Traditional marketing planning often starts with target audiences, channels, budgets, and campaign goals. But without clarity on why customers choose a product or service, even the most well-funded efforts can miss the mark. Jobs To Be Done brings a human-centered lens to your marketing strategy by focusing on how your product fits into customers' lives and solves real problems.

Using the Jobs To Be Done framework during the planning phase gives marketers a clearer picture of:

• What outcome customers are hiring your product or service for – whether it's saving time, gaining confidence, or getting a task done more easily.
• Which customer motivations drive behavior – functional, emotional, and social factors that influence buying decisions.
• How to align offers with unmet needs – allowing your strategy to address gaps in the market.

Here’s how JTBD enhances your overall strategy development:

Improves Market Research Inputs

Instead of simply asking customers what features they want or reviewing industry benchmarks, JTBD uncovers the deeper “why” behind customer behavior. These insights lead to more meaningful research and data interpretation. It not only reveals what matters but also why it matters to your audience.

Guides Growth Marketing with Purpose

Knowing your customers’ most important jobs helps you spot where your brand can add the most value – and scale that value efficiently. This can shape product positioning, feature prioritization, or identifying high-potential marketing channels as part of your growth strategy.

Connects Cross-Functional Teams

One of JTBD's strengths lies in its ability to serve as a common language across departments. When marketers, designers, product teams, and executives align around the customer’s job, it becomes easier to build cohesive strategies and consistent experiences.

Helps Prioritize and Focus

Rather than spreading resources thin or chasing trends, JTBD enables clear prioritization. You learn which aspects of your offer matter most to customers – and which ones don’t. With that clarity, you can focus your marketing energy where it counts.

Adding Jobs To Be Done to your marketing strategy planning process makes it easier to shift from assumptions to evidence-based strategy. The result? A marketing plan that not only defines your target audience but understands their needs with greater empathy and precision.

One area where the Jobs To Be Done framework really shines is in developing a clear and compelling messaging strategy. By uncovering why customers seek certain solutions – and what they’re trying to accomplish – JTBD helps businesses communicate in a way that truly connects. It transforms your messaging from product-focused to customer-centered.

Understanding the Real Customer Needs

When marketers talk about customer needs, they often think in terms of features or feedback. JTBD digs deeper. It reveals the underlying goals that drive purchase decisions. These goals can be:

• Functional – e.g., "I need a tool that helps me simplify scheduling."
• Emotional – e.g., "I want to feel confident in my choices."
• Social – e.g., "I want others to see me as competent."

Identifying these layers gives marketing teams clear direction when shaping brand stories, ad copy, and messaging on all channels. Instead of listing product features, you begin to speak to the transformation your product offers – the "job" your customer is hiring it to do.

Creating Messaging That Resonates

Using JTBD to build your messaging strategy ensures you're addressing your audience’s actual intentions, not just demographics or assumptions. Whether in digital campaigns, email sequences, or packaging, messaging that speaks directly to a customer’s desired outcome will always feel more relevant.

For example, instead of highlighting that a blender has five speed settings, your messaging might shift to, “Make fresh morning smoothies in under a minute – even on your busiest days.” Now you’re speaking to the customer’s goal, not just a functional detail.

Refining Customer Segmentation for Accuracy

Jobs To Be Done also enhances customer segmentation by grouping people based on similar goals rather than age, gender, or industry. You might discover that two very different demographic groups are both seeking the same outcome – like reducing stress or saving time. This kind of segmentation helps refine messaging even further.

JTBD-based customer segmentation allows marketers to:

• Target segments based on desires and challenges
• Craft specific messaging for each group’s unique "job"
• Improve ad relevancy and campaign performance

Better Messaging Across the Funnel

From awareness to conversion, JTBD-informed messaging helps maintain consistency while ensuring you’re highlighting the benefits that matter most. It supports personalization without adding complexity because the core message is tied directly to what customers care about.

In short, using the Jobs To Be Done approach for understanding customer needs helps marketers shift from product descriptions to customer outcomes – making every message feel more personal, relevant, and actionable.

Using JTBD to Segment Your Audience Effectively

One of the biggest advantages of the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is its ability to sharpen your customer segmentation. Unlike traditional methods that rely on static demographics like age or income, JTBD focuses on what your customers are trying to achieve – their "job to be done." This approach leads to more dynamic and useful audience groupings that reflect real consumer behavior.

Instead of asking “Who is my customer?”, JTBD encourages marketers to ask, “What is my customer trying to accomplish?” This mindset shift helps uncover the motivations behind decisions, making it easier to develop messaging and offers that truly resonate with your target audience.

How JTBD Segmentation Works

Let's say two people buy the same running shoes. One purchases them for marathon training, while the other buys them for casual weekend walks. Demographically, they might look similar, but their jobs are entirely different. By understanding the underlying task – or job – you can segment these customers by need or intent rather than surface-level traits.

Benefits of Using JTBD for Customer Segmentation

• More accurate targeting: Segment customers based on specific needs, not assumptions.
• Relevant messaging: Tailor your marketing language to address real goals.
• Better product alignment: Understand which features or services support each job, leading to better positioning.

