Talk about the key points of B-end, C-end and G-end operations

Based on practical experience and combined with industry perspectives, this article briefly discusses the different characteristics and operating points of the B-end, C-end, and G-end from the aspects of field division, user characteristics, common misunderstandings, etc.

Let me tell you a little story first

The protagonist of the story is my friend Xiao A, who went to a company to do C-end operations after graduating from university. She likes to work hard and think diligently at work. Her leaders, colleagues and even people in the industry are very confident in her abilities. Last year, she changed jobs to work in content operations at another company, but left within three months. She never knew the reason until she told us the following:

The new company cooperated with the government to create an industry-wide government information management platform in a semi-official name. The platform provides government information to local small and medium-sized enterprises, and also provides the government with enterprise usage data. From this point of view, this is a project where G and B coexist and is based on the G end, which is significantly different from Xiao A's previous experience in C-end operations.

Let’s talk about Xiao A’s work. She is mainly responsible for the new media operations of the platform. Based on the project background, in our opinion, before you have a good grasp of the preferences of your clients and bosses, it is safest to do the following two things:

1. Show the authoritative image of the G-side: the writing style is serious and formal, the layout is standard, and ensure that the information is accurate.
2. Deliver the information required by the B-side: timely and accurate delivery of industry policies, industry and friendly business dynamics, etc.

But Xiao A did not do so. She directly used her accumulated C-end thinking to create content: she racked her brains every day to grasp industry and social hot spots, and pursued humorous and personalized language and relaxed and lively layout.

Although in just one month, indicators such as reading volume and UGC performed very well. However, her superiors and government clients were never satisfied with her work. Once, they even criticized her for writing something that was not serious and too lively during a regular meeting.

Little A felt aggrieved when she spoke. She asked me, isn't the role of an excellent content operator to use words that can gain insight into user psychology to create product IP and interact with users? Aren’t the views and UGC a full recognition of her work?

I was speechless for a moment. What Xiao A said was indeed correct, but she overlooked the most important issue. The context of the product has changed from her first job. She made a big mistake: she only cares about C in operations!

The C-only theory of operation is to mistakenly believe that the target audience of the product is the C-end users, and then apply the C-end operation methods and assessment indicators to do it. Blindly pursuing reading volume, interaction volume, etc.

In operations, C-end products are currently the mainstream, and many current methodologies and operational techniques are also based on C-end operations. This often leads to people thinking that so-called operations are the operations of C-end products.

1. How was the C-only theory of operations formulated?

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

1. The C-end is mature and the methodology is easy to extract: The C-end is based on the service business scenarios of a single person, has simple business scenarios and has developed early and has many categories. Therefore, it is easy to summarize the universal pain points of individual needs and general methodologies to solve problems.
2. Non-C-end businesses are highly professional and targeted: The needs of B-end and G-end come from specific work, with fixed business scenarios, strong professionalism and industry diversity. Therefore, it is difficult to summarize a set of universal methodologies to solve different business pain points;
3. Non-C-end operation departments have not yet formed a system : B-end and G-end products are relatively rare in the market, and the operation work is highly overlapping with other departments. Some companies even have the marketing, R&D, or other departments do the work directly for them. Therefore, it is difficult for the operation department to form a system for the time being.

However, judging from industry data, B-end and G-end products have also been growing rapidly in recent years, 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 structures and deploy B-side businesses. At the same time, over the past year or so, the financing amount and number of financing times for B-side projects have always been among the top three in the market (data source: IT Orange). In this context, it is necessary to correct the "operation-only theory".

In order to correct the "operation-only theory", we need to first clarify the classification standards and their respective characteristics.

2. What are the divisions in the product field and what are the division criteria?

What are the product classification standards? What do we usually mean by C-end and B-end? What are the characteristics between them? What are the typical products? Let us answer these most basic questions first.

2.1 Classification Dimensions and Common Types

There are various forms of product classification, the most common ones are business direction, technical field, user attributes, etc. The type of classification we are going to talk about today is product user attributes.

The user attributes here are not specific user portraits in the micro sense, but macro-general user characteristics based on the business field. Based on this classification, current products can be roughly divided into C-end products for ordinary consumers, B-end products for small and medium-sized enterprises, and G-end products for government and other official institutions. Strictly speaking, G-end products are a branch of B-end products, and they have many similarities.

2.2 Common divisions and characteristics

Definition and classification of C-end products

C (consumer) refers to a product that provides services to a single consumer. For example: WeChat for meeting social needs, Ele.me for ordering takeout, TikTok, a short video application, and Qidian Academy for recharging and learning.

These products have more products than competitors, a large user base, and are iterated quickly. There are hundreds of C-end products on the app store, which Zhu Zhu believes can be roughly divided into two categories: functional and content-based.

• Functional products, that is, products with functions as their characteristics, can usually meet the specific needs of users. For example, Meituan, 12306, Didi, Lianjia, Meitu Xiuxiu, Beauty Camera, Reading Notes, etc.
• Content type refers to products that mainly provide news and information, such as Toutiao, Douyin, Tencent Video, and several major news products.

Of course, both functional and content types are not distinct from each other with clear boundaries. When products develop to a certain stage, they will inevitably penetrate each other. As a famous Internet saying goes: All tools will gradually become alienated and become media when they have a large number of users. Can we still give a definite definition of WeChat? It is no longer just a simple IM tool. Taobao, Alipay and other applications we commonly use are all like this. They have gradually become a huge place, penetrating into various fields.

