How to build private domain traffic from scratch?

In the face of huge traffic, no one can resist it. Social platforms can bring enough traffic, but they need to be properly directed and maintained to deposit the traffic into communities and private domains , so that the traffic can become real “retention”.

Recently, a public account named "Pretend It's Heaven" had two articles with over 100,000 views and gained nearly 400,000 followers in just one month. One of the articles was even forwarded by the People's Daily and had over 65 million views. This undoubtedly brings the concept of "private domain traffic" back into people's attention. Let’s take a look together below.

01. Two articles with 10w+ each in one month and 40w+ followers, pretending to be a counterattack from heaven?

Looking back, when the voices all around were basically pessimistic and the official accounts were overshadowed by their twin brother "short videos", the opening rate and reading volume of the official accounts continued to decline. Is there still a chance to enter the market now? This is undoubtedly a common problem for all content entrepreneurs. Although the opening rate of public accounts has dropped significantly in recent years, on the other hand, it is also conducive to the screening of content, forcing people to create better works.

Pretend to be Paradise undoubtedly delivered a result that exceeded expectations at the beginning of 2020, causing a number of brand owners to begin to refocus on the task of building their own private domain traffic.

Relying on the various content platforms that have developed in the mobile Internet environment in recent years, and relying on the attention models of these content platforms, establishing a company's own private domain traffic model is undoubtedly an issue that brands should rethink.

We have all noticed that in recent years, the relationship between content platforms represented by official accounts, Weibo, Toutiao, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. and their users has become a "following" relationship. This function allows users to follow content accounts that interest them, turning the relationship between the account and the reader into a stable reading relationship.

In the past, there was no way to connect brands and consumers using a tool. However, the emergence of this content platform has provided everyone with such a valuable tool for connecting users. In theory, such a content platform can help various brands connect all users.

This highlights the value of private domain traffic. Compared with public domain traffic, private domain traffic forms a further relationship between users and companies and brands, a "private domain connection relationship". At the same time, compared with public domain traffic, the key is that this is traffic that the brand itself can control.

The sudden popularity of "Pretend It's Heaven" further proves the indispensable position of WeChat official accounts in private domain traffic. It can be said that in the face of the impact of short videos and other methods, official accounts still occupy an important position in private domain traffic. On the one hand, although the opening rate of official accounts has declined in recent years, the official accounts that have survived after the test of time are undoubtedly giants in the traffic pool. On the other hand, in various publicity and warm-up links of the brand, countless expectations have been achieved or even exceeded through the official account platform.

Nowadays, public domain traffic is tending to be saturated, competing companies are still increasing, big brands occupy a dominant position, there are too many people and too little meat, and the demand exceeds the supply, so the existence of private domain traffic is undoubtedly a breakthrough.

02. Pinduoduo first, DingTalk later, the rise of private domain traffic

In addition to the sudden popularity of "Pretend It's Heaven" which proves the indispensable position of public accounts in private domain traffic, we can see the rise of the Wechat business army who have been making good use of private domain traffic earlier. They conduct marketing and sell goods through social platforms. You can see them promoting the products they represent on their homepages everywhere, and the phrase "After three months in the industry, you can get XXX" is rolling in. Some people yearn for it, some people sneer at it. Although there is some exaggeration, it undoubtedly confirms the huge role of private domain traffic.

At the same time, even Dingding, which was besieged by elementary school students, released its ultimate move. On February 25, at the DingTalk 5.0 new product meeting, DingTalk officially launched a new feature called "Circles", which aims to achieve efficient private domain traffic operations.

Currently, on the DingTalk homepage, you can see the "Circle" by entering through the "Discover" button. Specifically, it can be divided into four categories: internal circle, online teaching circle, business exchange circle, and community operation circle. Each different circle focuses on different topics, and users can discuss, live broadcast, post topics, etc. in the circle.

As traffic acquisition becomes increasingly difficult and expensive, how can companies find new traffic entrances? DingTalk 5.0 launched Circles, fully opening up the private traffic pool for the first time.

Enterprises and brands can use DingTalk Circles for free to manage private communities. Internally, it can help build an open, transparent, and dynamic organizational culture; externally, it can connect upstream and downstream partners and fans to form a digital community.

