How to build private domain traffic from 0 to 1

In recent years, private domain traffic has been very popular, and many companies have begun to operate their own private domain traffic. Private domain traffic is a relatively low-cost method with a good conversion rate; it can also establish close ties with users and penetrate deeper into the user base.

This is an introductory article on private domain traffic operations. The main content of this article is to introduce how e-commerce companies can build their own private domain traffic.

01 What is the essence of private domain traffic?

Baidu Encyclopedia says:

"Private domain traffic is a concept relative to public domain traffic. Simply put, it refers to channels that can reach users directly at any time and frequency without paying. For example, self-media, user groups, WeChat accounts, etc., that is, the circle that KOC (key opinion consumers) can reach. It is a concept in the field of social e-commerce."

My personal understanding is that private domain traffic is essentially a free traffic pool that is in your own hands. We only have the right to use public domain traffic, but we do not have it in our own hands. In other words, our life and death are in the hands of the platform.

What we are competing for in private domain traffic is the issue of traffic ownership. The traffic is in our own hands and we can direct it to other platforms to obtain more traffic. Even if our store is blocked by Taobao, our account is blocked by Douyin, or our official account is blocked by WeChat, we can still make a comeback by using the private domain traffic in our hands.

02 Why are we all doing private domain traffic?

The concept of private domain traffic has been particularly popular in the past two years. Along with the popularity of private domain traffic, the concept of social e-commerce has also become popular. Why are more and more companies and individuals starting to engage in private domain traffic and social e-commerce? There are mainly three aspects. The most fundamental reason is that traffic is becoming more and more expensive, and it is not cost-effective to buy traffic.

1) Reduce marketing costs

The customer acquisition cost for merchants on traditional e-commerce platforms is getting higher and higher. For example, sellers who open stores on Taobao need to open a through train for paid promotion, but the total traffic on the Taobao platform is limited. As the number of merchants increases, the cost of paid promotion on Taobao is also getting higher and higher.

Moreover, through paid promotion through the Through Train, customers return to the Taobao platform after purchase and are no longer truly the merchant’s own customers. The merchant can only see the customer’s phone number and address information in the store background, and it is difficult to reach the customer again. Next time, paid promotion will still be needed to bring in new customers.

2) Prevent customer churn

Everyone knows the importance of customers, but on traditional e-commerce platforms, even if merchants want to maintain their hard-earned customers, they have no chance, because the platform will prevent merchants from directly contacting users. If merchants take away all the platform's traffic, how can the e-commerce platform earn advertising fees from merchants?

However, if we use a series of measures to add every user who purchases our products to our personal WeChat account or WeChat group when the customer comes to our store for consultation or delivery, the relationship between us and the customer will change from a weak relationship to a strong relationship, which can minimize customer churn.

3) Increase customer lifetime value

On traditional e-commerce platforms, we cannot provide customers with more valuable services, so customer stickiness is low and the repurchase rate is not high; but in the private domain, we can provide customers with more refined services through various operational means, and continuously improve user experience and brand loyalty.

At the same time, in the private domain, merchants can efficiently reach users multiple times, use personal account private chats, Moments, and communities to continuously convert users and increase repurchase rates.

03 Which industries are suitable for private domain traffic?

Private domain traffic is very important, but it is not worth it for all companies to do. Private domain traffic is most suitable for products with high profits, high repurchase rates, and many natural topics, such as beauty and skin care, clothing, mother and baby and other industries.

High profits mean that the money earned can cover the operating costs, a high repurchase rate means that the value of a single customer is high and it is worth spending time to maintain. Many topics mean that we can continuously produce new content in our official accounts, Moments, and communities.

For example, there are many topics about beauty and skin care products. Several girls can get together and chat about what eye shadow and foundation they used today, and which sunscreen spray is the best. This will make the atmosphere of the community more active.

The most fundamental purpose of an enterprise's private domain traffic operation is to increase profits. If the product has low profit and very low repurchase rate, and after a few months the number of private domain traffic conversions is only a handful, and even the cost of employee salaries cannot be covered; then there is no point in doing private domain traffic, or there is no need to invest a lot of cost to operate the private domain.

04 The first step to build a private domain - WeChat account maintenance

The first step to build private domain traffic is to maintain a WeChat account. Only when we have a pool of customers can we direct traffic into it. I suggest using the ID card of the boss’s own family to register a WeChat account to reduce a lot of unnecessary trouble.

The core purpose of maintaining an account is to imitate real users in using WeChat. We do what real people do in daily life: taking the subway and buying breakfast to go to work in the morning, chatting with others, reading articles on public accounts, posting to Moments during the day, and making videos and sending red envelopes in the evening.

For details on how to maintain an account, please refer to the picture below. This is a very detailed guide to maintaining a WeChat account.

