Operational methodology: How to carry out private domain operations well?

If public domain traffic is the ocean, then users are the fish. If you want to fish, you need bait. At the beginning, there were few people fishing, so the bait didn’t have to be very good to catch a lot of fish. But as more and more people go fishing, there are more choices of fish, and their appetites have become more picky. Only when you spend more money and buy better bait will the fish take the bait.

The same applies to doing business. The traffic of Taobao and Douyin is becoming more and more expensive, the rent of physical stores is rising, competitors are emerging in an endless stream, and the cost of acquiring customers is naturally rising. What’s even more fatal is that the purchased traffic is one-time. Regardless of whether there is a conversion or not, you have to pay as many times as you want users to visit your store.

Many people who work on Taobao and Tmall seem glamorous on the surface, with hundreds of orders every day. However, when they do the accounting at the end of the year, after deducting the money spent on purchasing traffic, they find that after working hard for a whole year, they end up working for the platform.

So can we dig a pond ourselves, catch the fish from the sea, and then put them in the pond for a while without rushing to sell them, feed them some feed, and wait for them to give birth to more small fish or fatten them up before selling them? Thus, private domain traffic was born and flourished under the catalysis of the epidemic.

Private domain traffic refers to private user traffic that can be reached at any time, freely controlled, repeatedly used, and used free of charge.

Private domain traffic is not the same as WeChat. WeChat is just a carrier. With its social network, decentralization, diverse content forms, and freedom and lack of control, it is currently the most suitable platform for private domain traffic. Xiaomi Community is a gathering place for Mi fans, and the official can also reach them directly, free of charge and multiple times. Who dares to say that this is not Xiaomi’s private traffic pool?

01. The deeper benefits of private domain

Why do we need to do private domain? Many people would say that private domains can enable users to repurchase, increase GMV, solve retention problems, etc. In my opinion, these are just superficial aspects. The deeper level and the real benefits to the company are not made clear.

1) Insight into user needs

The core competitiveness of an enterprise lies in its products. Only products that meet user needs can be considered good products.

In the past, companies were too far away from users and had to go through layers of dealers, making it impossible to interact directly with users and understand their needs. The results obtained from questionnaire surveys and interviews often have biases. Therefore, we often hear that a well-known and mature fast-moving consumer goods company develops hundreds of new products every year, but its success rate is less than 5%.

Working in the private domain can bring companies closer to users. Through various interactions within the private domain, it is easy to accumulate large-scale, multi-dimensional user data, including content interaction data, social interaction data, activity interaction data, store interaction data and online consumption data, and then draw a clearer, more three-dimensional and vivid user portrait and develop products in a targeted manner.

To put it simply, after looking at the Moments of dozens or hundreds of users, you will always have a clearer understanding of who they are, what characteristics they have, and what they like.

2) Service upgrade

After-sales, guidance, and problem solving, in my opinion, these are the minimum requirements for service. Only by providing unique information services can you capture the hearts of users.

There is a cat food store called Yuanben Cat Food. It has about 30 pet consultants on its private domain, including a medical expert group, a behavioral training group, and a nutrition professional group. The doctors are managers and clinicians from well-known offline pet hospital chains. They have rich pet medical expertise and clinical experience. They are online 24 hours a day to answer users' pet medical questions and provide free remote diagnosis...

Traditional channels cannot directly reach users, so there is no way to upgrade services. You should know that users are not just a series of numbers or indicators on KPIs, but real people behind them. Only by being attentive can you win sincerity.

3) Influence the user’s mind

After users enter the private traffic pool, we can continuously influence their minds through content output in Moments, private chats, communities, video accounts, and official accounts: sell them products with higher average order value and higher gross profit margins; have stronger exposure and higher conversions during promotion activities; and let them fission and bring in new customers...

Take the live broadcast scenario as an example:

The first step in live streaming is to buy traffic from the platform. The purchased users are likely to be entering the live broadcast room for the first time and meeting the anchor for the first time. They don’t know each other and have no trust. Whether they can be converted depends entirely on the anchor’s personal ability.

With a private domain, live streaming will be different.

