What exactly are we talking about when we talk about private domain?

As public domain traffic becomes increasingly difficult to obtain, many companies regard private domain traffic as a "lifeline", and even small shops on the street are converting to private domain. Under the influence of industry propaganda, private domain has been completely mythical. The author of this article expressed his views on private domain, let's take a look.

I have to admit that the term private domain is defined from the subjective perspective of merchants and operators, not users.

In the eyes of merchants and operators, private domains are not users, but just labels, orders, and revenues that can help them achieve certain achievements.

for example:

"Hello~ Babies in private domain, bla bla bla".

I don’t know how you feel when you receive this message. In short, as a real user, the feeling I get is not good at all.

1. Private Domain or Private Desire

When we communicate through WeChat in our daily lives, if we make typos, we often end up with hilarious puns.

Generally speaking, when we make a typo, we will subconsciously correct it immediately below. In fact, even if we don’t correct it, everyone knows that it is a typo (if it is pinyin instead of Wubi), and we won’t pay much attention to it.

Whenever I see someone talking about "private domain" and mistakenly typing "private desire" or "civil domain" (I don't know whether intentionally or unintentionally), but never correcting it, I am shocked.

But some people do this every time, even when they know it is a typo, they still refuse to change it and continue to do as they please.

However, according to the characteristics of "private domain":

If we analyze it from the perspective of “ direct ownership, low cost, and repeatable reach ”, it seems reasonable to write “private domain” as “private desire”.

An object that is privately owned, can be used in any way and can be harvested, in short: selfishness.

This may be a bit pedantic, but I am sharing a case that happened to me:

A few years ago, when I was working as a PM, I was interviewing at Didi and the keywords "ios" and "android" appeared in my resume.

When I was leaving, the interviewer said: Remember to correct the English in your resume. The OS in iOS is capitalized, the P in iPhone is capitalized (this is also the rule in Apple's HIG manual), and the A in Android is also capitalized.

From then on, whether I am writing a PRD proposal or sending WeChat or DingTalk messages, as long as English is involved, I will be very careful to avoid non-standard issues.

When I see someone using non-standard English abbreviations, such as writing "私域" as "私欲", "TikTok" as "TK", "AI" as "ai", "iOS" as "ios", etc., I can't stand it.

This is not a question of level, but a question of attitude towards work.

2. Too much emphasis on drainage

Under the influence of industry publicity, private domain has been completely deified.

• If traffic is not growing, move to private domain.
• Attracting new customers is no longer effective, so go to the private domain.
• When users are lost, move to private domain.
• The conversion rate has decreased, so we moved to the private domain.
• The frequency of repurchases has decreased, so go to the private domain.
• If marketing activities don’t work, go to the private domain.

It seems that all the problems can be solved by doing private domain business, which can detonate traffic and double sales.

However, when merchants make the decision to start private domain operations, they only focus on the traffic generation link at the execution level. If we simply divide private domain operations into three steps: traffic generation, operation and conversion.

All businesses are thinking about how to attract all users who can be reached in the public domain to the private domain without hesitation, and the more the better.

• I ordered takeout and they asked me to add WeChat and join the welfare group.
• I went to dine in the restaurant and they asked me to add WeChat and join the welfare group.
• I was buying clothes in a mall and they asked me to add WeChat and join a welfare group.
• I bought a box of tea on Taobao and they asked me to add WeChat and join the welfare group.
• I went to the 4S shop to have my car serviced and they asked me to add WeChat and join the welfare group.

Even when my aunt was attending an event at a store in the community (it was obvious from the appearance that it was a scam for old ladies), she was asked to add WeChat and join the welfare group.

However, when merchants indiscriminately add users without any attribute labels, without stratification or labeling, although the volume of private domains seems to be growing, the quality is extremely poor. How can they carry out subsequent refined operations?

Of course, this obviously meets another need of merchants:

Our private domain user base reached a milestone of 1 million this year, an increase of 3856.52% compared to last year.

This is a PR article that even I am afraid of reading.

Or maybe, their KPI assessment indicator is: the number of private domain users reaches 1 million, I guess.

But if you start from the end in mind, the goals you set will in turn reshape your behavior.

As I mentioned in my previous article "Only 7,000 fans, but earned 150,000":

When your goal in making short videos is to increase GMV rather than the number of fans, your behavior and your work will be of completely different styles.

You will focus only on order conversions, which in turn will guide you on how to create works that attract precise traffic and find ways to increase conversions, rather than pursuing vanity indicators such as number of fans or hot products.

You taste it, you taste it carefully.

3. Simple and crude operation

If the private domain is a private object that can be harvested as one pleases, then some businesses or operators are really doing too much as they please.

In addition, some businesses take advantage of the reach of private domain users and think that it is “free” anyway, so they operate more unscrupulously.

