Every day, consumers are bombarded with information, receiving up to 10,000 ads per day. Because they are being bombarded, they only listen to people (and brands) that communicate simply, clearly, and to the problems they are looking to solve (the jobs they’re trying to get done).
Confusing messages lead to all kinds of problems:
Jobs-to-be-Done helps marketers understand precisely what their customers want to align the entire organization around a clear and consistent messaging strategy that speaks to the problem.
USING THE JOBS-TO-BE-DONE LENS, YOU CAN ANSWER KEY QUESTIONS LIKE:
Understanding your customers’ unmet needs has always been Marketing 101. Why, then, is this still so difficult to execute? There are two primary reasons.
As we covered in Chapter 2: Define Your Market, the primary customer should always be the job executor. This is the person that uses your product or service to get the core functional job done. They are the reason your market exists.
But there are other types of customers that can muddy the waters for marketers, including:
The job executor is your most important customer—you don’t want to confuse your job executor with other audiences. But it’s important to consider the purchase decision maker and the product lifecycle support team in your messaging strategy, too.
Download your free copy of Tony Ulwick’s book Jobs-to-be-Done: Theory to Practice.
The second challenge is that most companies do not agree on what a customer need is, let alone what their customers’ needs are. In fact, we’ve found that 85% of teams do not have a common language for talking about customer needs. You may think in terms of exciters and delighters, while your colleague or boss messages to pain points and challenges. Just like product owners have lots of ideas as to how to best add customer value, so do marketers—and they’re not all created equal.
This is the root cause of misalignment when it comes to creating and communicating value for customers. It’s the common understanding of customer needs that allows you to create a clear and consistent messaging strategy.
Considering these challenges, it should be no surprise that Jobs-to-be-Done opens the door for more effective marketing by clarifying who the customer is and what the customer’s needs are at each step of the job map (review Chapter 3: Build Your Job Map).
FOCUSING ON THE EXACT BENEFITS AND VALUE THAT MATTERS TO YOUR CUSTOMERS.
When you know exactly what your customer wants, you can align your organization around and deliver the most effective messaging—no flowery language or puns necessary.
UNCOVERING UNMET NEEDS THAT YOUR COMPETITION HAS FAILED TO ADDRESS.
This offers you the opportunity to reposition your offering in a new and differentiated way—maybe even redefine the category.
DISCOVERING NEW WAYS TO COMBINE SINGLE PRODUCTS OR POINT SOLUTIONS IN YOUR MESSAGING.
Your job map may show you have multiple products in your portfolio that can be pulled together to get the bigger job done. Rather than marketing them individually, you can bundle them together to help customers get more of their job done with a single solution.
INDENTIFYING EARLY ADOPTERS.
When you can identify segments of people that are struggling most to get the job done, you can find the people most likely to try your solution.
You may remember our Microsoft story from Chapter 3—this software giant was able to double year-over-year revenue on their flailing Software Assurance offering, mostly by combining existing solutions to help customers get more of their job done and communicating that value appropriately.
And don’t forget the success story from Arm & Hammer’s Animal Nutrition division in this playbook’s introduction. After a series of lackluster product launches, the brand realized they were targeting the wrong customer with the wrong messaging. As it turns out, the job dairy farmers were trying to get done had little to do with nutrition— and everything to do with increasing herd productivity.
Arm & Hammer adjusted their messaging accordingly, which resulted in a 30% increase in revenue in the first year alone.
"We started to see results from our new messaging and positioning strategy almost immediately. It contributed to an outstanding year. In the end, we grew greater than 30%. Every one of our products had double-digit growth. We far outpaced our competitors."
– SCOTT DRUKER VP, ARM & HAMMER
Coloplast also offers a stellar example of how Jobs-to-be-Done can provide vital messaging insights. As a leader in wound care products, the brand had always assumed that their primary value prop was helping wounds to heal faster. But it turns out that most of their customers were more concerned with preventing complications with the wound.
Just by switching up their messaging, Coloplast went from stagnant to double-digit growth in only six months.
Like Microsoft, Arm & Hammer and Coloplast, you can also use Jobs-to-be-Done to identify and execute the most effective messaging strategy for your brand—which can be one of the fastest and simplest ways to growing revenue.
Viewing your marketing through the lens of Jobs-to-be-Done can also help you to:
Segment your audiences around their unmet needs to find hidden segments of opportunity
Define the most appropriate growth strategy
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