B-end products

B (business) means that the user group is mainly organizations. The purpose of this user group choosing and using B-end products is often to meet the needs of the company or organization. You must keep accounts for the company, punch in, assist with organizational management, salary management, organizational optimization, etc.

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

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

The software business is mostly tool products, that is, users use relatively mature tool software to enhance collaborative office work or improve efficiency. There are many of these tools, which can be roughly divided into:

1. Team collaboration: convey the needs within the management team and reduce communication costs. For example, Teambition, Yundao, Github (code management tool), Git (version control tool), Jira (requirements management tool), Confluence (document management tool);
2. Internal communication: internal communication tools, such as DingTalk, WeChat for Enterprise, and Lync and Slack commonly used by foreign companies;
3. Office Automation: Office Automation mainly provides functions such as data query and document approval. It is the most basic and most commonly used office software.
4. Human Resource Management Software: Human Resource Management, including recruitment, resume management, onboarding management, salary management and other functions.
5. Financial management system: This is the most professional business system, and companies generally purchase mature financial software.

• Platform-based, selling platform resources to enterprises

The platform, as a supplier, integrates upstream and downstream business resources in the industry to provide users with traffic, technology and other resources. It is just like a women's clothing store that wants to open a business. The store's geographical location, basic decoration and even the number of users in the mall itself are already there. The new store only needs to do simple soft decoration and daily stocking to operate normally.

In this process, the reasons for choosing to settle in the shopping mall platform are nothing more than two points: relying on the platform's inherent traffic flow and the platform's own basic facilities. Based on this purpose, most online e-commerce platforms are B2C ones, such as Tmall, Meituan, Dianping, and Wedding.com.

• Service-oriented, selling services or solutions to enterprises using products as the medium.

The difference between service-oriented products and the former lies in the provision of user scenario-based services or vertical integrated solutions. It is more of a targeted end-to-end service. It can be a product but is more of a solution in which a set of products with certain characteristics work together in a certain arrangement and combination.

This type of users also have many demands, including 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 taking on the venue layout and planning of users' activities; visual companies taking on users' 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 similarities.

• It is a product for organizations rather than individuals;
• It has the characteristics of business professionalism and universal user demand for improving efficiency;
• The demand is clear and often paid for.

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

• Specific product type: providing specific product services, mostly customized software products, such as information management platforms;
• Services and solutions: Based on vertical scenario requirements, we provide end-to-end services that integrate product hardware and software, technical training guidance, and even operational analysis.

3. What are the user characteristics of B-end, C-end, and G-end?

The essence of operation is to manage users. Operation work is to build a sustainable ecosystem between users and products through a series of methods, which can not only continuously discover user needs, drive product iteration to users, continuously meet users' changing demands, but also steadily improve the interaction rate between users and products. Therefore, in order to ensure the construction of a good ecology, the operational measures implemented must be targeted based on user characteristics.

3.1 The magic weapon for C-end operations: the seven deadly sins of human desire

C-end products serve individuals and solve the needs of social people themselves. This universal need among individual natural persons is called "human desire", which includes arrogance, vanity, anger, laziness, greed, lust and curiosity. Operation is to satisfy or utilize human desires, or to arouse, stimulate, or satisfy them.

The corresponding commonly used aspect theories are as follows:

Greed: Love to get something for nothing, such as various lottery draws, discounts, cashback activities, and various group buying platforms;

Laziness: If you can do less, never do more, for example: food delivery platforms, various door-to-door service apps, etc.

Vanity: showing off one's good side to others, such as various beautiful pictures/photos, etc.

Curious: interested in new and interesting things;

Lust: For example, all kinds of copywriting that focuses on the beauty effect or even skirts the line of pornography.

Angry: For example, some marketing copy and soft articles that are characteristic and emotional.

Therefore, the typical user characteristics based on C-end needs are as follows:

• Purpose: To solve the pain points of "human desire" and meet personal usage demands;
• Reason for selection: purely personal needs or personal interests, etc.;
• Decision cycle: short;
• How to use and purchase: emotional;
• Self-propagation: Strong.

3.2 B-side user characteristics - improving efficiency and increasing revenue

B-end products serve a group of small and medium-sized enterprises, are only used at work, and have fixed usage scenarios.

• Purpose: Purchase/use products to improve efficiency and savings and achieve high-efficiency output;
• Reasons for selection: It is cheaper to buy finished products than to produce them by yourself, specifically because it can solve business needs and difficulties, save manpower and R&D costs, etc.;
• Disturbed factors: bottom;
• Usage and purchasing method: rational.

3.3 G-end User Characteristics—Policy and Business Demands

The G-end serves the government or enterprises and institutions and is a branch of the B-end. The purposes of purchasing and using products have certain overlaps. However, G-end products also have distinct characteristics based on the particularity of business scenarios and user attributes:

• Reason for selection: Business needs or technical difficulties based on policy and administrative requirements
• Key requirements: High level of information security. Due to the particularity of government systems, the requirements for data security are very high. From data confidentiality issues in the product design stage to data flow, storage, and exchange between products, strict security protection is required;
• Long decision-making cycle: The organizational structure of government or enterprises and institutions is huge, and the completion of a project requires cross-departmental review. After layers of review, the time span will become extremely long.
• Usage and purchase method: rational

This article briefly describes the product's user group division and user characteristics.

Author: Zhu Zhu

Source: Zhu Zhu Life Laboratory (ID: ixian888)