Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) and personas are two distinct approaches used in market research to better understand customer behavior. While both aim to illuminate customer needs, they come from different mindsets and are used for different purposes in the product development and strategy process.

Personas: Who your customer is

Personas – sometimes called buyer personas or user personas – are fictional representations of your target customers. These profiles are often built from demographic data, customer interviews, purchase behavior, and other traits. The goal of a persona is to represent a real segment of your audience in a way that makes them relatable and easier to design for.

For example, a persona might look like this:

• Name: “Karen, the Budget-Conscious Mom”
• Age: 38
• Occupation: Elementary school teacher
• Goals: Provide healthy meals for her kids without spending too much
• Pain Points: Time shortage, cooking fatigue, picky eaters

This kind of profile helps align internal teams and keeps the end-user top of mind. But it doesn’t always explain why that user chooses certain products or behaviors in the moment – which is where JTBD comes in.

Jobs To Be Done: What your customer wants to accomplish

The JTBD framework focuses less on who the customer is, and more on what they are trying to achieve. In other words, what is the job your product is being “hired” to do in the context of your user’s life?

Taking the earlier persona example, JTBD might reframe the insight as: “Karen hires a meal delivery service because she wants to reduce weekday stress and still serve nutritious food.” This perspective highlights the underlying motivation and context – not just the person’s identity.

Key differences between JTBD and Personas

• Focus: Personas focus on the person; JTBD focuses on their goal or job
• Approach: Personas are built around attitudes and demographics; JTBD is built around motivation and context
• Application: Personas help with messaging and segmentation; JTBD helps guide product development and innovation

Both approaches are valuable market research tools when used appropriately. In fact, many businesses use them together for a fuller picture – JTBD to uncover the need, personas to understand the people behind that need. Understanding the difference between JTBD and personas helps ensure you're asking the right questions at the right time.

The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is powerful because it shifts the focus from who the customer is to why they make decisions. It views customers as actors in a specific context, facing challenges and seeking solutions. With this approach, you investigate the driving forces behind a choice, rather than just describing the person making it.

What is the JTBD framework?

At its core, the JTBD framework explores the fundamental reasons a customer “hires” a product or service. The phrase “hire” may sound unusual, but it’s a helpful analogy. Just as a company hires an employee to fulfill a role, a customer hires a product to complete a specific job in their life.

These jobs can be functional (e.g., getting to work on time), emotional (e.g., feeling confident at a wedding), or social (e.g., impressing peers or fitting in). Understanding these jobs reveals what customers truly value in a solution – even if they can’t articulate it themselves.

How JTBD uncovers real customer needs

Traditional market research often stops at preferences or habits. JTBD digs deeper by asking:

• What is the customer trying to accomplish?
• What obstacles do they face?
• What are they dissatisfied with in current solutions?
• What triggers them to seek out new options?

Imagine a fictional example: A commuter isn't just buying noise-canceling headphones. They’re hiring those headphones to create a calm mental space on a chaotic morning train ride. Their job isn’t “listen to music” – it’s “arrive focused and mentally refreshed.”

This nuance matters. When you identify the real job being done, you’re more likely to design meaningful, differentiated products that satisfy unmet needs.

Why JTBD leads to better product decisions

By uncovering motivation and context, JTBD insights are especially useful during:

• Early product discovery or concept development
• Innovation and identifying whitespace opportunities
• Competitive analysis and positioning
• Customer journey mapping

Because it ties directly to what drives behavior, JTBD research often produces more actionable results than surface-level preferences or generic user personas.

When to use Jobs To Be Done in your research

If you're seeking deeper clarity on what motivates your audience, or if your product roadmap isn’t resonating with user behavior, it's a good time to explore the JTBD framework. It helps align teams on why people make the choices they do – guiding differentiation and product-market fit.

Many SIVO clients use JTBD alongside qualitative and quantitative studies to develop growth strategies grounded in true customer insight. While personas describe the user, JTBD captures the purpose that fuels action – making both useful, but uniquely different tools in your market research toolbox.

What Are Traditional Personas and When Should You Use Them?

Personas are fictional characters that represent a typical customer based on data about your target audience. These profiles often include demographic information (like age, gender, income), psychographics (such as values and lifestyle traits), and behavioral patterns (such as purchasing habits or decision-making styles).

In market research, personas help businesses humanize their customers by painting a clearer picture of who they are serving. This makes it easier for product teams, marketers, and designers to align strategies around shared customer archetypes.

What Goes Into a Persona?

