Talk about the product difference between B-end, C-end and G-end

This article is based on practical experience and combined with industry perspectives,

In terms of domain division, user characteristics, common misunderstandings, etc.

Talking about the different characteristics of B-end, C-end and G-end and their respective operating points.

1. How is the operation C-only theory refined?

In Zhu Zhu's opinion, the reasons for the formation of this theory may be as follows:

The C-side is mature and the methodology is easy to extract: The C-side is based on a single individual service business scenario with simple and early development categories, so it is easy to summarize the general needs and pain points based on the individual and the general methodology for solving problems.
Non-C-end business professional methods are pertinent: The needs of B-end and G come from specific work, with fixed business scenarios, strong professionalism and diverse industries, so it is difficult to summarize a set of general methodology to solve different businesses Pain point
The non-C-end operating department is not in a system : the B-end and G-end products are less in the market, and the operation work and other departments are highly overlapped. Some companies even directly do the marketing, R&D, or other departments, so the operating department is temporarily difficult to form a system.

But judging from industry data, in recent years, B-end and G-end products have also grown rapidly, and a large amount of capital, entrepreneurs, and intellectual resources are pouring into this track.

It is understood that since the second half of 2018, major Internet giants represented by Tencent have begun to adjust their organizational structure and deploy B-side business. At the same time, the financing amount and number of financing of B-end projects have been in the top three positions in the market for more than a year. In this context, it is necessary to correct the "c-only operation".

In order to correct the "c-only operation theory", it is necessary to clarify the classification standards and their respective characteristics.

2. What are the divisions of product fields and what are the division criteria?

What is the product classification standard? What does the C end and B end usually mean? What are the characteristics of each? What are the typical products? Let us answer these basic questions first.

2.1 Dividing dimensions and common types

There are various forms of product division, the common ones are business direction, technical field, user attributes, etc., and the division type we are talking about today is product user attributes.

The user attributes here are not specific user portraits in the microscopic sense, but macro general user characteristics based on the business field.

Based on this division, current products can be roughly divided into

C-end products for ordinary consumers,

B-end products of SMEs,

G-end products of government and other official institutions.

Strictly speaking, G-end products are a branch of B-end products, and there are many commonalities between them.

2.2 Common divisions and characteristics

C-end product definition and classification

C (consumer) is a product that provides services to a single consumer. For example: WeChat to meet social needs, Are you hungry for takeaways, Douyin for short video applications, and the starting point for charging learning.

These products have more competing products, a large user base, and rapid iteration. In Zhu Zhu's opinion, there are hundreds of C-end products on the app store, which can be roughly divided into two categories: functional and content.

Functional products, which take functions as product characteristics, usually meet the specific needs of users. For example, Meituan, 12306, Didi, Lianjia, Meitu Xiuxiu, Beauty Camera, Reading Notes, etc.;
The content type is the product, which mainly provides information and information. Today, Toutiao, Douyin, Tencent Video, and several major news products.

Of course, regardless of the function type and content type, they are not distinct from each other, and the boundaries are clear. When products develop to a certain stage, they must penetrate each other. Such as the famous Internet saying: All tools will gradually alienate and become media when they have a large number of users. Can we give WeChat a definite definition? It is no longer a pure IM tool, Taobao, Alipay, our commonly used applications are like this. They have gradually become a huge place, infiltrating all fields.

B-end products

B (business) means that the user group is based on the organization. The purpose of the user group to choose and use the B-side products is often to meet the needs of the company or organization. Must keep accounts for the company, punch cards, assist in organization management, salary management, organization optimization, etc.

Compared with C-end products, B-end users have a stronger general purpose-to increase the company's profitability. Based on this feature, the current B-end products can be divided into three forms:

1) Specific products: Provide specific products for enterprises. According to the presentation form of the products, they can be divided into hardware business and software business. Among them, the hardware business refers to the physical product business, which provides users with the hardware entities required by the upstream and downstream supply chains. For example, a tire factory supplies tires to a bicycle factory; a flour mill supplies flour to a bakery.

Software business is mostly tool products, that is, users use relatively mature tool software to strengthen collaborative office or improve efficiency. There are many of these tools, which can be roughly classified as:

Teamwork: convey the needs of the management team and reduce communication costs. For example, Teambition, Yundao, Github (code management tool), Git (version control tool), Jira (requirement management tool), Confluence (document management tool);
Internal communication: internal communication tools, such as DingTalk, corporate WeChat, and Lync and Slack commonly used by foreign companies;
Office Automation: Office Automation, which mainly provides functions such as data query and document approval, is the most basic and most commonly used office software.
Human Resource Management Software: Human Resource Management, including recruitment, resume management, entry management, salary management and other functions.
Financial management system: This is the most professional business system. Companies generally purchase mature financial software.

Platform type, selling platform resources to enterprises

The platform is the supplier's integration of upstream and downstream business resources in the industry to provide users with resources such as traffic and technology. It is like a women's clothing store that wants to enter a business. The location of the store, the basic decoration and even the number of users of the mall itself are already there. Newly settled stores only need to do simple soft decoration and daily shop to be able to operate normally.

In this process, the reasons for choosing to enter the mall platform are nothing more than two points: relying on the platform's inherent human flow and platform's own infrastructure. For this purpose, most of the online platforms are B2C e-commerce platforms, such as Tmall, Meituan, Dianping, and weddings.

Service-oriented, selling products-based services or solutions to companies.

The difference between service-oriented products and the previous two is that they provide services based on user scenarios or vertical integrated solutions. It is more a targeted end-to-end service, which can be a product but more is a solution in which a product set with a certain characteristic works together according to a certain permutation and combination.