05 The second step in building a private domain: creating a personal image

WeChat is a social software. The key to achieving paid conversion in WeChat is the trust in social relationships. Users definitely hope that the person chatting with them is a real person, not an emotionless robot, so we must create a personal image for our personal accounts.

Normally, we will trust a "person" because of the label on him. For example, if he is an expert in a certain field, then we will definitely listen to his advice when we encounter problems in this field.

So how should the character be positioned?

You can refer to the RCSC model of corporate new media personality of Socket Academy and just connect the lines according to the model; the role is fixed, but the personality and content can be diversified as long as there is no conflict.

It would be even more perfect if it was accompanied by a touching story, such as the twists and turns of starting a business or the story of the ugly duckling turning into a white swan.

06 The third step in building a private domain - promotion and customer acquisition

The main sources of customers for private domain traffic are: offline stores guide customers to follow official accounts and add personal WeChat accounts; platform e-commerce directs traffic to official accounts and personal accounts; traffic is directed through self-media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Zhihu; social advertising is used to direct traffic; live streaming is used to acquire traffic, etc.

1) Package card diversion

For Taobao sellers, the simplest and most effective method is to guide customers who have purchased in their stores to add their private personal WeChat account by sending package cards and text messages.

These paying customers are very accurate fans and already have a certain foundation of trust. We must not let them be lost in vain.

Let me share a package card that I designed when I was building a private beauty domain. Compared with ordinary small cards, we added a red envelope shell and put the drainage card into the red envelope.

Normal customers will be curious and open it to take a look when they see a red envelope in the package. This small step alone increases the reach of the card content and the conversion rate of adding WeChat.

Regarding the design of package cards, I suggest that students learn from the ways of the industry leaders. You can try scratch cards, password red envelopes, high-value benefits, etc., and keep testing to improve the conversion rate of adding friends.

2) Fission drainage

When doing TaskBao fission in WeChat, it is not recommended to do free giveaway activities unless it is a virtual product. You can set up an activity to invite friends to purchase such TaskBao for 9.9 yuan.

No matter what, he has to spend some money. This step is critical and can screen out a large number of people who just want to get the free stuff at no cost.

In addition, as long as the cost is reasonably controlled, we don’t have to worry even if the freeloaders come. For example, a box of facial mask with a retail price of 169 on Taobao has a cost of 6 yuan and the express delivery cost is 2 yuan. We can set up a Taskbao activity and invite 10 people to buy it for 9.9 yuan, which serves as a traffic-generating model.

07 The fourth step in building a private domain - taking over conversions

How should we handle the incoming traffic to ensure subsequent refined operations and improve conversion rates?

When you greet a friend for the first time after adding them, you need to obtain the customer’s basic information as quickly as possible, label and stratify the customer based on this information, and formulate corresponding operational strategies in a targeted manner.

For example, we can ask the customer to tell us his mobile phone number and Taobao membership name so that we can check the number and amount of orders he has placed in our store, and find out whether he is a new user or a loyal user, and whether he is a high-priced user or a low-priced user.

It is also necessary to obtain some of the customers' current needs. For example, in the beauty industry, you can ask customers to fill out a simple questionnaire to understand their skin condition, whether they have oily or dry skin, and their current main needs, such as whether they want whitening or freckle removal, and other key information.

If there are related activities or high-quality skin care content in the future, we can push them in a targeted manner and conduct precision marketing to increase conversion rate and repurchase rate.

08 The fifth step in building a private domain - content planning

In addition to one-on-one communication and converting customers, what is more important for a personal WeChat account is whether the content provided to customers is valuable, such as daily sharing content in the circle of friends and content reached in private chats.

Especially for the traffic and retention of personal accounts, good content plays an almost decisive role, and the content of personal account private traffic also needs to be planned; just like platform e-commerce regularly plans activities, we do private traffic in order to provide customers with more refined services, so the daily content operation of personal accounts needs to be well planned.

You can plan corresponding content based on the user needs of your industry. For example, for clothing, you can post dressing tips, model dressing videos, high-quality buyer shows, emotional chicken soup, etc. For beauty, you can post makeup techniques, skin care tips, cosmetics testing, and makeup tool trials.

If our character is positioned as an expert, then we must share some practical knowledge in our daily circle of friends; if our character is positioned as a friend or girlfriend, we need to share more of our daily life, and be more playful when chatting with customers; in a word, we should simulate a real person and speak human language.

I'd like to share the circle of friends schedule I made. It's been a long time, so it's just for reference~

It is enough to post 3-5 pieces of content on your Moments every day. Not all of them can be product advertisements, as this will cause others to be disgusted. The maximum number of product advertisements is no more than 3.

09 The sixth step in building a private domain - sharing fission

When our private domain traffic reaches a certain scale and users have a certain degree of loyalty to us, we can plan corresponding fission activities to achieve a closed loop of traffic.

1) Public account fission & group fission

The official account is very suitable for task treasure fission. The beauty industry I mentioned above uses facial masks and beauty eggs to carry out fission activities, which is a very low-cost fission and drainage method.

