How Marketers and Innovators Can Use the Jobs to Be Done Theory to Make their Work More Successful
Marketers and innovators’ work can achieve more success when they look at customers not through arbitrary demographics but through the jobs (or progress) they are trying to achieve in their life at any one time and in specific situations.
The jobs to be done theory was conceptualized by the late Professor Clayton Christensen and his team in a series of articles and in their book Competing Against Luck.
The founders of the concept have demonstrated its success through many examples in their writings. It is proven to make innovation and marketing more effective, turning those business efforts from hit-or-miss to success.
In this article, I have explained the concept with an example and provided a basic structure to help practitioners use it with certainty.
Does segmenting customers based on demographics & psychographics work?
This is how marketers often categorize customers — or at least a basic version of how they do it (it can often get more granular).
Female. 25 to 34 years. Lower LSM. Urban. Juggling small trades to stay afloat. Living hand-to-mouth. Have little knowledge of banking beyond loans.
If your brief is to design a product or a marketing campaign for this group, what would you do?
We often go and study the group a bit more to see what gaps there are in their life (for a product) or what tensions they have (for a marketing campaign.
Marketers and innovators often fall into the trap of seeing gaps and tensions from their own or their brand’s point of view. In such as a case, these would be possible outcomes of their ‘analysis’:
Gap: Know very little about financial products beyond loans. Solution: Create a product or campaign that teaches them more about products or teaches them financial literacy.
It’s not effective
I have been in this situation before — and the innovation we created fell flat on its face.
Why?
Let’s take a closer look.
Female. 25 to 34 years. Lower LSM. Urban. Juggling small trades to stay afloat. Living hand-to-mouth. Have little knowledge of banking beyond loans.
None of those attributes of the group causes them to go to a bank, let alone choose a specific bank.
I don’t go to a bank because I am 25 or 34 years. Neither do I choose a bank because I am living hand-to-mouth; nor because I live in an urban area. Those are just attributes that make other things happen to me.
The things that are happening to me, and what I am trying to achieve when those things are happening to me, are what drive me to go to a bank or choose one.
In any case, 25 to 34 year old women living in urban areas are not all the same. Some are married, some not. Some have children, others not. Some are ambitious, others not so much. Some have just lost a job, others have never been in formal employment. An approach that bundles them all together produces weak product and marketing hypotheses.
Thinking in terms of job to be done is more effective
Thinking about what the job / progress they are trying to achieve in specific situations makes product / marketing punchier — and more naturally fitting in their life.
It also narrows and makes our customer focus sharper. Consider this example:
Single mothers have very different financial needs from most other women. They are not just taking care of themselves and concerned for their future but also for their children — and they don’t have partners to support them. This is a helpful point to start from.
Remember, we are still working with this brief, so let’s push it further:
Female. 25 to 34 years. Lower LSM. Urban. Juggling small trades to stay afloat. Living hand-to-mouth. Have little knowledge of banking beyond loans.
The city is a tough place for young single mothers who have very little income and have to work 18+ hours a day just to survive. A number of concerns arise. Here are 3 examples.
- With a child who is about to start school: How will I afford school fees and school-related expenses for my child next year?
- With a child already schooling: Who will take care of my child — to keep them safe and fed, and make sure they do their homework and perform well in school whilst I am out working till late night?
- I can barely make rent and feed my children. How do I make sure my children are well fed, clothed, and not exposed to desperation?
How to think with the jobs to be done approach
Those 3 concerns give rise to 3 jobs around which a business can innovate or serve young single mothers in the city with very little income and little financial literacy.
- Afford school for my child when they start schooling whilst I have very little income.
- Keep my child safe, fed, make sure they do their homework whilst I am out working till late.
- Keep my children well fed and clothed whilst I am struggling to meet basic expenses.
This approach surfaces more relevant, powerful solutions
Here, a business can innovate around one or more of those jobs separately or take a wholistic strategy towards bettering the quality of their life. Here are possible interventions.
Option one: Only job 1
If the business were a bank, for instance, it could choose one job to solve for — like the first job. It makes sense — a bank is a financial institution and not a charity organization.
Option two: Jobs 1 and 2, or jobs 1 and 3, or jobs 1, 2, 3
The bank could also choose a specific geographical area in which to solve for job 1 as a business together with 2 or both 2 and 3 through its foundation or in partnership with another charity organization.
The bank would take this option if it wanted to take a wholistic strategy of elevating a population’s living standards, making them customers, and empowering them to earn more — which brings growth both to the brand and the business.
The rationale is that if the bank (directly or through partners) alleviates their stress in terms of jobs 2 and 3, it will have the attention of young single mothers and have leeway to engage them on financial guidance and saving solutions to solve for job 1.
Clearly, this option entails market-creation (creating customers of young single mothers who currently have no reason to bank), brand building, and customer acquisition.
The basic structure of a clear job to be done
How do you arrive at a clear job to be done for which you can innovate or campaign? Consider our example job to be done 1.
Most times, people will hardly buy things unless there is a strong internal push and a corresponding pull from a brand. If there is an easy and ready solution to a real challenge, people will hardly consider an alternative.
Therefore, you need a real challenge that pushes them, and your solution needs to do the job better than an existing solution (better for your brand if that solution does not already exist, meaning you have no competition) — which pulls them. In other words, there needs to be a state or progress they are trying to achieve, a situation that makes the need for the state or situation more urgent or real, and a bottleneck that makes everything challenging.
Basic structure: Achievement / state / progress + situation / time when it is needed + bottleneck
The writer, Sam, is passionate about marketing and innovation effectiveness. He is Strategy Director at Ogilvy, the most awarded creative network in the world.
