Steal Jobs To Be Done From Product
And Become a Better Marketer
Product Envy
I think product people have more fun. Maybe it’s my control issues, but I love the idea of being responsible for the shape of a tangible thing. They get to create epics and tell stories. They get the business to agree to releasing something that makes no one happy and still be optimistic about it (do you mean Most Valuable Player? No! Minimum Viable Product…). They imagine themselves in situations that need solving, and put themselves in customers’ shoes. In a high-functioning org, they are in lock-step with what customers want. Organizations look to their product people to solve problems and drive the business forward.
As marketers, we’re constantly trying to prove ourselves and quantify our worth. There’s still this stigma attached to our profession that views us as more of a cost centre than a profit centre. I’ve spent my career proving that wrong. I create metrics-driven marketing orgs that are as creative as they are measured, that are as structured as they are adaptable. And part of the way that I do that is to borrow from my friends in product.
Fast-Forward a Few Years
Jobs to be Done and the Value Map are key methods I regularly use to align my teams. The clarity that comes out of those discussions are invaluable. Often, as marketers, we’ll be handed something and it’s our job to create or find demand. We’re not generally in on the ground floor, so we can have a different understanding of what’s been built and why. This exercise forces us all to examine what’s there, how it matches with who we’re trying to sell to, what their motivations are, and how we can best tap into their wants and needs.
This Is How We Do It
Jobs to be Done (JTBD) is one of my favourite adaptations. Widely popularized by Clayton Christensen, I first came across it in a previous role, in the book Value Proposition Design (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Barnarda & Smith). At the time, I was working with a business that had built a product that no one knew what to do with. The core of our product team had moved on to build the next product, and was having productive sessions using that book. I was pretty frustrated, stuck trying to figure out what to do with this thing that no one could define, much less sell. We originally had a very strong vision, but somewhere along the line we had stopped listening to what our customers wanted. Rather than pivot, we started to believe in our own Field of Dreams. Well, we built it, and they didn’t come. And marketing was left to figure out how to sell it.
Enter Jobs To Be Done
The simplicity of Jobs To Be Done is so attractive. Figure out what your potential customer needs, and dig in. Those customer needs are the Jobs to be Done that whatever you are building needs to do for them. What do they need from a functional perspective (I need a pair of sneakers)? From a social perspective (I want everyone to think I’m cool). From an emotional perspective (I need to feel superior)? Then figure out the potential Pains (I don’t have enough $, I don’t trust my taste) and Gains (I will to look better, I will get a new girl/boyfriend).
Now, as a perfect mirror, you put together a Value Map. What are the Products & Services you’ll build to help them do their Jobs? What are the Pain Relievers you will use to make their lives easier? And what are the Gain Creators that your product will use to give them more value? Wrap that all up in a value proposition you can use as your guiding light.
It’s easy to see why working through this would be a great idea before you jump in and build, but that wasn’t the case for me. I had an unfocused product, no idea who would use it, and for what. What I was looking for was a structured method I could use to define our value.
The good news is, with a few tweaks, JTBD worked well here too. Rather than try to recreate the past, I set the exercise in the present. I talked to potential customers and did industry research to determine JTBD and associated Pains & Gains. I played around with the product, talked to the people who designed and built it. I sat down with the people who’d been trying to sell it, to find the disconnects between what we thought our customers wanted and what we’d actually built. And guess what — it worked! We got to a cleaner value proposition that spoke to real customer need. And it showed me that there was power in this approach.
So how does this actually work? I like to work with cross-functional groups. I’ll have everyone on the marketing team there, along with delegates from Product, Sales, Community and whomever else is interested. I’ve done this alone, and in packed rooms with dozens of participants.
Meeting 1: Jobs to be Done (90 mins)
- After explaining the exercise, split teams into 3 small groups, one each for Functional, Social and Emotional Jobs. (For those of you familiar with JTBD, I usually group Supporting into Functional as they tend to be hard to de-couple). Give the groups 10/15 minutes to write as many of their jobs onto individual post-its
- Have each group come up and post their jobs on the wall, while reading them to the rest of the room. Ask the room if there’s anything missing and fill in the blanks.
- Starting with Functional, ask the room to split the jobs into More Important and Less Important (so you have 2 categories). Then, sort the More Important category from most to least importance. Move on to Social and then Emotional. This is all done together, with the facilitator moving the jobs around on the board based on instructions from the attendees.
Meeting 2: Value Map (90 mins)
- Follow the 3 steps above for Products & Services, Pain Relievers & Gain Creators.
Meeting 3: (60 to 90 mins)
- Prep for the meeting by documenting the results of the last 2 meetings in a spreadsheet. All the results should be included, and the rankings of each should be clearly delineated (a combination of colours & numbers works best). Send this out to the team, and ask them to come prepared for the next meeting with a few value prop ideas. For our purposes, a value prop is just a sentence with the form: [something the product helps you do], [something you need]. (ie — Hubba’s value prop for Retail Buyers is: Find new brands, grow your business faster). The VPD readers out there will note that i’m suggesting a different structure here. I always like to ask teams to get as simple as possible — it gets to the root of what you’ve built and what it does.
- In the meeting, have people write their sentences on a whiteboard, and start consensus building. With 4–5 people you can generally talk it through and come up with something great. With more, it can be helpful to split into small groups once all the sentences are on the board. Have each group pick 2 that they like OR amalgamate a few to come up with a new one, and then get those up on the board. Then re-split the teams and allow them to pick only one, and so-on until you only have one standing.
So Now What?
You’ve done all this work to distill your entire value into one very powerful sentence. Here’s how it’s going to help you. Have a look at your website, at your product. What is it saying? What does it say about you? Go update your in-app messaging, your website copy, your ads and landing pages. And then think bigger. It will act as your guiding light. It will help you triage ideas and make sure you focus on what’s important. It will help anchor conversations across the organization. It will give you structure. And that structure will drive your team, and your business forward. Don’t leave it to product to have all the fun.
If you do apply this to your next marketing project, I’d love to hear about it. Tweet me @theedanibee, or leave a comment below!
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