The private domain operation skills worth tens of millions!

Today I want to talk to you about private domains. As an old e-commerce person with several years of experience in private domain operations, I really have a lot to say to you.

Let’s not talk about SCRM and SOP for now, there will be N articles about this in the future. In fact, private domain is nothing new. Two or three years ago, many brands were clamoring to do private domain, but private domain can actually be traced back to an earlier time. Ten years ago, many people made a lot of money through private domain. Today I want to talk to you more about the top-level logic of private domain, and then in the next n articles I will discuss with you how brands can better develop private domain based on WeChat.

1. How can brands correctly understand private domains?

What exactly is private domain? Lao Zhao understands that private domain is not actually traffic, but a pool that enables brands to reach 5A people (1-5 represents the relationship with the brand from low to high) . The private domain pool needs to introduce traffic in order to continue to expand, and it can also feed back traffic through fission and other forms.

The carrier of the private domain pool can be a corporate WeChat account, an individual WeChat account, a Douyin group, Feishu, DingTalk, or QQ. As long as it can communicate with users in the pool at any time, it can be regarded as a carrier of the private domain. To be more strict, it means that you can find users to chat with at any time. As for official accounts, video accounts, etc., we can only call them middle domain (neither public domain nor private domain) .

Among the many private domain carriers, enterprise microblogs and personal microblogs are the most commonly used:

• Individual microblogs have a large user base, are frequently opened, are easy to win user trust, and have many user touchpoints. However, after being abused by marketing, their future path will become narrower and narrower, with more and more restrictions, such as the collapse of friend circles and group chats, which seriously affect the efficiency of individual microblogs.
• The user base of enterprise microblogs is not as large as that of individual microblogs, and there were many limitations on their capabilities before. However, the total number of users has exceeded 400 million, which is still a large base. The circle of capabilities is also gradually expanding, and the road is getting wider and wider.

2. Why do brands want to develop private domains?

Back to the ultimate question, why do brands need to enter the private domain? The reason is to grow the brand. Brands build private domain pools from the following three perspectives:

1) Collect requirements

Brands that can target this point are very smart. Because consumers' current attention span is very unfocused, their demands are broad and fragmented, and are constantly changing. If brands want to dig out first-hand information from consumers, they must observe consumers closely and have the opportunity to reach consumers multiple times. This is a very weak point for public domain traffic and mid-domain traffic, but private domain pools can help brands accomplish this task very well. A typical case is Wuling Hongguang. User demands are collected from private domains. Users talk about it in the community, and the demand for a car comes out. It is very direct and effective.

Brands need to find real needs through private domain users and eliminate false needs. During the product design phase, inspiration can be sought through private domain users; during the product internal testing phase, internal testing can be conducted through private domain users to determine whether the product is suitable and whether adjustments are needed, which can help brands save a lot of money.

2) Maintain brand reputation

The brand voice must not only be loud, but also positive. There is no shortcut to gaining positive recognition; it can only be achieved through good products and good services. The private domain pool is an excellent platform for collecting product feedback and providing high-quality services to customers, which can help brands maintain their reputation.

3) Sales growth

It is definitely not enough to rely solely on new customers to increase brand sales. Repurchase from old customers is an important factor in brand growth that cannot be ignored. It may seem easy for brands to generate repeat purchases through private domains because they can reach customers at any time, but it is actually a very artistic operational task.

First, the product category should be suitable for repurchase. For example, large appliances may only be repurchased once every few years, while skin care products should be purchased once every one or two months.

Second, you need to strike a good balance in reaching customers. If the information is too soft, users will not be aware of it; if it is too hard, users will get annoyed. If you don’t push information to users, they will forget it; if you push activities too frequently, users will get bored. Therefore, when doing repeat purchases in the private domain pool, you cannot do it with a sales mindset, but a marketing mindset;

(How to play with a dead group)

Third, financial accounting, whether the cost of investment is proportional to the benefits obtained;

To sum up, no matter what goals a brand wants to achieve in the private domain, it can only be achieved by establishing trust between the brand and users. If you simply send users what you think they want, such as event advertisements and discount information, you actually fail to achieve the purpose of building trust with users. Instead, you are consuming users. It would be strange if users don’t delete you!

