Jobs to be done in B2B marketing

It's time to stop guessing what customers want.

I was first introduced to the concept of Jobs To Be Done about eight years ago, when the MD of the company I worked for at the time handed me a copy of Competing With Luck by Clayton Christensen, and invited the marketing group to a series of workshops. It was not optional, and the language of "jobs" and "JTBD" spread quickly through the business.

What struck me at the time wasn't the novelty of the idea, but the shift that it actually enabled. It took the whole concept of thought-leadership into a new direction. Content became sharper and much more aligned with customer intentions. Events were chosen for a reason (despite plenty of battles with sales teams).

For the first time, we were connecting to what customers were actually trying to achieve rather than solely plying them with what we wanted to talk about. After working with the concept for so long, it has left me wondering why so many technical companies still miss the point, so let's tackle a few common questions I hear when I introduce Jobs To Be Done to B2B marketing teams.

What is Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)?

In its simplest form, jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) is a way of looking at both products and services through the eyes of what customers are really "hiring" or purchasing them to do. They don't want a drill, they want a hole. They don't really want a hole either: they want to be able to hang a photo of their family up on the wall.

In technical industries, customers don't specifically want a complex piece of software. Instead, they want a process that takes half the time and doesn't land them in hot water with compliance.

The "job" that they are trying to achieve is the outcome that they are striving for, not the product businesses happen to sell.

You would think that this all sounds logical, yet many businesses still fall into the trap of talking about themselves: our product, our innovation, our decades of experience. JTBD forces you to stop talking about your business and look outwards. The honest, yet often uncomfortable truth is that your customer does not care about you one iota. They care about getting their work done and meeting their goals and targets.

Why is this important for technical B2B companies?

Too often, complex offerings get stuck in feature translation. Marketing believe they have achieved their objective by simply turning features into benefits. Let's look at this example: "our pump has a 40% faster flow rate than our competitors", becomes "you'll save time." Great, you have focused on the benefit.

However, JTBD goes deeper than that.

What is your customer actually trying to achieve as part of the bigger picture? Are they trying to win investment? To prove compliance? To save the world from climate change? These are all very different drivers, and they completely change how you talk and connect with the market.

How can a technical B2B team actually apply the JTBD concept?

1. Interview real customers: Ask them what they are trying to achieve. Find out more about the work and research they are conducting. What else had they considered?

2. Align your marketing outputs: Don't just write a brochure to tick a box. You need to design them in a way that you are directly showing customers how you help them achieve their jobs. Align events, thought leadership, and campaigns around them.

3. Embed the language: Use JTBD phrasing and terminology across sales, marketing, and product teams until it becomes completely engrained in the way that you think collectively. It will translate to customers, and you will beging to realise that you are speaking their language more than you are expecting them to learn yours.

What is the most common mistake companies make with JTBD?

To re-iterate, most companies think that this is a nice way to dress-up features as benefits. It isn't, and to be honest, it completely misses the point.

What it is about, is understanding the real struggles, progress, and anxieties that customers face. It is not about your company at all. That is exactly why so many businesses and individuals struggle to adopt it properly.

Turning insights into action

If you are serious about connecting your marketing to commercial outcomes, and helping to make a real difference for the business, you need to start by asking one simple, yet fundamental question.

What is my customer actually trying to get done?

Write down three answers, then test your current marketing strategies and tactics against them. If the connection isn't obvious, then you have an answer on where you need to start.

It's time to stop marketing what you've built and start marketing what customers are hiring you to do.