I sincerely advise you not to do this private domain

The article ironically refutes the view that people should operate private domains. The article puts forward 43 reasons and elaborates on the difficulties and costs of private domain operations. It provides a good reference for proving the difficulties of private domain operations and has strong persuasiveness and value.

‍01

I’m not kidding, even though many big Vs are advising you to do a good job in private domain.

But their reasons are definitely not as many as mine. I have 43 reasons to advise you not to do it!

02

When 2023 is already halfway through, the reason they advise you to do private domain is "you own it, it's repeated, and you can reach it for free."

What makes me sad is that there are people who actually believe it and nod their heads enthusiastically before forwarding it to their friends!

03

Anyone who advises you to do private domain business because “private domain can reach customers for free” must let them help you bear the operating costs of increasing followers, promoting activation and retaining customers.

04

There is also the "slot fee" on WeChat for Business, which is charged based on the size of the contacts. It only costs 0.1 cent for one friend for one year.

05

It’s very cost-effective, after all, you can reach out “repeatedly”.

Don’t ask for “unlimited reach”; one private message, one group chat, and three Moments a day are already the content production capacity limit for more than 95% of companies.

06

“Why do we need content production capacity when doing private domain business?”

If you ask this question, please quickly delete the article "Doing Private Domain Business Well" that you forwarded to your friends circle!

07

Do you remember why you started private domain? Besides the high cost of public domain traffic.

"marketing!"

Thank God you finally remembered!

Of course marketing requires content production!

08

You need to write traffic-generating words, test the conversion rate of package hooks, write welcome messages, write invitation words to join the group, write group welcome messages, formulate group rules, the circle of friends needs copywriting and posters, and the mini program needs a cover...

09

Of course, you can also write the company's business scope, vision, mission and values ​​in the welcome message, but it will be a bit strange.

10

The private domain is not about adding friends, creating groups, or allowing users to chat in groups.

The private domain is to secretly circle users from the public domain and send them advertisements for free!

11

Seems simple?

Do you know what "circle" means? Do you know how much effort TikTok has put in to get users to open it and browse it every day?

The "public domain" where you steal traffic is ByteDance's "private domain". They are so good at content that they are afraid that users will go to watch their video accounts. What ability do you have to "circle" users in your private domain?

12

We need to retain it, right?

Then you have to bleed, either by giving users the freebies or by spending a lot of money to hire a great private domain trader.

13

Of all the companies that started to engage in private domain business after reading an article, half were fleeced by users, and the other half were fooled by traders who claimed to have managed private domain projects with a turnover of over 100 million yuan.

14

Do you know what it means to have a private domain turnover of over 100 million? Pop Mart's mini program had an annual revenue of 890 million in 2021, contributed by 19.58 million members. For the time being, it is assumed that mini program revenue = private domain revenue.

I would like to ask, what kind of business did this trader you hired do before? How could he make hundreds of millions of dollars in turnover in a year through private domain? Do you dare to go to the police station and tell them?

15

Or let’s talk about the “19.58 million members” thing.

Suppose you also have 19.58 million private fans, all of whom have been added to WeChat for Business.

Then, you must first pay the enterprise WeChat a placement fee of 1.95 million external contacts.

Then use 979 corporate WeChat accounts to host these friends.

Assuming that your employees are very helpful and each of them contributes 5 personal WeChat accounts with real-name authentication to bind these corporate WeChat accounts, you will still need 195 employees.

16

Oh yes, 979 corporate WeChat accounts correspond to 979 mobile phones and 979 SIM cards.

The cost of a second-hand Android phone at 200 yuan is 195,800 yuan, and the monthly rental of the phone number is 8 yuan, which means it is a little more than 90,000 yuan a year.

Remember to pay monthly. If you don’t pay for half a year, your account will be automatically cancelled. If someone else logs in and looks for it, they won’t be able to find it back!

17

If you don’t want to add so many friends, then you should add at least 100,000 friends.

The average conversion rate of adding friends to package cards in the industry is 5% now. Let us calculate it for you at 10%.

So 100,000 friends require 1 million orders...

18

"I have an existing mobile phone number!"

That’s fine too. You can actively initiate a friend request using your mobile phone number.

Assuming your corporate WeChat account is an old one, you can actively initiate 80 friend requests a day.

If there is an AI outbound call to tell the user at the same time, the success rate is 15%.

With 50 corporate WeChat accounts working at full capacity, it would take 5 months and 660,000 mobile phone numbers with historical orders to add 100,000 friends.

Oh yes, the 15% pass rate above is the mobile phone number of users who made purchases in the past 30 days...

19

We have only talked about "over 100 million in turnover", and haven't even mentioned the private domain operators!

In January this year, I saw a friend of mine at Meituan Pets was recruiting a private domain manager (i.e., an operator). I saw last week that they were still recruiting...

As far as I know, a person who can be responsible for private domain business must at least understand growth, content and e-commerce product selection, pricing and discount strategies, and also understand some technologies related to SCRM tools, and be able to negotiate resources between the company's various main businesses...

