---
title: "Brand Owners Take Note: 'Private Domain Traffic' Has Arrived—Should You Follow?"
description: "Private domain traffic is a new concept that has garnered significant attention in the marketing field this year, both online and offline. There is considerable debate about its value: some see it as a revolutionary marketing innovation that will transform traditional models, while others dismiss it as merely adding friends on social platforms. This article argues that private domain traffic will become the primary marketing model of the future, potentially replacing traditional systems, and offers guidance on how enterprises can build a new marketing system centered on it."
author: "鲍跃忠"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-10-28"
categories: "Brand Marketing, E-commerce & Instant Retail"
language: "en"
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# Brand Owners Take Note: 'Private Domain Traffic' Has Arrived—Should You Follow?

> Private domain traffic is a new concept that has garnered significant attention in the marketing field this year, both online and offline. There is considerable debate about its value: some see it as a revolutionary marketing innovation that will transform traditional models, while others dismiss it as merely adding friends on social platforms. This article argues that private domain traffic will become the primary marketing model of the future, potentially replacing traditional systems, and offers guidance on how enterprises can build a new marketing system centered on it.

**Private domain traffic is a new concept that has garnered significant attention in the marketing field this year.** It is a concept that both online and offline players are paying close attention to.
Currently, there is considerable debate within the marketing community about this new concept.
**Some believe that private domain traffic is an important concept that can bring disruptive marketing innovation, meaning it will change traditional marketing models and lead to a revolutionary marketing transformation.**
**Others argue that private domain traffic does not hold such great value; it is merely about adding friends on social platforms and generating a bit of user influence.**
For instance, a few days ago, renowned marketing expert Liu Chunxiong, in his article "Liu Chunxiong: My View on Private Domain Traffic," shared his perspectives on the topic.
Among his points, Mr. Liu proposed: **As a business model, the biggest problem with private domain traffic is that its ceiling is too low.** Simply put, relying on private domain traffic cannot scale a business. Because the ceiling is too low, that traffic is insufficient to constitute a traffic strategy in the eyes of large brands.
## Currently, there is extensive theoretical discussion about private domain traffic. Some enterprises are also making various attempts. Innovative brands may be doing more in terms of private domain traffic model innovation. However, overall, we have not yet seen a complete case of a marketing system that shifts to private domain traffic as the mainstay.
**My view: Private domain traffic will become the primary marketing model in the future, potentially replacing the current traditional marketing system. That is, future marketing will shift from the traditional model dominated by public domain traffic and commercial domain traffic to an era dominated by private domain traffic.**
The private domain traffic model will address many problems of the traditional public domain and commercial domain traffic marketing era, such as blind marketing, high user acquisition costs, and poor user stability, ushering in a new marketing era with higher efficiency, more precise targeting, and significantly lower marketing costs. **-01-
****What is Private Domain Traffic?**
Currently, there is no universally accepted definition of private domain traffic.
According to Sogou Baike: Private domain traffic or private domain traffic pool, distinct from traditional e-commerce consumer traffic, represents a shift towards user management. The fans or users you manage are no longer just an audience for a single product; this stickiness may lead to one-time customer acquisition generating multiple transactions. This traffic belongs solely to you, not purchased through platform bidding. Beyond the concept, the underlying shift in user philosophy is the most important.
This concept primarily explains the nature of private domain traffic. It specifically points out that private domain traffic enables one-time customer acquisition to generate multiple transactions, representing a shift from product marketing to user management. However, it does not clarify what form this traffic takes.
Based on my decades of marketing practice and research on the changes in the marketing environment brought about by the internet, I define private domain traffic as follows:
**Private domain traffic is a traffic marketing model that relies on various platforms developed in the internet, especially the mobile internet environment, and leverages the connection models of these platforms to establish a traffic system that belongs to the enterprise, can be effectively influenced, and better managed.**
There are three key points here:
**First, private domain traffic is a new thing.** More precisely, it is a new marketing model arising from the environmental changes brought by mobile internet development. The PC era also generated connections, but compared to mobile connections, the efficiency gap is significant.
In the mobile internet environment, various platforms have emerged, including e-commerce platforms, content platforms, and community platforms. These platforms have continuously developed, becoming the main arenas for gathering various groups (traffic). They have captured people from all walks of life. For marketing, wherever people are, marketing must follow.
**Second, connection.** For marketing, the important value these platforms bring is user connection. Platforms connect more and more people, and they facilitate connections between individuals and between enterprises and individuals.
