Personas and Jobs to Be Done: It’s Not an Either-Or Conversation

Customer personas were once a tried-and-tested tool in marketers' toolkits, but they are losing credibility after the emergence of Jobs-to-Be-Done.

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a modern method gaining popularity within the sales, product, and marketing communities. Unlike personas, which focus on the characteristics of audience segments, JTBD concentrates on understanding user needs and the jobs they want to get done using your product or service. Due to its largely functional nature, many brands prefer the JTBD framework over personas.

It makes sense when you think about it – personas answer the 'who,' while JTBD addresses the 'what' of what customers want, along with the situation, context, and solution. It's easier to invest your efforts in providing users with ways to achieve their desired results rather than catering to the eccentricities of every customer segment.

JTBD is great for people who want instantaneous results, yet personas are better in the long term. Although people may accomplish a single job, like drilling a hole, their motivations for purchasing the drilling machine can vary — one person buys it for professional use and another needs it for a DIY project.

But how do you determine which framework is irrelevant and which one works better for you? Remember, well-built personas go beyond demographic factors to include psychographic and behavioral attributes. It’s best to use both approaches — don’t disregard the old in favor of the new.

This post shows you how to combine personas and Jobs to Be Done to get the best of both worlds; the functionality of JTBD and the empathy of personas. Together, they offer your product development and marketing teams the insights to create experiences that help users achieve their end goals.

What Is the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Framework?

A critical aspect of the product design process, the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework is based on the idea that users seek to achieve a specific goal or complete a 'job' when purchasing a product or service. Companies must identify the core 'job' users are trying to accomplish and create solutions that meet those needs.

First introduced by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator's Solution (2003), JTBD asks decision-makers a simple question: What is a person hiring your product to do? What is the job that your product should perform? Most businesses fail because they cannot answer these questions.

Christensen explains the concept further in Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure, "When people find themselves needing to get a job done, they essentially hire products to do that job for them… If a marketer can understand the job, design a product and associated experiences… and deliver it in a way that reinforces its intended use, then when customers find themselves needing to get that job done, they will hire that product."

Example of jobs to be done

Uber is an American transportation company that provides ride-booking, courier, and food delivery services. It’s also one of the best examples of jobs to be done right. The brand understands the core job people need to get done: getting from point A to point B without the hassles associated with taxi services.

It helps its user base accomplish this goal in several ways:

• A simple UI allows users to book rides with just a few taps.
• Cashless transactions with digital payment options increase convenience.
• Real-time tracking gives the driver's location, reducing wait-time anxiety.

Besides its other ventures, Uber is a simple app that makes hailing a ride easy, with cashless payments and driver ratings to ensure a reliable user experience. It does the job well, so whenever you need a ride, Uber naturally comes to mind.

Now, the correct way to understand jobs to be done is through qualitative user research. This includes user interviews, surveys, field studies, behavioral data analysis, focus groups, competitor analysis, and reviewing support tickets or chat logs. It’s critical because it helps identify the other brands buyers are considering to “hire” for the job, presenting gaps or opportunities you can use.

Each method involves questions that dig deeper into users' unmet needs, challenges, and motivations. In the case of Uber, their questions might be framed like this:

• What challenges do you face when trying to get a ride in the city?
• What transportation-related tasks frustrate you the most?
• At what points do you hesitate or abandon the ride-booking process?
• What other services have you used, and how do they compare to Uber?
• Were you able to complete the job you “hired” our service for?

Once you have the answer to these questions, you’ll be able to formulate a job-to-be-done description. A JTBD description summarizes what customers are trying to achieve, along with other factors that impact this job. It captures both the functional and emotional success criteria for a job.

• Functional criteria: requirements needed for the job to be successful, e.g., getting a ride quickly or arriving on time.
• Emotional criteria: individual emotional needs – feeling safe – and social inputs, like what others think about them using the service.

For Uber, it can be as simple as: “I’m in a busy city and running late without my car. I need a quick ride without the hassle of hailing a taxi or paying cash.” Ultimately, it’s not about how Uber helps them accomplish something, but rather about how they use Uber to get a specific job done.

JTBD differs between B2B and B2C contexts

What’s interesting about Jobs to Be Done is that they apply across all demographic dimensions. The underlying needs or goals of users remain consistent across different demographics, like age, gender, or location, regardless of individual variations. As such, it has clear implications for your business strategy and marketing messages.

But is JTBD the same for B2B and B2C scenarios?

Both B2C and B2B marketing take a customer-centric approach, aligning products and messages to consumer needs. However, B2B jobs are more complex, with multiple stakeholders, longer timelines, and measurable results like ROI. Conversely, B2C customers make quick decisions and rely on emotional triggers. B2B decisions are driven by a combination of organizational needs and operational efficiency.

Jobs to Be Done helps both businesses perform better. For B2B brands, they uncover the unique "job" each decision-maker wants to get done with the product (e.g., cost cutting, productivity, or revenue generation). This cuts down the sales cycle since you can highlight how your solution fulfills the needs of each stakeholder.

In a B2C context, you need to know the functional as well as the emotional and social jobs to be done. You can leverage these insights to position your products as the perfect solution for the buyers’ immediate needs.

