B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity

The Importance of JTBD: How to Use a JTBD Template to Improve Your Business

Guest Author

Guest post by Nadica Metuleva.

JTBD refers to “Jobs-to-be-done,” a useful framework that helps you understand the needs and demands of your customers. If done right, not only will this give you better comprehension of your market, but also define the data you’ll need to collect to help you improve your services and products and tweak your future strategies.

The results of a good JTBD framework can be amazing for your business, yet the effort doesn’t need to be all that onerous.

That’s because pre-built templates exist to make your life easier. Before looking at the tools, here’s why you need JTBD to begin with.

About the JTBD Framework

JTBD or the Jobs-to-be-done framework is used to unlock a better, more accurate understanding of prospects’ and customers’ needs and attitudes. Such knowledge is crucial for marketing and innovation in any business and sector.

The premise of JTBD, the main reason why such a framework exists, is to avoid focusing on the wrong time. Many companies do this—they focus on the irrelevant when launching products hoping that it will work. JTDB frameworks can collect accurate data and know what exactly works with current customers, i.e., define the target market more narrowly.

As the creator of this term, Tony Ulwick says:

“The problem with innovation is clear: without knowing precisely what target you are trying to hit, the chances of hitting it are unlikely.”

Here is how Ulwick explains JTBD:

Reasons to use Jobs-to-be-done

How you’ll use the data gathered with the help of a JTBD template will depend on what you’re offering—and to whom. But the applications for it are universal. You need to understand your customers through different lenses: segments, demographics, product attributes, personal attributes, and market economics. Some of the benefits JTBD offers are:

The best part about this is that you can incorporate it into many different processes including market segmentation, brand development, and product development.

Smart move: use a quality JTBD template to get started

For those who haven’t performed such a task before or are unsure of how to create a successful JTBD framework, there’s a very simple solution: use a quality Jtbd template and customize it based on your data.

The Clayton Christensen JTBD framework provided by Attest helps you better understand the needs of customers more quickly and efficiently. You can save tons of time by putting together an elegant, well-designed survey in just a few minutes.

Not only that, but Attest allows you to send it to an audience of over 100 million people all at once, which gives you access to high-quality, comprehensive data within days.

How else will you collect so much data and create the JTBD framework when you need it? This intuitive platform enables you to customize templates and select your preferred audience. Attest gives you access to people from 49 countries, as well as various quotas and filters to reach out to your target audience. It makes JTBD easier than ever.

According to Attest, JTBD surveys can be used at any stage of product development. They define four times when this is essential:

Since it can be challenging to find the right questions to ask as part of your JTBD, the pre-designed template can help you with the process.

How to apply your JTBD framework into the projects

Once you have the framework ready, you’ve done the biggest part. Still, there’s one important matter to tackle next—incorporating the principles of your framework into existing and new processes. Here are the steps to follow to do that:

Step 1: Define your target audience.

In an direct consumer market, the person who purchases a product or a service uses it. If you work in such a market, i.e., cater to the needs of consumers, that’s your goal.

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In a business-to-business market, it’s not as simple. When you sell to businesses, you often aren’t selling to those who will use the product. This is why the JTBD template takes matters further and splits the audience into three types:

Before you determine who has which role, you need to decide which role related to your business falls into each of these buckets.

Step 2: Define the needs and jobs.

This is a more challenging step. Once you know who your target audience is, you need to know what they are trying to achieve, that is, which “jobs” they hire or buy products for. Each individual might have different “jobs” in their role, so the research needs to be thorough and detailed. In addition, most managers don’t use a single product to achieve one “job,” but several.

However, view these challenges as an opportunity; perhaps you can create a product or solution by bundling a set of your current products and services?

Many JTBD practitioners use the example of a kettle. When you ask: “what’s the kettle’s job?,” your first answer would be “to boil water.”

This is accurate, but in the context of business success, it’s not sufficient. This is a too-narrow definition of the job of a kettle. A kettle’s job is to “prepare a hot beverage for consumption.” If you overlook this, you’re giving your competition an advantage. What if they find a way to get the entire job done by creating a single product?

Next, you need to define the jobs to be done. According to Attest, there are two main categories for this:

Next, we can split these categories into two subcategories:

Functional job aspects are more straightforward, but emotional factors can significantly impact decisions. This is why Attest splits them even further, into social and personal. The first refers to how the customers feel they are perceived by others if and when they use your product, while personal refers to how they feel about it.

Step 3: Find an opportunity.

At this point, job mapping should provide you with a large number of jobs to be done. Now it’s time to prioritize. Consider the following when doing so:

Once you figure out which JTBDs represent your opportunities, you can use that data to tweak and improve your marketing and product strategy. You can use this data to identify which segments of the target audience present the biggest opportunities, and align your current products and services with them.

And of course, such data will help you generate ideas for new, better products that will be in demand by your market.

Final thoughts

Whether you’re managing a large business or a startup, it can be hard to create successful innovations if you cannot accurately identify your best market opportunities. The Jobs-to-be-Done framework shows that all businesses have the tools they need at their disposal to learn about the needs of consumers—but they still have to work to find them.

JTBD is a framework for categorizing and organizing the needs of customers. If you’re not using it, you may be missing out on huge potential benefits of applying the theory. According to this framework, the main cause of failed services and products is their misalignment with the needs of consumers.

By using the JTBD template, you can easily implement a framework that shows you which jobs your customers are trying to get done, and consequently what they expect of your products and services. This can be useful not only for your current products and strategies but for your future product direction.

Nadica Metuleva is a freelance writer who’s passionate about creating quality original content. She holds a Master’s degree in English teaching and a Bachelor’s degree in translation. With 7 years of experience in the freelance writing industry, Nadica has become proficient in creating content that captivates the audience, drives growth, and educates.

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