Using Jobs-to-be-Done in a Marketing workshop
In the book Competing Against Luck, Clayton Christensen describes how important it is that all processes in an organisation be aligned to the customer’s Job. This enables an organisation to truly deliver on the Job the customer has hired it for. This means aligning the product offering, sales, support and of course marketing strategy to the customer’s Job. In this article, I’ll discuss methods I’ve used to leverage Jobs-to-be-Done in marketing workshops.
First, what is the purpose the workshop?
1. Uncover the key customer struggles and the context they occurred in.
And use these insights to shape the message you give customers and when you give it.
2. Shared understanding and stakeholder buy-in.
As John Cutler says, shared understanding is hard and you’ve got to work on it. But if everyone has the opportunity to hear and be heard, to empathise and be exposed to the research results, then you are already closer to success.
3. Define goals
Related to shared understanding, if everyone agrees on what you are trying to achieve based on what you know, then you’re closer to success.
4. Multiplying minds
This is about drawing the best knowledge and skills from the whole team to get the best results. This is not a brainstorming session. We use techniques to avoid groupthink.
Before you get started
Prior to a workshop, you’ll want to have a degree of buy-in to Jobs-to-be-Done theory with the team. If you haven’t already, read my article on Top 10 tips for introducing Jobs-to-be-Done theory to your organisation. And spend some time learning the fundamentals of Jobs-to-be-Done.
The following process borrows heavily on components of the Google design sprint. The workshop can be as long or short as you need or want. It may be worth blocking out a minimum of a day, but it could be spread across a few days. Make sure you time-box each step to fit them in.
Also, you will have completed at least 10 Switch Interviews. I use the technique described by Bob Moesta, Chris Spiek and The Rewired Group.
1. Combine the timeline and forces diagrams as a strategy blueprint
Similar to how Greg Le Sueur describes ideation workshop, after you’ve completed your interviews, draw out the timeline together with your team.Add common events that happened at each step. It’s important you do this with all stakeholders if you can. It gives them a chance to see the raw research data and empathise with the customer. For this article I’m using edited results interviews I did with people registering with Five Good Friends to be a carer for someone in their home. Five Good Friends is a service that connects people who need care in the home, with people who can help.
Take your forces diagram and step through each of your findings. Place them around the moment they occur in the timeline. Add stickers on each note to indicate the number of times an item was heard in the interviews. Use green for push/pull and red for habit/anxiety. Now you’ll start to form a picture of where the forces are in your customer journey.
We discovered that there were two distinct groups of people that registered to be a carer. The first were middle-aged people who were looking for options to get out of the office, semi-retire, help people and make a little bit of money. The second group were students that were studying health and care degrees or courses. They saw Five Good Friends as an opportunity to have a flexible job and gain industry experience while they studied. The example here focuses on the interviews we conducted with students.
Finally, write up insights you uncovered on what the customer was doing at each moment. Where they were, who they were talking to. What time, day, date it was? What was the weather like? What were they interacting with — mobile, computer, etc. Again, place a sticker on each of the contexts to indicate how often it came up in the interview. The context of the moment is important. It’s a goldmine for marketers to tap into. You can use this to design strategies to be there at the moment your customer is thinking about overcoming a struggle that your product solves.
The forces and timelines we uncovered allowed us to design a marketing strategy that was in front of students at the most effective moments. It highlighted the forces that promoted change to Five Good Friends as a carer and gave reassurance and resources at the key moment for the anxieties that occurred along the way.
2. Define the opportunities (How might we…?)
Now you have your journey map, it’s time to define the opportunities with a “How might we…” question. Pick the top three forces with the most stickers and the top three contexts.
Writing ‘How might we’ questions is about reframing the item in a way that gets you thinking about what you could do to overcome a habit or anxiety or promote a push or pull. For the context items, it’s about how you could leverage the moment. Get each member of the team to independently write at least three questions related to each of the forces or contexts. Place all the questions on the wall under the item on the timeline. Group any that are the same together, placing the best version of the question on the top.
Here are some examples that we wrote in our workshop:
- How might we promote Five Good Friends as an option for people that are looking to give back?
- How might we describe the different levels of experience required and reassure people there is an opportunity for them at Five Good Friends?
- How might we promote Five Good Friends as a way for students to gain industry experience?
3. Ask the experts
It’s not always possible for everyone to join the workshop. This is the time for key stakeholders to gain a shared understanding of your findings and to crosscheck your opportunities with domain experts. Book the experts to come in individually for 30–60mins to review your progress and ask them any questions you’ve uncovered along the way.
4. Lightning Demos
Once you have your ‘How might we’ questions, it’s time to get the ideas flowing. Give each team member some time to independently collect examples of marketing strategies and executions they like. It’s a good idea to have briefed the team on this part of the workshop prior to starting so they have time to think about it and come prepared.
The demos can be related to the question you’ve proposed, the market sector, or it can be something they just like. The idea is to share inspiration and get the creativity flowing. This is also an opportunity for the product team to demo the product you are marketing to make sure everyone understands what the customer is getting at the end.
5. Ideation
You’re now ready to work on solutions. Go through each question and give everyone eight minutes to sketch as many ideas as they can to answer the questions. We’re not after masterpieces, it just needs to convey their idea without them needing to present it. They can use words if they want to (but it shouldn’t be a page full of text). If people are struggling, there are a number of ideation games that you can play to start getting ideas out of the box.
After working on each HMW question, briefly shares sketch ideas. Timebox this sharing to five minutes, this isn’t about selling your idea it’s about seeding thoughts in other peoples minds so they can take them and grow them into something new.
At the end give everyone 20–30 minutes to combine or refine their ideas into a single solution sketch. Once done, tell them to give their solution a title and stick it to the wall. Now everyone votes on the solutions (five stickers each) and the most voted solutions gets discussed further.
The purpose of the process is to give everyone an opportunity to be exposed to the research, find the key struggles and the context they occurred in. Then use these insights to shape the message you give to customers and when you give it. Now your whole marketing team has a clear understanding of what they need to do to execute the marketing strategy.
If you have any experience using Jobs-to-be-Done with your marketing team, or have any general feedback, please leave a comment below.
If you want to learn how to apply JTBD to your work, including what to do once you’ve got the research I’m working on a video course with Greg Le Sueur here at jobstobedone.pro
Happy Jobs hunting!