Although some platforms were not originally intended as marketing platforms—such as WeChat—they gather people and enable connections, which creates significant value for marketing.
**Third, it belongs to the enterprise and can be effectively managed and influenced.** This is the most critical point.
The essence of marketing is finding users. Marketing is about using various means to find users and generate purchases.
For a long time, in the era before connections created private domain traffic, enterprises primarily relied on products as the basis, channels as the main carrier, and brand communication as the primary means to find users.
However, without today's connection methods, enterprises could not achieve more effective user influence, especially effective user management.
In the current connected environment, enterprises leverage the user connections provided by various platforms to form a link with users, creating a state of connection. Under such a relationship and state, enterprises can continuously influence users and achieve effective user management.
A vivid analogy is that enterprises use the connection methods of various platforms to first dig various "pools," through which they manage users and continuously improve relationships with them.
**-02-****What New Value Can Private Domain Traffic Generate?**
Private domain traffic is a new marketing model brought about by the mobile internet connection environment. What important value can this new model bring to enterprise marketing?
To understand this value, the key point to clarify first is: What is the essence of marketing? Is it the product or the user? This is also the crux of the current debate.
**First, it must be clear: Who creates value for the enterprise? The product or the user? It must be clear that users create value, not products. All products only realize value creation when users pay for them.**
Of course, the long-standing marketing system has been product-centric, including the 4Ps and Kotler's marketing system.
I believe the reason the marketing system has long been product-centric is the lack of connection. In an environment without connection, enterprises cannot manage the users who truly create value, so they can only use the controllable business element—the product—as the core marketing element. The traditional marketing system influences users through product marketing.
Currently, connection has changed the traditional marketing environment. **The most significant change is that mobile connection environments have created user connections. On this basis, managing users has become a reality, allowing marketing to return to its essence—from long-term product marketing to user marketing.**
In Chinese society today, connection has become a social norm. Since 4G, China has achieved person-to-person connections and enterprise-to-user connections. In the future 5G era, we will also achieve person-to-object and object-to-object connections, bringing further environmental changes based on connection.
Therefore, in the current connected environment, enterprises need to change the traditional product-centric marketing system and reconstruct a new user-centric marketing system. This is the urgent need for a complete transformation of marketing philosophy and model.
So, on the basis of this philosophical and model transformation, private domain traffic becomes a very important and valuable marketing system. If we still adhere to traditional product marketing philosophy, private domain traffic indeed holds little meaning.
In an environment where user marketing is the main model, products are a key element for influencing and managing users, but they are no longer the primary element of marketing.
**The difference between product marketing and user marketing is:**
**Product marketing emphasizes market coverage and user reach; the standard for enterprise growth is maximizing market coverage.**
**User marketing emphasizes user value; the goal for enterprise growth is maximizing user value.**
My current industry observation is that we are in the initial stage of transitioning from product marketing to user marketing. E-commerce has set many examples in user marketing. Overall, e-commerce focuses on traffic management, which is essentially user management. Currently, some traditional offline enterprises are also beginning to experiment with shifting from product management to user management.
**My judgment: In the future, user management models will definitely be the mainstream direction of marketing. Product marketing systems without user value support will gradually weaken.**
To deeply understand the important value private domain traffic can bring, we can also analyze from the perspective of the problems existing in traditional marketing.
I define traditional marketing as marketing in a disconnected environment, meaning a marketing system that does not directly establish user connections like today's.
**The most prominent problem with traditional marketing is its blindness.** The main manifestation is blind marketing: I don't know where my users are, so I use a full-coverage deep distribution method—"distribution, distribution, and more distribution"—to occupy stores and shelf space, thereby generating sales.
Including promotional activities, they lack clear target user direction, essentially being product-centric with price as the main tool.
Consider a case from Hema: Once, when a Hema store had 20 boxes of milk with only one week left before expiration, the store quickly launched a promotion, offering an unprecedented "buy one get one free" discount. Despite this, from 1 PM to 6 PM, only a dozen bottles were sold.
In traditional marketing, they would have been stuck, "waiting for rabbits by the tree stump." But Hema, after 6 PM, extracted customers who had previously purchased this brand of milk from its many members and pushed a discount promotion message to them. Within three minutes, all 20 boxes were sold out.
This case basically illustrates that in a connected environment, enterprises can use apps to generate private domain traffic. With private domain traffic, target users are relatively clear, and marketing actions can be relatively precise.
