It’s easy to fall into the trap of vague or generic marketing. Messages that talk broadly about being “fast,” “affordable,” or “easy to use” may sound appealing, but they rarely connect on a meaningful level – especially when your competitors are saying the same thing. If everyone uses similar language, how can your brand stand out? More importantly, how does the customer know you actually understand their struggles?

Marketing that doesn’t address specific customer pain points often comes from a lack of insight into what your audience is truly experiencing. You might know who your customers are demographically, but not why they make decisions – or what’s stopping them from choosing you. This is where many marketing strategies fall short: they fail to uncover the real emotional and functional friction behind a buying decision.

Common pitfalls of surface-level messaging

• Assuming the problem: Teams sometimes guess at what they think the customer wants, rather than grounding that assumption in data.
• Overgeneralization: Marketing personas are often too broad, grouping people by age or income instead of motivation or goals.
• Ignoring context: A message that works in one situation may not fit another. Generic marketing leaves out the specific circumstances surrounding a buyer’s decision.

Without grounding your messaging in real behavioral insight, you risk missing the mark entirely. A potential customer might read your campaign and think, “That’s not really what I care about,” and move on to a competitor who better understands their actual frustration or need.

The cost of missing the message

When pain points are misunderstood or ignored, brands often see:

- Low conversion rates from marketing channels

- Poor customer retention

- Missed innovation opportunities

These aren’t just marketing problems – they’re business challenges. And they can often be traced back to one thing: a lack of deep, actionable consumer insights. That’s why frameworks like Jobs to Be Done are increasingly valuable – they help marketing teams go from guessing to knowing what truly drives customer behavior.

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework helps marketers refocus their attention from who the customer is to what the customer is trying to do. It’s not about demographics, but rather about understanding goals, motivations, and the blockers that stand in the way. When customers hire a product or service, they do it because they need help completing a specific “job” in their lives – whether that job is emotional, practical, or both.

Uncovering hidden drivers of behavior

JTBD is especially useful for surfacing the emotional and functional friction customers experience during their decision-making process. While functional friction might involve price, speed, or usability, emotional friction can be more subtle – like fear of making a bad choice, lack of confidence, or social pressure.

For example, someone buying a meal replacement shake isn’t just looking for nutrition (a functional need). They might also be looking to feel in control during busy mornings, or to avoid judgment from coworkers who criticize unhealthy eating (emotional needs).

How Jobs to Be Done helps identify customer pain points:

• Clarifies motivation: By asking the right qualitative research questions, JTBD reveals the deeper motivations that drive behavior – not just what customers say, but why they say it.
• Maps the full context: Jobs-based insights explore the customer’s journey across environments and situations, not just the moment of purchase.
• Spots obstacles and friction: JTBD shows where customers struggle, pause, or abandon a task – which is often where the biggest opportunities lie.

This type of analysis goes beyond traditional market research methods and fills in the gaps that many surveys or data reports miss. Instead of just measuring satisfaction or intent, JTBD gets at causality: “What makes someone feel stuck? What triggers them to act?”

From insight to impact

When marketers understand the job a customer is hiring their product to do, it becomes much easier to craft resonant product messaging and improve marketing strategy. Messaging is no longer focused on features, but on how the brand helps customers complete their job with less friction.

JTBD also lends itself well to innovation. By identifying unexplored customer pain points or unmet emotional needs, brands can develop offerings that fill important gaps in the market. This might mean reframing a current product or creating something entirely new based on true buyer motivations.

In short, using JTBD for better marketing messaging is about clarity and alignment. When you speak the customer’s language – and reflect their emotions and struggles – you earn trust, increase relevance, and build better business outcomes.

JTBD in Action: Real-World Examples of Emotional and Functional Pain Points

One of the reasons the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework is so valuable in market research is that it uncovers both emotional friction and functional challenges faced by real customers. These customer pain points are often hidden behind day-to-day decisions, and understanding them brings marketers closer to actual buyer motivation – not just surface-level needs.

To illustrate how JTBD works in action, let’s explore two types of frictions – emotional and functional – with concrete examples:

Example 1: Emotional Friction – Buying a Fitness Tracker

A common assumption about fitness trackers is that people buy them for tracking steps and monitoring heart rate. But when explored through the JTBD lens, the real 'job' may be deeper: a customer might want to feel in control of their health and avoid the emotional regret of not taking care of themselves.

In this case, emotional pain points like guilt, confusion about what health choices to make, or even fear of aging become the triggers for purchase. Brands that only speak to features miss out. Messaging that acknowledges these motivations – such as “Take control of your tomorrow, today” – addresses the emotional journey and builds stronger relevance.

