I went to Northeast China to do private domain business: it seems to have many difficulties, but it is also a fertile soil!

The private domain market in Northeast China is gradually showing its huge potential. Although it is still in its early stages and faces many difficulties, this black land also has advantages beyond imagination and is a private domain treasure worth cultivating.

“The Northeast is actually very suitable for private domains.”

"Why?"

"Because Northeastern people are warm, hospitable, efficient, and focus on solving problems efficiently, it is very easy to make friends with them. It is a natural place for private domains."

This is a point of view mentioned by a startup team in Northeast China during a chat with Jianshi. Business owners in Northeast China are eager to learn, willing to spend money, and willing to make reasonable investments for business growth. He strongly suggested that Jianshi pay more attention to the private sector in Northeast China.

This is different from past perceptions. Compared with the explosive popularity of live streaming, it seems that the private domain in Northeast China is quite stable and slightly less in terms of gameplay innovation and the emergence of benchmark cases.

But now the situation is very different, and many talented people have returned to the Northeast to do private domain. They found that this black land is the current value depression of private domain and is more worthy of serious cultivation.

1. Entrepreneurs look to the private sector in Northeast China

At the beginning of 2024, Wu Xi resigned from her position as the head of private domain at Kingsoft Document. Prior to this, she was also in charge of New Oriental's private domain. Both are well-known large companies in the industry. They attach great importance to traffic, so they are willing to invest in various new trends including private domain. As a result, she has accumulated a lot of rich experience, which she once shared at the Jianshi Private Domain Conference and was highly praised.

The reason for leaving the company was to start a business. Wu Xi still wanted to do private domain, but she just didn't figure out how to start. It was definitely a good choice to put the company in Beijing. First, in China, the five major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou are the most advanced in the private domain, with a good atmosphere and high acceptance from users and companies. Second, her own connections and resources are also there. For example, as soon as she said she was leaving, a super large company came to her and hoped that she could help with consultation and simply take over the private domain agency operation.

She also took the opportunity to think about many things she wanted to do, including "wanting to create a private domain talent solution platform" and "private domain consulting agency" and so on.

But these do not seem to be the best entry points. For example, "the consulting industry has too much duplication, it is difficult to build core barriers, and it is late to enter the market. Without a sufficiently fierce and experienced team, it is difficult to help customers."

In addition, 2024, which is this year, is still a conservative and cautious year. Although many companies clearly "value" the private domain, and the profit and cash flow contribution brought by the private domain are increasing year by year, the corresponding investment is being cautiously controlled - everyone is reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

While helping the big company, Wu Xi was thinking about how to start. Not long ago, she suddenly came to see him and said:

"I'm going to set up my company in Shenyang."

Compared with the leading cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, the private sector in Northeast China is actually at an early stage. If the leading cities are calculated with 10 points, the private sector in Northeast China may only reach 1 point.

A small number of companies are trying, but because they are not familiar with cutting-edge methods and trends, the results are not particularly good. There are no particularly outstanding cases in the country. If you go there with the mature methods of the cutting-edge team, you will almost face a huge market that is yet to be explored.

Is the Northeast really interested in private domains? Wu Xi talked to some local friends and entrepreneurs and found that everyone knew what private domains were and was willing to try them. However, they were not so good at recruiting people, deciding how to play, and finding resources.

Now that the demand has been confirmed, Wu Xi has decided to focus the company, team and business on the Northeast. "As a Tianjin native, I can go to revitalize the Northeast (private domain)."

Liao Rong saw similar needs as Wu Xi. To some extent, as the CEO of Baishi Interactive, he was one step faster than Wu Xi - he had already established a branch in Northeast China and started to accompany several clients.

"We held a closed-door meeting in Changchun, and more than a dozen leading companies showed up at once, all of them were top executives or senior managers, far exceeding our expectations."

In his opinion, in the past, driven by the epidemic, many local big businesses had to start private domains. Now, more leading companies have begun to actively plan and promote this business.

Ning Yanqing said, "In the era of global/private domain, there is no industry that is not suitable for the development of private domain, and the same is true for Northeast China. Especially in the big consumer industry, individual IP-based private domain, civil manufacturing industry, big health industry, life service industry, silver economy industry, etc., the demand is more urgent."

Ning Yanqing is the president of Ruichuangshe Chuangshe and a well-known angel investor in Liaoning and Shenyang. Having deeply cultivated the local business, he has always been sensitive to the fluctuation of opportunities. His observation is almost an affirmation of this market opportunity.

These evidences and observations allowed Wu Xi to decide to launch the first Northeast Private Domain Traffic Conference in Shenyang on August 15, just a few days later.

She said: "I will gradually invite private domain experts from cutting-edge cities and excellent large companies to Shenyang to communicate face to face with local entrepreneurs. I will use this simple method as the start of my local business."

2. What are the difficulties in private domain in Northeast China?

"The development of private domains in Northeast China is still at the stage of awareness but no perception. Everyone hopes to build their own private domains, but most do not know where to start. They have relatively abundant knowledge reserves, but the channels for obtaining them are not specific and systematic. It is difficult to implement and execute. There is a lack of necessary tools and execution methods."

Ning Yanqing has held more than 200 entrepreneurship-related salons in the local area over the past four years. As he spends time with entrepreneurs every day, he knows exactly what difficulties cities in Northeast China face when it comes to private domains.