Using JTBD in customer segmentation goes beyond categorizing people – it helps identify meaningful differences in the context of their lives or workflows. These distinctions offer better guidance for crafting offers that feel personalized and relevant.

Combining with Traditional Segments

JTBD doesn’t replace standard segmentation methods – it enhances them. You can still use age, behavior, or geography in your marketing strategy, but layering in JTBD insights reveals why certain groups act the way they do. For example, you might find that young professionals and retirees are both completing the job of “finding quick, healthy meals,” which opens up cross-demographic marketing opportunities that traditional segmentation might overlook.

Ultimately, using Jobs To Be Done for customer segmentation ensures that your marketing isn’t based solely on who people are, but also on what matters to them. This leads to smarter, more human messaging strategies – and more effective campaigns.

Applying JTBD Insights to Select Marketing Channels

Once you understand your customers' core needs using the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework, the next critical step is determining where and how to reach them. This is where JTBD becomes a powerful tool for channel selection. Knowing the jobs your customers are trying to complete offers key clues about the environments and moments when they're open to your message – helping you choose the best marketing channels strategically.

Why JTBD Improves Channel Planning

Traditional channel choice often relies on general media habits or demographic-based assumptions. But integrating JTBD allows you to go deeper. If you know when and why a customer is trying to get something done, you can align your channels to their unique decision-making context. This means showing up in the right place, at the right time, with the right message.

For example, if someone’s job is “finding a quick lunch during a busy workday,” grabbing their attention on their morning commute via mobile ads or podcasts could be far more effective than targeting them during off-hours. JTBD gives marketers a practical edge in choosing both timing and touchpoints that match intent.

JTBD Channels in Action

Here are a few ways JTBD can shape your channel strategy:

• Search behavior: If the job involves research or discovery, paid search and SEO may be the best channels to engage users actively looking for solutions.
• Time-sensitive needs: For jobs that occur quickly or spontaneously (like “getting last-minute gifts”), social platforms or in-app push notifications offer speed and urgency.
• Habit-driven tasks: If the job is routine (e.g., “planning weekly grocery trips”), email campaigns or text reminders may be ideal for recurring engagement.

In essence, JTBD helps you reverse-engineer the marketing funnel based on customer behavior. Instead of guessing which platforms fit your audience, you can prioritize based on which channels support their job completion.

Making JTBD Channel Decisions Actionable

To turn these insights into a workable strategy, map out each major customer job and list the possible touchpoints where customers consider or complete that job. Look for patterns across your audience segments. You may find that some jobs happen on-the-go, while others are planned – which can guide whether you focus on mobile-first placements, long-form content, or retargeting.

By applying Jobs To Be Done in marketing channel selection, you’ll improve reach, relevance, and efficiency – all while aligning your growth marketing efforts more closely with how your customers actually live and make choices.

When Is the Right Time to Use Jobs To Be Done in Marketing?

Understanding the right moment to adopt the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework in your marketing strategy can make all the difference. While JTBD can be valuable at many points in your planning cycle, there are several situations where its impact is especially powerful.

Key Moments to Use the JTBD Framework

Here are some of the best times to introduce JTBD into your marketing strategy:

• When launching a new product: JTBD helps you clarify which specific job your offering solves, making your messaging more relevant from the start.
• When your current messaging isn’t connecting: If engagement or conversion is low, JTBD can help uncover the missing emotional or practical triggers that matter to your target audience.
• When customer needs are shifting: In fast-changing markets, using JTBD to understand evolving consumer behaviors ensures you stay aligned with what buyers are trying to accomplish.
• When improving personalization: JTBD supports deeper segmentation, enabling more targeted outreach and a more human-centered marketing strategy.

Whether you're refreshing your brand positioning or scaling growth marketing efforts, JTBD can guide everything from messaging to channel choice. It creates a cohesive thread by linking what your customer needs with how you present and deliver it.

How to Know It’s Time

If you find yourself asking “Why aren’t our campaigns resonating?” or “How can we stand out in a crowded market?”, JTBD can provide the clarity you need. It bridges the gap between surface-level analytics and human-centered understanding, revealing what drives consumer behavior beyond simple purchase data.

In other words, the best time to use Jobs To Be Done in marketing is when you need fresh insight into your audience – not just in terms of who they are, but what they’re striving to achieve. If your current approach feels out of sync with your customers' goals, it's time to step back, reassess their real needs, and infuse your marketing with JTBD thinking.

Proactive or Reactive – JTBD Fits Both

The beauty of JTBD is its flexibility. You can incorporate it early during product development or brand strategy, or later when revisiting campaign tactics. It fits just as well into long-range planning as it does a mid-year marketing pivot.

No matter your timing, JTBD offers a way to bring deeper customer insight into your strategy – a critical win in today’s crowded, message-heavy landscape. With JTBD, marketing becomes less about guessing and more about understanding and serving people in the right moments of need.