Good Teeth × Feng Ping | An 8 - year Practical "Godmother", See Her Stake Her Career

On March 25, 2020, Feng Ping, author of "Private Domain Traffic," posted the following on his WeChat Moments: "People are all educated by events. We used to see stories about the pandemic in history, but this time, we have become history ourselves. Just like operating and selling goods, you need to learn how to do it and experience it before you can 'take it in' and achieve success."

This year also marks Feng's eighth year working on private domain traffic.

Over the course of eight years, she has managed more than 2,000 private domain traffic accounts, with 2.3 million users, and has guided more than 150 companies, including Xibei, in implementing private domain traffic operations. Her book, "Private Domain Traffic," has consistently ranked at the top of the bestseller list since its publication.

The 2019 Newrank Content Business Conference focused on the topic of "private domain traffic" | Image source: Newrank official WeChat account

In fact, the advent of the waning user dividend in the second half of the internet era has already begun (the lower-tier market is also rapidly bottoming out), and platform traffic costs continue to rise. Coupled with the revenue losses suffered by dental clinics this year, they are among the first to be affected. Clients have indeed tightened their belts; although performance is gradually recovering, they are becoming more cautious than ever with advertising on public platforms.

Feng explained, "It's not that we can't afford to invest, it's that the return on investment (ROI) is no longer suitable. Suddenly, we found that the more we invested, the less effective it became, turning into a negative value, which caused everyone to be fearful and dare not invest even with the money in hand." (Feng's interview with CBNData)

Previously, many clinic brands had been battling with public platforms: from bidding for prime positions and securing fixed spots to interest-based traffic recommendations.

In contrast, inquiries from readers and members about "private domain traffic" have surged dramatically recently.

The creators believe that the reason why private domain has received unprecedented attention in the industry is, on the one hand, due to cash flow constraints, and on the other hand, because many dental professionals have begun to truly realize the "value of existing assets," that is, to shift from a traffic-driven logic to an existing asset-driven logic.

According to WARC's research on advertising spending in 2020, global advertising spending will decline by 8.1% (US$49.6 billion) this year, with traditional media spending projected to fall by more than US$50 billion throughout the year. Conversely, social media will see the strongest growth (+9.8%), with e-commerce penetration increasing by 11 percentage points (to 27%) in the first eight weeks of 2020 alone.

However, in the inquiries we received, the focus on private domain traffic has not changed much compared to one or two years ago. Business owners who haven't entered, are newly entering, or have just withdrawn are still worried.

Feng's advice is: take small steps and move quickly; practice first, identify problems before solving them, and then conduct training and debriefing. Worrying is pointless; the speed of trial and error is the most important thing.

Feng said, "Right now, dental clinic owners need to refresh their understanding: wrong understanding will not lead to the right approach. If dental staff do not know how to retain customers or even lack the ability to produce content, they will be clinics that cannot attract fans. Even if they invest enough in public platforms, have a strong relationship with the platform, and receive enough traffic support, it will still be a waste!"

The need for a refreshed understanding stems from the fact that current perceptions of "private domain traffic" are fragmented and lack consensus. Discussions of private domain traffic often fail to reach a clear consensus due to differing definitions and a lack of unified terminology. However, most private domain traffic operators generally agree on three key elements regarding their operational strategies:

Warning: The following content may be somewhat "heartbreaking".

Warning: The following content may be somewhat "heartbreaking".

Warning: The following content may be somewhat "heartbreaking".

Private domain traffic is not actually a new concept; it simply became a widely circulated marketing term before spreading to various industries for commercial practice. Therefore, many consider 2019 to be the "first year" of private domain traffic. The pandemic saw major brands (such as Xiaomi and JD.com) enter the market in large numbers, creating another surge in discussion. This is simply because the private domain ecosystem, after several years of iteration, has now reached a point where its conceptual framework, methodology, and technological platforms are largely mature.

Of course, some argue that private domain traffic is derived from the "WeChat business logic," and those who have been "disturbed" or have "idol baggage" are particularly critical of it. But it must be admitted that during the pandemic, apart from large traffic platforms, the most "sellable" channel was precisely "private domain traffic."

Among the nine new professions recently released by state media, those who operate "private domain traffic" have been officially named: Internet Marketers.

