For private domain merchants, is there no other option but to buy traffic at a high price?

In the agency operation business, I have always been in contact with private domain customers. In the process of communicating with them, I found that most bosses are mainly concerned about customer capital costs, because the platform population is of high value, so I have to buy traffic and get customer capital. Don’t talk to me about brand or not, they all want to cheat me of money. Generally, I will not talk in depth when I meet such merchants. If they don’t understand the core of the business, they can only be harvested by traffic.

Why do I say this? In the long run, whether it is a brand or a private domain customer, if you regard the company or this business as your lifelong career, a short-term traffic carnival may only bring a mess, but brand value will take you further.

Thinking through this question, is it necessary for private domain merchants to build a brand?

Let’s first go back to what private domain merchants are, that is, directing customers to WeChat through Xiaohongshu notes, and then converting them on WeChat.

Most businesses focus on high-unit-price, low-frequency purchase categories such as decoration, wedding photography, and business services.

Figure 1: Classification of Xianfeng products

In general perception, private domain merchants only need to obtain contact information, they can have multiple accounts and different names, and treat Xiaohongshu as a traffic platform. There is no need to build a brand at all.

More importantly, in the eyes of the vast majority of private domain business owners, they believe that building a brand requires a huge amount of money.

This is precisely the biggest misunderstanding. What is a brand? It is the brand of the product. The moment the brand name is born, you are building the brand.

For private domain merchants, they should build brands and continuously reduce transaction costs. Why do you say that?

Private domain products essentially solve the trust problem, and the existence of brands is to solve the trust and supervision problems. Especially for private domain customers with high unit price, the biggest problem is the trust issue.

Once brand awareness is established, users will find you as soon as they have relevant needs. More importantly, as the brand posts more and more on Xiaohongshu, more people will recognize the brand, and transaction costs will decrease accordingly.

On the contrary, when you operate on Xiaohongshu, you use different names to reach customers, which means that every time you reach out to customers, there will be a new transaction cost.

At the same time, as the platform traffic costs become higher and higher, it will become increasingly difficult to acquire customers, which will cause merchants to jump from one platform to another.

A truly healthy brand should have lower and lower customer acquisition costs over time.

So specifically for private domain merchants, how do they build their brand on Xiaohongshu?

I summarize four underlying methodologies.

1. All actions focus on the brand name

Brand is the brand of the product. Brand is the brand name and symbol. The name is the most important brand asset of the brand.

Each of your notes, tags, and comments should include your brand name. Secondly, you should include your image IP so that when users see your notes, they at least know who you are and what services you can provide.

In this case, your brand name must be easy to read and able to spread on its own. Avoid making your name too stiff and difficult to read.

The brand name comes first. Next, you need to strengthen your own strength from aspects such as account profile, cover photo, tags, moments, etc. to dispel users' purchasing doubts.

2. Matrix Operation

The final destination of customers in the brand is equivalent to the category. The higher the proportion of the category, the more user needs are intercepted.

For private domain merchants, once an account is running smoothly, they need to operate in a matrix manner. The matrix gameplay on the market mostly intercepts demand through different names.

The core of operating a matrix account is to occupy categories, that is, when users search for a certain word, the account can get more display opportunities and occupy a higher category in the entire category.

My suggestion is to still register using the brand name, because our goal is to build a brand. Operating three accounts at the same time will make the voice louder. If different accounts are used for operation, the operating costs will increase and the energy will be dispersed.

Figure 2: Vandao professional number matrix

In the above picture, they are all private domain merchants. There will be no harm if you don’t compare them. If you were a consumer, who would you choose!

3. Planting seeds and sending private messages are equally important

Private domain customers mostly use professional accounts + performance advertising, which is purely for sales harvesting.

I think it is appropriate to increase the content of grass-roots content. Grass-roots content means using the words of ordinary people or experts. When users see relevant notes, they will have more trust in the brand.

Figure 3: Xiaohongshu platform attributes

Taking skin beauty training as an example, AYOKO increases the authenticity of training and store experience through expert store visits and expert training. Combined with professional account content, the brand's image on Xiaohongshu will be more three-dimensional. The same approach can be used for wedding photography and decoration.

Figure 4: Xiaohongshu skin care training

4. Go with the flow and respect the platform

Illegal traffic diversion is the most common problem encountered by private domain merchants. How to avoid illegal traffic diversion.

The first way of investing traffic may obtain certain exemptions. Currently, for customers who send private messages, a private message whitelist can be opened, which can avoid many detours.

The second way to recognize and understand the platform is to regard it not only as a traffic platform, but also as a communication platform.

That is, they really want to use the platform to promote the brand's history and customer cases, not just to lock in customers through various excessive private message guidance techniques, but to operate Xiaohongshu as a longer-term platform to make the brand name more and more popular on Xiaohongshu.

The above is the knowledge about brand operation for private domain merchants.

Author: Jianghe Chats About Marketing, WeChat Official Account: Jianghe Chats About Marketing