Content Promotion｜How to build private domain traffic?

As China's mobile Internet penetration accelerates, mobile social users have also seen a massive increase. The number of Chinese Internet users has exceeded 1 billion, approaching China's total population. This means that public domain traffic on the Internet is saturated, but competing companies are still increasing. There are too many people and too little meat, so demand exceeds supply and the cost of acquiring traffic is rising.

If the past was an era when everyone fished in the ocean together, then the next era is to raise fish by yourself. When you are in trouble, you must think of changes. The user management thinking of enterprises must change - from acquiring new users to maintaining old users. Thus, private domain traffic has emerged. Let’s talk about private domain traffic today.

The concept of private traffic

In the past six months, the hottest word in the marketing field is "private domain traffic", and operators have all mentioned "private domain traffic".

It has overshadowed previous terms such as "growth hacker", "fission distribution", and "traffic pool". But there are still many friends who don’t understand, what is private domain traffic?

What is private domain traffic?

The so-called private domain traffic refers to the fans, customers, and traffic accumulated by an account over which an individual has full control, which can be directly reached and used multiple times. For example, QQ numbers, WeChat numbers, fans or customers on social networks are all considered private domain traffic.

In contrast, the so-called public domain traffic refers to a huge traffic pool that we cannot control. We can obtain traffic by placing some advertisements, but most of the traffic cannot be used by you.

As for WeChat public accounts, Douyin accounts, Weibo accounts, Xiaohongshu accounts, etc., some people think they belong to public domain traffic, while others think they are private domain traffic. I think it can only be regarded as semi-private traffic, because although these traffics are deposited in your account, it is difficult for you to reach them freely because there is a layer in between. For example, if you launch a product, you can freely communicate with any member on WeChat, QQ personal account, or in QQ or WeChat groups to collect suggestions. However, on public accounts, etc., they are restricted by official rules and cannot be accessed freely.

So how do you tell the difference? Let me briefly talk about public domain traffic here.

What is public domain traffic?

Public domain traffic refers to the model in which merchants obtain traffic for sales through platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Ctrip, Dianping, Meituan, Ele.me, and Zhubajie.

Public domain traffic has three characteristics:

1. There will be some platform dividends in the early stages of the platform, and the traffic cost will be relatively low.
2. As the platform matures, traffic costs will become higher and higher.
3. Eventually the platform will become a channel to collect tolls

For merchants, if they enter a good platform early and operate it properly, they will get good dividends. However, if you join a platform during its mature stage, there will be no advantage in traffic costs, and you may have to pay a lot of high tuition fees due to not understanding the rules.

At the same time, for brand merchants, since the platform will eventually become a channel for collecting tolls, all transactions are equivalent to paying a penny to the channel.

The problems with these public domain traffic models have also given rise to brand merchants' demand for private domain traffic.

For brand merchants, private domain traffic is a necessary supplement to public domain traffic. Moreover, there are still dividends from the private domain traffic based on the WeChat system.

Therefore, it is a general trend for brand merchants to make up for the shortcomings of their private domain traffic as soon as possible.

The benefits of adopting a private traffic model

The most direct benefit is that it can save the channel costs of regular customers and directly increase the profit level. At the same time, turning regular customers into your promoters and achieving fission sales can expand the customer base. In addition, the accumulated data can be used to explore more commercial value.

1. Reduce marketing costs and have high cost performance

It costs a lot to direct traffic from public domain traffic and gain exposure, and this cost is still rising.

For example, paid ranking has gone from a few yuan per popular word to dozens of yuan per keyword now. Costs are rising, but effectiveness is decreasing. As for private domain traffic, such as WeChat groups or QQ groups, it is easier to organize activities and gain exposure. It is also a very convenient initial startup volume for activities.

For example, Taobao sellers bring in customers through paid through-train services. After the purchase, the customers return to the platform and still belong to Taobao users, not the merchants themselves.

