Please read this section with these questions:
1. What methods can TikTok use to obtain traffic?
2. Why is “retention” more important than traffic?
3. How would you rate your/team’s ability to obtain traffic?
The content of this section is to help you understand the types of traffic on TikTok, what roles they play, what are the corresponding requirements and costs, and how we can better formulate traffic acquisition strategies suitable for our products, etc. Regarding the most important and core issue of how to obtain huge traffic on TikTok, I spent a lot of space in Chapter 4 to systematically explain it. In this chapter, you must first gain a solid understanding of the underlying knowledge before you can better use the methods mentioned in Chapter 4.
1. TikTok’s free traffic
Free traffic is not the traffic we can get without spending a penny, but the traffic we get by not paying the platform or partners for the corresponding exposure, but only because the work is of good quality and popular, thus triggering the platform’s traffic distribution mechanism.
We often fall into a misunderstanding: paid traffic is more expensive than free traffic. This statement seems to be correct on the surface, but if we calculate the total account, the cost of free traffic is often higher. The equipment costs, labor costs, venue costs and other operating costs involved in video shooting, editing, publishing and operation are at least in the tens of thousands of yuan per month. Using this money to buy advertisements directly to get traffic can get more exposure. So when it comes to getting TikTok traffic, free traffic is often more expensive.
The determining factor of free traffic is whether our content can be liked by customers and whether it can help the TikTok platform improve the user experience. TikTok wants to increase the user’s usage time as much as possible. To this end, TikTok constantly uses its own unique recommendation algorithm to tailor content that suits the preferences of each user.
For you, if your content happens to help TikTok attract and retain the attention of a certain group of people, so that they are willing to spend time on your work, then TikTok will definitely continue to recommend such traffic to your work. On the contrary, if your work is not good, TikTok recommends traffic to you, but these people swipe away in one second, or even feel that TikTok is really boring after watching your work, the system will determine that the content of this account is not strong, and it will be difficult to continue to let TikTok recommend traffic. We need to understand clearly what kind of content TikTok wants us to contribute to the platform and what kind of effect it will achieve, so as to grasp how to obtain free traffic from the platform.
2. Paid traffic of TikTok
Paid traffic is a direct train that directly spends money to buy views to gain exposure. However, paid traffic also needs to be strong to play a role. Generally, the purpose of using paid traffic in TikTok is to directly close transactions, increase brand exposure, and obtain a certain number of fans to live broadcast and other permissions.
If the purpose is to close transactions directly, paid traffic has a very important indicator-ROI (Return on Investment), which is what we often call the input-output ratio. As long as the ROI is high enough, we are willing to keep charging advertising fees to do delivery. However, paid delivery is a very deep knowledge. A good pitcher may have been cultivated by burning tens of millions. There are many factors that affect the delivery effect, such as material quality, ad group settings, budget settings, when to release volume, when to stop, user portrait selection, delivery channel method and target selection, etc. In TikTok, if you want to spend your money worthwhile, you must choose materials with strong content for traffic delivery, otherwise it will cause waste.
The entrance to directly purchase views in TikTok is called Promote, which is similar to the “Douyin+” of Douyin in China. In Chapter 3, I will talk about how to use Promote to help our account get through the “black hole period” faster, and in Chapter 4, I will talk about how to use Promote as a booster for us to obtain huge traffic. These contents are all interpreting this point.
TikTok’s free traffic and paid traffic should be used in conjunction with each other: content power is the basic power and fuel, and paid traffic is used as a booster to help us detonate good content more quickly.
3. Private domain traffic (retention)
The concept of private domain traffic is relative to public domain traffic. Directing public domain traffic to private domain is the process of directing customers from “other people’s territory” to “one’s own territory”. In China, many creators and businesses try their best to guide their fans from Douyin to WeChat, so that they can chat and post to Moments at any time, and even transfer money in real time to earn income, maximizing the commercial value of fans.
