Private domain traffic SOP guide!

The topic I want to talk about today: private domain traffic.

The concept of private domain traffic has probably become popular since 2019.

But in fact, it is nothing new. It appeared as early as 2013 when WeChat business began.

But why has private domain traffic not been discussed separately for so many years?

In this regard, I have the following thoughts:

1. Private domain traffic is booming, what is the logic behind it?
2. After reading so many SOPs, can you do a good job in private domain traffic?
3. My thoughts on the future of private domain traffic

1. What is the logic behind the boom in private domain traffic?

Private domain traffic is a concept relative to public domain traffic. Simply put, it refers to traffic that can be used multiple times at any time without paying.

Common private domain traffic generally exists in some social media accounts of individuals or enterprises, such as QQ, WeChat, Weibo, mini programs, Douyin and other private accounts, with fans or customers as a concrete form of traffic.

This form of traffic actually existed as a private traffic pool for many companies during the era when QQ was popular.

I joined an education company after graduating in 2012, and then started working in community building, which has been almost 10 years.

The reason why it was mentioned suddenly and explosively in 2019 was that even some Internet people began to create the term "private domain traffic" in order to attract attention, bringing "private domain traffic" into the public eye and starting a nationwide trend of engaging in private domain traffic.

I think there are several reasons:

1. Merchant level

1. The traffic dividend is over, and user acquisition is becoming increasingly difficult
2. Get rid of platform dependence and let users own it
3. Improve business stability and resist risks

2. User level

With more and more choices, the fear of making choices becomes more serious.

First, let’s talk about the merchant level:

(1) The traffic dividend has passed, and user acquisition is becoming increasingly difficult

In the past, your traffic started from 0-1, and the competitive pressure was relatively small.

There are not many companies in the same category, and users have no other choice. As long as you spend a small amount of money, users will come in an endless stream.

The low cost of acquiring customers has led to many businesses not paying much attention to user experience. Even if they gain 100 users, as long as there is one sucker willing to pay, the cost will be recovered.

In addition, the Internet is underdeveloped and users have a weak awareness of rights protection, which means that even if users are dissatisfied, they have nowhere to complain.

Now, with the increasing popularity of the Internet, there are more and more companies of the same type, the competitive pressure is increasing, and the cost of acquiring customers is becoming higher and higher.

Companies not only need to provide good user experience, but often also need to consider marketing and user operations, and constantly use different types of activities such as promotions, product upgrades, etc. to stimulate user consumption.

Users are becoming smarter and smarter, and if companies are not careful, users will "fall in love with someone else".

The book "Super Connection" believes that "traffic thinking" should be transformed into "touchpoint thinking" in the private domain.

It means to operate in depth and continuously every touchpoint that can connect with consumers, so as to continuously generate self-sustaining revenue.

The "super connection" system built by Tencent's ecosystem includes more than 60 operational touchpoints, both online and offline.

(2) Get rid of platform dependence and let users own their own products

I don’t know if you have noticed that, whether it is a startup or some large companies, it is really difficult to obtain traffic when they just build their own platforms in the early stages.

It is difficult to obtain independent traffic without spending money, so you have to rely on advertising or join platforms with traffic, and in this situation it is difficult for users to have their own control.

Therefore, creating one’s own private traffic pool is the best way for companies to get rid of platform dependence.

(3) Improving business stability and resisting risks

Do you remember the changes that the sudden outbreak of the epidemic in 2020 brought to all walks of life?

Offline stores are unable to operate, and companies have to move online. For some companies that have never accumulated online users before, this is undoubtedly a devastating blow.

However, for companies that have already accumulated online private domain traffic users, they can respond quickly, for example, through social networks, mini-programs, special flash sales, live streaming, etc.

On November 9, 2020, Youzan released its Q3 2020 financial report showing that in the first three quarters of 2020, the GMV of merchants served by Youzan reached RMB 72.3 billion.

Compared with the same period in 2019, the year-on-year growth reached 90%, and the number of new paying merchants was 45,328, a year-on-year increase of 22% compared with the same period in 2019.

Therefore, developing private domains is an effective way to resist crisis risks.

With private domain, enterprises can connect to consumers at any time and any place.

Next, let’s talk about the user level:

(4) With more and more choices, choice phobia becomes more serious

As society progresses, material wealth becomes more abundant and choices increase, which leads to information overload and makes it increasingly difficult to make choices.

This difficulty in making choices is called "overselection" in psychology.

In the past, businesses relied more on consumers looking for goods.

So a lot of advertising exposure attracts consumers.

However, as the product categories become more and more abundant, the advertising effect is getting worse and worse.

The urgent problem that needs to be solved now is not only to provide the option of "people looking for goods", but also to provide customized services of "goods looking for people".

Managing private domain traffic well can help users solve this problem. For example, can’t the popular review short videos on Tik Tok help users solve the problem of choice phobia?

To sum up: In the past, traffic was mostly obtained through purchase, or operators obtained it through free channels.