If you have added 10,000 customers on WeChat or in WeChat groups, and they are willing to add you, that shows they trust you. When you launch new products and hold events in the future, you will have your own free promotion channels and can push the information directly to them.

Before this, you had to spend money on advertising and sending text messages. So, the more users you connect, the lower your future marketing costs will be.

It’s not just e-commerce, it’s the same with offline stores too, customers leave after buying, and you can only wait for them to come next time. If you add him on WeChat, you can actively contact him, update your Moments, and use group messages to expose him. If no connection is made, these will cost money.

2. Facilitate communication and feedback to reduce customer churn

Competition is fierce today, and your competitors’ new customers may have been your old customers yesterday. Connecting customers solely through products only remains at the level of buyer-seller relationships.

If a competitor launches a lower-priced and higher-quality product one day, customers may leave. So we also need to establish an emotional interactive relationship with customers.

Once a customer buys my product, he or she will often participate in activities in our VIP customer group and occasionally like and interact with me. This is not just a simple product buying and selling connection.

For example, we have accumulated fans through official accounts, Douyin, etc., but if we want to interact with fans and get some suggestions, it is difficult for both parties to communicate instantly and without obstacles. Private domain traffic is different. We can communicate freely through QQ, WeChat or social groups.

For example, in the past, when we held an event and launched new products, we would put up a roll-up banner at the door and wait for customers to come.

Later, the store manager suddenly opened a personal WeChat account in his own name. In the first two months, he asked customers in the store to add his WeChat, and they would get free side dishes or a 20% discount. In this way, that WeChat account soon accumulated a lot of regular customers.

At the same time, he also set up a VIP customer group, which gives priority to seats and an extra half pound of meat if you make reservations through the group. I also try to update the content of my Moments, occasionally organize new product tasting events, and like and comment on customers' posts when I have nothing to do. As time went by, we had more and more regular customers.

He also offered more discounts for consumption during free time periods, which alleviated peak dining times and increased revenue. It may seem time-consuming, but it is indeed effective. After all, the more exposure you give to customers, the greater the chance that they will come back to eat at your restaurant. To retain old customers, in addition to making good products, you should also frequently remind them of their memories.

3. More helpful in building the brand

Brand can be said to be a customer's perception of the corporate spirit. Once the influence is huge, it is loyalty. But it is not just related through product shaping, corporate mission culture, employee service, product experience, etc. A brand must make people feel warmth and trust.

We can shape the image of the company and brand through content output through official accounts and other channels. However, to maintain the brand image, users need to be perceived. The private traffic pool allows users to experience corporate services up close and enables users to communicate and provide feedback instantly when they have questions, which is beneficial to the company's brand communication.

In the past, I always thought that marketing was about attracting new customers, but today the times are different. I think user retention is more important. Attracting new customers without retaining them will die sooner or later. Besides, retaining users is the key to sustaining a business.

How to create your own private domain traffic

The following five keywords are the five key steps to start the private domain traffic pool:

1. Account maintenance
2. diversion
3. Character
4. Conversion
5. manage

1. Account maintenance

Maintaining an account is the most important task! Only after we have containers can we talk about using containers to carry users and perform traffic diversion, operations and conversions.

Maintaining an account is also a threshold that limits the large-scale development of private traffic pools! Many people started to build traffic pools with just a few WeChat accounts and employees, but if the volume was too large, it would lead to official bans. Scaling is not within the scope of this article and will be discussed next time.

If you want to maintain an account, you must have the awareness of maintaining the account. As WeChat rules become increasingly strict, if the security of your account cannot be ensured, all your efforts will be wasted once it is banned.

There are two common methods of raising accounts in the market:

The first category: raise it yourself. Your own employees register WeChat accounts and use the company’s dedicated mobile phones to maintain the accounts. Employees carry their mobile phones with them when going to and from work, and add customers to these WeChat accounts for work use. This is the most compliant method of maintaining an account, which means that every employee has an additional work mobile phone number, and all operations are human behavior and normal business behavior.