This is why Lao Zhao is not going to talk about SCRM, SOP and other things first, but wants to reach a consensus with everyone in terms of concept: When doing private domain, you cannot do it with a sales mindset, but must do it from a marketing perspective!

1) Brands must have a deep understanding of what consumers are interested in and understand the consumer tasks on private carriers (personal WeChat is a place to interact with friends, what is the consumer task of users on corporate WeChat?) ;

2) Consumers are willing to add private domains because they find them useful, not because they want brands to keep harassing them. After adding a user, a brand has to think about how it can help the user, is it high-quality content, expert advice, or attentive service?

3) Can you design a good mechanism to enhance user participation, refer to the gameplay of making friends;

This is the correct way to build trust with users, and this is the first principle of doing a good job in private domain!

3. Four major obstacles for brands to fail in private domain

Why are most brands failing in private domain business? Let’s first look at the characteristics of brands that do well in the private domain:

1) Brands know the importance of private domain and understand the correct approach to private domain;

2) Have clear goals and know what you want, whether it is repeat purchases, demand or word of mouth;

3) The company, from the CEO to the executive level, is determined to do a good job in the private domain and cooperate well;

4) Complete solutions + supporting tools to help brands improve efficiency and reduce costs;

5) Have refined operation methods and iterative means to locate problems through data analysis and make continuous improvements;

It is actually not easy to achieve the above points. Lao Zhao will analyze for you the four major problems that hinder the success of brand private domain.

3.1 Brands always want to seize the dividends instead of doing private domain business!

Although brands have been arguing about entering the private domain for many years, there are very few brands that are truly aware of accumulating capabilities in this area, and there are only a few high-end players in various industries. The problem is not only that brands have a wrong understanding of private domains and have incorrect positioning, but more importantly, they have no determination to do a good job in private domains. Most of them either wait and see or only try briefly. Brands always feel that after all the hard work they have put in, they still don’t make any money, so why not seize the traffic dividend? Rather than doing private domain business, it is better to seize the dividends, which is the biggest obstacle for brands to do private domain business well.

Lao Zhao wants to say that the traffic dividend will eventually fade away, and competitors are not stupid. Faced with limited dividends, the best way is to insist on refined operations.

3.2 Brands always think that without users, what can they do to develop their private domain?

The traffic issue is an issue that all brands operating in the private domain cannot avoid, because in order to continuously accumulate data in the private domain pool, it is necessary to continuously inject fresh blood into the pool. The key to solving this problem is to consider two major issues: user source and sedimentation efficiency.

3.2.1 How to mine user sources

The sources of users can be generally divided into two categories: one is the group of people who have accumulated transactions (A4) , and the other is the group of people who have accumulated relatively broad traffic (A1-A3, people who understand the brand, people who have a good impression of the brand, and people who choose the brand's solutions) .

If a brand decides to accumulate people who have completed transactions, the key is to solve how to efficiently deposit new and old orders from various channels into the private domain pool;

If a brand decides to accumulate unsuccessful customers, the key is to solve the problem of how to efficiently deposit online traffic (advertising) and offline traffic (store customers) into the private domain pool;

Another dimension is to use existing users to generate new users, which will be discussed in detail in future articles.

3.2.2 How to improve precipitation efficiency

Although there are many sources of traffic, it is really not easy to settle them well. We need to try every possible way to improve efficiency. For example, many brands have sold well on Douyin and generated a lot of recent orders, and they want to attract all customers to their private domain pool.

