As the concept of private domain traffic explodes, many brands and companies have invested significant manpower, energy, and financial resources into it. Some use simple, blunt tactics like mass-sending coupons to quickly convert users; others adopt a more refined approach with user tagging and segmentation, membership programs to lock in customers, and standardized SOPs for repetitive tasks, reducing labor while delivering high returns. Yes, these can boost performance in the short term (1-2 years), but they inevitably hit bottlenecks, especially after group folding has largely blocked the mass-coupon route. Recently, I've been pondering: what is the long-term core value of private domain? After serving several KA brands, especially a Fortune 500 company with extremely long user lifecycles and complex chains, I've gained new insight: private domain is the perfect arena for building a 'user-centric brand.' Traditional coupon-sending and refined operations are essentially sales-driven, using discounts, promotions, and price discrimination to make users feel products are cheap, thus maximizing purchases, while rarely conveying brand values or personality to shape user perception. I've always believed that in today's highly mature supply chain, creating truly competitive products is difficult; even if achieved, competitors quickly copy or large brands overwhelm with multiplied resources. Without brand recognition, private domain operations fall into endless price wars, with users buying whichever brand is cheapest, severely impacting pricing and profits. Therefore, building a user-centric brand through private domain is crucial. A user-centric brand means the brand no longer stands aloof but stands with users, communicates equally, and becomes friends. I believe this is the best state of brand-user relationship. Users recognize and follow the brand, recommend it to others, and speak up for it, but not blindly; if the brand falters, they point out flaws and grow together. Building a user-centric brand follows the same steps as making friends: Step 1: Play to their interests. Talk about what they want to discuss. This requires the brand to insight into user needs in real-time. In product R&D, be user-oriented, meeting diverse personalized needs of different segments, upgrading products and services; in marketing, use user insights and analysis to feed into campaigns, achieving precision marketing and expanding ROI. Step 2: Trust. 'I trust you' is the most touching phrase. Through private domain persona building, value delivery, and trust construction, brands make users feel cared for and trustworthy. I trust your brand and products; no matter how expensive or feature-rich competitors are, even if your products are imperfect, I'll only buy yours because I trust you. Step 3: Co-create experiences. Life is mundane and needs surprises; same for brand-user relationships. In interactions, brands should offer co-creation in gameplay and value, communicating equally and growing together; in services, beyond standard offerings, brands should leverage private domain platforms to provide services traditional channels can't, surprising users and showing care. In the past, brands couldn't directly reach users, making these three steps difficult. But in private domain, brands face users directly, gaining the opportunity to befriend them. Insight into Needs: Personalized Products, Feeding Marketing In traditional channels, brands are too far from users, passing through layers of distributors/retailers. Distributors are reluctant to let brands contact users directly, fearing brand poaching. Thus, brands act purely as product developers and suppliers. (This is why franchise systems struggle with private domain.) Without user contact, brands lack real-time data. User data helps brands insight into needs, develop personalized products, and use social and behavioral data to feed front-end acquisition. First, product R&D. Users, especially Gen Z, raised in the information age, have diverse, segmented, personalized needs due to cultural influences. Traditional R&D uses surveys or expensive third-party data to find needs and preferences. But these data offer only vague user profiles, with high bias and similar findings across brands. Plus, real-time changes in personalized needs lead to low success rates (under 5%) for many multinational chains' new products. Moreover, most brands lack manufacturing barriers. Homogeneous needs and manufacturing lead to product homogenization, intensifying price wars where users buy the cheapest. In private domain (brand-controlled channels like WeChat Work, apps, websites), brands face users directly. At the system level, every user action in private domain can be captured: social data (gender, name, family, phone, height, weight), behavioral data (browsing preferences, duration), consumption data (preferences, amounts, repurchase frequency, personalized needs). At the operational level, through 1-on-1 chats, group conversations, or recruiting new product R&D officers, brands can precisely understand needs and preferences, listen to complaints, and iterate products and services. Even with 500 users, browsing their moments daily gives deeper insights into their traits, preferences, and personalities. Before launching new products broadly, brands can pilot in private domain. Based on actual purchases and feedback, validate if products meet needs, reducing failure risks and avoiding waste in promotion, inventory, and manufacturing. How to understand feeding precision marketing? Marketing broadly splits into brand marketing (awareness, mindshare) and performance marketing (conversion). Before any campaign, brands typically assume a typical user profile based on past experience and third-party data, then craft plans, channels, and materials. With private domain, brands can easily draw clear, multi-dimensional user profiles from behavioral data, enabling targeted campaigns. Often, brand marketing effects are hard to quantify—which plays interest users, what scenarios move them—unknown or based on experience. But in private domain, brands can test with small samples, analyze feedback to validate hypotheses, or recruit KOCs