How to correctly view private domain traffic operations?

In 2020, as the epidemic raged, more and more companies discovered the importance of private domain traffic . Private domain traffic has always been a concept that companies have been scrambling to capture. It is sought after by companies for its features such as free payment and precise reach. Companies' hunger for traffic has reached an unprecedented level. The quality of operating a company’s private domain traffic will be the fundamental factor that determines the company’s future survival.

01 The private domain traffic boom caused by anxiety

In the state of slow market growth, when companies of all sizes are generally anxious about sales and customer growth, in this anxious state, we always hope to grasp something to temporarily relieve our emotions, and private domain traffic has exploded in this environment.

Marketing is not just about talking. In the past year, I have heard many companies talk about growth, building up their own private traffic, and improving the KPIs of the marketing department. Regardless of whether they are Internet companies, B2B or B2C companies, they do not consider their own market track and customer needs, what their business scope is, what is the value system of the customer groups they face, whether it is suitable to build private traffic, and if they build private traffic, how much manpower and material resources can be invested in operating this.

An online education entrepreneur who has been engaged in advertising for nearly ten years revealed that Baidu's keyword bidding has increased more than ten times in the past 10 years, and the cost of acquiring customers in the P2P industry has increased from 200-300 yuan in 2015 to about 1,000 yuan in 2017. However, not only is traffic more expensive, but the conversion rate has also been declining . Compared with previous years, prices have risen exponentially, and the conversion rate is only 1/10 of the past. This forces everyone to constantly look for new channels.

From the perspective of traffic costs, leading companies that are not short of money will become stronger and stronger. After all, not every company can afford the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in advertising costs every month, and the Matthew effect will become more and more serious .

However, there seems to be a general misunderstanding of private domain traffic in the market, which needs to be corrected. Growth is essentially about attracting new users, while private domain traffic focuses on the long-term personalized operation of old users , enhancing relationships and friendships, in order to increase activity, loyalty and repurchase rates.

At the same time, private domain traffic cannot be obtained by just creating a group. It requires learning communication well - establishing new media thinking - doing content marketing well - obtaining a steady stream of accurate traffic - building a private domain traffic pool - managing users over the long term - and obtaining high conversions. In short, it is a systematic project.

However, the reality is that the excessive consumption of the term private domain traffic in the context of slow market growth has misled the industry's correct understanding of private domain traffic operations, which has also laid the groundwork for future difficulties in the marketing department's work.

02 From operating products to operating users

There is one thing that the market is converging on. All markets will eventually become stock markets . The current Internet has become a stock market and has basically lost the opportunity to become a large and comprehensive platform. Deeply cultivating subdivided fields and entering small and beautiful niche markets may be the current antidote to traffic.

To achieve this, we need to change our mindset from managing products to managing users, and transform product management from the early growth-drive-retention to retention-drive-growth , using existing customers to find incremental growth. In theory, retaining old customers is much easier than developing new customers.

From "traffic thinking" to "user thinking", we need to understand that traffic is not just a piece of data, but the living people behind it. What we need to see is the essence behind the traffic. Therefore, the source of traffic must be where people gather. Where the users are, there is the private domain traffic, and where people are, there are business opportunities.

1. 7 sources of private domain traffic

(1) Online and offline stores, and industry exhibitions

Customers who are passing by or entering the store can be connected using personal WeChat. Many people do not pay attention to the traffic from their own stores and offline activities, thus wasting it. Many people direct the fans they have accumulated on platforms such as Douyin, Weibo, and Zhihu to e-commerce platforms or personal WeChat accounts for monetization. This is based on trust, which they have established among consumers through long-term content output.

(2) Obtaining traffic through paid traffic diversion

Place advertisements on Baidu, Taobao, JD.com, mainstream social media platforms or KOL’s self-media platforms to direct traffic from the public traffic pool to your own private traffic pool. As for marketing your products, paid advertising methods include Guangdiantong, Fanstong, DOU+, KOL advertising, and elevator advertising. The launch of various marketing products is mainly based on the platform's big data, which recommends the brand content you want to expose to a more precise group of people and acquires potential customers.

(3) Create your own account, do content marketing, and obtain accurate private domain traffic

The current mainstream social media platforms include text and pictures (WeChat official accounts, long articles on Weibo, Penguin accounts, Tiantian Express, Toutiao accounts, Sohu accounts, NetEase accounts, Dafeng accounts, Baijia accounts, Yidian Zixun, Maimai, Zhihu, Wukong Q&A, Douban, Jianshu, etc.), video/short video accounts (Tik Tok, Kuaishou, WeChat video accounts, Bilibili, Weishi, etc.) and audio accounts (Himalaya FM, NetEase Cloud Music, Lizhi FM, Lizhi Micro Class, Xiaoetong, etc.).

