September 23, 2022

What is “Private Traffic"? Which is popular during Epidemics? How to make use of “Private Traffic"?

【Posted on: 2021 February】

1. What is Private Traffic?

First, we need to understand what Public Traffic is. Public traffic is open to everyone, such as offline traffic, BAT（Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent）traffic, like WeChat, QQ, Tmall, Taobao, Baidu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo, JD, Toutiao, Pinduoduo, etc., and platforms that are relatively in silos but also have plenty of traffic, such as Zhihu, Jian Shu, Baby tree, Xiaohongshu, etc.

For Private Traffic, it is a controllable traffic pool based on the “public traffic” platform. Let’s take WeChat as an example, for each WeChat public account, WeChat group and WeChat personal account, fans and friends are “Private traffic”, as these can be independently operated and maintained by the account owners who have WeChat public group, and personal account.

Private traffic is mainly for the management of user relationships. According to the level of the relationship, it can be divided into 4 levels (from low to high):

4th Tier: Fans

The lowest rated “private traffic” are fans on social accounts such as WeChat public accounts, Weibo, and Toutiao. This is the initial level of “private traffic”, but also the lowest-rated level of the trust relationship.
Fans-type “private traffic” – Where information received is one-way, relying on operators to continue output of content to maintain retention, and the conversion effect will be better if the content matches the interest of fans. This is also the operating logic of the WeChat public account (WeChat Subscription Account Mainly)

3rd Tier: Fans

The next level of “Private traffic”, are WeChat and QQ groups, who do not necessarily know each other but come together on common hobbies and interests.
Community-type “private traffic” – The information received is multi-directional, and the degree of trust is higher than the ordinary fans, and through the continuous engagement and interaction within the community such as group activities, group discussions, group live broadcast, etc. improves conversion.

2nd Tier: Friends

A deeper level of “Private traffic” than a community is direct friend relationships, mainly WeChat friends. Because WeChat is the most important instant messaging tool in China at present, and it includes the majority of social relationships.
Friends-type “private traffic” is the most discussed type of “private domain traffic” at present. The main reason is it has the highest degree of trust and the best conversion effect because friends communicate directly and frequently, and trust is the key element. As long as solid operations and regular product recommendations are maintained, there will be good monetisation benefits.

1st Tier: CRM

Official website, independent App, WeChat service account, mini programs, individual shops, individual accounts and community operating tools, etc. are captured by a CRM system to record browsing behaviour of users, registrations, login, the setting of appointments, usage, payments, etc. A management system automatically labels each of these actions, and comprehensive personalised marketing is generated. It is the best conversion tool in this era of “traffic anxiety”.

2. How to make use of “Private Traffic”?

The operational steps of “Private Traffic” are Referral traffic > Fission > Convert > Purchase > Repurchase. In this process, fission is considered to be the most characteristic marketing method. There are 2 key steps for fission; step 1 is designing a complete mechanism to close the loop (sharing—convert); step 2 is giving enough incentive to cooperate.

Common Fission Methods:

Group Buying

Group leader and members purchase product at a price lower than the original. Suitable for the product with a higher repurchase rate and low unit price.

Unlock

Buy at a low price, such as first-class product, and invite friends to make the same purchase, this unlocks the rest of the products.

Distribution Sale

Users generate invitation posters to purchase products, and a commission is paid-out when friends purchase through the invitation posters.

Bargain

Users may bargain on their own or invite friends to participate until the target price is achieved (e.g., 1RMB) before a purchase is made.

During the epidemic, e-commerce mini programs turned customers into their own “sales staff” by offering a commission and achieving good results in the form of Distribution sales. Currently, the most popular method is “mini program + live streaming + private traffic (community + friends)”, which generates rapid purchases and orders.

The most common form of live streaming is one of the private communities. In recent years, tens of thousands communities were accumulated. The following are private community cases based on referral traffic for different live streaming campaigns.

SaSa Hong Kong (WeChat group of Beauty, Shopping and Parenting)