Recently I heard someone say that the core keyword in the field of online education in 2020 is private domain traffic. Obviously, this is a gimmick of some third-party service providers. There is nothing wrong with it. After all, Liu Run said that there is a business logic behind everything.

In fact, private domain traffic is basically consistent with other Internet concepts in the past. The original intention remains unchanged, which is to teach you how to reduce customer acquisition costs. However, in comparison, traffic pool thinking may be more convincing. This is a concept that can be compared with growth hacking.

The best proof is the rise of luckincoffee, which adopts the approach guided by traffic pool thinking in traffic acquisition, conversion and fission.

Of course, any concept has its limitations. If too many people follow the trend, people will stop believing in it. However, based on my own experience, the traffic pool thinking is still very helpful in terms of operational understanding and work guidance.

Today's article is intended to help you systematically understand the traffic pool thinking. Of course, this is just my personal opinion, and readers need to understand and think about the details on their own.

In fact, the core idea of ​​traffic pool thinking is just one sentence: find incremental growth from existing stock, and bring high frequency with high frequency. This sentence is very suitable for operational work. Therefore, as long as we firmly grasp and understand the meaning and core of this sentence, everyone can build their own traffic pool.

01. Distinguish between traffic pools and traffic sources

Which are traffic pools and which are traffic sources? The traffic pool includes APP, WeChat, DMP, community, and brand; the traffic sources include BD, social marketing, digital advertising, and traditional advertising.

Why do we need to distinguish between traffic pools and traffic sources? Personally, I think the goal is to reduce traffic costs in the long term. How to achieve it? Perform different actions on traffic pools and traffic sources.

The traffic pool can achieve long-term sustainability and continuous flow of traffic through operations. For example, a parent community can promote word-of-mouth communication among parents by setting rules and thresholds and providing content such as academic advancement and family education.

Traffic sources are one-time and very precious. They can either be converted directly or introduced into traffic pools for operation, such as placing headline information flow ads. The leads obtained must be converted the first time. If they cannot be converted, they must be labeled and other strategies can be tried later.

So, when do we generally use traffic sources? The answer is the initial stage of accumulating seed users and the rapid expansion after surviving, and short-term goals are often set at this time. As for the traffic pool, it will only be used in the long term.

In other words, one focuses on the long term and the other focuses on the short term. This is one of the more obvious differences between traffic pools and traffic sources.

Furthermore, the cost of the traffic pool is controllable, while the cost of the traffic source is not controllable, which is another difference.

For example, products that use apps as carriers can freely split, invite friends to give free lessons and discounts, and use the invested money directly to reward users. If the effect is good, it can continuously reduce customer acquisition costs.

If you place traditional advertisements, first of all, the price may be very expensive, and you have no bargaining power and can only act according to the requirements. Secondly, the effect may not be verified. Can you guarantee that passers-by will remember you when they see the billboard you designed? If not, it's a waste.

Therefore, in the long run, traffic pools must be the first choice, but the work of distinguishing them from traffic sources still needs to be done.

02. Brand is the most stable traffic pool

Brand is the most stable traffic pool. This is the most accurate description of the role of brand. So, how does a brand become a stable traffic pool? We need to do "one up" and "one down".

"One upgrade" means occupying the user's mind and doing a good job of positioning. There are three types of positioning in the traffic pool thinking: competitive positioning, functional positioning and dimensional positioning.

First of all, there is a strategy called reverse brand strategy, the essence of which is to reduce service items and improve service quality, or to use a popular term, “subtraction”.

For example, Google's minimalist search page. While other search engines are constantly adding various services, it goes the other way and reverses the competitive landscape with a bare page.

The positioning method under the guidance of this strategy is competitive positioning, which means finding areas where we are significantly different from our opponents. In simple terms, we have what others do not, and we are better than others in what we have.

In copywriting, you can use words such as "more, than, without, increase, not... but..." to reflect the comparative advantages.

One thing to remember is to make your positioning clear in one sentence or a few words, making it simple and easy to understand. For example, not all milk is called Telunsu, Baidu understands Chinese better, and Guazi.com, a used car direct sales website, has no middlemen to make a profit from the price difference.

There is also a strategy called hostile brand strategy, which is essentially a marketing strategy that does not use traditional methods, or even involves anti-marketing that goes against users. One of the strategies is to emphasize the functional features and special effects of the product, which is called functional positioning, or physical positioning.

In principle, the functions of the product should be very good, even unique, and the copywriting generally uses the sentence pattern of "use ..." to form a scenario-based slogan.