One week before the broadcast, we interacted with users through content such as hot product previews and welfare previews, in the form of official accounts, video accounts, Moments copywriting, posters, etc., to arouse their curiosity and build momentum for the official live broadcast. Coupled with the sense of trust and intimacy cultivated in daily private life, it will greatly promote users' expectations and interest in live streaming.

Before the official broadcast, you can repeatedly remind and reach out to the audience in the private domain, and then promote the attendance rate of the live broadcast through operational means such as grabbing red envelopes and limited-time benefits.

During the live broadcast, you can also slice up the highlights, individual product explanations, special products, etc. and put them into the private domain to improve the conversion rate.

After the live broadcast, have a wonderful review, promote key information and important products again, and make secondary conversions.

In this way, the user's mind can be influenced little by little, which is higher than spending money directly to buy traffic, live broadcast room data and conversion rate.

02. The core of private domain is trust

Many people have a misunderstanding that when they start doing private domain business, they start selling goods directly.

Behind the private domain are living people, each of whom is emotional, warm and valuable. Put yourself in their shoes. If you, as a user, just added WeChat and right away they sent you a lot of product information and asked you to spend money to buy something, would you be happy? Will you have a good impression of the company?

I quite agree with what Zhu Aiguo, director of Bosideng, said: "Private domain is not for harvesting traffic. It is more about delivering your products and brand concepts to consumers and providing corresponding services. If they are satisfied and have a good impression of the brand, they can do some business by the way."

What is the essence of business? Item exchange. What is the essence of making money in business? trust. Without trust there is no exchange.

What problem does the brand solve? Still trust. When doing business with neighbors, it is based on trust. I believe your product is good and you will not cheat me. If you want to sell products to strangers, you need to use the medium of "brand" to solve the so-called trust issue and make users believe that the products of this brand are good.

The same applies to the private domain. It is not about attracting fans in batches through an assembly line, nor is it about blindly promoting advertisements. Instead, it is about building relationships with users and generating trust through the private domain channel through your products, services, content, and operations. Even if other companies advertise that their products are of better quality and lower price, I am still willing to buy from you because I trust you.

Why is community group buying so popular? Why are group leader resources being scrambled for by major giants? It simply means that the group leader has a certain level of trust in the local community and neighborhood. Compared with invisible and intangible platforms, users are more willing to consume and place orders with people around them and people they trust.

How to establish connections with users in the private domain and build trust?

In our daily communication, we often say "Let's keep in touch in the future." So, do we keep in touch with all people? Only those who have a vested interest in you.

The same applies to private domains. Only when you create long-term value for users will they be willing to establish a relationship with you and build trust.

Products are the foundation of all value, needless to say. In addition, in the private domain, you can create long-term value for users in the following three ways:

1) Accompany users to grow

When users buy a product, they not only gain the functional value of the product itself, but more importantly, they can also grow. For example, Nian Gao Mama not only sells maternal and infant products, but also imparts parenting knowledge in private domains and teaches users how to be a good mother.

2) Benefit value

After entering the private domain, users can obtain valuable benefits that are not available elsewhere. For example, scarce content, sharing by celebrities who rarely appear, priority purchase of new products, specific discounts, specific styles...

3) Become a friend

The private domain is not an advertising platform, and users are not God. Only when operators have the right mindset, are neither humble nor arrogant, and put themselves and users on the same footing, can they truly become friends with users.

There is a car wash shop owned by a couple near the community where I live. There are two chain car wash shops within less than 200 meters of each other. The prices are similar, but the equipment, decoration and service are obviously of a higher grade. But every time I pass by, there is a long line of cars next to the mom-and-pop stores, but the chain car washes are almost deserted. Why is that?

After I experienced it once, I understood that a husband-and-wife shop truly treats customers as friends, is neither humble nor arrogant, and does business with the mentality of making friends. They joke around, do minor repairs for free, and get along with customers like friends. But what about chain stores? Treating customers as a business, without any human touch. Assuming that the levels are similar, there is no need to say more about which one the customer will choose.

03. Establish a persona and build IP

The first step in doing private domain is to establish a personal image and build IP. In this way, after users enter the private domain, they will know who you are and what value you can provide? What's the use to him? Otherwise, after the traffic is drawn in, users will be confused, which is a waste of resources.