Therefore, in a marketing environment dominated by private domain traffic, the main benefit is that target users are clear, and marketing measures can be relatively accurate. **Ultimately, this leads to a significant improvement in marketing efficiency and a significant reduction in marketing costs.**
Based on the above analysis, let's look at what value private domain traffic can bring.
Currently, the most important is user connection. On the basis of achieving user connection, marketing efficiency will undergo major changes, and marketing costs will significantly decrease.
Currently, there are three main platform models that can help enterprises establish user connections:
**First, transaction-based platform models:** Such as enterprise apps, mini-programs, one-item-one-code, and user connections on third-party transaction platforms.
**Second, content-based platform models:** Including official accounts, Toutiao, Weibo, etc. The most typical is the official account. The connection model of content platforms is: content generates user connections, uses content to effectively influence target users, and can generate transaction conversions.
**Third, community-based platform models:** The most important is WeChat groups. WeChat groups can be used to effectively influence users and, based on mini-programs, enable transactions and marketing within the group environment.
Enterprises use these three platform models to establish user connections and form a marketing system based on the private domain traffic model, with the focus on how to effectively manage user value.
In a connected environment, the private domain traffic model can generate many effective ways to manage users, including marketing methods, content methods, and interaction methods. These methods will generate efficiency around managing user value. **-03-****How Enterprises Can Build a New Marketing System Centered on Private Domain Traffic**
To build a new private domain traffic model centered on user management, the most critical step is to break away from the previous product marketing mindset. This system is not about product marketing; it is about user management.
The center of this system **is maximizing user value, not simply maximizing user numbers.** It aims to eliminate the serious problem of low user value in traditional product marketing and use a new system to expand user value.
User value refers to the consumption contribution of users.
The prominent problem with traditional marketing is that user value is too low. This is mainly because traditional marketing is not centered on user value at all.
Such a marketing system is no longer suitable for the current Chinese consumer market environment. In the current market environment, with the rise of the new middle class and significantly enhanced consumption capacity, marketing must seek new breakthroughs from the user value perspective.
Enterprises transitioning to a new marketing system centered on private domain traffic mainly involves establishing user connections. Future marketing will be a marketing system built on connections.
Enterprises should quickly build three major connection platforms: transaction-based platforms supported by technical means, content platform systems supported by various content platforms, and community platform systems supported by WeChat groups.
**Private domain traffic is not a single method but a combination matrix generated by multiple connection means.**
Currently, it can form transaction connections using apps, mini-programs, and one-item-one-code; content connections using official accounts, Douyin, Toutiao, and Weibo; community connections using WeChat Moments and WeChat groups; and user connections through third-party transaction platforms.
These connections constitute the enterprise's private domain traffic. The number of target users connected determines the scale of future marketing. How to establish an effective marketing system to manage user value on the basis of connection determines the future space for the enterprise.
Building a private domain traffic model is a gradual and continuous improvement process. It is not about immediately overturning the current marketing system, but rather about establishing a connection mindset within the existing system and immediately setting up various means and methods to connect with users.
That is, enterprises should establish and leverage various platforms to convert the public domain traffic and commercial domain traffic they can currently reach into private domain traffic as quickly as possible through connection methods.
The most critical aspect here is to establish a connection mindset. Users should be effectively captured onto various connection platforms, such as apps, mini-programs, official accounts, Toutiao, Douyin, Weibo, and WeChat groups.
In offline channels, enterprises should also use opportunities to reach users through products and promotions to achieve user connection and connect users to relevant platforms.
On the basis of establishing connections, enterprises need to build a new marketing system for managing users.
Maximizing user value requires a system of user management to be developed. This system must be well-designed.
**The goals this system aims to achieve are: maximizing value users and maximizing user value.**
This system should integrate user connections established through various private domain traffic forms, allowing each to play its different value—for example, using content to create influence, using communities to improve relationships, and using user digitalization systems to effectively stimulate users' consumption potential.
By continuously establishing different ways to connect with users, continuously increasing the number of users connected to each platform, and on the basis of connection, continuously using new user management marketing systems to effectively manage target users, once a certain number of connections and user value are achieved, it is only a matter of time before enterprises switch from traditional marketing models to a private domain traffic-centric marketing system. **In summary, connection has already disrupted the traditional marketing environment, and connection has given rise to the new marketing model of private domain traffic. Enterprises need to transition from traditional marketing models to new models centered on private domain traffic as soon as possible.**


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 鲍跃忠
- Published: 2019-10-28
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/brand-owners-take-note-private-domain-traffic-has-arrivedshould-you-foll-fd9ade82/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AvCq7MbecUsozVmfa775iA

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