Personas are a core part of marketing strategies, almost a mantra. They’re where many of us begin when crafting campaigns or understanding our audiences. 

However, my experience at Spendesk, particularly working with some brilliant product managers, challenged me to rethink this approach.

These product managers introduced me to the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework, and it sparked a significant shift in my thinking. I began to ask myself: are we too obsessed with personas? Should personas really be the foundation of our marketing efforts, or is there a better way?

In this article, I’ll explore some of the challenges that come with an overreliance on personas and introduce an alternative perspective rooted in the JTBD framework. 

Let’s rethink how we connect with our customers.

The pitfalls of the persona-first approach

To understand why we need to rethink the persona-first approach in marketing, let me share the four key issues I’ve observed. These challenges show that focusing too much on personas can limit us, and why a problem-oriented or JTBD framework might be a more effective alternative.

1. You may be missing the market

When you start with personas, it’s easy to overlook the actual problem you’re trying to solve, and this can lead to targeting the wrong market altogether. 

A powerful example comes from Custom Tobacco, a company selling cigars. Initially, they marketed to cigar smokers—it made sense on the surface. But the results weren’t great, and they discovered two critical insights.

First, the few orders they received weren’t cigar smokers. Instead, they were from event planners and gift buyers purchasing cigars for others. Second, cigar smokers tend to be extremely brand-conscious and loyal, making them difficult to convert. 

The company realized their real opportunity lay with event planners and gift-givers. So, they shifted their marketing to target these groups, attending event-planning trade shows instead of cigar shows. 

As the founder aptly put: 

“Not only were we not solving a problem for cigar smokers, but if a problem did exist, we would not be the solution.”

2. Problem as the only shared trait

Sometimes, the only thing connecting your customers is the problem they need to be solved. This insight comes from Matt Hodges at Intercom, a company that exemplifies the JTBD framework in their go-to-market strategies. 

As Hodges notes, customers often span industries, demographics, and profiles—but they’re united by the problem or the job they need to be done.

An example that came to mind is my dad. He’s had the same haircut his whole life, managed by my grandmother at first and now by my mom. Despite our vastly different demographics, we both use hair ties—but for very different purposes. 

I use them for my hair, while he uses them to adjust the waistband of his wedding trousers (which he still insists fits, 35 years on). Our shared need for hair ties unites us, but trying to market to us based on demographics would likely fail.

3. Problems help you expand

When you rely on personas, your growth is constrained by the size of the audience that matches those criteria. 

Tactics like lookalike audiences in paid social campaigns only take you so far; eventually, you hit a ceiling. And as you try to scale further, you encounter lower-intent customers, making acquisition more expensive.

Focusing on problems, however, can unlock new markets entirely. Consider Splitwise, an app designed to help people split bills. Initially, they targeted flatmates, helping them share costs like rent or utilities. 

But when they thought about their customers’ problem—splitting bills—they realized this was relevant to other contexts too. 

For example - travelers splitting expenses during a group trip. By focusing on the problem rather than the persona, Splitwise expanded into the travel market, opening a completely new avenue for growth.

4. Personas don’t think demographically

One of my colleagues at Spendesk helped me realize this point. One of our key personas is a “budget owner”—anyone who manages a budget, big or small. 

When I mentioned to her that she fit this persona, she was surprised. “That sounds way too senior for me,” she said. But when I described the specific problems and jobs-to-be-done associated with this persona, she recognized herself immediately.

This conversation made me realize how exclusionary personas can be. If we insist on calling someone a “budget owner,” we risk alienating the very people we’re trying to reach. And if you think about how people search for solutions, they rarely use persona labels. 

Nobody Googles “solution for budget owner.” Instead, they search for things like, “how to create a budget” or “how to track expenses.”

People think in terms of their problems—not their demographic label.

The key issues with the persona-first approach can be summarized as follows:

  1. By focusing on personas and ignoring the problem, you risk targeting the wrong market.
  2. The problem may be the only common thread among your audience, making it a better anchor for your messaging.
  3. Personas limit market size, while problems can help you expand into new opportunities.
  4. People don’t self-identify as personas—they think in terms of their problems and jobs-to-be-done.

While there are additional nuances to consider, these four challenges illustrate why I believe it’s time to rethink the persona-first approach.

A problem-first approach with the jobs-to-be-done framework

If I’ve managed to persuade you of the limitations of the persona-first approach, you might now be wondering: what’s the alternative? How do we move beyond personas without losing sight of the customer?

I believe the key lies in starting with the problem. Personas should still have a role in your strategy, but as a way to enrich it—not as the starting point. 

A problem-first approach grounded in the JTBD framework is a more effective way to craft meaningful and impactful marketing strategies.

Here’s a high-level overview of how to shift your approach in four steps:

  1. Identify the problem and the job to be done using the JTBD framework.
  2. Define your personas based on the problem, rather than starting with personas.
  3. Develop your go-to-market strategy around the problem or job to be done.
  4. Leverage personas to execute and optimize your strategy.