Of course, the best way is to combine the product's functional points for conceptual packaging, using more verbs and words that describe the effects. For example, the Mini Cooper of the Beetle, when you are tired and sleepy, you can drink Red Bull, Nongfu Spring is a little sweet, and you can talk for two hours after charging for five minutes.

The third positioning, which is opposite to the first two ideas, is not to compete with competitors under the same concept, but to upgrade to a higher dimension. The essence is to completely ignore the existing category definition and pull users out of their habitual consumption rhythm.

The principle is to be user-demand-oriented, creating new demands, new categories, and new areas that are suitable for innovative products.

The copy often uses words such as "xxx industry pioneer, redefining xxx, xxx revolution" to attract attention. For example, Rio’s pre-mixed cocktail concept and Xiaomi’s Internet TV concept.

"One drop" is to actively contact users and strengthen their memory of the brand by creating strong memory symbols and scene marketing.

As a practitioner of traffic pool thinking, luckincoffee designed a unique deer head and royal blue brand to attract young people, and chose a location near office buildings, focusing on office scenes. It also adopted the method of precise delivery and IP leveraging.

In terms of precise delivery, offline targeted advertising is carried out. For example, you can see Luckin Coffee posters with Tang Wei in the elevators of various office buildings. Online, WeChat's LBS is used for precise targeting. For example, you will see Luckin Coffee ads when you browse the Moments.

Let’s look at how the brand leveraged IP. First, Tang Wei and Zhang Zhen were invited to be the spokespeople to attract the attention of the white-collar group. Secondly, the brand used the unique deer head image and blue tone, and leveraged the World Cup, various film and television IPs, celebrities, and even competitors to flood the Internet with ads and trigger a trend.

03. Fission is the lowest cost way to acquire customers

Fission is currently a low-cost way to acquire customers, and many people like to equate it with "growth hacking" and "traffic pool thinking". This is wrong. Fission is just a means or model of acquiring customers, but it does play a very important role in the construction of traffic pools.

I will not elaborate on the methodology of fission here, but will only make a relatively systematic classification of fission.

(1) Classification by power

It takes motivation to get users to participate in fission, and the most fundamental motivation comes from user needs. Based on this, fission can be divided into three categories:

• Word-of-mouth fission: Users experience and use products because of need or influence. When the product or service exceeds expectations, users will spontaneously recommend it and generate word-of-mouth.
• Social fission: Users participate in interesting and creative activities out of curiosity. When the activities meet social needs, users will spontaneously spread them to satisfy their desire to show off.
• Interest fission: Users are forced or actively share because of some attractive benefits, such as red envelopes, discounts, etc., in order to satisfy their desires.

There are many cases mentioned above, such as word-of-mouth customer acquisition in the education industry, Lian Coffee’s pocket coffee shop, and fission red envelopes from Ele.me.

(2) Classification by mode

In addition to motivation, fission also has different modes. The reason for the different modes is the distribution of benefits between sharers and those shared. Based on this, it can be divided into five types:

• Referral fission: you get benefits after sharing.

This fission method is suitable for products with a high single experience cost, especially virtual products, such as paid knowledge products, online education courses, etc. The most common way is to share free classes, offset the actual price through sharing, and reach more potential users at the same time.

Case: Youshu’s community fission and Himalaya’s sharing and free listening.

• Invitation fission: both the inviter and the invitee receive benefits at the same time.

Attracting new users from old users is the essence of fission. If you want old users to be willing to attract new users, the fastest way is to reward old users for attracting new users, and also reward new users at the same time. This has become the standard way of playing, especially suitable for apps and WeChat public accounts.

Case: Invitation gifts for UCAR, and give-one-get-one promotion for Luckin Coffee.

• Group fission: the inviter and the sharee rs form a group to enjoy the benefits.

This is already a relatively basic way of playing. Users initiate group purchases and use social networks to let their friends and themselves buy products at low prices, thereby achieving a fission effect. The basic logic is to gain profits through sharing.

Case: e-commerce or knowledge payment platforms such as Pinduoduo and Qianliao.

• Distribution fission: that is, developing downlines to earn commissions.

This is a very popular way of playing at present. Its essence is the secondary compound interest of direct sales. As long as the user recommends a friend or a friend of a friend to buy, the recommender can obtain a certain percentage of the profit, that is, the commission. The promoter model and fission poster model of some platforms are both distribution fission. Distribution and invitation are different. The former is that paying users invite paying users and both of them make profits, while the latter is not necessarily the case that paying users make the invitation, and only the inviter makes a profit.

Case: Paid knowledge courses that have been popular on New World, NetEase, Sanlian Weekly, etc.