The character setting should revolve around the product. You are in the field of workplace education, and you are building a persona around mothers and babies. Even if users are willing to enter your private domain, it will not bring any value to your business and will not generate cash.

To create a persona, two attributes must be identified:

1) Functional attributes

What value can a persona provide to users? It must be extreme enough and scarce. For example, they can provide professional and practical knowledge, solve user problems all day, and enjoy the lowest discounts...

2) Personality attributes

What kind of person is the character? Show your personality through the text in your circle of friends, comments, likes, and language style. For example, the easy-going mother who loves to share her parenting experience, the funny operation boss...

Next, refine the character settings. You can find your seat according to the table below:

04. Private Domain User Drainage Channels

Many people believe that as long as they establish a private domain, they will solve the problem of increasing corporate traffic. This is a fallacy. The private domain is more about refined operations of users, and growth is only one of its functions.

Using the analogy at the beginning of the article as an example, if you build a pond (private domain), you cannot expect it to produce fish. First, you have to go to the sea (public domain) to catch fish. To do private domain, you must first attract traffic. Currently, there are four common ways to attract traffic:

1) Offline stores

The reason why people spend money to rent a storefront is simply because they see that this storefront has a lot of customer traffic. Every user who passes by, comes into the store to inquire, or buys something can be imported from offline to online and enter the private traffic pool.

2) E-commerce platforms

Put a small card in the express delivery with a WeChat QR code and short-term value on it, and consumers will add it if they are interested.

I know an e-commerce company that doesn’t make any money from selling things on Taobao, and even has to lose money. By wrapping small cards and directing users to the private domain, they can then sell high-priced, high-profit products to achieve profits.

3) Content Platform

Traffic is imported through mainstream content platforms such as Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo, etc.

4) Finding incremental growth from existing stock

On the basis of existing users, we can achieve fission of old customers bringing in new ones through forms such as task treasure, distribution, group buying, and assistance. For specific details on how to do it, you can read the 6,000-word article: How to plan a fission growth activity from 0 to 1?

The premise of building trust in the private domain is to provide users with long-term value. So for a user who has not yet entered the private domain and does not know you at all, short-term value can increase the conversion rate.

For example, in offline stores, adding WeChat will give you a small gift; in e-commerce package cards, adding WeChat will give you a voucher; in content platforms, adding WeChat will give you a useful information package...

After users are attracted in, we need to label them so that we can carry out refined operations later and push different content to different users.

For companies with a certain level of financial strength, they can purchase a professional SCRM system to assist with labeling (approximately RMB 10,000 to 20,000 per year). Of course, they can also label manually and make notes in the friend settings column. The dimensions of the label include source channel, intention or not, whether to place an order, order frequency, order amount, key behaviors, etc.

05. Content marketing, the key to success in private domain

Content shapes image and generates trust. Continuous, stable and valuable content output is the key to success in the private domain.

An average person will receive 30-50 updates from Moments every day. Do we read every one of them carefully? I will only read carefully those contents that I am interested in and that can bring value to myself.

For the same content in Moments, we will give different attitudes to the content depending on the sender. If a person who posts chicken soup and spoof content on WeChat Moments every day suddenly posts an extremely authoritative and serious content one day, people will not believe him.

Private domain content not only refers to the circle of friends, but also includes official accounts and video accounts, which is the trinity.

The main purpose of Moments is to output interactive and life content to build closer relationships with users, while video accounts and official accounts are to create a professional image. They should be used flexibly according to the actual situation of the product.

The content of the circle of friends can be studied from five dimensions:

1) Lifestyle content

If you post advertisements frequently, others will think that you are not a “human”, that you have no warmth and no emotions. Of course, everyone has emotions. We all have positive emotions, but we also have negative emotions occasionally.

2) Interactive content

Let users interact with you and enhance relationships. For example, like the post and you will get XXX; reply “1” to comment and you will get XXX; what do you think about XXX? ; Is there any way to solve XXX, etc.

3) Work content

Describe your work status to users and indirectly endorse your company and brand. For example, the company's afternoon tea, working overtime until late, department team building, recent work experience, etc.

