Jobs To Be Done: The secret to effective B2B SaaS messaging

Intro

In this episode of "The Perfect SaaS Website" series, I sat down with Alex Gammelgard to discuss how the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework can transform your B2B SaaS messaging and website strategy. Alex brings valuable insights from her experience at ActiveCampaign, where she implemented this approach to drive 60% month-over-month growth. We explore how understanding the functional needs of your customers can lead to more effective messaging, better website conversions, and sustained growth beyond your initial customer base.

What is Jobs-to-be-Done?

Jobs-to-be-Done is a framework that shifts focus from who your customers are to what they're trying to accomplish. As Alex explains:

"Jobs to be done is looking at what are people hiring your company to do? Basically, what jobs are you completing with your product? It's a little bit more bare bones, brass tacks, but I think in terms of getting to the core, what is the value of this product? I think it's a helpful framework of just looking at literally what are they hiring you to do?"

This approach centers on the functional, practical ways people use your product rather than traditional demographic or psychographic profiles. It's about understanding the specific tasks, challenges, and goals that drive people to seek out your solution.

I've found myself using the term "functional" frequently when discussing product messaging with clients: "What are people going to use this product for? What are they using it for?" Through this lens, it becomes clear why solely focusing on high-level business outcomes often falls flat—they rarely represent the functional reason why someone chooses your product, especially for internal champions or end users.

The Relationship Between JTBD and Traditional Personas

Traditional personas often focus on creating detailed profiles of buyers based on demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns. While this works well for B2C companies, B2B often requires a more nuanced approach.

Alex suggests a layered model that combines the strengths of both frameworks:

"I think in marketing, as marketing moves across the full funnel, we're responsible for everything from top of funnel all the way down to conversions, customer referrals, testimonials. So really you have to be looking at everything. I think at the top of your funnel, maybe you're looking more at some of these buyer personas... as you go through the funnel, you're going to start bringing in some of these people that are actually using the product that really need to understand it at a brass tacks level, functionally, what are we doing with it?"

This creates a comprehensive approach:

• Top of funnel: Traditional personas help you understand high-level buyer goals and why someone might consider your category of solution
• Middle/bottom of funnel: Jobs-to-be-Done helps you communicate specifically what problems your product solves and how it works in practice

The beauty of this approach is that it addresses a common disconnect in B2B messaging:

"What I found in some companies, those two things don't actually match when you get down to it. You know, maybe you're selling this story. And then when you get down and maybe you're in marketing, not actually paying attention to what users are doing. And I've found a lot of times this can be where people fall off after a demo, or maybe people buy the product and then don't actually start using it. It's because you were so focused on the high level business story and kind of the high level value of the product, but overlooked what functionality does this product actually provide and are those two things aligned."

The Power of Situations and Triggers

One of the most valuable aspects of the JTBD framework is its focus on situations and triggers—the specific circumstances that motivate someone to look for a solution.

As I explained during our conversation:

"What I like about jobs to be done is the situational element of it. I think situations and triggers are for me personally, how you take your targeting, your customer targeting, or whether you're building like an ICP to the next level... everyone's looking at the sort of thermographics, psychographics, demographics, but like, what's the actual situation that would motivate somebody to look for a solution? What's that unique thing that's happening?"

Understanding these triggers helps you identify when your solution will rise to the top of a prospect's priority list, allowing you to craft more potent, relevant messaging. Rather than creating generic value propositions, you can speak directly to the moment when a prospect is most likely to be receptive to your solution.

This situational insight transforms your messaging from broad appeals to targeted interventions that address specific pain points at exactly the right moment.

How Market Conditions Impact Your Messaging

Jobs and situations aren't static—they evolve with market conditions, economic climates, and industry trends. Alex highlighted how dramatically this has shifted in recent years:

"In 2021, digital transformation was everywhere. Everybody was moving online... now we're in sort of a weird constrictive climate... people are really focused on cost savings consolidation. So, you know, whereas a couple of years ago, if I'm in, for example, marketing automation, you know, there's 8,000, 10,000 players in Martech and maybe I'm buying all of them and I've got the situations right where I'm willing to spend money to solve that niche problem with this niche thing. Now fast forward, I'm in a situation where I need to solve the same problems, but the way I have to solve them and the compelling events are going to be much different because I'm focused on like, good Lord, let me keep the tools I have."