• Crowdfunding fission: that is, inviting friends to help and gain benefits.

Crowdfunding is also a popular way of playing, which mainly utilizes the emotional identification among friends and the external form of welfare. The welfare mainly includes discounts, products, etc.

Case: Bargaining activities in social e-commerce and the help of various mini-programs to unlock.

(3) Classification by platform

Sometimes, most people think that fission only happens on WeChat. In fact, it is not true. Any platform can do fission. However, according to this classification, there are three main types of fission:

• APP fission: All fission methods are based on APP, with the aim of promoting APP downloads. Sharing channels are WeChat, QQ, Weibo and other platforms.
• WeChat fission: Currently most fissions are carried out on this platform, and a relatively complete fission industry chain has emerged. The main tools include official accounts, WeChat groups, personal accounts and mini-programs.
• Product fission: The main form of offline fission, which few people pay attention to. It can be combined with online or do pure offline promotions, such as collecting bottle caps, collecting bottle bodies, collecting paper cards, etc., and a more famous case is ofo's Minions car.

Let me share the latest classification standards of fission by Mr. Yang Fei, the author of "Traffic Pool", namely compound interest, crowdfunding, and sharing:

• The characteristic of compound interest is mutual benefit, such as luckycoffee's gamified fission gameplay, where you can get coupons in various ways with your friends.
• The characteristic of crowdfunding is that everyone helps me, such as Pinduoduo's group buying fission, where you can get products at a low price only by inviting friends to join the group.
• The characteristic of sharing is that I help everyone, such as the family account of Shenzhou Special Car, and you can make purchases by binding your family members' accounts to your own.

Of course, this is just a rough classification. Different products are suitable for different fission methods, and the specific social relationship chain design requires careful consideration.

In fact, fission is a very important practical link in the traffic pool thinking, especially the sentence "all products can be fissioned, all creativity can be shared", which amplifies the effect of fission to the extreme. Taking luckincoffee as an example, let’s briefly review its fission methods and promotional techniques:

First order is free: Download the luckin coffee app and get a free drink.

Give them a coffee: When friends download the app by sharing the link, they will each get a free drink.

50% off every week: Follow the official WeChat account and receive 50% off coupons through IP implantation every week.

Light Meal Storm: Enjoy all light meals at 50% off.

Coffee Wallet: Buy drink coupons, recharge two and get one free, recharge five and get five free. During Double 11, recharge one and get two free, limited to five.

Place an order and get a coupon: Purchase any product and you will get one of 20 coupons. The discount depends on your luck, and the rest can be shared with friends.

Among these marketing measures, giving TA coffee and giving coupons when placing an order are the main ways of fission. Sending TA coffee for free is an attraction that entices users to actively share it with their friends. All their friends need to do is download the app, and the threshold is very low. This not only increases the number of users, but also benefits them.

In comparison, the effect of sending coupons when placing an order is better. First of all, it needs to be shared and through gamification, such as slot machines, claw machines, trying your luck, etc., to get random discount coupons. Although there is a high threshold, it is interesting. Secondly, it is limited to 20 people, which is very suitable for sharing in WeChat group scenarios to increase the level of fission.

It can be said that the method of giving coupons when placing an order can not only increase the frequency of sharing and the scale of customer acquisition, but also further stimulate consumption and improve retention.

However, if you study the luckycoffee App carefully, you will find that there are slightly more entrances to send TA coffee, and the coupons will only be displayed after the order is placed. This shows that Luckin Coffee hopes to achieve user growth through mature social relationships, and sending TA coffee and the social attributes of coffee just fit the bill.

04. Retention first

Reducing customer acquisition costs does not depend on building a traffic pool, retention is also important.

Everyone is familiar with the AARRR model. Retention is between activation and monetization. It is hard to imagine that it is at the core position, but after careful consideration, you will find that growth must rely on retained users, because only they will pay and spread the word, and only then will they have the value of being activated.

So how do you ensure retention?

The first point is to change your mindset, that is, from customer thinking to user thinking.

What is customer thinking? Spend money to buy volume, make a one-time deal, and don’t have your own data. A common example is companies that used to rely mainly on advertising. They have high marketing costs and it is difficult for them to survive for long.

What is user thinking? Self-built traffic, multiple conversions, and own data. A typical example is Baby Playing English, which uses communities and trial classes as conversion methods and has over 300,000 paying users.

It can be seen that only under the guidance of user thinking can we have our own traffic, retain existing stock and create more increments.

The second point is the most core sentence in the traffic pool thinking: existing stock brings incremental growth, and high frequency brings high frequency.

