You've segmented customers by industry, company size, and role. You've built detailed personas with names, photos, and pain points. Yet your messaging still doesn't resonate, and prospects don't understand why they need your product.
The problem isn't your research. It's your framework. Demographics and personas describe who buys your product, but they don't explain why.
Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) takes a different approach. It focuses on the progress customers are trying to make in their lives—the "job" they hire your product to do.
What Is Jobs-to-be-Done?
The JTBD framework was developed by Clayton Christensen and popularized by practitioners like Bob Moesta and Tony Ulwick. The core insight: people don't buy products—they hire them to make progress.
When someone buys a drill, they're not buying quarter-inch drill bits. They're hiring a solution to create quarter-inch holes. But dig deeper and they're really hiring a solution to hang shelves, which helps them organize their space, which makes their home feel more functional.
The job is the underlying progress they're trying to make, not the product features they need.
For product marketers, this changes everything. Instead of positioning around features or buyer demographics, you position around the job customers are hiring you to do.
The Core Components of JTBD
Every job has four dimensions that product marketers need to understand.
Functional dimension: What task is the customer trying to complete? This is the practical, tangible outcome they need. "I need to create a quarterly budget forecast."
Emotional dimension: How does the customer want to feel during and after completing the job? "I need to feel confident that my forecast is accurate so I don't look incompetent in front of the CFO."
Social dimension: How does the customer want to be perceived by others? "I need my team to see me as data-driven and strategic."
Contextual factors: What circumstances trigger the job? "I need to do this at quarter-end when I'm already overwhelmed with closing tasks."
Traditional product marketing focuses almost entirely on the functional dimension. JTBD reveals that emotional and social dimensions often drive purchase decisions more than functional capabilities.
How to Identify Jobs-to-be-Done
You can't identify jobs through surveys asking "What features do you want?" or "What's your biggest pain point?" Those questions elicit stated preferences, not actual behavior.
Instead, conduct switch interviews. Talk to customers who recently switched to your product. Ask:
"Walk me through the moment you decided you needed to find a solution. What was happening?"
"What did you try before choosing us? Why didn't those solutions work?"
"What almost stopped you from switching? What pushed you over the edge?"
These questions reveal the struggling moment that triggered the search, the job they were trying to do, what they valued, and what they worried about.
You're looking for patterns across 10-15 interviews. When multiple customers describe similar struggling moments and desired progress, you've identified a job.
How to Apply JTBD to Product Marketing
Once you've identified key jobs, use them to reshape your marketing.
Messaging and positioning: Lead with the job, not the features. Instead of "Project management software with Gantt charts and time tracking," try "Help engineering teams ship on time without drowning in status update meetings."
Customer segmentation: Segment by job, not demographics. A 25-person startup and a 5,000-person enterprise might hire your product for the same job. They're the same segment even though traditional segmentation would separate them.
Content strategy: Create content that speaks to different stages of the job. Before customers know they have a problem, they're experiencing struggling moments. Create content that makes those moments visible. Once they're searching, create content that helps them evaluate solutions based on job criteria.
Sales enablement: Train sales to identify which job a prospect is hiring for. The demo and pitch should be customized to that job, not to company size or industry.
Product roadmap input: Share jobs with product teams. Features should enable jobs better, not just add functionality. When product asks "Should we build Feature X?" the question becomes "Does this help customers complete Job Y significantly better?"
Common Mistakes with JTBD
Confusing tasks with jobs: "Create a report" is a task. "Prove to my boss that our marketing is driving pipeline" is a job. Jobs are about progress and outcomes, not individual tasks.
Identifying too many jobs: If you have 47 different jobs, you haven't found the patterns. Most products serve 3-5 core jobs well. Identify those first.
Ignoring emotional and social dimensions: Product marketers often catalog the functional job but ignore that someone buying sales software might be hiring it to "look like a strategic leader who modernizes processes" (social) or "feel less anxious about hitting quota" (emotional).
Making up jobs without research: You can't brainstorm jobs in a conference room. They must come from real customer interviews about actual switching behavior.
When to Use JTBD vs. Other Frameworks
JTBD works best when you need to understand why customers switch solutions or when messaging isn't resonating despite knowing your audience.
Use JTBD when:
- You're entering a crowded market and need differentiation beyond features
- Your product serves multiple customer types who seem unrelated
- Prospects say "interesting product, but I don't need it right now"
- You're trying to create new category demand
Don't use JTBD when:
- You're doing quick tactical execution and need simple positioning
- Your product is highly technical and buyers evaluate purely on specifications
- You're marketing to highly regulated buyers with strict evaluation criteria
JTBD is a research-intensive framework. It requires customer interviews, pattern analysis, and deep thinking. The payoff is messaging that resonates at a deeper level than feature-benefit positioning.
Getting Started with JTBD
Start with switch interviews. Identify 10 recent customers who switched to your product. Schedule 45-minute calls. Ask about the struggling moment, their search process, what they considered, and what made them choose you.
Look for patterns in their stories. What progress were they trying to make? What were they worried about? What circumstances triggered their search?
Document 3-5 core jobs you identify. For each job, write:
- The functional outcome they need
- The emotional feeling they're seeking
- The social perception they want
- The context that triggers this job
Then rewrite one piece of core messaging—your homepage headline, a sales deck opening, or a key landing page—focused on the job instead of features.
Test whether it resonates better. If customers say "yes, that's exactly what I need," you've found a real job.
Jobs-to-be-Done isn't just another framework. It's a fundamental shift in how you think about customers—from who they are to what they're trying to achieve. That shift makes all your marketing more relevant.