The same logic applies abroad. We carefully make videos on TikTok, and we also hope to lead fans to our private domain to facilitate secondary marketing. As mentioned earlier, the difference between TikTok and Douyin is that it is more open. You can directly bind the photo wall and YouTube official account on the homepage. At the same time, merchants can hang the official website link of the independent website on the TikTok homepage, and users can directly click the link to jump to our independent website for consultation or purchase. Therefore, TikTok’s overseas private domain links are smoother.
Since we have such advantages, we need to lay out the links of private domain traffic and accumulate private domain assets for ourselves. Because the platform’s rules, traffic distribution mechanism, and whether the advertising fee will increase or not are all unilaterally decided by the platform. If the new policy released by the platform is not favorable to us, at least we have our own private domain users as a guarantee.
We can choose a suitable platform for private domain traffic according to user characteristics. It can be WhatsAPP, Messenger, Discord, photo wall, EDM (email marketing), etc. It is not only convenient to chat with customers, but also allows them to see the content we publish, constantly brushing their presence, and then appropriately giving promotional activities to stimulate them to make purchase decisions, thus completing a simple closed loop of private domain traffic operation; it is also conducive to cultivating and developing loyal users and super users, increasing repurchase, referrals and upgraded consumption. Therefore, I would call private domain traffic a more valuable “retention volume” – the volume retained.
So how can we guide these overseas users from TikTok to our private domain traffic platform? I mentioned in the previous section that there is a content library called “private domain grabber library”. We can set up multiple “grabbers” in advance and use benefits and privileges to attract users to enter the private domain. For example, buy one get one free if you come, and you won’t get one if you don’t come; if you come, you will get another year of warranty, and you won’t get one if you don’t come; and so on. Or you can put this “grabber” in the package sent to the user. I believe that when you open express delivery, you must often see the merchant’s “add WeChat cashback card”. I have also used a similar method to guide users into the private domain:
Make the card into a high-level “product experience officer” invitation letter, telling users that the probability of being selected is only 5%. “Product experience officers” can receive free trial quotas every time we launch new products, and feedback the trial results to us to help us improve our products. You only need to pay $10 for shipping each time. Let me tell you quietly that the cost of the product we give for trial + international postage is only $8 in total, and we will not lose money. But our price on the official website is $59, and many users are still very happy to join.
Tips
Behind every successful brand, there must be a group of super users who support it. When we deposit users into our own private domain and conduct refined operations, it is the beginning of screening and cultivating super users.
Second, TikTok’s traffic circulation closed loop
After understanding the three most commonly used traffic in TikTok, we need to further understand how these three types of traffic are circulated and promote each other to form an enhanced closed loop.
Free traffic is the main – private traffic circulation – paid traffic boost
Free traffic is a necessary foundation and core capability; paid traffic is a booster for direct transactions and popular videos; private traffic is a precipitated user asset, and it can also acquire new users through fission. On the way of using TikTok, if you understand these three types of traffic and play them well, you will definitely become a traffic expert of TikTok.
3. Evaluation criteria for traffic gain
Below is my scoring rule for TikTok’s traffic gain. You can see how many points you and your team can get in terms of traffic gain based on your different levels at each stage.
1 point for traffic: Not understanding TikTok traffic classification, and not knowing how to obtain traffic;
2 points for traffic: Understanding TikTok traffic classification, and having tried to obtain traffic on TikTok, but with poor results;
3 points for traffic: At least proficient in one way to obtain traffic, able to skillfully use this method to conduct transactions with users, and consciously depositing users in the private domain for secondary marketing;
4 points for traffic: Having systematic research and strategies for TikTok’s free and paid traffic, and establishing and operating one’s own private domain traffic, so that these three types of traffic form a positive closed loop;
5 points for traffic: On the basis of 4 points, you can obtain the maintenance and support of a group of highly sticky users, and can also continuously gain new users.
Please record your rating, I will analyze the comprehensive score with you at the end of this chapter.