Although the dental industry tends to lag behind, previous surveys show that many dentists have tried their hand at private domain traffic, but most failed because they didn't know how to do it properly, and some even made things worse.

Infiltrating a dental brand's "private domain traffic" fan group

Due to a lack of proper management, it was almost entirely a case of "self-indulgence" and "dead groups."

Feng emphasized to us that bosses must be forward-thinking. "Through this pandemic, you'll find that companies that consciously added customers on WeChat and sold goods online through Moments and live streaming have achieved remarkable results during the pandemic. Even those that did poorly have maintained a steady cash flow. On the other hand, most offline companies that didn't realize the importance of building a private domain are on the verge of collapse!"

Part 1 | Only lazy dental marketers focus solely on the public domain.

Feng is from Sichuan and always speaks sharply and directly: "You see, no matter what industry you're in or what platform you're advertising on, customer service always says: 'Let's add each other on WeChat.'"

In fact, traffic from both offline clinics and online platforms is collectively referred to as "public domain traffic." Once customers are added to your personal WeChat account, they become your private domain traffic. After that, you can not only use it for free and repeatedly, but also share it with your friends.

"Private domain traffic is very benevolent because it doesn't harm existing customers. If I buy something from your offline store and then add you as a friend, it means we're friends, and you can still provide me with services in the future, including after-sales support. If I don't buy anything, I can add you on WeChat before leaving, and you'll be happy that I'm willing to continue our contact." (Quoted from Feng's interview with CBNData)

Offline clinics each have different sources of traffic, which I won't go into detail about here; I'll just talk about traffic platforms.

There are two main logics:

Search logic and algorithm logic

If we understand this in conjunction with McLuhan's concepts of "the medium is the message" and "the platform society," the interaction between these two logics, due to the limitations of platform attributes, makes it difficult to achieve transactions with "long decision-making chains," such as dental medical services.

Therefore, "adding someone on WeChat" to establish a closer relationship is something most people know, and it's the first step in transitioning from public to private domain. Essentially, it's about expanding the scenarios for reaching users. Here, we need to dispel a misconception: "Public-to-private" isn't just about reducing future advertising costs, but about establishing connections with the other party.

Because all transactions are marketing based on relationships.

Taking Douyin as an example, many dental brands have done operations or advertising, but in the end, the result is: all the excitement is theirs, and I get nothing.

Why ?

Feng believes that traffic isn't about quantity, but about precision! Super users are the target of private domain traffic; close relationships lead to a surge in super users. For a brand, super users offer high conversion rates, high repurchase rates, high sharing rates, and high referral rates. Super users are 50 times more valuable than ordinary users!

“Yesterday I was talking to a friend about Douyin live streaming. He’s writing a book about it. We talked about how Douyin is very popular, but it’s not selling anything.” Feng is a doctor by training and a typical pragmatist.

“Platforms like Douyin are theoretically advertising companies. They’re like Baidu, except Baidu is based on the logic of searching text and image information, while Douyin is based on the logic of recommendation.”

Due to the convenience of being in the industry, we also obtained a lot of actual ROI data for Douyin. As Feng said, "In the past, high-traffic accounts made some money by accepting advertisements, but now they have almost lost it all. You have tens of millions of followers, but you still can't monetize (for brands)."

Caption: Recently, quite a few A-list celebrities have also been caught in scandals and have been frequently exposed for their misconduct.

Part Two | The underlying logic of private domain traffic will not change, but a new trend is emerging.

Unlike other traffic platforms that only address data and exposure issues, WeChat, from a company value perspective, does not allow the emergence of gray-market data. This also means that the WeChat ecosystem is relatively more user-friendly and protects information recipients.

What does this tell us from the opposite perspective?

“When you look at your Moments, you might think the other person doesn’t know you’re looking and that it wasn’t specifically posted for you. But what’s the reality? It is posted for you. The other person can take advantage of the opportunity to post whatever you want to see,” Feng said. “If you see someone’s content on WeChat, logically, you two must have a relationship. From building a relationship to monetizing it, (for products with high trust costs) only a personal connection can generate a transaction, and that’s only possible on WeChat.”

Before writing this article, we re-analyzed Feng's WeChat Moments posts from the past six months, word by word. WeChat Moments, as the primary communication "medium" for private domain traffic, was also a key focus of Feng's hands-on teaching.