If we produce high-quality content to provide to users, do a good job of content marketing and tell our own stories well, lay out a content network, build traffic channels, use content to connect and filter users, we can continuously obtain accurate traffic and then put it into a private traffic pool for long-term operation.

(4) Value every employee and make them IP-based

Employees of any company are the first customer of your company, and each employee is a small traffic pool. Their circle of friends has hundreds or thousands of people, so this data is very optimistic. There are many companies that do this very well, such as Alibaba, Gree Electric Appliances, and Xiaomi. It is indeed a general trend for enterprises to carry out full-staff marketing.

(5) Product mediaization is imperative

Make the product something that has its own topics, self-propagation capabilities, and its own traffic. Good products can speak and have their own propagation attributes, such as drone products, the food delivery robots we encounter in hotels, and the guide robots in shopping malls and banks. It can communicate with its consumers, so it has medium attributes.

(6) The brand/IP itself is a private traffic pool

Brand is a traffic pool, IP is also a traffic pool. The essence of building a brand is to create a symbol of a product, and the essence of building an IP is to create a label on the Internet. Brand is based on products, and IP is based on people. In fact, the future of brands lies in creating IPs, and the rejuvenation of brands is IPization. You will discover this if you look more at traditional big brands.

(7) Splitting from within, using stock to drive growth

There are two types of traffic: existing and incremental . Today, it is not easy for anyone to increase the volume. No matter how much incremental traffic there is, if it cannot be retained, it is really called "traffic". To use existing traffic to bring incremental traffic, we need to operate in a refined manner. Good operations will lead to forwarding, new dissemination, referrals, new customers, and at the same time activate dormant customers.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, personal WeChat accounts are the first choice for building private traffic pools. Personal accounts are relatively closed, and can communicate with users one-on-one. They can also further establish communication through the content of Moments, gain user trust, and obtain higher attention. Currently, there are many SCRM tools that can solve this problem well.

2. Misconceptions about building private domain traffic

Under private domain traffic, it must be clear that everyone is an emotional, warm and valuable person, so private domain traffic should focus on the long-term value of users . It is not an assembly line thinking of attracting fans in batches. It connects precise traffic, establishes long-term relationships and friendships with users through your warm service, and manages this relationship well. What is important is sincerity, not using tricks to deceive customers. Remember, this is not a one-time deal, this is very important.

03 Content marketing is the cornerstone

We need to have corresponding strategies when doing communication: high-quality content output + repeated exposure are the fundamental requirements . Only by establishing a label recognition system for information content can we amplify the efficiency of communication, and only by creating IP in the field can we win the user's choice in the long run.

In this era, the cost of obtaining information is getting lower and lower, while the cost of screening information is getting higher and higher, and the difficulty of marketing and communication has greatly increased.

Even if we see the same content or article in the circle of friends, we will take different attitudes depending on who sent it, to judge whether it is useful, valuable, and trustworthy. For example, if a person has left others with the impression that he often posts chicken soup, gossip, and messy content in his circle of friends, one day even if he forwards an extremely important and authoritative information, people will not believe him.

A brand is how many people you and others have reached a consensus on a certain thing, and communication is telling a thing to many people over and over again. Brand is the result of communication and also the feedback after using the product . The reason why communication in the new media era is important is that it has changed from one-way communication to two-way communication.

1. Four dimensions of content sources

1. Product dimension: Tell the product’s value, features, user experience and uniqueness well.
2. Enterprise dimension : a series of stories that happened when the enterprise made this product, including the enterprise's values, cultural concepts, founder's feelings, enterprise dynamics and honors received.
3. Industry dimension: What is the overall situation of the industry, what changes have taken place, and the efforts made by companies to change the industry.
4. User dimension: Look at the problem from the user's perspective, what are the user's demands and complaints, and how we solve these problems.

Communication is content marketing, communication = content . Without good content, there is no focus. No matter how hard you try, it is like hitting cotton balls, soft and powerless. All efforts without practical results are in vain. The difficulty of content marketing varies in different industries. It is more difficult in the highly professional technology field. The output of content requires the cooperation of professional departments such as technology and products. The limitations of relying solely on the marketing department are very obvious.

In other words, content marketing means turning information about your industry, brand, products, services , and other aspects into content and putting it in places where users can reach it. Remember that labels are king and content comes second . People may not remember the content, but they can remember the feeling left by the content, and this feeling is the label.

Labels are used to tell users who you are, what you can do, and what you represent, while rich content is just defending labels, proving labels, and repeating labels.

04 Conclusion

Today, with the rapid development and iteration of Internet information, any company or individual must remember that as much emphasis on marketing as you have placed on marketing in the past, you should place as much emphasis on communication today.

Author: Tong Xiaoxiu

Source: Tong Xiaoxiu