Successful social media marketing starts with understanding your audience. Witty messages and beautiful photos are not enough. You need to know who you're talking to, and what goes on inside their heads.
Jobs-to-be-Done is a powerful framework that enables you to understand your customers in new ways. To discover not only what your customers want, but also why.
Key Take-Aways
Jobs-to-be-Done is a strategic framework to help you find out the reason why your customers are buying your product.
It helps you to save money by targeting your customers effectively and write persuasive content.
Deeply understanding your customer's needs and your real competition creates an advantage that's hard to copy.
What Is a "Job to be Done"?
A "job to be done" is the goal you try to reach by using a product or service, and the specific circumstances under which. It includes your wishes and concerns along the way and how they progress over time. A "job to be done" describes the story of the struggle to achieve a desired outcome.
An example: what "job" can the metro serve? 1. Trying to get to work on time, 2. trying to stay dry when it's raining outside, 3. avoiding the traffic in the city. But with different circumstances (dry weather), someone might choose to cycle. And with a different goal (having a change of scenery) someone might pick the tram.
It is the combination of the goal and circumstances, and how these interact over time, that determines the solution someone wants.
Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen coined the concept of Jobs-to-be-Done to help companies innovate, describing the singular focus on demographics in marketing as a reason for not getting the right results in his HBR article Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure.
After all, a father does not take his daughter to a football match because he is 35 years old and lives in Vienna. He does so because he wants to give her a great day and share his passion for sports.
How Jobs-to-be-Done Can Improve Your Social Media Strategy?
By offering a different perspective on your audience's needs. Figuring out their jobs to be done can help you to:
Select the most promising channels and best times to post at, as you understand where and when your (potential) customers are likely to look for a solution.
Improve your segmentation by better understanding what factors make someone buy or use your product. Improved target group definition makes your marketing more efficient, and helps you to reach new customers.
Write more persuasive content. Knowing your customer's goals and worries, you can advertise with the problem you can solve, and address concerns ahead of time.
Know your competitors. You might be surprised what other products and brands customers are considering instead of yours. An airline can compete with Zoom. Filter coffee can compete with the local gym. Knowing this helps you to position your brand better.
Jobs-to-be-Done in Action
IKEA is an apt example of a company that is known for its consistently successful marketing and shows a clear understanding of what jobs to be done it serves.
Take the following IKEA ad, designed by the agency thjnk:
It shows that IKEA 1. knows in which context its products are likely to be used (a messy student room), and 2. what is vital for them (affordability). IKEA's ad tells customers "As your chair will end up looking like this anyway, and we know you are short on money, get our cheaper version instead! It will offer you the same benefits for a fraction of the price."
Such effective marketing comes from IKEA's understanding of the job to be done: quickly furnishing a student room with a limited budget.
To illustrate the advantage IKEA derives from being the leader in this job to be done, answer this question: Who do you think of when you need to furnish your room overnight on a shoestring budget? Exactly, IKEA.
How to Get Started
Two concrete tools you can use to start building an understanding of your customer's jobs to be done are the job statement and the timeline.
The Job Statement
A job statement structures the Job to be Done in this format:
When... (situation)
I want to... (goal)
so I can... (desired outcome)
without... (concerns)
An example of the job to be done IKEA serves for many students:
When I am assigned my dorm room
I want to furnish it quickly and cheaply
So I can move in as soon as possible and start studying
Without breaking the bank
This statement covers the essential parts of the job to be done: the goal, desired outcome, circumstances under which someone tries to reach her goal, and concerns she has.
The Timeline
The timeline shows how these factors shape your actions over time and your decision to buy a product. It includes critical events like forming a goal, the search for a solution and making the final decision.
The timeline helps you to map how your customer's "struggle for progress" over time, including the key decision points, circumstances and concerns that cause him to make his final decision.
These tools can help you figure out:
Who is likely to have the job to be done your product is serving, i.e. your (potential) customers
Where and when to reach them
How to persuasively communicate the problem you can solve
Concerns your customers have so you can address these ahead of time
Other products you are competing with, i.e. your real competitors
Keep in mind: your product is likely to be used for several jobs to be done. So try to uncover as many critical decision points and test which ones are most valuable for your business.
Want to Learn More?
Did we get you hooked on the topic? There is much more to the Jobs-to-be-Done approach, not just for marketing but also for product design and customer support. We will dive into a couple of them in future posts, so make sure to keep an eye on our blog. A great reminder to stay in the loop is our monthly Boom Social Trends newsletter.