However, most of them are one-time transactions, and they do not do a good job of retaining users or guiding them to repurchase.

Managing private domain traffic well can not only cultivate your KOC/KOL, but also increase your brand influence, obtain more traffic, and be more conducive to the long-term development of the brand.

He Xinghua said in his book Traffic Generation:

In essence: what we lack is not users, but user interaction.

One user interaction is one flow of traffic, and continuous interaction will eventually turn into actual transactions.

Isn’t this the essence of private domain traffic? For those who are interested, I strongly recommend you to buy it and have a look.

2. After reading so many SOPs, can you do a good job of private domain traffic?

I don’t know when it started, but many of my friends have become obsessed with collecting the SOPs (Standard Operation Procedures) of various institutions.

Some people even think that if they master other people’s high-conversion SOPs, they can master the gameplay of private domain traffic.

Is it really useful to study other people’s SOP? It is useful and can be used as a reference for some private domain traffic gameplay.

However, you cannot think that you can do a good job in private domain traffic just by studying other people’s SOP. In this regard, I will talk about my thoughts on SOP from two aspects:

1. Why you shouldn't rely too much on SOPs
2. How to develop a SOP that suits you
3. Why you shouldn't rely too much on SOPs

1. Don’t over-rely on SOPs

Let me tell you a real case. Around 2019, I took over a new project.

This project had been running intermittently for more than a year before I took over, and the data was really bad. Almost no one came to the free public classes/trial classes, not to mention the subsequent conversions.

Later, my leader gave this project to me. I first learned about the project situation, made a user portrait based on the project situation, then analyzed the reasons why users did not come to the open classes/trial classes, and upgraded the experience class process according to the project situation.

The final data: 500 people signed up for the 9.9 yuan trial class, and then used the flash group to do a 2-hour community group registration activity, converting 100 people to the 2,000 yuan class, and realizing a revenue of 200,000 yuan.

When the event was over, I was really happy and felt that I had finally found a way to enable the community to generate revenue.

I feel that as long as I can train a few people, our department’s revenue will not have to worry about in the future.

So I happily reviewed the entire process of the event and generated a complete SOP.

Later, I gave the SOP to other friends in my group and led them to carry out new activities together, but the results of the second phase of the activities were particularly poor.

Later I summarized the reasons: the same SOP would have different effects when implemented by different people.

What affects the effectiveness of the entire event is not how wonderful the SOP is, but the care that the event operator has for the users.

When I was doing my first event, I was able to have in-depth communication with each user who participated in the event and understand each user's situation.

However, when it was handed over to other people later, it was not done in such detail, which resulted in the failure to attract users in the early stage, and it was too difficult to influence users in the later stage.

Therefore, what influences users is not the SOP but your heartfelt care for them.

Please remember that "no one can refuse you if you are truly kind to him". This is the underlying philosophy of private domain traffic operations.

2. How to develop a SOP that suits you

I told you before that you should not be obsessed with SOP, but that doesn’t mean SOP is useless. The best SOP is the one that suits you.

Next, let me tell you how to develop a SOP that suits you:

(1) Preliminary preparation

First of all, let’s talk about what preparations need to be done in the early stage of making SOP.

As the saying goes, never fight a battle without preparation. If we are not well prepared in the early stages, then the rest will be like crossing a river by feeling the stones, not knowing what problems will arise in each link, so early preparation is crucial.

① Understand the project and investigate user needs

This is a very critical step.

No matter what project we take on, we must have an in-depth understanding of it.

Take the project I worked on before: Economist Qualification Certificate as an example. When I took over this project, the first thing I did was to understand the project situation, which mainly included: the test situation (test situation, test difficulty, test population)

After understanding the project situation, the next more important thing is the competitive situation.

As the saying goes, "know yourself and know your enemy, and you will win every battle." When we don't have a deep understanding of the project in the early stages, the operating conditions of our competitors will often greatly help us formulate the overall operating strategy.

The main competitors for the economist qualification certificate exam are: Global Online School, Zhishang, China Accounting Online School, and Dongao.

I have made an in-depth understanding of the situations of these competitors: performance, advertising, team, products, and operational activities.

Seeing this, some people must be curious about how to conduct research on competitors. Main methods:

1. Find out about some of the internal staff of the competitor. If there are colleagues around you who have jumped from the competitor, you can ask them. If not, you can go to the competitor for an interview to understand the situation;
2. As for the product situation, you can check it out through the official website of the online competitor;
3. Mainly look at some official self-media accounts and official websites of competitors.
4. After understanding the project situation and the competition situation, we can basically know the user situation of this project.

The following two analysis methods can help us gain a deeper understanding of the project and users:

a. SWOT analysis

It is to list out various major internal strengths, weaknesses, external opportunities and threats through investigation, and arrange them in a matrix form. Then, using the idea of ​​system analysis, various factors are matched and analyzed to draw conclusions.

b. 5W1H analysis method

• W（what）：What is our product?
• W (who): Who are our users? Find out the types of our user groups.
• W (where): Where are our users? Find the scenarios where users exist. Taking economists as an example, users are mainly in enterprises and institutions.
• W (when): When is our activity?
• W (why): Why do users choose us? This is our core selling point
• H (how): How do we attract users?