and super users as experience officers for early feedback. Platform marketing can also feed back. For example, Douyin livestreams push more organic traffic based on online users, duration, and GMV; better data means more traffic. Brands buying traffic can attract users to private domain via package cards, AI calls, SMS. In private domain, build strong IP personas, deepen relationships through daily interactions and games. Before next livestream, warm up to attract users to order, leveraging Douyin's organic traffic. Truly reuse one-time traffic. Trust: The Foundation of All Business I've seen too many private domain operators who, right after users join, bombard them with product pitches and ask for orders. If your brand is well-known with strong momentum (at least top-tier in category) and users have bought multiple times in public domain, they might buy if they need and you offer discounts. But in reality, most brands aren't that high in user perception; they need time to build trust before users buy, especially for high-priced, low-awareness products needing seeding. Behind private domain are living, emotional, warm people. If a brand sends a barrage of promotions right after adding you on WeChat, asking you to spend big on a 'seemingly great' product, would you be happy? Money is hard to earn; users have been harvested and learned. Why trust you? The only result is being blocked or deleted. Private domain isn't for harvesting traffic; it's about conveying your product and brand philosophy to consumers, then providing services. If satisfied, they develop goodwill and incidentally do business. What is the essence of business? Exchange of goods. What's the premise? Trust. Without trust, no exchange. Villagers trade based on trust—I believe your product is good, you won't cheat me. To sell to strangers, you need 'brand' as an intermediary to solve trust, making users believe the brand's products are good. Private domain is the same: not assembly-line fan acquisition or crude marketing, but building relationships and trust through products, services, content, and operations. Even if competitors claim better quality and lower prices, I'll buy from you because I trust you. Building trust requires clarifying brand positioning, tone, and values, then designing specific operations: persona IP matrix and value delivery. 1. Persona IP Matrix Offline, trust is built through store staff, guides, owners. Users trust through interactions. Common in life: A friend who is a coach at a chain gym—I trust him, so I'll buy memberships there; seeing the brand on the street gives me goodwill; I'd recommend it to friends. Trust in the person transfers to the brand. My neighborhood has a mom-and-pop car wash; within 200 meters, two chain stores with similar prices but better equipment, decor, and service. Yet the mom-and-pop shop has long lines, chains only a few cars. Curious, I tried it: they treat every customer as a friend, doing business with a friendship mindset—joking, minor fixes free—building trust naturally. Chains see customers as transactions, lacking warmth. When washing quality is similar, which would you choose? Online, brands need to translate offline intermediaries into online persona IPs. Using 'people' to approach and serve users is more acceptable and likable than a cold brand. Private domain persona IPs fall into 4 types; brands should mix based on category. 1) Expert IP For low-awareness categories, brands need education. Expert personas convey professional knowledge, making users feel reliable and trustworthy, transferring trust to the brand, leading to purchases. Example: Mother-baby category needs professional parenting experts sharing content and lectures. Example: I do private domain business, so I build an expert persona in private domain, showing expertise and experience, earning trust for my services. 2) Founder IP As the name suggests, the founder is the IP. If expert IP is rational, founder IP adds emotional appeal. Through values and viewpoints, attract like-minded people. Over time, regardless of product changes, users trust you and buy when they need. 'The core of founder IP is professional competence; you can't rely solely on emotion unless you have strong content output, like public intellectuals.' 3) Brand IP A brand's image IP, usually virtual. Tone must align with brand positioning, tone, values. Integrate with online/offline touchpoints, promotional materials, even products. Users see the IP and think of the brand. Example: Starbucks' Bear Store Manager. In online communities, he interacts as a person. Offline, he appears as dolls, figurines, costumes in activities. In materials, he's the main design and promotional element. 4) Sales IP Usually paired with expert, founder, or brand IP. Experts and founders can occasionally post ads—users understand, everyone needs to earn. But daily ads and promos annoy users, who see experts as aloof. Same for brand IP. So, divide roles: sales and ads go to separate persona accounts. For example, my expert IP is 'Chen Sanshi'; my sales IP could be 'Chen Sanshi's Assistant—XX' or just a nickname. For Starbucks, the brand IP is Bear Store Manager; the IP sending coupons and promos in groups is Bear's Assistant. 2. Value Delivery In daily life, we say 'keep in touch,' but do we contact everyone? No—only those valuable or potentially helpful. In private domain, the premise for trust and relationships is creating value for users. The most obvious and core is the product. How important is product? A formula: Product = 1, marketing/private domain capability = 100, total = 100. Product = -1, capability = 100, total = -100. Many bosses/brands lack product strength, no advantage over peers, or even pseudo-needs. Then thinking about making money via private domain is unrealistic. Even if you pull groups and sell some, can you withstand user complaints about product and service? User research, product development, core competitiveness require coordination across market, supply chain, channels—too many factors to detail here. But private domain product architecture differs from e-commerce or stores, shaped like a ladder/funnel. Based on user journey and lifecycle, four tiers: traffic drivers, trust builders, profit products, expansion products. 