For example, identifying that your audience is more likely to be at event trade shows than cigar shows (like Custom Tobacco’s shift) flows naturally from focusing on the problem. Personas, in this context, enrich and implement the strategy, rather than defining it.

Using the Jobs-to-be-Done framework: Three key steps

The Jobs-to-be-Done framework breaks the process into three essential components:

  1. The job to be done and the job map
  2. The desired outcome statement
  3. The analysis of unmet needs

Let’s explore each of these.

Understanding the job to be done

The concept of the "jobs-to-be-done" might sound unfamiliar at first, but you’ve likely encountered its essence before. Consider this popular phrase: “Customers don’t need a drill; they need a hole in the wall.” This idea lies at the core of the framework: customers “hire” a product or service to accomplish a specific task or overcome a problem.

To uncover these jobs, you rely heavily on user and customer interviews. Once identified, the job can be articulated using a clear and structured formula:

  • Context: What happens when the job arises?
  • Job: What task or problem is the customer trying to solve?
  • Outcome: What is the desired result of accomplishing the job?

Here’s an example: Imagine I own a bike and want to protect it. My job-to-be-done statement might look like this:

  • When I leave my bike unattended (context),
  • I want to ensure no one will steal it (job),
  • So that I can relax (outcome).

Notice what this statement does not include—it’s entirely solution-agnostic. It doesn’t specify how I want to protect the bike (e.g., using a lock, asking someone to watch it, or installing an alarm). This neutrality opens the door to innovation, allowing for creative solutions that meet the job in unexpected ways.

Moreover, solution-agnostic statements remain valid over time. They focus on what the customer ultimately wants to achieve, rather than being constrained by a current solution or technology.

Three types of outcomes

The outcome part of the statement deserves special attention, as it comes in three varieties:

  1. Functional outcomes: These focus on tangible results, such as reducing or improving something.
    • Example: “Reduce the likelihood of bike theft.”
  2. Emotional outcomes: These focus on how the customer feels.
    • Example: “So I can relax and not worry about my bike.”
  3. Social outcomes: These focus on how the customer wants to be perceived.
    • Example: “So others see me as a responsible and prepared cyclist.”

As a marketer, I find this structure particularly exciting because it closely resembles the building blocks of a value proposition. By using the JTBD framework, we gain deep insight into what customers want to achieve, what matters to them, and the metrics they care about. This clarity helps us align our messaging and solutions to their needs.

While the job-to-be-done statement gives us the big picture, the job map takes it to a more granular level by breaking the job into discrete steps. Every job involves a sequence of actions or components, and mapping these steps can reveal unmet needs.

Returning to the bike example, protecting my bike involves several steps:

  1. Traveling to my destination with the bike.
  2. Finding a place to leave it.
  3. Ensuring it’s securely locked or otherwise protected.
  4. Returning to retrieve the bike.

Each of these steps can be explored to identify pain points or opportunities. For instance, while there may be plenty of locks available, perhaps the process of finding a secure location to park the bike remains a challenge. By breaking the job into its components, we can identify areas where current solutions fall short and develop innovations to address those gaps.

Why job maps matter

In today’s market, solutions often exist for nearly every conceivable problem. However, by examining the granular steps in a job map, you might discover an overlooked aspect—a specific step where customer needs are not being fully met. This insight allows you to focus your efforts and create a value proposition that directly addresses these pain points.

The job map helps marketers and product teams prioritize and tailor their solutions more effectively. By targeting the most pressing unmet needs within the customer’s job, we can offer something truly impactful, whether that’s a new product, service, or improvement to an existing one.

The JTBD framework and the job map provide a structured way to move beyond personas and focus on what truly matters to your customers: solving their problems. This approach doesn’t just align your marketing efforts with customer needs—it also opens doors for innovation and differentiation in a competitive market.

Crafting a desired outcome statement

The desired outcome statement is the next critical step in the jobs-to-be-done framework. This statement serves as the customer’s success metric—the measurable, concrete result they hope to achieve by completing the job. 

It ensures clarity around what success looks like from the customer’s perspective and provides a benchmark for evaluating how well your solution meets their needs.

To create a desired outcome statement, we follow a specific formula that ensures it is both actionable and measurable. The formula consists of four components:

  1. The direction of improvement: What should happen: minimize, increase, improve, reduce, etc.
  2. Performance metric: The specific aspect to be measured, such as time, likelihood, or number of occurrences.
  3. Outcome: The ultimate result the customer wants to achieve.
  4. Context: The situation or condition under which the outcome is desired.

Example: Protecting a bike

Let’s revisit the bike protection example. A desired outcome statement could look like this:

  • Minimize (direction of improvement)
  • The number of items I have to carry around (performance metric)
  • To protect my bike (outcome)
  • When I leave it unattended (context).

This statement defines the customer’s desired outcome in a way that is both specific and measurable. It highlights not just the end goal but also the conditions under which the goal must be achieved.

Desired outcome statements for each step of the job map

The desired outcome statement can apply at two levels:

  1. The overall job to be done: A high-level success metric for completing the entire job.
  2. Individual steps in the job map: Specific metrics for each discrete step within the broader job.