At this time, some people will say, isn’t this easy? Just use AI phone calls + text messages to let customers add you actively. In addition, you can also add friends automatically through API, which is not very convenient. Friends who can say all this have at least gotten started in the private domain, but that is not enough, because the Douyin platform now has a layer of protection for orders. When displayed on the front desk, the user’s phone number is not displayed completely. At this time, you have to manually click on the display one by one in the background to see the full picture. You can’t export orders in batches like before. What should you do at this time?

The point of giving this example is that when we do private domain sedimentation, we must not only comply with the requirements of the enterprise micro-platform, but also the requirements of the e-commerce platform. The more restrictions there are, the lower the efficiency will be. We must constantly come up with new ways to improve the sedimentation efficiency of the private domain pool. This is indeed not easy, but the more difficult it is, the more it will become a threshold for the brand.

To give another example, are the powder adding efficiencies the same for previous orders and recent orders? It is definitely different. For previous orders, the history is long and users have forgotten you. However, for recent orders, the transaction has not been completed yet. We have very strong reasons to convince customers to add a friend and complete the overall service process. How to improve the efficiency of adding powder for old orders is also something we need to continue researching.

Of course, it will also involve some internal brand issues, such as the online team and the offline team fighting each other. It is obvious that offline fans can be directed online and transactions can be promoted through refined online operations. However, the offline team will feel that accumulating people online will steal the store business, and then they will begin to expand without considering the overall interests, obstruct and refuse to cooperate in every possible way, and miss the golden time for accumulating the private domain pool. So, it is really the situation that determines the outcome!

In addition, the accumulation of private domain users is not blind. There must be a clear MVP model. If the accounts cannot be calculated, it is unnecessary to spend a lot of effort and cost to accumulate a private domain pool.

3.3 Some brands just do whatever they want while guarding their gold mines!

I have encountered some brands before that have consciously accumulated a large number of private domain users, and then began to bombard this wave of users with activities and benefits. However, the situation is different between users, and their perceptions and demands of brands will change. The best strategy is to stratify users and then provide corresponding content and services for different types of customers. But it doesn’t mean that we should give customers everything we think is good. We need to think carefully about how to get along with customers and what their pain points are. What are they most concerned about? Then give it to them in a targeted manner.

Another problem is that their thinking is too simple. They say every day that no one watches their live broadcasts, but then they randomly give benefits and discounts to old customers in their private domain. Brands that are doing well have already turned inventory clearance into welfare items, completed transactions through live streaming, and then leveraged more system recommendation traffic. You can add this WeChat to discuss the details.

Again, the key to a brand’s private domain operations is to build user trust. Private domain operations that fail to create loyal fans are simply hooliganism. A brand must build user trust from multiple aspects such as product strength, service strength, content strength, etc., so that users will support you, cooperate with you, and repeat purchases will be natural.

3.4 Building a brand private domain team

The last issue I want to talk about is the creation of a brand’s private domain team. There are very few operators in the market who understand private domains. Most of those who have experience are micro-businesses, and even fewer can really use corporate micro-businesses well. If the boss doesn’t understand and the brand wants to start from 0-1, he must find an operator with practical experience, trust him, cooperate with him to build a team, and give him enough time and patience, because private domain is a systematic project that cannot be accomplished by one person.

If the boss understands it, he can come up with his own plan, sort out the work flow, assign a few people with strong execution capabilities, combine it with SCRM tools, and achieve the goal in stages. This kind of team cannot achieve everything at once, it has to take things step by step.

In addition, I think the most important point is that the boss must have "three hearts": determination! Take it seriously! patience! Only when the boss is determined and pays attention, will the team be determined and pay attention!

Final Thoughts

This article is not about techniques, but about the philosophy, because I think most brands fail to do well in the private domain because they have the wrong thinking. If you are working in the wrong direction, the harder you work, the greater the harm will be! This year, competition among brands for public domain traffic will be particularly fierce. It’s time to think carefully about what to do in the private domain.

The last piece of information I want to share with you is that some brands have done a very good job in linking private and public domains, and this is also a trend this year.

Author: Lao Zhao Marketing Notes

Source: Lao Zhao's Marketing Notes