1) Traffic Drivers Products that attract users from public platforms to private domain via touchpoints. Common types: Physical: samples, trial packs, new products, related items (e.g., buy a pot, get a spatula with WeChat add). Virtual: free live courses, recorded courses, tutorial videos, resource packs, toolkits. Service: tests (skin analysis), benefits (free shipping for adding), experiences (free test drives, free membership trials). Discounts: no-threshold coupons, spend-and-save, buy-one-get-N, random free orders. 2) Trust Builders The first product users buy after entering private domain. Goal: let users quickly experience the Aha moment, feel value, build trust, paving the way for higher-priced profit products. (If traffic drivers are samples/trials/new products, they double as trust builders.) Requirements: low price to lower decision barrier; immediate results for user gain. Example: Education industry uses 9.9 yuan week-long camps where users learn daily, gaining skills or knowledge, leading to full-price courses. Example: Beauty industry: new users buy samples at ultra-low prices (brands may lose money), with immediate effects, building trust for full-price and profit products. Common in mother-baby, pet, medical aesthetics. 3) Profit Products As the name implies, high-margin products, the core of private domain conversion. After purchase, calculate repurchase cycles to trigger SOP-based conversion near the next cycle. 4) Expansion Products For brands with narrow product lines or low repurchase frequency, partner with other brands for cross-industry expansion. Example: Cars (high-ticket, low repurchase): use traffic drivers like loan calculators, free test drives to bring users in, then quickly let them experience core value; if good, they buy; finally, partner with others to sell car accessories for maximum profit. Co-create Experiences: Surprises in the Mundane Life is mundane; surprises add color, and only surprises or exceeding expectations are remembered. Put down your phone and recall the past six months. Daily trivialities are forgotten; only peak experiences remain. Brand-user relationships are the same: not a one-time transaction. To be a remembered 'friend,' regularly co-create surprise experiences. 1. Equal Communication This might be the biggest joke. Equal communication between brand and user—such an obvious thing—is actually a surprise and very important. Too many brands treat it as a slogan, claiming to treat users as friends while stabbing them in the back. Can brands resolve after-sales issues promptly? Can they handle reasonable user requests positively? Achieving equal communication is simple: put yourself in their shoes; it's also hard: brands must lower their haughty posture, proactively close the distance. 2. Co-creation Experiences Co-creation means brand and users jointly create something—content or products. It breaks the traditional one-way value transmission, emphasizing user 'participation,' making users feel they created the product/content, deepening emotional ties and turning them into super advocates. Lei Jun's co-founder Li Wanqiang in 'Participation' said Xiaomi's success lies in letting users join MIUI development, giving them a sense of participation, feeling they built the system. 1) Product Co-creation Traditionally, products are designed based on user data and research, with users passive. But in private domain, with zero-distance communication, brands can hand over product concepts and design to users. Example: LEGO's 'LEGO Ideas' online community has many users/players discussing designs and ideas. They vote for proposals; LEGO decides production based on votes. Example: IP merchandise co-creation: recruit users with design skills to create IP items—pillows, dolls, badges. Users vote; top designs are produced, and designers share sales revenue. Additionally, product names, logos, packaging, dosages, development priorities—all can be co-created. Brands just set themes and options, let users vote, publish results fairly, and act accordingly. 2) UGC Content Co-creation Co-create content and promotional materials with users, leveraging user power and platform algorithms to break out. Example: Mixue Bingcheng's theme song broke out after user remixes; in late 2021, Heytea's logo full-body co-creation went viral with hilarious user drawings, hitting hot searches. Simplest UGC co-creation: have users post usage experiences. Brands assign tasks: users post quality reviews on Xiaohongshu or community platforms; or recruit new product experience officers who pay a deposit, receive a free new product, post reviews, and get deposits back. Event themes, gameplay, venues—all can be co-created. Everything can be co-created as long as risks are managed and core brand interests aren't touched. 3. Exceeding Expectations in Service Services all brands provide aren't services but obligations. I agree. Many brands say they offer many services: 1-year warranty, 24-hour customer support, no-questions-asked returns, money-back guarantees. These are good, but 90% of brands offer them; they're the same, so nothing special. As mentioned, private domain offers zero-distance contact. In services, brands should think how to provide services traditional channels can't. Example: Most cat food brands offer returns and after-sales. But one cat food brand offers 'home pet doctor' service: about 30 pet care consultants, including vet experts, behavior trainers, nutritionists, available 24/7 for light medical questions and free remote diagnosis. Similarly, fitness brands can offer online fat-loss/muscle-gain camps, recipes, fitness consultants; beauty brands can offer skin tests, beauty consultant services, makeup tutorials. On specific dates or holidays, offer special value. During Shanghai's COVID outbreak, brands can remind users to protect themselves, offer help, and send care packages (masks, alcohol wipes) to high-value users. Play to interests, build trust, co-create experiences—these are the trilogy of befriending users and building a user-centric brand. Source: Tomato Operations (ID: fanqieyuny) Author: Sanshi Are you 'watching' me?