The same product may solve the same fundamental problems, but the compelling events and situations that drive purchase decisions change. Your messaging must adapt accordingly—what worked in an expansion economy won't resonate in a consolidation market.

This is why regular JTBD research is essential. As Alex notes:

"You can't just set and forget your personas and jobs to be done research, because the climate is changing constantly."

Leveraging AI in Jobs-to-be-Done Research

AI tools can enhance your JTBD research process, though with important limitations. Alex shares her approach:

"I think AI is a great tool for hypothesis generation and a great tool for finding deficiencies in the work you've done. I think people who are using it to outsource critical thinking and kind of getting to the heart of it are making a big mistake."

She recommends using AI in two key ways:

1. Hypothesis development: "We're able to kind of use AI to describe some of these and, hey, what job titles, what things do you think that this might be related to? And then from there, you need to go out and validate, right?"
2. Message testing: "One thing that we've been doing recently is looking at website effectiveness. So if you have this really defined set of jobs to be done, understanding of what are their hopes and dreams? What are their barriers to buy? What decision criteria matters to them? What are they trying to do this year? What climate are they operating in? You can go pull a website, screenshot the whole thing and go to a prompt and say, hey, I'm a website conversion person and I'm trying to understand how effectively does this speak to all of these points?"

However, AI has limitations in how it evaluates your work. Alex notes that AI models like Claude tend to be "deferential" and "positive," requiring specific prompting to provide critical feedback:

"I prompt it like play devil's advocate... I have to kind of encourage it sometimes to be a little combative because its tendency is to say, you know, that was great. This is all the things you did right."

I share Alex's view that while AI can help with efficiency, it can't replace the core research work:

"When it comes to things like research, I just don't think there's any way to avoid the hard work, which is speaking with customers going out there and rolling up your sleeves."

Research Best Practices: The Three Critical Groups

When conducting JTBD research, Alex emphasizes the importance of diversifying your information sources by interviewing three distinct groups:

1. Existing customers:

   "That's important to understand what people are actually doing with the product and uncover maybe interesting use cases, opportunities to include something in your top level messaging that maybe your product managers might not know they're doing with the product. Customers will always find strange and unusual and interesting things to do that you didn't intend with the product."

2. Sales funnel prospects (especially lost deals):

   "I especially like talking to recent loss deals. I think that is the single biggest value activity that you can do in product marketing is why didn't you buy? What were the competitors doing better? Why did you believe this could or couldn't get these jobs done? Was this job even valuable to you?"

3. People unfamiliar with your product:

   "You need to talk to people who have nothing to do with your product. They've never heard of you. Maybe they've vaguely heard of you, because you can also get locked into your view of the world... but the actual early adopters versus people out in the world, they may be thinking about the problem completely differently."

This three-pronged approach helps you avoid confirmation bias and the echo chamber effect:

"Good research is actually going out there and sometimes hearing the hard truth or having your assumptions broken down and changing your perception."

Alex shares that in nearly every company she's joined, she's discovered discrepancies between internal perceptions and market realities:

"Almost every company I've joined when I'm trying to come up to speed, first thing is you interview all the internal people and that's super valuable. But then almost every single time when I've gotten out into the market, I've found sometimes big and sometimes small discrepancies."

Addressing the "Sample Size" Objection

One common pushback against qualitative JTBD research is concern about sample size. Stakeholders may question whether insights from 10-15 interviews can be trusted. Alex addresses this practical challenge:

"One of the things I've run into is kind of push back on that qualitative and thinking that we need to survey a thousand people for this to be right. And what I've found is what you find across 10 to 15 people, 85% of that is going to be like you've nailed it, especially if a fair amount of them are saying the same thing."

Her solution is to complement qualitative research with quantitative validation:

"What you can use it for too, is you get your hypothesis and then, okay, we'll do a survey. We know the things that we think now we can go get some more quantitative information on that... sometimes you're surprised, but usually you're not."