There are also many demands of this kind of users. There are comprehensive solutions based on big data and cloud technology, such as smart cities, digital cities, smart medical care, cloud tourism, etc.; there are also specific special services, such as event companies to undertake user activities. Distribution and planning; Vision company undertakes user's corporate vision, etc.

G-end product definition and classification

G (government) is a product developed for the government, including public institutions. Strictly speaking, G-end products are a branch of B-end products, and they have many commonalities.

Is a product for organizations rather than individuals;
General user demand characteristics with business professionalism and efficiency improvement;
The requirements are clear and are often paid for.

Based on business requirements, the G-side can also be divided into two forms:

Specific product type: Provide specific products and services, most of which are customized software products, such as information management platforms;
Services and solutions: According to the requirements of vertical scenarios, provide end-to-end services that integrate product software and hardware, technical training guidance and even operation analysis.

3. What are the user characteristics of B-end, C-end and G-end? The main purpose of these three types of products

The essence of operation is to manage users. Operational work is to build a sustainable ecology between users and products through a series of methods, which can continuously explore user needs, drive products to iterate to users, and continuously meet users’ changing demands. Steadily increase the interaction rate between users and products. Therefore, in order to ensure the construction of a good ecology, the implemented operation measures need to be based on user characteristics to prescribe the right medicine.

3.1 The magic weapon of C-side operation: the seven deadly sins of human desire

The C-end product serves a single individual and solves the needs of the society. This universal demand based on individual natural persons is "human desire", specifically arrogance, vanity, anger, laziness, and greed. , Lust and curiosity. Operation is to satisfy or use the desire of human nature, or arouse, or urge, or satisfy.

The corresponding common aspects are as follows:

Greed: love to squeeze wool, greedy for cheap, such as various lottery draws, discounts, cash back activities and various group buying platforms;

Laziness: able to move less and never take one more step, such as: takeaway platforms, various door-to-door service apps, etc.;

Vanity: Show your own good side to the outside world, for example: various Meitu/Meipai products, etc.;

Curious: interested in new and interesting things;

Lust: For example, a variety of main beauty effects and even copywriting for pornography.

Anger: For example, some characteristic and emotional marketing copy and soft copy.

Therefore, typical user characteristics based on C-side requirements are as follows:

Purpose: To solve the pain points of "human desire" and satisfy personal demands;
Reasons for selection: simple personal needs or personal interests, etc.;
Decision cycle: short;
Use and purchase method: perceptual;
Self-propagation: strong.

3.2 B-end user characteristics-improve efficiency and increase revenue

The B-end product serves a group of small and medium-sized enterprises and is only used at work and has a fixed usage scenario.

Purpose: Purchase/use products, improve efficiency and save, and achieve high-efficiency output;
Reason for choice: It is cheaper to buy finished products than to produce by yourself, specifically because it can solve business needs and difficulties, save manpower and R&D costs, etc.;
Interfering factors: bottom;
Use and purchase method: rational.

3.3 G-end user characteristics-policy and business demands

The G end, serving the government or enterprises and institutions, is a branch of the B end, and the purpose of purchasing and using products has a certain degree of overlap. However, the G-end products also have obvious characteristics based on the particularity of business scenarios and user attributes:

Reasons for selection: business needs or technical difficulties based on policy and administrative requirements
Key requirements: a high degree of information security. The government system has very high requirements for data security because of its particularity. Strict security is required from the data-related issues at the product design stage to the data flow, storage, and exchange between products;
Long decision-making cycle: The government or enterprise has a huge organizational structure. To complete the construction of a project, cross-door review is required. After layer-by-level review, the time span will become extremely long.
Use and purchase method: rational

This article mainly briefly describes the product-oriented user group division and user characteristics.

Tell a little story

The protagonist of the story is my friend Xiao A. She went to a company to do C-end operations after graduating from college . At work, she likes to think hard, leading colleagues and even people in the industry are very sure of her ability. Last year, she moved to another company to do content operations, but resigned within three months. She never knew the reason until she told us the following situation:

The new company cooperates with the government to build an industry-based government information management platform in the name of semi-official. The platform provides government information for local small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as corporate usage data for the government. From this point of view, this is a project in which G and B coexist and is based on the G end. This is obviously different from the C-end operation experience that Xiao A did before.

Let's talk about the work of A, she is mainly responsible for the new media operation of the platform. Based on the project background, in our opinion, before you have grasped the preferences of your customers and bosses, it is safest to do the following two points:

Show the authoritative image of the G end: the style of writing is serious and formal, and the layout is regular to ensure that the information is accurate.
Deliver the information required by the B-side: timely and accurate delivery of industry policies, industry and friend business trends, etc.

But Xiao A didn't do this. She directly used the accumulated C-side thinking to make the content: every day she struggled to catch industry and social hot spots, and pursued the witty and personalization of language and the relaxed and lively layout.

Although in just one month, reading volume, UGC and other indicators performed very well. However, leaders and government clients were always dissatisfied with her work, and even criticized her for not serious and lively content in a regular meeting.

Xiao A was very aggrieved when she talked about it. She asked me an excellent content operation, isn't it about creating product IP with text that can insight into user psychology and interacting with users? Aren't page views and UGC affirmation of the results of her work?

I was speechless for a while, and Xiao A was right, but she ignored one of the most important issues. The context of the product has changed from her first job. She made a major mistake: C-only operation!

C-only operation is the mistaken belief that the audience of the product is the C-end user, and then apply the C-end operation method and evaluation indicators to do it. Blindly pursue reading, interaction, etc.

In operation, products oriented to the C-end are the current mainstream. Many current methodologies and operating skills are also based on C-end operations. This often leads to the belief that the so-called operation is the operation of C-end products.