20

Speaking of the main business, what are the main revenue channels of our company? Is there a chance that private domain will become the main revenue channel?

If there is such a plan, do we need to invest the same human, financial and time resources as in the main channels?

twenty one

At the very least, can all the traffic from all channels be directed to the private domain as much as possible? Can the mobile phone number, package card, packaging material, comment area, private message, and introduction be directed?

twenty two

"No, Taobao's mobile phone number cannot be used for AI outbound calls. Once you issue a coupon in your private domain, all the goods will be returned!"

twenty three

“It’s not allowed on TikTok either. If you divert traffic from outside the site, your account will be blocked.”

twenty four

“The package card has added you as a friend. Will you only place orders on Youzan in the future? Then what should I do to encourage repeat purchases?” said a colleague from the Tmall business department.

025

The revenue from other channels is actually not going well. Are you trying to save the company from the dire situation through private domains?

…

26

Private domain: I can’t save it! I’m dirty, tired, and slow to see results! It consumes content, wastes manpower, and wastes energy, and I have to worry about complaints and account closures every day.

27

“Isn’t private domain a hot topic?”

Wake up! (Imagine I'm holding your shoulders with both hands and shaking you)

No one can get rich overnight by relying on private domains!

There is no one or team who can’t do anything else, because working in the private domain is the pinnacle of life!

28

Private domain is just a form of marketing developed when the cost-effectiveness and user perception of conventional marketing methods are not so good.

It is a kind of "marketing" game.

29

The process of building profitable customer relationships by creating value for customers and gaining value in return.

This is the definition of marketing given by the father of modern marketing.

Is it also particularly good for defining private domains?

30

It’s better than the definition of “private domain is traffic that you own, repeat, and reach for free,” right?

This definition seems to be more instructive. At least through this definition we can know how to do private domain.

31

Creating value for customers: a way to “increase followers” ​​and “retain customers”;

Profitable customer relationships: This is the purpose of our private domain operations, to turn users who have no relationship or are unfamiliar with us into users who are willing to buy our products;

Obtaining value in return: This is the purpose of our private domain business.

32

"It's too troublesome. I'm only doing traffic in the private domain."

That’s fine. Since it’s traffic, it involves “traffic monetization”.

How is the traffic monetization efficiency of your other platforms?

33

Can traffic that cannot be monetized on other platforms be monetized by directing it to the private domain?

34

Speaking of traffic, do you remember the 100,000 private fans we discussed earlier?

At that time, we only said that the industry average fan conversion rate was 5% and 15%. How to achieve this industry average conversion rate is another science.

35

You see, they only say that private domain is awesome and valuable, but they don’t tell you how to do private domain, right?

They don’t even tell you the simplest way to attract traffic, but instead advise you to do private domain.

As a result, before you could "attract" your private domain traffic, your Douyin and Xiaohongshu accounts were blocked first.

So annoying!

36

They don’t tell you, but I tell you.

Draining traffic is very simple, you only need to consider 3 questions:

1) Whether the cited platform allows you to cite;

2) Whether users are willing to be led by you;

3) What price did the user and you pay respectively in the process of attracting traffic?

37

If expanded, there are 6 questions:

1) Where are the users?

2) Why is the user there?

3) How to get users to leave?

4) Why do users trust us?

5) Is the drainage method smooth?

6) How do we retain users?

38

If you don’t want to think about so many problems, you can also follow the following 4 steps:

1) Find a traffic pool that can reach target users;

2) Publish content that the target users are interested in to guide their attention;

3) After being attracted by the hook, users can successfully take action;

4) Ensure that the user's actions are smooth and that they can add you as a friend in as few steps as possible.

39

After attracting traffic, there are still retention, conversion, activation and recall, user tag system, content script planning, team performance management, and SCRM and CDP tool purchases...

Private domain traffic is the most difficult type of traffic to obtain, no doubt about it.

40

Can't we just add him as a friend and send him a message instead of making it so complicated?

That’s fine. Suppose your company has added 100,000 friends and now wants to send a group message.

What to post?

Text, pictures, and mini programs, that’s all there is to it.

Is it a science to write well-written words?

041

OK, I won't send messages. Can I just create a group and let everyone communicate on their own to accumulate traffic first? Do you want everyone to communicate more actively in the group or less actively? In an active group, not everyone is communicating. Most of the time, there are only a few people in the group, and these people have no "profitable value". If it is too quiet, it seems to have no value. You have to arrange people to regularly throw topics into the group to stimulate discussion, right? (You need to produce content again...)

42

We also need to consider whether someone will file a post-sales complaint in the group, whether there will be any competing products or shady products coming in to gain followers, or whether there will be any advertisements in the group...

43

How about not creating a group and just leaving the friends there and sending group messages when needed?

Yes, according to the experience of service accounts: for accounts that have been silent for a long time, 30% of their fans will be lost for every group message sent...

Author: Zhang Jia, WeChat public account: Xixin