The so-called private domain operation and the so-called refined operation have gradually evolved into mindless mass messaging , whether in a group, in a circle of friends, or in a one-on-one private chat.

For example, in those so-called welfare groups, it is mostly a one-man show by the group owner (i.e. the operator):

Every day, a large amount of "content" (whether it is coupons or advertising information) is directly delivered to users in the private domain through social networks in a simple and crude manner without any secondary processing, personal splitting, or any warmth.

They may not know that users may have blocked the link or discount information, or they may know it but still choose to do so resolutely.

Maybe that’s true, yes.

When an operator needs to manage a hundred groups, how can he manage them well?

How to maximize user value?

If it were me, I would probably copy and paste mechanically.

This is also the reason why if you want to do well in the private domain, it is actually very important to focus on operations and require refined operations.

Let me give you an example from my own experience:

In the past year, I have been producing content around short videos and private domains. During this period, I added a lot of friends (whether for the purpose of making friends or for research to accumulate materials).

For example, some third-party short video services have the following common characteristics in their friend circles:

Treating the private domain as a public domain, the private domain is forced to become not private, but a public domain!!!

Here are some screenshots:

But, if you do this every day, it will be just a crude marketing promotion, sending out ten of the same hard ads a day.

If I can tolerate it for a short period of time in order to study and observe private domain operation strategies, let alone ordinary users, there is only one result: being blacklisted, deleted, and folded.

The refined operation of private domains does not depend on quantity but on the depth of links.

The private domain should not be a harvesting logic, but a refined operation, which means hard and dirty work.

As I discussed in the three-part theory of private domain operation in "Is Douyin's private domain a false proposition?"

Just one touch, service and final transaction.

Through private domains, you can build relationships with users, generate trust, and achieve conversions through your products, services, content, and operations.

4. Consume your users, even WeChat’s

The operation of private domains should be based on growth logic rather than consumption.

What is consumption?

Constantly send messages, push notifications, and harass users until they unfollow you.

Nowadays, users have added too many merchants and customer service WeChat accounts.

The homepage is full of promotional groups of various merchants, and the circle of friends is also full of promotional content released by merchants.

Does this bring more information noise to users?

Will it cause disturbance to users?

Or even backfire and consume users?

Take the question of how many times to post in a day on WeChat Moments as an example. I remember that Mr. Liu from Qunxiang once said:

There are two principles for content creation in Moments:

It is useful to you and makes you yearn for it.

If your content is valuable to users, it is not called screen flooding or harassment.

Users will treat your Moments as a subscription channel, and may even develop the habit of clicking on your avatar every day to check your Moments to see what valuable content has been updated.

In fact, users are willing to give you the opportunity to trial and error. Providing value is equivalent to saving money, while posting advertisements is equivalent to withdrawing money.

But if, like the third-party service I mentioned earlier, the content that floods my Moments is the same every day and I don’t see any valuable incremental information , I will eventually have to block it.

I even think that this will not only consume users' patience with Moments, but may even consume users' patience with WeChat .

Why?

You know, when WeChat added the Moments entrance on the Mac, it was to increase users' motivation to browse Moments and reduce the interaction cost of browsing Moments to some extent.

• U know what I mean?
• Guess what the core competitiveness of WeChat is?
• Is it a social relationship chain?
• Is it the cost of migration?
• Is it an excellent user experience?

No, neither.

Zhang Xiaolong once said:

WeChat’s core competitiveness lies in users’ tolerance for WeChat message push .

Users may turn off message notifications for most apps, but not WeChat.

This means that WeChat messages are important to users and they don’t want to miss them.

All behaviors and actions that contradict this will not be allowed by WeChat.

This is also why WeChat has always had zero tolerance for marketing-related behaviors and induced sharing behaviors.

The purpose of doing this is to protect the healthy and sustainable development of the "WeChat ecosystem".

However, will the so-called "private domain" operations of merchants make all the official efforts of WeChat go to waste?

At this point, do you think the private domain will eventually consume [WeChat users]?

I think the answer to this question is probably both romantic and terrifying.

Finally, as a comparison, compared with private domain operations, short video operations are much easier.

Short videos only need to focus on single-dimensional dissemination and reach, while private domains need to deal with all-round and multi-dimensional logical relationships.

above.

References:

1. "Don't Believe in Private Domains: Six Traps, Each One Is Fatal", Shen Xiang;

Further reading:

1. "Is the end of traffic the private domain?"

2. "The owner of the neighborhood supermarket taught me how to make 100,000 yuan a month through WeChat private domain operations"

3. "Has Douyin become a fan recommendation? Is Douyin's private domain going to be established?"

Author: Meng Dawei

WeChat public account: Dawei talks about e-commerce (ID: mengdawei01)