Example 2: Functional Friction – Booking Business Travel

On a functional level, consider a frequent business traveler booking airline tickets. The job isn’t just to book flights. It’s to arrive on time, hassle-free, with minimal disruption. Common pain points might include:

• Tedious comparison of flight options
• Corporate approval delays
• Stress around making connections

Using JTBD insights, a travel provider might uncover that reliability and speed of booking are more valuable than offering the lowest fare. That could inspire a product innovation – such as a quick-trip booking recommendation engine – paired with marketing focused on “getting the job done faster and smarter.”

These examples show how applying JTBD to consumer insights helps reveal not just what people do, but why they do it. Whether it’s emotional triggers like confidence or peace of mind, or functional blockers in daily workflows, JTBD equips marketers with a clearer lens into customer behavior.

When used correctly, JTBD frameworks create opportunities to meet real customer needs – and to stop sounding generic in marketing. These insights become especially powerful when backed by qualitative research methods that bring voice-of-customer themes to life.

How Marketers Can Use JTBD Insights to Improve Messaging and Positioning

Once the Jobs to Be Done perspective brings clarity to customer needs and pain points, the next step for marketers is using those insights to craft messaging and positioning that truly resonates. Too often, brand messages focus on features or benefits that sound good on paper – but miss what matters most to customers in real life.

JTBD reframes messaging from “what we offer” to “what job we help you get done.” This shift is subtle, but powerful – it focuses communication on real-world outcomes customers care about.

Turning Insights into Sharper Messaging

By understanding buyer motivation and emotional friction, marketers can connect on a human level. Instead of generic lines like “Our service is fast and reliable,” JTBD-inspired messaging might say, “Never miss another important moment because of travel delays.”

This approach addresses the true tension your customer wants to solve – and positions your brand as the solution to a deeper problem. Effective product messaging rooted in JTBD is often described as surprisingly accurate by customers, because it reflects their inner thoughts and challenges.

What Does JTBD-Inspired Positioning Look Like?

Positioning informed by JTBD insights makes your product or service feel like a tailor-made solution. It often involves:

• Aligning product value with the customer job – e.g., “This app helps busy parents stay organized in minutes, not hours.”
• Connecting marketing strategy with specific emotional tensions – e.g., “Designed for those who want to focus on family, not financial stress.”
• Framing features around real-life use cases – not just specs

By tapping into these consumer insights, marketers can move from bland messaging to vivid storytelling that solves a real customer struggle – whether that struggle is logistical, emotional, or aspirational.

To make the most of JTBD, marketers should pair their research with customer stories, quotes, and qualitative data gathered in context. This helps verify the emotional and functional dynamics uncovered by the JTBD framework. The goal isn't perfection – it's precision with empathy.

In short, understanding customer needs with Jobs to Be Done empowers brands to meet people where they are. It closes the gap between business goals and the real challenges customers are trying to solve through their buying habits.

SIVO’s Approach to Jobs to Be Done: Turning Insights into Growth Opportunities

At SIVO Insights, we believe that great marketing starts with a deep understanding of people – and that the Jobs to Be Done framework is one of the most effective tools to get there. Our approach goes beyond uncovering tasks or triggers; we dive into the emotional and functional layers of what customers are truly trying to accomplish at each stage of their journey.

Combining JTBD With Holistic Consumer Insights

JTBD isn’t just a stand-alone technique – it becomes most powerful when combined with rigorous market research methods such as qualitative conversations, ethnography, journey mapping, and behavioral analytics. We tailor our JTBD research to the specific context of your business, industry, and audience, ensuring we don't apply a one-size-fits-all model.

By integrating JTBD into your broader consumer and market research strategy, we help uncover patterns that traditional surveys often miss – including subtle emotional friction or hidden decision drivers that shape customer behavior.

How We Turn JTBD Insight Into Action

Whether it's for improving product marketing, refining innovation strategy, or creating more relevant brand experiences, SIVO's JTBD-driven insights lead to decisions with real business impact. We help translate findings into:

• Clear customer-focused messaging that speaks to precise needs
• Refined brand positioning aligned with buyer motivations
• Innovation roadmaps informed by unmet needs and emotional triggers
• And much more!

Our job is to highlight where your brand can step in and help a customer complete their journey – with more ease, confidence, and clarity. That’s how we drive actionable outcomes from consumer insights, not just data collection.

So whether you’re fine-tuning your product messaging or rethinking go-to-market strategy, we make sure your decisions are firmly based on what customers actually need – not what the assumptions say they do.

With SIVO, JTBD becomes more than a framework – it becomes a growth lens for your entire business.