A Customer-Centric Framework for Start-up Messaging
- Chetan Bhatt
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
The Need for Customer-Centric Messaging
Customers are bombarded with marketing messages, receiving between 4000–10,000+ a day. And it’s only intensifying as AI allows products to be produced at inordinate speed.
Your prospects brain has put intense filters up so as not to be overwhelmed — only allowing what’s most relevant and useful through. If messaging is even a little bit confusing, they won’t spend the time to figure it out and move on.
To cut though to them then, start-ups must strike at the customer’s heart in seconds, clearly communicating:
The specific value you provide
Why you’re meaningfully different
With a message memorable enough to stick
But to achieve this, you can’t focus on mere features and benefits of your product. You’ve got to go deeper.
You need to understand first what your customers are actually trying to accomplish — the “job” they’re hiring your product to do — that is the key insight that unlocks hyper relevance of your product.
Example: The Milkshake Revelation
Clayton Christensen is the Harvard Professor who coined the term ‘Disruptive Innovation’. He gives an example of insight generated through a Job-to-be-done perspective with his famous milkshake example (Christensen 2007).
A fast-food chain discovered that 40% of milkshakes were purchased in the early morning by commuters who faced a long. The didn’t understand ‘why’ viewing Milkshakes as just another menu item.
But taken from a different perspective, we can ask ‘What job are our customers hiring Milkshakes for?’
Through observation and open dialogue with customers they found that the morning commute for customers was long and dull and to kill the boredom they were consuming milkshakes. It’s thick texture allowing for an extended period of slurping versus a brownie or bagel which would go down too quickly.
This changed their perspectives on competitors which now included all boredom killers on the long ride. It also influenced how they approached innovation:
They made the shakes thicker (to last longer), adding fruit chunks (for textural interest), and moved the dispenser in front of the counter (for faster service) — all improvements directly aligned with the job customers were hiring the milkshake to do.
This directly links to messaging. What will the substance of your messaging be? What will help you to cut through the noise and get customers to understand the value you provide them? Answer: The insights we gain from their Jobs-to-be-done.
Beyond Demographics: Understanding Customers Through Jobs To Be Done
Segmentation is the buckets you put your customers in. These buckets affect your view of who you customers are and your competition. These are two fundamentals in marketing — who are you going after and what are your differentiating yourself from.
Most companies segment markets by customer demographics (age, income, gender) or product characteristics (category, price, features). The problem? These segmentation schemes are static and poor indicators of customer behaviour. As Clayton Christensen explains, “Customers’ buying behaviours change far more often than their demographics, psychographics or attitudes.” In other words, if you base your product and messaging around segments that break down and change, you’ll be for ever on the strategic backfoot. You need something that defines your customers in a way that’s stable long-term — that’s the job customers are trying to get done.
So, instead of asking “who” your customers are, the Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework asks “what job are customers hiring your product to do?” This fundamental shift reveals the underlying process:
The specific jobs your customers are “hiring” products to help them accomplish
The functional, emotional, and social dimensions of these jobs
Understanding the job reveals who you’re really competing against
The diagrams below show how this comes together from a Customer Type, Job Type to full framework.
Then when you explore the cause behind each JTBD you also uncover category entry points (when customer come into market), market trends that creating pressure for these jobs to be done now and internal company dynamics that affect purchase processes are affecting your customer all essential to winning GTM messaging.
Finding Your Customer’s Jobs and Pain Points
To discover the jobs your customers need done, you need to:
Look Beyond Product Categories: Your real competition may come from entirely different industries
Observe Compensating Behaviours: Watch for workarounds customers create to solve problems
Conduct Situational Interviews: Ask what customers were trying to accomplish when they used your product
The JTBD hierarchy helps systematically map the goals, needs, and motivations of customers without getting trapped in existing product frameworks.
Uncovering Pain Points: The Golden Nuggets
Within the jobs framework, a critical discovery awaits: customer pain points. These are the unsolved problems customers have when trying to get their job done — the golden nuggets for successful innovation and messaging.
Pain points emerge when you identify “Need Metrics” — specific expectations customers have when doing a job — and then determine which ones are:
Highly important to customers
Poorly addressed by existing solutions
These pain points are your innovation sweet spots. Solutions that address these points will win in the marketplace, while innovations that don’t solve relevant customer problems will fail. Equally, we can use it to build customer-centric messaging around your current product.
Below is a diagram of how this comes together. Each level of the pyramid moves from process driven jobs at the bottom, to emotional and social jobs higher up. Within each level we elaborate the customer journey, marketing the obstacles to achieving the job — these are true pain points.
The ones that are being underserved by competitors and served well by us would be the differentiator we’d hone into for customer centric-messaging.
Seeing Competition Through the JTBD Lens
When you understand the job customers are hiring your product to do, you gain a much clearer picture of your real competition — which often extends far beyond your product category.
Take the example of car manufacturers who fail to recognize that for many customers, their car serves as a mobile office. These customers aren’t just comparing different car brands; they’re comparing cars against Starbucks, productivity apps, and other solutions that help them work on the go.
This broader competitive landscape reveals:
Untapped differentiation opportunities
Premium pricing potential for solving the job well
A larger market than traditionally defined
Positioning Your Brand Through Jobs To Be Done
With a clear understanding of your customer’s job and pain points, you can now craft messaging that resonates instantly and is distinct enough to be memorable:
1. Create a Purpose Brand
When a product does a job exceptionally well, it creates the opportunity for a “purpose brand” — a brand that customers automatically think of when a specific job needs doing. Examples include Google (finding information), FedEx (sending packages urgently), and Starbucks (having a comfortable “third place” to work or socialize).
Purpose brands:
Guide customers to the right product
Guide your product development and marketing
Command price premiums
Often grow through word-of-mouth rather than expensive advertising
2. Configure Your Marketing Mix
The JTBD framework naturally aligns all four P’s of marketing:
Product: Features and experiences directly supporting the job
Price: Set relative to alternative ways of getting the job done
Place: Distribution aligned with where the job occurs
Promotion: Messaging focused on the job, not features
Indeed, all for of these would play a role in your messaging across the funnel. If any one of them fails to be Customer-centric, it could cost the conversion of a prospect to a customer.
3. Build a Messaging Hierarchy
With this foundation, you can create a messaging hierarchy that works:
Lead with the job: “When you need to _______…”
Highlight key pain points: “Without wasting time on…”
Differentiate: “Unlike other solutions that…”
Deliver emotional payoff: “So you can feel…”
Conclusion: The Power of Jobs-Based Thinking for Start-ups
For startups with limited resources, the JTBD framework offers a strategic advantage. By understanding the job customers are hiring your product to do and the specific pain points they face, you can:
Create more compelling messaging that instantly resonates
Develop more focused products that solve real problems
Discover larger market opportunities
Find meaningful differentiation
Command premium pricing
In a world where customers have less time and more options than ever, the Jobs To Be Done framework doesn’t just improve your marketing — it transforms your entire approach to creating customer value.
References:
Jobs-to-be-done: A framework for customer needs, Ulwick, 2017
2. How to identify pain paints with Jobs-to-be-done, Vendbridge, 2022
3. White paper: Outcome-based segementation, Strategyn, Ulwick, 2019
4. White paper: Outcome-driven innovation, Ulwich, Strategyn, 2019
5. Finding the Right Job for your product, Chistensen, MIT Sloan Management Review, 2017
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