Compared with others, Lao Meng is a local private domain service provider. His feelings about the private domain in Northeast China can be summarized in one sentence: "Talent is the core issue." Everyone's cognition is still at the stage of attracting fans and building groups. Occasionally, a small number of teams with good traffic are cutting projects that can quickly realize cash.

“If the boss doesn’t come forward, the team organization will definitely be stuck and the organization’s confidence will not be boosted,” said Lao Meng.

In contrast, the industry has been constantly emphasizing that private domain is a long-term project for CEOs, and the boss personally coordinates different departments within the company, external stores and dealers, and upstream and downstream resources of the industrial chain. Operations have also begun to enter the stage of full-domain operations.

Many brands have calculated and found that the value contributed by operating and converting users in private domains across the entire network is even 6 times higher than that in private domains. The value brought by private domains themselves is much higher than that brought by advertising and public domain era gameplay.

The cognitive gap was presented intuitively.

When these teams communicated with the brands in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and other cities, and then communicated with entrepreneurs in Northeast China, they also perceived another obvious difference:

Northeastern people are used to paying for results, and before paying, they are more likely to ask, "What can I get for this money?"

They hope that paying for services will bring them immediate visual effects. They are not even willing to wait for a longer period of time. This is somewhat different from companies in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. For example, after seeing the trend, Shanghai companies are willing to invest part of their money to try it out.

Even compared to the mature proxy operation, consulting services, and running-along businesses in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, "many local companies still don't know that there are specialized companies that provide private domain service providers, and they don't think there are enough professional people in the local area to provide training in this area. The concept is more of an individual perception of 'cutting leeks'."

When these issues are combined, we see this phenomenon:

Liao Rong mentioned that the mainstream gameplay of local private domain teams is not very mature and they are eager to achieve results immediately.

To some extent, private domain is a method that requires some time and investment to develop. If you are impatient and your gameplay is immature, you will not be able to set a benchmark. Therefore, local people cannot see each other's successful cases, and cannot see objects to benchmark, communicate and learn from. There are no cases that can be disassembled when people in the circle want to talk about it, so they cannot make up their minds and invest.

This also verifies Wu Xi’s judgment just now: it is very early, "some small parts have invested manpower in trying, but because they do not understand the private domain trends and the team lacks experience, they rarely see benchmark cases."

The above difficulties deserve help from external forces, especially those that are excellent, experienced and can produce results.

3. The advantages of private domains in Northeast China are beyond imagination

Founders in Northeast China are also aware of the shortcomings in talent and cognition. "They know they need good cases to raise their awareness, realize the importance and necessity of private domain, and make them determined to get involved."

To this end, this group of people has been actively learning all the information about the private domain:

Everyone has been very proactive in paying for learning, some even regardless of cost. Some company executives once had an average budget of 100,000 yuan per person to go to Shenzhen to attend lectures on private domains.

The talent shortage is being quickly solved by external forces, and the cognitive shortage is also being made up through the active learning of the bosses. In addition, there are more and more occasions like Wu Xi, Liao Rong, and Ning Yanqing who constantly invite external brand private domain experts to the Northeast and have face-to-face exchanges in the local area - such as the Northeast Private Domain Traffic Conference on August 15, which will quickly narrow the cognitive gap.

At this point, it depends on the opportunity. Compared with the so-called difficulties, the more prominent advantage of launching private domain operations in Northeast China may be.

The private domain places great emphasis on the direct connection between brands and users, and the close relationship between them, that is, users should treat brands as their own relatives/family.

This is difficult for others to understand, but in Northeast China, this is the foundation - when I was working at Tencent, I organized a developer salon in Dalian. At that time, I visited local companies and cases, and found that brand operators and users are natural role models when building relationships.

In live broadcast operations, the term "family" has replaced the term "relatives", which is enough to illustrate this point. Shenyang and Northeast China are not lacking in understanding of private domains. To some extent, Northeast China is at the forefront of "close relationships" and "warm operation" in private domains.

Liao Rong believes that this advantage, coupled with the Northeast’s natural cultural genes and live broadcast foundation, can directly allow local companies to quickly obtain new results through the combination of “video account + private domain” - this combination is also the latest trend in the entire industry.

What Wu Xi sees is that the "local life + private domain" or pure private domain approach can quickly bring value to local companies, and this value is far greater than imagined. This meets the needs of local companies to professionally penetrate the market and get used to seeing results.

"Local companies are particularly competitive in the local life track, with about 90% of companies investing in local life. The biggest problem is that all the users who are deployed only have one transaction behavior. If you want to find these users again next time, you still need to pay again, and the cost of acquiring customers is very high."

For example, there is an obvious phenomenon in the group buying of a live broadcast platform: the user verification rate is very low, and orders are placed based on enthusiasm rather than immediate needs. This has led to the emergence of opportunities around local life + private domain.

The people who have the greatest demand for private domains are precisely those who work in the public domain. All private domains are not fighting alone. If the private domain is compared to a fish pond, it needs a constant flow of fresh water.

The public domain is the biggest source of living water, so the region with the best combination of public and private domains in the future may be the Northeast. Wu Xi believes that "the first entry point to open up the private domain in Northeast China is the local life gameplay."

Directly starting from the current trends can save Northeast enterprises from having to try and error out abandoned paths and practices.

More importantly, they all have the manpower, experience, and even possible resources and connections needed to break through the new gameplay. Now, the private domain in Northeast China is a fertile land to be developed. What is lacking now is that there are only a few benchmarks that can be quickly seen and copied by local companies.

All changes are starting from small things.