For example, in the bike protection scenario, you might identify desired outcomes for each step, such as:

  • Finding a secure place to leave the bike: Minimize the time it takes to locate a safe parking spot.
  • Securing the bike: Minimize the effort required to ensure the bike is protected.
  • Returning to retrieve the bike: Maximize the likelihood that the bike is still there upon return.

By breaking the desired outcomes down in this way, you can pinpoint opportunities for improvement at every stage of the process. This level of detail allows you to design or position your solution to address specific pain points, creating a more comprehensive and compelling value proposition.

Why desired outcome statements matter

Desired outcome statements are essential because they keep the focus on the customer’s goals, ensuring your solution aligns with their priorities. They also provide clear, measurable benchmarks for evaluating success, making it easier to assess how well your product or service meets customer needs.

As you move through the JTBD framework, desired outcome statements bridge the gap between understanding the problem and designing the solution, helping you craft a value proposition that is both relevant and impactful.

Identifying unmet needs

Once we have a clear picture of the job to be done, the job map, and the desired outcome statements, the final step is to identify where customer needs remain unmet. This step bridges understanding and action, allowing us to focus our efforts on areas that truly matter to the customer and where opportunities for innovation exist.

To identify unmet needs, we consider two key questions:

  1. How important is this need to the customer?This ensures that we focus on something that has significant value or priority for the customer. If the need isn’t important to them, investing resources in addressing it won’t yield meaningful results.
  2. How well is this need currently met?This helps us determine where existing solutions fall short. If the customer is dissatisfied with the current options, it highlights an area of opportunity for improvement or innovation.

Mapping unmet needs to opportunities

By combining these two dimensions—importance and satisfaction—we can uncover unmet needs that represent actionable opportunities. For example:

  • High importance, low satisfaction: This is the sweet spot. Customers care deeply about this aspect of the job, but current solutions don’t meet their expectations. These gaps are ripe for innovation or differentiation.
  • High importance, high satisfaction: While important, this area may already have strong solutions in place. Competing here might be challenging unless you can offer a significant improvement.
  • Low importance, low satisfaction: Although there’s dissatisfaction, the lack of importance suggests this isn’t a priority for the customer, making it a lower-value target.
  • Low importance, high satisfaction: This area is best avoided—it’s not a priority for the customer, and existing solutions already work well.

Returning to the bike example: If we identify that “minimizing the time it takes to find a secure parking spot” is both highly important and poorly addressed by current solutions, this signals a strong opportunity. We might then innovate by creating an app to locate safe bike parking spots or design a product that simplifies securing a bike in any location.

Similarly, if we find that “ensuring the bike remains secure” is well-covered by existing locks, we might choose to focus on another aspect of the job map where customers experience more pain points.

Why this matters

This process not only helps us uncover pain points but also ensures that our efforts are strategically directed toward what matters most to the customer. It allows us to position our solutions in a way that clearly addresses gaps in the market, creating value where others haven’t yet delivered.

By focusing on unmet needs, we can innovate with confidence, knowing our efforts will resonate with the customer and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Starting with the problem of better positioning and messaging

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to leveraging the jobs-to-be-done framework, but one company that stands out for doing this exceptionally well is Coloplast, which provides wound-healing solutions. Their story illustrates how focusing on the problem and unmet needs can lead to transformative results.

Traditionally, competitors in the wound-care market emphasized speed in their messaging, promoting products that offered “fast healing” as their primary value proposition. Coloplast, however, used the JTBD framework to uncover a deeper insight. 

They realized that for nurses—the primary users of these products—speed wasn’t the key concern. What nurses truly cared about was preventing healing complications.

This shift in focus informed Coloplast’s positioning and messaging. Instead of joining the competition in shouting about speed, they zeroed in on complication prevention. This resonated deeply with their audience and set them apart in the market. 

The result? Their revenue skyrocketed—enough to make them a prime example of the power of problem-first thinking.

From problem to strategy

As Coloplast demonstrates, starting with the problem, desired outcomes, and unmet needs forms the foundation of a strong go-to-market strategy. This approach helps you answer critical questions like:

  • How should we position ourselves?By focusing on complication prevention, Coloplast found their differentiator.
  • What’s our key message?Their messaging centered on what their audience—nurses—cared about most.
  • How do we reach our audience?Once the messaging was clear, Coloplast could focus on where and how to reach their target personas (e.g., marketing in hospitals, targeting specific times or forums where nurses were active).

Notice that personas still play an essential role here—but they’re used after the problem is defined. In Coloplast’s case, understanding that nurses were the primary personas helped refine the strategy: identifying the right channels, timing, and context for communication. 

Personas are crucial for execution, but they come second to the deeper insights revealed by starting with the problem.

The bottom line: Problem-first thinking drives success

Starting with the problem allows us to focus on key positioning, messaging, and differentiation, ensuring that everything we do speaks directly to what matters most to our customers. By layering personas into this foundation, we can execute our strategies with precision.

The example of Coloplast shows us what’s possible when we flip the traditional persona-first model on its head and prioritize problems, outcomes, and unmet needs. It’s a strategy that not only helps us stand out but also delivers real value to our customers.