Activities like this one that give away free gifts can also be used for group fission. Based on WeChat’s current account blocking mechanism, I suggest using corporate WeChat to operate fission activities, or to take over personal account fans.

2) Mini Program fission and diversion

Why Pinduoduo was able to grow under the noses of Taobao and JD.com? In addition to its low prices, another very important reason is that it took advantage of WeChat's social fission. Pinduoduo's bargaining activities brought them many users.

There are still quite a lot of SaaS service companies on the market that make mini-programs. Most of them can provide marketing methods such as group buying, bargaining for 0 yuan, sharing coupons with friends, salesmen, fission coupons, etc. to help acquire customers at low cost.

3) Distribution fission

When we have a certain number of loyal users on our personal accounts and in our communities, some of them will definitely have connections. We can discover some KOCs and incubate them as distributors to help us expand our sales scope and increase sales.

A separate community can be created for distributors, and regular training can be given, such as how to expand customer base and develop subordinate distributors, etc. Some incentive plans can also be planned to stimulate distributors to take the initiative to expand customer base and develop secondary distributors.

10 The seventh step in building a private domain: Feeding back to Taobao

Taobao sellers must feed back to Taobao when generating private domain traffic. They cannot divert the traffic to WeChat and then operate it independently. This will not help the Taobao store at all and may even reduce the sales of the Taobao store because of users purchasing on WeChat.

On the other hand, the cost of private domain operations is also very high. For example, frequent transfers on WeChat can easily lead to account blockage. If a product does not have a detail page, it takes a lot of time to introduce it to customers, and it costs even more money to develop a mini program.

When you first start to work with private domain traffic, I suggest that you direct users back to Taobao to place orders and purchases, help increase the weight of the Taobao store, obtain new traffic to achieve a closed loop, and thus increase sales.

For example, when a Taobao store has new products, it can use users with private domain traffic to add products to Taobao and place batch orders in a short period of time to increase the weight and ranking of products. When live streaming on Taobao, it can also preheat and promote in personal WeChat Moments and communities to increase the probability of the live broadcast room becoming popular.

11 Common Misunderstandings of Private Domain Traffic Operation

1) No user thinking

The essence of selling goods through private domain traffic is to rely on trust conversion. If you don’t have user thinking and only know how to harvest users, then you will definitely not do it well. Don’t treat users as fools.

Now that we are working on private domain traffic, we must change our mindset from Taobao’s selling mindset to user mindset. To put it bluntly, it means treating users as friends instead of thinking about harvesting users right from the start.

For example, when we recommend a product to our good friends, we certainly don’t just copy the QA script like Taobao customer service, but instead we recommend it based on our own experience of use and the effects before and after use.

2) Blindly imitate big companies

When it comes to private domain traffic, everyone knows Perfect Diary. Most companies want to copy Perfect Diary’s model and form a closed loop of personal accounts, official accounts, and mini programs.

But there is a misunderstanding here. People only see the bright side of Perfect Diary. They don’t know that when they first built their private domain traffic team, they had to lose money to support the team, and it took more than two months to build up the private domain traffic.

Moreover, Perfect Diary has spent a lot of advertising fees on product promotion and product promotion on various platforms, so it is difficult for ordinary companies to copy it. Don’t imitate blindly, but formulate your own private domain strategy based on actual conditions.

3) Blindly increase followers through fission

The cost of obtaining traffic through fission in WeChat is relatively low. However, when doing free giveaway activities, the better the fission effect, the more people participate, the more products need to be given away, and the greater the cost.

The free model is actually more suitable for the education industry. The cost of a lead-generating course is fixed, and no matter how many people participate, the final cost is still one course. However, for industries such as beauty and food, when giving away physical products for free, the data may look good in the end, but the conversion rate is almost 0.

The biggest problem is that when you do free giveaways, you will be served by a one-stop service from the wool-gathering gangs. You may find that your followers have increased a lot, but they are actually zombie fans. Some companies that provide fission services will also push the activities to the wool party in order to make their customers' data look good.

4) Blindly creating a group

When it comes to private domain traffic, many people will blindly create groups without thinking twice, and then they will turn them into advertising groups within two days.

There must be a threshold for inviting members to join the group. A group without a threshold has no value, and fans will not cherish a group without value.

It is not recommended to add newly added friends to the group. To be more direct, fans who have never purchased anything should not be added to the group. We can create groups based on the number of fans’ purchases, spending amounts, and fan attributes, so that people with common topics can be in the same group.

At the same time, don’t think about asking your loyal fans to speak for you in the new fan group. They are customers, not your agents. Leave professional matters to professionals ( agents). It is better to maintain one old customer than to develop 10 new customers.

Finally, I hope this article will be helpful to you. It is easier said than done. Execution is very important.

Author: Quan Yufan

Source: Quan Yufan