In the past six months, Feng posted a total of 1,020 updates on WeChat Moments.

She was betting her entire career.

I often see her posts on WeChat Moments in the early hours of the morning; that's probably when she has a sudden epiphany.

Recently, WeChat accelerated the development of its Video Accounts feature. Feng, as one of the first invited beta testers, actively explored the platform. After its release, Video Accounts iterated rapidly, reaching 200 million users in just a few days. Feng believes Video Accounts represent a new evolution of private domain traffic and a new opportunity.

This was also what she called a "game-changer" in 2020.

Caption: Feng's video account live stream room

"Both WeChat Channels and Douyin are video platforms, right? But they are completely different concepts. Douyin feels more utilitarian to users, while WeChat Channels feels more personal. No matter how much you interact on Douyin, it doesn't really matter."

Feng still insisted on explaining it to us using the "relationship" as a starting point:

Although the IP name of a video account can be separated from a personal WeChat account, video accounts are still based on relationships and WeChat's private traffic, which makes the future potential of video accounts very large.

Just like everyone joked:

We dodged Douyin and Kuaishou, but ultimately met again on WeChat Video Channel.

Therefore, video accounts are still about relationship connections, but they are much richer than text and image content. And the ultimate goal of relationship interaction is trust.

"If you really want to build a brand, I think you should focus on establishing your own relationships on WeChat," Feng believes. She argues that dentistry, as a medical service industry focused on smile reconstruction, is no different from the "private domain pioneer" aesthetic medicine in terms of operation; the only difference is whether you're "selling radishes" or "selling cabbages." Previously, she had already conducted extensive practical work in operating private domain traffic within the aesthetic medicine industry.

But simply having a relationship (adding friends) isn't enough. Relationships need to be layered with new scenario designs while also maintaining efficiency; otherwise, the system remains incomplete.

In offline clinic settings, one-on-one, face-to-face interactions are the easiest way to build long-term, stable relationships, but their efficiency isn't much higher than WeChat. Many clinic brands have membership systems, but these are often one-way relationships and lack a defined context. In the practical application of private domain traffic, both relationships and contexts need to be considered.

So how do we handle the new scenarios?

Today we will only discuss role-playing issues within the scenario:

Part 3 | Should we build a dentist's IP or a clinic's IP?

This has given rise to an even more poignant dilemma: Should dental private domain traffic be built around the dentist's IP or the clinic's IP?

"I know a large dental group that originally planned to aggressively develop private domain traffic. The boss made all the initial investments, but in the end, it didn't go through with it. All the doctors were against it because they didn't want to hand over their WeChat friend resources to the company."

What is the explanation?

Feng didn't say it explicitly, but just smiled and said, "That depends on the boss's understanding and ability." However, she shared a similar IP dilemma in her book:

Feng had a client named Zheng in Hangzhou who ran a "model economy" and later expanded into live streaming. The model economy is similar to the dental industry; the core is also IP—specific individuals. At the time, Zheng needed to manage over 1000 live streamers simultaneously, which was extremely difficult. When the streamers were asked to share live stream information on their WeChat Moments, many were unwilling to cooperate. Feng then led a team of over 30 people, providing hands-on guidance to help Zheng maintain these 1000+ WeChat accounts.

Caption: Feng's daily "hands-on" teaching

"Don't be too greedy. Instead of using the streamer's own account, let the streamer create a batch of your own accounts. It's more convenient to use, and the long-term value generated by the accounts belongs to the company." Feng's advice debunked Zheng's "key myth."

After resolving the issue of "traffic ownership," Zheng launched a WeChat account called "Anchor Assistant," positioning himself as the "chief leader" of anchor assistants. Even though the anchor industry is fiercely competitive and has high turnover, Zheng is currently not worried about anchors "running away after being cultivated to fame."

Here's a simple formula to summarize: "Celebrity" IP + "Celebrity" assistant, solving the problem of traffic ownership.

Feng added, "Strategically deciding whether to enter the private domain traffic market or the dental clinic is a wonderful 'litmus test'—the value presented by individual dentists becomes more obvious. In the past, when dentists provided services offline, they could see the value they created; but once the dentist's IP is placed online, the value becomes the temperature between the dentist and the private domain traffic. How others perceive your value is what we call the gold content of your personal IP."