How to increase the existing stock? It’s very simple, just let users share. The premise of sharing is that users use the product frequently, but not all products are used frequently. What should we do? Increase frequency by creating more contact points.

What kind of products have more touch points? The answer is low-priced, high-frequency products.

Therefore, if you have a product with high frequency and high price, low frequency and high price, or low frequency and low price, you can transform it into a product with the characteristics of "low price and high frequency" through special design. For example, Weibao is a typical high-priced and low-frequency product. It significantly increases the frequency by giving away free insurance and publishing personal monthly reports, thereby increasing user retention and sharing.

The third point to ensure retention is to use DMP and PBL to operate and tap users.

The so-called DMP is a user data labeling platform that can implement more precise actions based on user tags, such as precise targeted delivery, personalized message reminders, and personalized activities for old customers to bring in new customers.

However, I don’t want to discuss how to use DMP, but the application logic behind it - user segmentation.

For example, community users can be divided into three tiers based on points. The first tier grants management rights to new groups to help form new communities. The second tier designs point reward activities to help activate existing communities. The third tier provides regular benefits to awaken silent users.

Therefore, whether with the help of machine or manual analysis, user segmentation is beneficial to retention. As long as different operational actions are implemented for different types of users, operational efficiency and retention effects can be significantly improved.

In addition to stratification, another tool that can be used to improve retention is the gamification model PBL, namely points, badges, and leaderboards. Points can increase user stickiness. For example, in Panda Mini Class’s training camp, users can earn gold coins that can be exchanged for prizes by checking in, commenting, and sharing. Badges can give users a sense of accomplishment. For example, Zhihu users can obtain matching titles and achievements by completing corresponding tasks. Rankings can increase users’ desire to share and repurchase. For example, luckincoffee’s “Chasing a Million Big Coffees” event ranks users based on the number of items they consume.

We can break down the "Million-dollar Celebrity Competition" event in more detail and gain a deeper understanding of the retention thinking of the traffic pool.

First, the app opens with a pop-up window to remind users that if they buy 7 items in the app every week, they will be able to share 5 million on Sunday. The blue "View Details" button is very eye-catching and easy to attract clicks.

Secondly, it displays consumption status, and there is a gray progress bar. When you buy one item, it will turn partially blue. In addition, it also reminds you of the quantity threshold and ranking, which will promote purchasing behavior.

Finally, it is the ordering operation after the stimulation of the first two steps. There are two options in this step. One is "I want to add an order", which can directly jump to the product consumption page to complete the order.

The other one is "I want to form a team", which displays the team formation rules and tells you that you can lower the threshold for sharing by inviting friends, thereby forming dissemination, completing fission, and further expanding the scale of the activity.

By breaking down the steps, we can find that the rules of this activity are very simple, the purpose is very clear, consumption is the main focus, and communication is secondary. It combines the two and is a very cleverly designed activity.

Disassembly is only the first step. Next, we need to understand the underlying mechanism behind it, which is the gamification mechanism, or more specifically, the combination of "reward mechanism + feedback mechanism + cooperation mechanism + competition mechanism".

(1) Reward mechanism

The essence of the reward mechanism is a positive evaluation of user behavior. The common form is the reward after completing the game behavior, such as clearing a level, signing in, etc. The purpose is to motivate you to form a certain behavioral habit.

The reward mechanism can serve as a prompt and guide for behavior before it begins, or it can provide positive feedback incentives after the behavior begins.

Like Luckin Coffee's competition for millions of big names, 5 million can be divided up, which means that before the behavior begins, users are treated as targets and are driven to place orders and invite people according to instructions until they get a share of the 5 million.

In addition, the amount of bonus to be shared is not fixed, which can easily stimulate the gambler mentality. This is another aspect of the reward mechanism that encourages action.

(2) Feedback mechanism

The purpose of the feedback mechanism is to satisfy the user's curiosity about their own behavior performance, such as how the task was completed, whether it was good or bad, how far it was from the goal, etc. The common form is the degree of task completion.

If users spend time and energy to complete tasks and see that their workload has been reduced, their completion rate has been improved, and they have made obvious progress, they will feel a sense of pride and will be more motivated to complete the tasks. At the same time, timely feedback can further stimulate users.

In Luckin Coffee's competition for millions of big names, the more eye-catching reminder that "x items have been completed" and the consumption progress bar are feedback mechanisms that let you know how far you are from the bonus.

(3) Cooperation mechanism

The cooperation mechanism refers to users with the same goals, who work together to complete tasks more easily through mutual cooperation, encouragement, supervision, and collaboration, thereby creating a sense of belonging and security. A common form is to form a team to complete tasks, such as checking in, answering questions, and playing against each other.

