“Hot” private domain traffic, “Shuanghuanglian” on the B-side?

The popularity of the concept of private domain traffic has its own reasons. But if all industries are really following the trend of private domain traffic and various success theories are emerging again, we may have to be wary of the possible bubbles that exist.

“Even if a person has his or her own independent opinions, once he or she joins a group that is bewitched by the ideology of people’s worship, he or she becomes part of the mob.”

The group psychology described by Gustave Le Bon in "The Crowd" seems to be constantly being confirmed. Moreover, similar mistakes will happen again and again.

On the individual C-end side, the Isatis root incident 17 years ago and the Shuanghuanglian incident this year were two such mass incidents involving a mob. The B-side, which has always been known for its rationality, will also be unable to withstand collective cognition. In the O2O era, various O2O operation masters and success gurus have reaped a lot of IQ tax. Recently, the private domain traffic that was all the rage last year has made a comeback, and some experts have emerged online to teach the B-side how to build a private traffic pool.

As has been often mentioned recently, the "black swan" of the epidemic is stimulating the "anti-fragility" of different groups. The popularity of the concept of private domain traffic is also based on this general background, and it has its own reasons for its popularity. But if all industries are really following the trend of private domain traffic and various success theories are emerging again, we may have to be wary of the possible bubbles that exist.

1. Behind the popularity of the concept: the demand for private traffic caused by the public "epidemic" environment

The epidemic has posed a huge challenge to all types of economies, large, medium, small and micro.

Large platforms have abundant financial resources, but the bigger the "ship", the more factors there are to consider and worry about. Coupled with the lack of grassroots labor such as couriers, the traffic pools of many platforms are threatened with stagnation. In addition, many leading brands, catering institutions, etc. are also facing operational pressure.

Since we cannot rely on the platform for the time being, building and tapping into private domain traffic seems to have become a life-saving straw in special times.

For example, the sports brand Anta has more than 30,000 employees and dealers involved in retail, and almost all employees are selling goods on WeChat Moments. The sales and brand support teams of each brand, as well as all management and shared teams, have opened micro-stores. Another example is Suning, which requires all management cadres (excluding terminal personnel) in the entire industry (headquarters and regions) to participate in the community sales of Suning Tuike, Su Xiaotuan, and Yundian mini programs.

We have recently seen many "all-staff sales" events like Suning and Anta. The original traffic pool was put on "pause" due to the epidemic, and "starting from scratch" became a top priority, allowing every employee to become a KOC and start tapping into the private traffic around them.

In fact, large platforms have long been trying to build private domain traffic. To a certain extent, live streaming with goods is actually about internet celebrities managing and interacting with their own private domain traffic, which ultimately enables them to complete delivery.

In the author's team's view, private domain traffic is like an alternative subscription-based e-commerce, and the community it exists in is equivalent to a service that individuals subscribe to. This subscription-like model usually has a higher repurchase rate, which can continuously attract users to pay and obtain better cash flow. Since it is possible to directly grasp the target users' preference data, it is natural for major platforms and brands to pay attention to private domain traffic.

In addition to platforms and leading brands, many small and micro e-commerce merchants, offline retailers, and restaurants have also realized the value of establishing their own private traffic pools during the epidemic.

From a direct perspective, the rise of private domain traffic is forced by the epidemic.

Especially the catering industry. At present, the catering industry should be one of the industries most severely affected by the epidemic during the entire Spring Festival.

According to Sina Technology, catering associations in Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Shandong and other places have sent official letters or open letters to the Meituan food delivery platform, stating that it suddenly increased commissions during the epidemic and that catering businesses have been overwhelmed during the epidemic. Nanchong Daily reported that the Nanchong Hotpot Association sent an online letter to the mayor of Nanchong Municipal Government, reporting that Meituan was suspected of raising commissions, monopolizing operations and engaging in unfair competition during the epidemic, damaging the interests of catering companies and the general public.

In my opinion, the controversy about the commission of food delivery platforms seems to have always been on the Internet, and it was not originally a contradiction. But when the offline doors are closed, the role of online channels will be magnified, both positive and negative. If the above report is true, it may also confirm that the cost for small players to rely solely on platform traffic is a bit high.

Meituan recently launched an upgraded version of the "Spring Breeze Action". Starting from March, the "Merchant Partner Commission Refund Plan" will be launched for food delivery. For high-quality food delivery merchants across the country, especially those whose business conditions are severely affected by the epidemic, the commission will be returned at a rate of no less than 3% to 5%. Of course, the specific response to this policy and the scope of its benefits may require further attention.

The root causes include the following aspects:

(1) Single entry has poor risk resistance

The traffic entrance is too dependent on a single platform, and once it encounters force majeure, it will become a lamb to be slaughtered. Therefore, the epidemic will force many "points" and "lines" that rely on the "surface" of the platform to actively seek more diversified ways.