Think about it: every time we spend money, we're voting for the world we want. Every time a customer gives you money, they're also voting for you and what you do with their money. Whether you're doing things right or wrong depends on the number of votes you receive.

Feng's daily workbench is like a central control panel.

Is it cheap?

The creators said, "When the dental community heard that they were going to operate 2,000 WeChat accounts all at once, they probably ran away without even asking about the costs."

Feng said, "The traffic that can be converted is always expensive."

How expensive is it? A complete private domain traffic system looks roughly like this:

Taking IP operation as a unit, organizational restructuring is needed to address the underlying strategic issues:

• Two basic departments: Content Department + Marketing Department
• The team is comprised of four departments: Content Department, Marketing Department, Operations Department, and Service Department.

How should we set KPIs for these departments?

First, it's important to clarify one point: the purpose of private domain traffic is to serve as a digital entry point for customer management.

Here are four basic KPIs for reference:

• The absolute number of customers in the customer pool (number of fans, users, and friends).
• Repurchase rate (the repurchase rate within the actual consumer purchase loop)
• Customer spending in absolute terms (GMV)
• Customer satisfaction (requires designing a survey scale)

With proper operational training provided, dental brand owners primarily incur human resource costs and conversion commissions. As expected, they will still experience a period of adjustment and gradual integration.

"A good content operations team can do the work of ten people." Feng's logic is also very much based on "first principles": either exchange time for money, or exchange money for time. Hiring an unprofessional team incurs the highest non-monetary costs, including time and opportunity costs. If you lack the ability to attract talent, you should never skimp on training costs.

Content dissemination and marketing planning may seem like low-barrier jobs, but communication studies and marketing are actually systematic disciplines. "Using your hobby to challenge someone else's profession" often results in outcomes that cannot be scientifically attributed.

Many things that seem free are often the most expensive. But in the long run, compared to the current dental industry's "widespread," "one-off," and increasingly high customer acquisition costs, there's not much to compare.

Similar to other industries, the dental operations team is predominantly composed of people born in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Feng, "The new generation of young people is very energetic, thoughtful, and digitally native. Therefore, their understanding of new things may, to some extent, surpass that of their superiors." So the challenge for the "older generation" is how to fully unleash their potential, and empowering them primarily involves stimulating their interest.

Feng said he wanted to speak frankly: "There's a group of young dentists who seem unassuming but are very good at marketing. As a result, they have high customer trust and loyalty, leading to high conversion rates and good sales. It's very likely that the younger generation will surpass the older one."

When discussing how character IPs should speak out correctly, Feng suddenly conjured up various scenes from dentists' WeChat Moments: "Some dentists say they don't have the energy, time, or are afraid of bothering their friends. Of course, they also refuse to spend money on private domain traffic."

In Feng's research, the number of posts on social media is not the reason for being blocked; low-quality or offensive content is the reason for being blocked.

Common hair tie poses used by dentists

"And you don't need many. Just one piece of this kind of content can decide whether you'll be locked in the 'don't look at their Moments' black box. Once you're locked in, what do you think the chances of being released are?"

Think about it, who hasn't blocked "WeChat sellers" a few times?

Undeniably, being an individual dentist is fraught with uncertainty, and as a clinic owner, you have to make that decision. "Because the owner's mission is to create and find clients. Of course, who controls the traffic is very important."

Feng has also encountered real-life cases where "an employee left and took WeChat with them, putting the boss in a life-or-death situation." Therefore, Feng always emphasizes that the boundaries between employee assets and company assets must be clearly defined.

The issue of ownership of WeChat personal accounts, at its most basic level, affects management efficiency; at its most significant level, it represents a loss of real assets (especially user assets).

However, Feng has repeatedly emphasized on different occasions that while establishing a private domain traffic strategy is important, its success depends on execution. When faced with specific problems—how to attract customers and generate revenue—it's crucial to find solutions. If the strategy is wrong, the outcome will inevitably be wrong. Even if the strategy is correct, poor execution will certainly result in unsatisfactory outcomes.

"You see, every boss wants to build private traffic. But wanting to do this is a false proposition; wanting to make money is the real proposition."

Those present exchanged smiles.

The following is the heart-to-heart section.