Currently, many small companies can build private traffic pools by relying on their own employees to maintain accounts. For example, if one number adds 3,000 customers, and there are 10 employees, and each employee has one number, then 30,000 customers can be added. Sufficient to cope with daily business dealings.

The second category: buying old numbers on the market. One risk of buying old accounts is that even if the old account is really an old account and all real-name operation history records are normal, if a large number of old accounts are purchased and employees operate them improperly, it may also cause the accounts to be blocked. Changing the login address itself is a sensitive behavior. If you have purchased an old account and want to migrate it, please proceed with caution.

2. Diversion

Traffic diversion means directing traffic into your private traffic pool.

Guiding users to add your WeChat account, or perhaps you actively request users to add their WeChat accounts, is a science. Now for e-commerce, the period between when users place an order and when they receive the goods is the golden period, and the approval rate can be as high as 90% or even higher. If the user is your old user and has been silent for a long time, it will be very difficult to reawaken such users. It is definitely easier when there is interaction with users. It is best to find a method that users are interested in based on the characteristics of your category. The simplest and crudest way of sending red envelopes is becoming less and less effective.

3. Character

Character setting is to create IP, and there is really a [real person] setting.

Many brands will insist that my WeChat account must have the brand logo as the avatar and the brand name as the nickname. WeChat is a social platform, and we hope that the friends in our circle of friends are real people. The person talking to me is a real person, not a cold brand. Of course, if the brand can provide users with a social experience, this can also be done. Most people still recommend using real people to establish IP characters.

The persona is that of a store manager: For e-commerce sellers, the store manager has his own life and business. This business may support the store manager’s dream, or it may be a small business to support his family. A full image of a store manager makes users value him as a trustworthy person rather than an unfamiliar store name.

The persona is a KOL: There are some areas that require concept output or knowledge-based people who need to spread knowledge to users. By integrating information and resources, you can create a KOL.

The personality is an expert or internet celebrity: Now is an age of appearance, and internet celebrities can emerge in many fields. If there is an expert or internet celebrity in the user's circle of friends, it feels like the appearance of the circle of friends has been greatly improved. In the fields of beauty, skin care, and clothing, you can become an influencer or internet celebrity.

In a word, different fields should create different IP personalities according to the characteristics of the field, establish connections with users, gain their trust, and make users feel that there is a valuable [real person] in their circle of friends.

4. Conversion

The ultimate goal of sales and building private traffic pools as a commercial behavior is to convert and monetize them.

Different companies have different approaches to sales conversion in private traffic pools. For example, e-commerce players usually release new products in the circle of friends, and users give positive reviews and post their orders, which gives users more opportunities to plant seeds. If you hold events to promote sales at specific times, the conversion rate will be 2 times or even higher than other e-commerce platforms. For example, after community players build a large community, they can use social advertising or other categories to convert and monetize.

5. Management

Operation management and user management means treating users as real people rather than traffic. [Real person] has personal information and user behavior.

The private domain traffic pool is a long-term process of user operation. How to protect users and how to achieve greater value realization and conversion are related to the operator himself. All bulk mass messages will be discovered by users. Bulk mass messages should be sent within the range acceptable to users, and the work that cannot be sent in bulk should be done by operations staff. When users feel your sincerity and build trust in you, subsequent conversions will become easier.

Build a private traffic pool and answer these 5 questions:

1. Do you have 3 WeChat accounts that are available at any time?
2. Have you thought about how to direct traffic to your personal account?
3. Do you have a personal WeChat account?
4. Is there a conversion path?
5. Is there anyone to help you manage the number?

If you have the answers to these 5 questions, congratulations, you have successfully launched a private traffic pool.

Merchants in which industries need private domain traffic solutions?

It is suitable for industries such as training and education, food and agricultural products, daily necessities, electronic products, toys, clothing, catering, life services, cultural tourism, etc. It can be considered that as long as the product or service is sold to consumers, private domain traffic solutions can be adopted.

Author: Elite Operations

Source: Elite Operations