(2) Public domain traffic is becoming increasingly expensive

E-commerce platforms, food delivery platforms, or some other Internet platforms generally face the problem of excessively high traffic costs. Correspondingly, platform merchants may need to bear certain traffic costs if they want to obtain more traffic support. Traffic, as a public resource, may not always be distributed fairly.

For example, e-commerce platforms may require merchants to do marketing, advertising, and bidding in order to obtain more traffic allocated by the platform. Similarly, there are support policies for food delivery platforms such as traffic and delivery range. The platform has the right to decide what kind of services merchants enjoy. It is also normal for the platform to provide support to those merchants who actively participate in the activities.

(3) From data-oriented to results-oriented

Previously, the "traffic-only theory" took root in various fields, and with traffic there would be real money. In the past two years, high conversion rate has become an indicator that is valued by businesses of different sizes. Internet platforms have no shortage of traffic, but in today's world of product homogeneity and diversification, platform-based search e-commerce seems to be somewhat far away from users in terms of conversion. Private domains and sinking are closer to users.

It can be seen from this that the popularity of the concept of "private domain traffic" is not out of thin air. For many fields, developing their own private traffic is indeed a high-quality solution to enhance "anti-fragility" and combat uncertainty. It is also an important means of "saving money" during a period of stable development.

2. There is no “master key” for private domain traffic: general gameplay cannot solve special problems

As the environment changes from people looking for information to information looking for people, the popularity of private domain traffic has become inevitable.

However, in an era where traffic quality is more important than traffic quantity, scenarios are more important than traffic, and retention is more important than attracting new customers, only when people, goods, and places are all right can effective transactions and conversions be achieved. The concept of private domain traffic has only become popular recently. From large listed e-commerce companies to small street restaurants, gyms, and insurance agents, everyone is building their own communities. However, many companies that claim to be developing "private domain traffic" are actually starting to use what was left over from micro-businesses.

Some communities are very vibrant, while others fade away after a short time. Tracy has not learned any success stories about private domain traffic, and does not recommend learning some so-called universal methods and then following them. Success that can be imitated on a large scale is unlikely to succeed. It’s just that it has been mistaken for private domain traffic too many times by others, so I have some understanding of how these communities die and what we need to be wary of.

• For example, Yunji Weidian, a listed company that now focuses on membership e-commerce, also focused on social e-commerce many years ago. Tracy was also a Yunji store owner, and she also split into nearly twenty store owners. At that time, Yunji had not yet been fined 9.58 million yuan, let alone listed. It had added countless cloud clusters, but now there are only a few left, and they are all filled with mini-programs and advertisements.
• Previously, when buying seafood, I joined the seafood group organized by the store. This store began to focus on same-city delivery within Zhengzhou. The store is still there and the owner has not changed, but the group has been silent for more than a year.
• Last year, in order to get rewards for recruiting new members, Tracy was asked to join an e-commerce discount group. After two months, the group owner became quiet and did not make a single purchase.

In addition, there are fitness groups next to office buildings, insurance groups created by college classmates who work as insurance salesmen... There are too many so-called communities on WeChat that have ended in failure.

In fact, it is not just small and micro businesses. Alibaba’s Taobao and Fenxiang e-commerce supported by JD.com also use WeChat communities and Moments to monetize. Recently, I was added to two groups named "Taoxiaopu" by my WeChat friends. After searching on Tianyancha, I learned that this is also a product of Alibaba. In the "Related News" column, I saw a report that JD.com launched Jingxiaopu on February 16, which is also positioned as a social e-commerce S2B2C model. Taobao Affiliate, Fenxiang e-commerce, Taoxiaopu, and Jingxiaopu can be regarded as the exploration of search e-commerce in building private domain traffic. The attention from Alibaba and JD.com has also made private domain traffic more popular.

These community operations, which mainly take the form of WeChat groups, are mainly connected through the circle of acquaintance relationship chains. From my personal experience, the reasons why several communities I joined died were different.

For example, a seafood restaurant that focuses on same-city delivery, although catering is a high-frequency category, chooses seafood, which is a less frequent category, and it is raw material to be processed. On the contrary, some food delivery groups specifically targeting office buildings, hospitals and other scenarios are doing very well and have successfully bypassed the blockade of Meituan and Ele.me. This shows the importance of service categories, consumption frequency, population positioning, and range positioning.

I have joined at least three or four fitness groups. In the groups, we often share some not-so-scarce sports knowledge and maintain the community in the form of content. The purpose is to mobilize people to go to offline gyms. There are strong traces of sales in their words and conversations. On the contrary, during this epidemic, the online live broadcasts of Super Monkey and Leke Sports had no sales orientation and the teaching was very professional. I felt that I was successfully "planted" and became the "private traffic" of a certain fitness anchor.