Different industries and groups can use circles to carry out digital operations of the community, such as work and business circles, life and entertainment circles, matchmaking circles, house rental circles, street dance circles, Taobao shopping cart blind date circles, etc. Circle is undoubtedly a digital traffic pool operation platform for all brands or enterprises.

In addition to DingTalk, the one we are most familiar with is Pinduoduo, which has also begun to develop its own private traffic pool.

Recently, many users have discovered that Pinduoduo is inviting users to enable a social group-buying sharing function called "Pin Xiaoquan" to "see what friends are buying." The entrance is located directly below the banner on the homepage of the Pinduoduo App. Pinduoduo will automatically recommend adding address book friends to users who have authorized the reading of contact information. After the function is activated, users can not only share their own group buying dynamics, but also see the group buying information and comments publicly provided by their friends. This may be Pinduoduo’s first attempt at private domain traffic on its own platform.

After all, Pinduoduo's move this time is more like an e-commerce version of Moments, which is very similar to WeChat Moments. Pinduoduo has also added social attributes to Pinxiaoquan. Users have Pinxiaoquan QR codes and can establish social relationships on a larger scale through the Pinxiaoquan QR codes. There are also social functions such as "likes" and "comments" for interaction under order dynamics.

When e-commerce platforms have "circles", turning friends in life into product recommendation experts, through the buyer's own circle of friends, it undoubtedly directly expands the audience range of a certain product. People's efficiency in receiving and absorbing information becomes higher, and they can directly purchase on the platform, thus facilitating the completion of transactions.

Whether it is DingTalk or Pinduoduo, they are actually sending signals of attacking private domain traffic. As individuals, our network resources can only serve ourselves. But when thousands of "circles of friends" gather together, the power is undoubtedly as strong as a tornado.

Whether it is the "Circle" of DingTalk 5.0 or the "Pin Xiaoquan" of Pinduoduo, they are all the development of private domain traffic based on social relationships.

03. How can brands build private domain traffic from scratch?

Whether in previous or future development, or even during this epidemic, the important role of private domain traffic has always been unable to be ignored.

As we all know, since everyone is staying at home, it is inevitable that offline stores will be impacted. Faced with the loss of customer flow, and the continued existence of rental and labor costs, merchants will certainly not sit idly by. It is obvious that merchants are turning their attention to the online world. In addition to the common selling methods such as e-commerce platforms and live streaming platforms, another method is to make use of private domain traffic.

Especially when the current dividend has peaked and the cost of acquiring customers is high, starting from the private domain makes acquisition effortless. After all, the current situation is "whoever gets the traffic gets the world". Kuang Ren believes that there are three main points for brands to build private domain traffic:

1. Technology platform, build your own APP. APP is the portal website of the enterprise in the era of mobile Internet. Everyone knows that in the PC era, one needs to build a corporate portal website. In the mobile era, companies must have their own portal APP, especially large companies and big brands. If you don’t have your own APP in the mobile era, it means you have been cleared out.

From the traffic perspective, developing one's own APP, establishing user connections, and using the APP to build one's own private traffic pool are actions that companies must complete.

2. Content platforms, namely official accounts, Toutiao, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. When building a content platform, you must plan from three aspects: linking, dissemination, and selling. The key to building a content platform is to establish user connections and leverage various content platforms to create your own private traffic pool.

Enterprises need to build a content platform matrix, that is, to make use of all content platforms that have link value and have become the focus of target users. Therefore, it is also of utmost importance to use content platforms to build a private traffic pool for their own brand.

3. Social platform, mainly represented by WeChat. The traffic pool value of WeChat is very large: the three major modules of official accounts, WeChat Moments, and WeChat groups all have very strong traffic pool value. In the current social communication environment, the effects of WeChat public accounts will definitely be stronger than previous advertising communications. So, from a certain perspective, WeChat official accounts are a very valuable private traffic pool.

The development of mobile Internet has brought us a new and very important marketing value tool - private traffic pool; future marketing must be based on marketing changes in operating traffic; learning to operate private traffic is a compulsory course for all companies and brand owners.

Author: PR Madman

Source: PR Madman