Using the two analysis methods above, we can analyze it, and then we will be closer and closer to users.

② Determine your goals

The goal is a very important link in determining the direction of the entire SOP. Only by determining the goal can we know the purpose of the entire operation strategy.

This should be done according to our activity goals, such as:

Goal 1: Increase the number of followers of the official account

Goal 2: Number of lists brought by the activity

Goal 3: Event Sales

Goal 4: Private domain traffic growth

You can set any goal you want, but it is recommended that you do not set too many or too complicated activity goals. We want to have everything, but we often end up losing the big picture while ignoring the big picture.

For example, if our goals are performance and conversion rate, then the SOP of our entire event should be centered around these two goals.

(2) Develop a plan

After the preliminary preparations are completed, the next step is to formulate a SOP plan:

① Project framework and draft plan

Here we mainly formulate the activity process according to our activity goals. The following process is the process of an activity we have done before and is for reference only.

The processes for different activities are different. You can develop your own process based on your own activities:

② With materials and timeline

For different activities, materials must be prepared in advance and a time schedule for the materials must be drawn up.

The materials required for different activities are slightly different. The table below shows the materials that may be needed for most activities and can be used as a reference.

At the same time, several versions of some poster materials should be made to facilitate A/B testing later.

Once the materials are ready, it is time to carry out operational actions at various time points for the event. The table below is the basic action framework for the activity.

③ Bring the words, materials, time advancement, and executable plans to the time node

Now that we have a framework, we need to have different operational scripts for each day. Below I use Feishu, and write down the overall rhythm arrangement of the SOP, the details of the promoted products, data, bill of materials, and the scripts for each day after the course starts in different SHEETs.

Using online document tools not only allows team members to see it, but also makes it easier for us to review it later.

(3) SOP test

The SOP has been basically completed. The next thing to do is to start the activity~

The process of starting an activity is the process of testing our SOP.

As mentioned above, we have detailed data dashboards, and every day we will review the SOP based on the statistical activity data.

Then adjust the rhythm of our subsequent SOP at any time. Please remember that SOP is not static, but needs to be adjusted at any time based on our daily data review.

PS: SOP is just a standard operating procedure, not everything. In addition to following the SOP process, we need to do more to care for our users. As the saying goes, "No one can refuse you if you are really good to them."

Therefore, even with the same SOP, different people will produce different results.

The essence of private domain traffic operation is not SOP, but care from the heart.

3. My thoughts on the future of private domain traffic

The future is a word full of uncertainty. No one knows what the future will be like.

So I don’t dare to make any bold predictions about the future of private domain traffic. I can only share some of my own superficial thoughts.

I hope this helps you. If you don’t think it’s useful, you can ignore it:

1. User Experience

In the Internet age, users are becoming smarter and their attention is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.

If you want to attract users' attention, in addition to good marketing methods, the most important thing must be a good product.

I don’t know if you have noticed that some companies that don’t pay much attention to product services, but pay special attention to marketing, can often bring good exposure in the early stages.

But users are not fools. Such businesses are often one-time deals and it is difficult for them to last long.

But on the contrary, some companies put product quality and service first. Even if the initial publicity is not good, they can often maintain long-term success.

The company I worked for before was a vocational education company, and the project I was working on was a financial project.

My leader pays special attention to marketing, but not so much to product quality.

The project was indeed done very well in the past two years and the performance was booming.

However, since last year, the reputation of the entire project has become increasingly worse, and now the project has basically come to a standstill.

Of course, when I say we should pay attention to user experience, I don’t mean that marketing is not important.

Good user experience + good marketing is actually like adding wings to a tiger, allowing our company to survive for a long time.

2. Refined operations

The so-called refined operation is actually a manifestation of the application of operational thinking in actual work.

Operational actions will also be more detailed.

Different content is displayed to users in different life cycles, different types of users in the same life cycle, or even each user, and different operation strategies are adopted to complete the final conversion.

In layman's terms, it means to serve different dishes to different people:

• Pay more attention to user segmentation and conduct user analysis (behavior, equipment, channel, psychology, etc.).
• We pay more attention to the effective use of traffic. Unlike the extensive approach in the past, we emphasize precision, pay more attention to retention and conversion, and attach more importance to leveraging the value of existing traffic.
• More diverse data analysis methods and dimensions emphasize the effective use and full realization of data value.

For example, Luckin Coffee. If you haven’t placed an order on the APP for a long time, Luckin Coffee will push messages to you to guide you to place an order on the APP again.

For example, some fast-moving consumer goods in e-commerce will also push messages to users to encourage them to consume again based on the estimated time it will take for the products to be used up by the users based on the time they placed the order.

If you truly focus on user needs and think about what users think, then closing deals will come naturally.

The above are my views on private domain traffic, for reference only~~

Author: Operation has private enjoyment

Source: Operation private sharing