4) Useful content

Show your professional ability to users and create a professional and reliable image. For example, Decathlon’s private domain often posts some sports and fitness tips.

5) Advertising content

It can be divided into two aspects. On the one hand, you can talk about the product's value, features, user experience, and differences from competing products; on the other hand, starting from the industry, talk about the company's honors, values, awesome deeds, etc.

The richer the product line, the more content you can output. Decathlon, you can talk about running, swimming, yoga, and basketball. In this case, the recommended frequency of posting to Moments is 4-5 times a day. If there are few categories, such as SAAS products, there is not much content to talk about, so you can post less, 2-3 posts a day will be enough.

I don’t recommend posting too many hard advertisements in your entire circle of friends. You can just post them when there are events or discounts. Many people may ask, how can I monetize without advertising? In fact, no matter what you post within the user’s circle of friends, it is a kind of “advertisement” and will subtly influence the user’s perception of the brand and product. When users have needs, they will naturally think of you.

06. How to realize cash efficiently and quickly?

Monetization is the most important part of the private domain. There are four ways to achieve monetization:

1) Direct conversion

There is nothing much to say about this. Transactions can be made directly through Moments or private chats, or through activities, group buying, coupons, buy one get one free and other promotional methods.

2) Live broadcast conversion

There are two types of live broadcast conversions. One is like Luo Yonghao, who directs traffic from the public domain to the private domain, makes exciting previews before the broadcast, releases live broadcast slices of popular products during the live broadcast, and reviews the highlights after the live broadcast. Usually, activities such as raffles and support are used to retain users and shorten the distance.

There is also a type that targets private domain users and conducts live broadcast conversions based on their pain points. For example, most of the people in the private domain are engaged in e-commerce, so you can hold a special live broadcast on "How to Improve the ROI of Through Train" and sell Through Train courses during the live broadcast.

3) Social Conversion

Communities can perform batch conversions, save operating costs, and improve conversion rates. There are two types of communities. One is more inclined towards group buying: XX product is on sale in the community today, N people in the XX product group can enjoy a discount...

For example, Luckin Coffee distributes coupons and special afternoon tea sets in the community every day.

Another type is the low-priced traffic-generating course, which attracts a group of users by charging 9.9 yuan, and then concentrates on sharing in the group for about 5 days, and finally converts them into full-priced courses worth several thousand yuan.

4) Offline store conversion

Many times, some products cannot be sold in private domains, including live broadcasts, communities, official accounts and other scenarios, and must be sold in offline stores to be converted.

A typical example is "Red Star Macalline", where the furniture has low frequency and high customer orders, and needs to be matched according to the home decoration, so it is impossible to complete the transaction online. At this time, the role of the private domain is to plant grass and attract users to offline stores.

According to official data from Red Star Macalline, the average total consumption of users who have undergone private domain operations is 1.6 times that of users who have not undergone private domain operations!

Well, the overall framework of the private domain operation has been sorted out. I will share the specific steps and details of each link in 5-8 articles later. Finally, I will make a summary of the key points of this article:

1) Private domain can not only enable users to repurchase, increase GMV, and solve retention issues, but more importantly, it can fully understand users, understand their needs, improve services, and influence minds.

2) The core of private domain is trust. The premise of trust is to provide long-term value to users: accompany users in their growth, provide benefits and become friends.

3) The first step in the private domain is to create a personal IP, focusing on the product and considering both function and personality.

4) The mainstream private domain traffic diversion methods include: offline stores, e-commerce platforms, content platforms, and finding existing traffic by increasing traffic. When attracting traffic, you should provide users with short-term value and label them well.

5) Continuous, stable and valuable content output is the key to success in the private domain.

6) The content of Moments is divided into life, interaction, work, practical information and advertising. Among them, less advertising content should be published.

7) Common monetization methods in the private domain include: direct monetization, live streaming monetization, community monetization, and offline store monetization.

If you think this article is good, you can follow the official account. I will share practical operational information every week, trying to avoid nonsense and make it easy to understand and implement at a glance.

Author: Tomato Operation

Source: Tomato Operation