This approach satisfies stakeholders while maintaining the depth of insight that comes from qualitative research.

Case Study: ActiveCampaign's JTBD Approach

At ActiveCampaign, Alex faced a unique challenge: creating personas for an extremely diverse customer base of 180,000 global users—ranging from flower shop owners to franchise managers, all using the same marketing automation platform.

Rather than trying to create traditional job title-based personas, they organized customers by business type:

• Small/medium businesses
• Solopreneurs
• Enterprise buyers
• Franchise operators

For each business type, they identified:

• Core business goals (e.g., "punch above your weight" for SMBs)
• Key functional workflows they needed to accomplish
• Tool stacks they were already using

What made their approach unique was how they combined business-level goals with functional needs:

"The key in what we were able to do was really, we understood at the customer level what are the flows they're trying to accomplish? What are the jobs they're actually using it for? And then at the buyer level and more of the persona kind of psychographic level, what are these people, what is their daily in and out? What are they trying to do as a business? And we married those together."

This approach helped ActiveCampaign grow 60% month-over-month by addressing both the business-level goals and the practical jobs customers needed to accomplish.

Breaking Through Growth Plateaus with JTBD

For early-stage startups, JTBD research becomes critical when you've exhausted your network of early adopters who think like you do. Alex describes this common plateau:

"I think the biggest thing I run into with founders is they started this company for an idea, for an audience, and that audience looks a lot like them. And they've seen this problem in their circles. They've seen it in their groups. They believe in it so strongly. They start a business on it and they sell to friends and family. They sell to all the people that think like them. And then they hit this wall."

This is the moment when many startups question their sales, marketing, or product strategies. But Alex suggests the real issue is more fundamental:

"Your value prop has reached all of the people who think like you. And now you need to figure out what needs to pivot to go reach the rest of the people who maybe experience a flavor of this problem, but think about it very differently or need to be educated that this is a problem at all."

I see this challenge frequently with early-stage clients who have successfully sold to their network—people who know and trust the founder and may not even scrutinize the messaging. But to expand beyond that initial circle:

"You need to be able to convince strangers, right? And that's where I find marketing becomes, well, not just marketing, the whole go-to-market function becomes very... that's where the pressure test is. And I think that's where cracks start to appear and where the lack of research really starts to come back to haunt you."

A Final Research Tip for Founders

Alex concludes with an important caution for founders conducting JTBD research:

"One other tip for founders... mistake I often see is they confuse this with sales calls... founders can go into salesman mode and they're talking to someone trying to get this research and they hear the problem. 'Well, you know, actually, if I give you a free trial...' they like pivot into that. You have to really resist the urge to do that."

The goal of JTBD research is to listen actively, ask good questions, and understand how potential customers think about their problems—not to convert the person you're interviewing.

Implementing JTBD on Your SaaS Website

So how can you apply the Jobs-to-be-Done framework to improve your SaaS website? Here are practical steps:

1. Identify your key business segments (like ActiveCampaign did) rather than focusing solely on job titles or industries
2. For each segment, determine:
   • The high-level business goals they're trying to achieve
   • The specific functional jobs they need to accomplish
   • The market conditions and triggers that make your solution relevant now
   • The tools they're already using (for integration and familiarity)
3. Structure your website around these segments, showing each how your product helps them accomplish their specific jobs
4. Feature actual workflows prominently rather than just abstract benefits—show don't tell
5. Regularly update your understanding as market conditions change

This approach ensures your website speaks directly to what visitors are trying to accomplish, using language that resonates with their specific situation and needs.

The Connection to Micro-Demos

This Jobs-to-be-Done framework is particularly relevant for products like Glimps, which helps B2B marketers create micro-demos to educate website visitors. The core challenge with complex B2B products is showing—not just telling—how your product helps users accomplish their key jobs.

Micro-demos allow website visitors to see exactly how your product would help them accomplish specific tasks, bridging the gap between high-level messaging and functional reality. By implementing the JTBD framework in your micro-demos, you can show each segment of your audience exactly how your product addresses their specific needs, increasing conversion and reducing the post-demo or post-purchase disillusionment Alex described.