In the event of competing for a million big names, by inviting friends to form a team, two people can complete the task of consuming 7 items per week, and each other can receive bonuses and titles, which is a reference to the cooperation mechanism.

The advantage of this is that by lowering the threshold, it can greatly stimulate the sense of participation, while expanding the coverage of the event to a wider range of people and achieving fission, which I think is the most attractive aspect of this event.

(4) Competition mechanism

The competition mechanism is a system adopted to further stimulate user behavior, and the most common form is the ranking list.

Rankings take advantage of people's desire to voyeurism and comparison psychology, allowing users to see the gap between themselves and others, stimulating them to do more tasks in order to achieve the goal of surpassing others. Once they have achieved the goal of surpassing others, they can enjoy the feeling of showing off.

In fact, there is no ranking list in this competition among millions of big names, but users can see their own ranking, which can also let users know how far they are from sharing the rewards.

What's even more cunning is that it will mark "xx pieces" next to the top 5,000, with the purpose of telling you that if you consume this amount, you can get more money. As for the reason behind it, it divides the 5 million into two parts. One part is 1 million equally divided among the top 5,000, 200 yuan each, and the other part is 4 million divided among those outside the top 5,000.

Obviously, it is best to be in the top 5,000, because there is a guaranteed 200 yuan, but after 5,000, you may not get much money.

According to observations, the number of people participating in the sharing each week is around 140,000. Excluding 5,000 people, the remaining 135,000 people can obviously get less than 200. Therefore, if you want to get more money, you should enter the top 5,000. The way to do this is to buy more products and consume more. This is the routine of the ranking list.

What is the way to improve retention among the millions of big names? It is the user's opening frequency and consumption frequency. The most important thing is the consumption frequency. If you want to increase the frequency in a short period of time, the best way is to provide consumption subsidies.

However, simply providing consumption subsidies, such as coupons for consumption and red envelopes for orders, will make users bored and unoriginal. It is obviously more sophisticated and more effective to guide users purposefully in the form of gamified tasks.

Because in the traffic pool thinking, the retention methods of different products are different, which is mainly related to frequency and price. The lower the price and the higher the frequency, the better the retention. Zhulu Million Big Brands uses bonus distribution to lower the overall price of the original product and uses gamification mechanisms to increase the user's consumption frequency.

In short, by changing user thinking, increasing user frequency, user segmentation and gamification operations, retention can be significantly improved and the stock can be turned into incremental growth.

05. How to convert traffic pool

Brand solves the problem of "who are the users", fission solves the problem of "how do users come", and conversion solves the problem of user payment.

There are actually many forms of conversion. I personally divide them into delivery, cooperation, live broadcast, discounts, and renewal.

Cooperation is more of a BD responsibility, requiring more complex event planning and personnel allocation. Live streaming, discounts, and renewals are often essential elements of some knowledge products, and the specific design requires some marketing thinking, which will not be elaborated here. Moreover, all of the above can be achieved here in "delivery", because delivery is a form of cooperation, and the content of delivery will also involve live broadcast, discounts and other content.

In the traffic pool thinking, delivery is a relatively effective but high-cost conversion method. For operators, the delivery involved is mainly public account delivery.

There are two important parts in the public account launch: one is the soft copy and the other is the landing page. Except for the different display methods, the design logic of the copy is almost the same. To launch a soft copy or landing page with conversion effect, the following six elements must be present:

• User thinking: The writing of soft articles and the introduction of landing pages should conform to user logic, so that users know "what, why, and how".
• Selling points: Sort out the core selling points, brands, and event information, and display them in a prominent position. The images should be brief and the language should be straightforward.
• Herd mentality: Be good at taking advantage of the herd mentality by using phrases such as "xxx user has registered to use" and "xxx user has placed an order".
• Core value: Tell users what services the product can bring, what value it has, what effects it has, how big the discount is, etc.
• Authoritative Testimonials: Display authoritative certifications and customer testimonials to lower the psychological threshold for users and enhance trust.
• Conversion entrance: Provide an entrance where users can leave valid information, such as a QR code. Don’t leave too much information, just the most critical ones.

As long as these six elements are done well, a soft article or landing page with conversion effect will be born, so be sure to think about these six points carefully.

In general, traffic pool thinking is not a new way of thinking, but it is systematic and effective enough. If you can master it well, you can turn any huge or precious traffic into a self-growing pool.

Traffic is precious, and traffic pool is even more precious. If I have to choose, I will definitely choose the latter.

Author: Wild Mushroom Dugu

Source: Wild Operation Community