The last one is the e-commerce shopping discount group. With the help of e-commerce giants, this is also the largest private traffic community. The consumption habits we hope to cultivate are: when users have certain needs, they will actively ask the group owner whether there are relevant discount coupons; when users accidentally see a product with a huge discount, they will have the urge to buy it.

However, the track is a bit crowded at the moment, and no “long-lived” discount group has been seen so far. Various red envelope codes and discount coupons are flooding the group screen, and everyone is @ed one after another, which is very annoying. The product information is complicated and has no focus. In the long run, it will become the next WeChat merchant. People in the group will feel bored, and the group owner himself will not be able to persist because he will not see any commission for a long time.

In my opinion, the characteristic of private domain traffic construction based on WeChat groups is that the communication objects are limited, so the content instilled should be more specific and accurate. From the perspective of cognitive psychology, humans are a system that processes information. Too little information is not enough, but too much is equally harmful. Various red envelope discount groups want to tell the whole story in one go, but in the end, haste makes waste.

In addition to WeChat groups, apps, mini-programs, and online celebrities selling products are actually the main battlefields for private domain traffic operations. However, successful cases are rare, and there are more cannon fodder. Those who follow the trend of building private domain traffic in a frenzy may just end up paying an "IQ tax".

After learning about the lessons of failure, let’s take a look at what successful people have in common. There are different methods for successful private domain traffic operations, and there is nothing to imitate, but the final effect should be clear.

Successful cases, such as Perfect Diary, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili, are characterized by circle-based traffic. They are no longer based on the private traffic of KOCs like traditional micro-businesses, but rather on the establishment of private traffic that truly belongs to the brand.

Nicholas Christakis, in his social science book The Big Connection, writes that the act of connection itself is the result of natural selection. We must work with others, judge their intentions, influence them or be influenced by them.

The degree of "connection" is the basis of the strength of the association. Brands, KOCs and traffic establish connections in the demand dimension, interaction dimension, interest dimension and trust dimension. The superposition of these four dimensions leads to an increase in transaction volume. Without emotional sales, traffic is difficult to privatize.

For example, community marketing based on circle culture has common hobbies, mutual trust, and related products have emotional colors. This type of group will often take the initiative to give others the opportunity to "plant grass", just like some people who like the two-dimensional world will pay attention to some figures and comics, and then pay for these things.

For example, in live streaming sales, the “four dimensions” are based on the host. For example, Li Jiaqi now sells more product categories, but his earliest reputation was still “the No. 1 lipstick seller”. He understands lipsticks very well, and every color of lipstick seems to have a soul in his mouth. The content he advocates has also attracted a large number of fans. In addition, his team is almost strict in selecting products. Over time, Li Jiaqi and his fans have established demand dimensions, interaction dimensions, interest dimensions, and trust dimensions.

In my opinion, just by creating a group and posting on WeChat Moments, the correlation between brands, KOCs and users is very weak, and private domain traffic is not a disguise of WeChat business. Either they are brand fans or KOC fans, which can be called real private domain traffic. Either the brand finds its own brand personality, such as the two-dimensional community or the beauty community. Either KOC should establish a good persona for themselves, such as Li Jiaqi’s “male best friend” image and Wei Ya’s “sister next door” image.

Relationship building is not for immediate conversion. Many times it is to establish community relationships or simply maintain a brand image, and then it is possible to further build in-depth community business relationships. The result of sales activities is sales, and the result of marketing activities is deepening of connections.

Finally, for small and medium-sized businesses, escaping from the public domain currently seems to be a false proposition.

WeChat communities were originally WeChat’s own public domain traffic; to monitor and track codes through mini-programs and to gain access to user behavior data, one must first log in to WeChat, Baidu app, and Alipay; and for live streaming sales, the best results can only be achieved by combining the platform’s recommended traffic with the influencer’s own private domain traffic.

Take Ruhan as an example. Ruhan started to focus on live streaming sales very early, but now we see that Taobao is still the most popular live streaming sales platform. The "Internet celebrity + incubator + supply chain" model gives people the feeling that it allows Internet celebrities to tap into their own private traffic and then sell goods. So where does the Internet celebrity's private traffic come from? Lacking a stable and reliable public domain traffic entrance like Taobao, it may be difficult to open up the private domain traffic situation.

Acquire customers from public domain traffic and operate private domain traffic.

The era of relying entirely on platform traffic for a living is over. After the epidemic, more people should learn to "save money". The fact that public domain traffic has become more expensive does not mean that we have to give it up. Learning to extend the customer life cycle value is the key to dealing with uncertainty in the future.

Author: Liu Zhigang

Source: Internet Jianghu (ID: VIPIT1)