internet, which is to transfer traffic to personal WeChat accounts or communities; then continuously convert it through activities, promotions, private chats, etc., to bring monetization to companies or individuals, which is what we now call private domain traffic monetization.

In fact, this way of playing did not appear in the past two years. The early micro-businesses actually did this. At that time, micro-businesses also constantly added people to WeChat, and then posted on Moments every day to do circle marketing and guide customers to convert.

If there is any difference, it may be that the previous model did not have as many novel gameplays as the current one. Micro-businesses only knew how to add people to WeChat first, and then keep posting to Moments and advertisements. They did not consider user maintenance, private chat, group buying, training camps and other methods to achieve conversion.

But now everyone's thinking is changing, and users are also aware of these routines. They are very disgusted with advertisements in the circle of friends and those WeChat business accounts. This has forced operators to constantly explore new ways of playing, which is the way we just mentioned when we launched it, and then it has become our now very popular private domain traffic gameplay.

In fact, this concept has always existed in traditional industries. For example, in order to sell products better, sales staff often retain customer contact information, greet customers during festivals, treat customers as friends, and build their own network of contacts. Sales staff provide not only products but also emotional comfort.

In fact, this is private domain traffic. Its essence is to establish good relationships with customers and gain their trust.

However, the rise of the Internet has forced these traditional businesses to transform and gradually migrate some of their previous traditional methods online.

For example, gyms will also begin to try to go to some online short video platforms, output content through videos and other content methods, and direct traffic from these public platforms to their own WeChat accounts, so as to convert and monetize through private chats or community marketing.

As for the conventional offline marketing method, many of them used to obtain phone numbers through marketing and then conduct telemarketing; but now the method has changed to adding people to WeChat through marketing, sending some coupons, and guiding customers to shop in the store through conversions on WeChat.

02 Why do we need to do private domain?

Why do we need private domain traffic? The reason is actually very simple, that is, low cost and high conversion rate.

Friends who work in e-commerce may have a deep understanding of this. On large public platforms like Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, they organize activities to attract traffic to stores for sales, and the most important way is to burn through trains. In the past two years, the customer orders obtained through these platforms have become higher and higher. Often, the conversion brought by an event held by merchants may not be as high as the cost of publicity, which greatly reduces the ROI of the event. This reason has forced these merchants to start thinking about how to use the acquired users to make multiple free repurchases.

Private domain traffic just meets this demand. By directing traffic from the public domain platform to the private domain platform, once the traffic comes in, there is no need to incur promotion costs for subsequent activities, thus leading to multiple repeat purchases.

But on public domain platforms, the traffic comes in only once, and once it goes out, people may no longer remember your product or store. That is, when you hold another event, the cost of promotion will also increase.

Of course, the advantage of private domain traffic is not just that it can be promoted and repurchased multiple times. Many companies will have problems with product traffic retention, repurchase, and brand stickiness in the later stages, and the private domain can just meet the needs of these pain points.

As for retention, as we said above, once the product traffic comes in, we can retain customers through maintenance and knowledge sharing on WeChat. Of course, when there are product activities, we can also conduct free direct promotion and reach, which greatly improves the exposure effect of the activities.

As for repurchase and return rates, when traffic comes in, through early trust cultivation and community marketing, we can sell products with higher average order value and higher gross profit, thereby increasing the average order value and gross profit of old users. If you take good care of old users, you can continue to split them and bring in more new users.

For example, an e-commerce merchant obtains traffic on Taobao, uses low-profit products to attract traffic and improve conversion rates, and then deposits this traffic into personal WeChat accounts in the form of QR code cashback red envelopes or coupons. Through continuous user operation reach, selling high-gross-margin products can bring about user repurchase and higher conversions.

The entire process reduces the cost of acquiring customers, increases the conversion rate and average order value of new users, and thus improves the return on investment.

As for brand stickiness, on some public domain platforms, users’ trust in your products is very poor, let alone brand stickiness.

Through private domains, we can continuously reach users, cultivate user perception, establish long-term trust and relationships with users, and then cultivate their awareness and stickiness for the products, thereby continuously improving product repurchase rates in the process.

In addition to what we have just said, private domain traffic can also be used as seed users for you to obtain more traffic; after the traffic comes in, through our early maintenance and cultivation, we can integrate some of the current traffic-generating products as bait for activities at the right time, allowing users to participate in group buying, sharing, and bringing in new users, etc. to achieve fission, obtain more users for yourself, snowball the traffic, and maximize the product's repurchase rate and ROI.

03 How to manage private domain well?

We all know that private domains are very popular, but how can we do it well?

As for the traditional industry, one way is to direct traffic to personal account carriers (WeChat, social groups, corporate WeChat) through some form, such as door-to-door marketing, distributing cards, flyers, and outbound calls, or through online event fission and third-party platform drainage.

Then, through surveys or questionnaires, we can make detailed demands of each private domain user and set notes. Then, we can conduct targeted and personalized private chats based on the previous notes, solve the pain points and provide suggestions for each user individually, lay the foundation for trust in the early stage, and finally launch the product features and discounts.

Sort out all private domain precision users every day, count the converted and non-converted ones, follow up the non-converted ones continuously, and build good relationships with users.

For users who have not converted through private chats, you can conduct social marketing and pull them all into a group. But it should be noted that if a survey has been conducted before, you can build groups in a refined manner based on the pain points of the previous survey questionnaire. The users in each group are users with a certain need point, and share lessons on the need pain points, such as a training camp model, or conduct short daily sharing to build trust and pave the way for conversions on the last day of community activities.

After such a set of processes, if the incoming traffic are all accurate users, and after completing a conversion cycle, the conversion rate can reach 30-50%, which is actually very successful.

Of course, what we just talked about is still an offline way of diverting traffic. For platforms that can obtain traffic online, traffic can be obtained through video accounts, short video platforms, Zhihu, major vertical websites and other platforms, and each platform will have corresponding platform rules every day; so when making preliminary preparations, you can also understand the gameplay and rules of these platforms in advance, and then increase traffic, so as to avoid working for a long time without any effect or being blocked by the platform.

When the traffic comes in, the operator also needs to plan a whole set of subsequent conversion models and processes in advance, and try to simplify the process, so that customers can fully understand the products and benefits, and also allow themselves to convert and monetize in the fastest time period.

Author: Liu Zhixing

Source: LZX's study notes