A traditional user persona or buyer persona often includes:

• Name and photo (to make it memorable internally)
• Demographics: age, gender, location, income
• Job role and responsibilities
• Goals and challenges
• Behaviors and preferences
• Quotes or anecdotes pulled from interviews

For example, a fictional B2B persona might be “Erica, the Operations Manager,” a 39-year-old who values efficiency, leans on SaaS tools, and needs to reduce manual reporting. While these snapshots are simplified, they can be powerful for guiding content creation, campaign targeting, product features, and customer service approaches.

When Are Personas Most Helpful?

Personas are useful when your team needs to:

- Tailor messages to specific segments of your target audience
- Prioritize features for product development
- Align cross-functional teams around shared customer understanding
- Inform UX/UI design choices for specific demographic groups

However, while personas capture who the customer is, they don’t always explain why a customer chooses a certain product or solution. This is where frameworks like Jobs To Be Done can offer deeper insights into motivation and underlying needs.

Still, when supported by actual research – and not just assumptions – personas remain a foundational market research tool for businesses trying to create relatable, personalized experiences.

JTBD vs. Personas: Which One Drives Better Business Insights?

When it comes to market research, both Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) and traditional personas offer unique perspectives. The real question for businesses is: which one provides more actionable insights to fuel product development, marketing strategy, and overall growth?

The answer lies in understanding the focus of each method. Personas help define who your customer is, while JTBD focuses on what the customer is trying to accomplish and why. In many cases, it’s this human motivation and context – captured through the JTBD framework – that drives deeper, more impactful decisions.

Where JTBD Excels in Business Contexts

JTBD can often reveal unmet customer needs that traditional personas miss. That’s because it goes beyond grouping customers by traits and instead uncovers the underlying progress they are trying to make in their lives. This results in clearer insight into:

• Why customers switch to or from competing solutions
• Which friction points block adoption or engagement
• What triggers a customer’s decision-making journey
• How people define success in specific scenarios

Imagine a fictional company designing a fitness app. A persona might highlight “Jake, a 28-year-old tech-savvy runner with a moderate income.” That’s helpful – but a JTBD approach might uncover that Jake downloads fitness apps when he's training for events and drops them when they lack training structure. That actionable insight (the need for a structured training path) can directly inform product development.

Benefits of Each Approach

Both tools serve different strategic purposes. Use personas when you want to:

- Visualize your target audience segments
- Communicate who your customers are across teams
- Personalize content or communication strategies

Use JTBD when you need to:

- Identify customer pain points and motivations
- Optimize product-market fit
- Develop innovations that solve real problems
- Predict what might drive future customer switching behavior

Ultimately, JTBD often delivers more direct business impact because it connects product design and experience to customer outcomes. But when used together, JTBD and personas can offer a well-rounded picture of both the customer’s identity and their true needs.

Can You Use JTBD and Personas Together in Market Research?

Absolutely. In fact, combining Jobs To Be Done and personas in market research can create a fuller, more holistic understanding of your customers. Businesses don’t need to make it a binary choice between the two approaches – instead, they can be strategically paired to support both user empathy and innovation.

Personas give you clarity on who your customer is, while JTBD focuses on why they behave the way they do. Together, they help create a narrative around your audience that’s both personal and practical. When you understand the person and their purpose, your product and messaging strategies become more effective.

How They Complement Each Other

Here's how these two approaches can reinforce each other in your market research process:

• Develop empathy through personas – Use them to give your audience context, build internal alignment, and tailor your messaging tone.
• Uncover unmet needs through JTBD – Identify the tasks customers are trying to complete and what success looks like to them.
• Connect tasks with people – Map JTBD insights back to specific personas to personalize offers or experiences around functional, emotional, or social “jobs.”

For instance, a fictional persona of “Lisa, the Busy Mom,” might not reveal much on its own beyond demographics and a few surface goals. But paired with JTBD insights, you might learn that Lisa seeks snacks that fit into her car’s cup holder and keep the kids full between school pickups – yielding meaningful packaging or product design opportunities.

This pairing is especially useful in cross-functional settings, such as workshops or go-to-market planning, where marketers, designers, and executives benefit from both layered human details and deeper purpose-driven insights.

Bringing JTBD and Personas Together in Practice

To apply both methods effectively:

- Start by conducting qualitative interviews to derive themes for both personas and job stories
- Create JTBD-based maps for each persona group
- Align product and marketing decisions around both user identity and their core motivations

At SIVO Insights, we often advise clients to think of personas and JTBD not as competing market research tools, but as complementary frames. Used in tandem, they unlock a clearer line of sight between who your customer is, what they care about, and how your solution fits into their life.