A Simple Definition of Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are fictional characters or avatars of your ideal customers based on their demographics, needs, challenges, hobbies, interests, shopping preferences, emotions, and personality traits. They are created using qualitative and quantitative data, like web analytics, competitor intelligence, social media insights, surveys, interviews, reviews, forums, and observations.

Now, a company can create one or multiple personas based on its business objectives. They can either do it manually – collecting and analyzing customer data themselves – or use AI persona generators like Delve AI to automate the entire process. Our tool creates personas for your business, competitors, and social media audiences by segmenting your first-party and second-party audience data, and then enriching the results with insights from 40+ public data sources.

You can generate two to eight persona segments for your B2C or B2B business. Each segment includes a customer’s profile photo, name, age, gender, location, education, job profile, bio, and a quote that summarizes their key objective. Additionally, you'll know their goals, motivations, pain points, values, interests, and hobbies.

You get to dive deeper into the things they love — whether it's TV shows, books, movies, or music. Explore the news sources they trust, the social media platforms they’re active on, the e-commerce sites they browse, and the brands they follow. Also, learn about the types of events they’re likely to attend. Industry-specific insights further list keywords related to your industry.

The best part about it? You can create an AI persona in just a few minutes, and the cost and time required are minimal compared to manual personas.

AI-generated personas are great tools for understanding and empathizing with the needs and goals of your target audience. They help your sales, marketing, and product teams know exactly who they're speaking to, allowing them to make data-driven decisions and connect better with their audience.

Why do brands prioritize JTBD over personas?

If personas are so useful, why do some brands prefer using the Jobs to Be Done framework? And why don't personas work for every organization? The answer is simple — like everything, personas have their challenges, and some of the criticism directed at them is valid. Most of it’s related to manual personas but understanding these limitations can help you decide when and how to use them effectively.

Personas sometimes oversimplify things. They create rigid user archetypes, which only work when the groups are distinct. But in reality, one person can fit into different personas depending on the situation. Traditional personas often rely on generalizations, which can unintentionally reinforce stereotypes. While real people change over time, these archetypes stay frozen, which can lead to a disconnect between the company and the audience they’re trying to reach.

They require and provide a lot of data that you don’t know what to do with – irrelevant information and assumptions that hinder decision-making. There are too many goals and too many needs. If the people using them weren’t involved in persona creation, they may not feel empathy. Also, proto-personas are based on assumptions rather than actual research; they don’t help much. Consistency across departments is a bigger challenge since they are created separately by different teams.

Jobs to Be Done vs. Personas: Are They Really That Different?

Jobs to be Done (JTBD) and personas are different – the former focuses on the direct outcome a customer wants to achieve with your product, while the latter explains how they go about reaching that goal. Both look at user experience from different angles and, when combined, create a complete picture of your customer. JTBD cannot and must not replace personas.

Contrary to popular belief, personas aren’t just about demographics. They go beyond this level to include the psychographic, behavioral, and transactional habits of your target audience. AI personas, in particular, can answer important questions; who your buyers are, what they need, why they make decisions, and how and when they interact with you. Moreover, online persona tools like Delve AI offer sample user journeys that provide a look into your customer's decision-making process.

Although Jobs to be Done helps companies differentiate themselves from their competitors, it doesn’t bring in the details required to understand the needs and motivations of different user groups. Functions are generalized among the entire customer base, creating problems across the marketing and product frontier.

1. If you make alterations to your product based on a JTBD description, you’ll likely disrupt the workflow of your current users.
2. Due to generalization, your marketing campaigns will not reach different audiences.

A JTBD framework is great for short-term decisions; you can solve immediate user goals. It’s useful in early product development when you’re determining the overall purpose and vision of your product or service. But later, once you’ve stabilized, you’ll realize that you have different customers, each with different interests and challenges.

This is the stage where you can use personas to get more contextual and behavioral information. You can keep the buyer front and center, foster empathy among stakeholders, and get different consumer perspectives. By integrating personas with Jobs to be Done, or branching out a JTBD statement into multiple personas, organizations can develop well-rounded business plans.

Combining Personas and Jobs-to-Be-Done with JTBD Personas

We’ve established this fact: personas provide a snapshot of who your customers are and Jobs to be Done looks into what they want to achieve. A JTBD persona blends the two methods, focusing on both the customer’s characteristics and their desired outcome.

At the core of a JTBD persona is the job statement — the main job a customer wants to get done, along with the context and triggers behind it. It includes their primary and secondary jobs, covering functional, emotional, and social needs. Focusing on what the customer wants shifts attention away from basic demographics and toward their real goals and motivations.

JTBD personas outline customer goals and challenges, helping you see why they want to complete a particular job. A brief bio and profile picture add a human touch, making it easier to visualize the buyer, and additional details like content or competitor data further refine your marketing strategy.

The Future of Personas and JTBD

Choosing between personas and Jobs to be Done depends on your resources and the level of detail you need. JTBD takes more time and effort but helps identify the end goal. Meanwhile, personas focus on building empathy and uncovering pain points along the customer journey. While JTBD is less useful for uncovering minor needs during the product lifecycle, it can significantly enhance the quality of your personas. So, it’s not “JTBD vs. personas” — together, they offer a complete understanding of your customers, guiding both product and marketing decisions.