Customer Personas Are Fun. But Jobs Are Powerful.
You’ve likely met her. Savvy Sally, 34, urban, yoga-loving, latte-sipping, marketing decision-maker. You’ve probably built marketing around her. Designed campaigns for her. Maybe even pitched to investors using her.
OK, let’s stop it there. Savvy Sally doesn’t exist!
She’s a cardboard cutout. A polite fiction created to give the illusion of customer understanding. But when it’s time to make real marketing decisions—why customers buy, what to say, and how to say it—Savvy Sally offers you nothing.
If you’ve ever felt like your customer personas are gathering dust, weren’t driving results, you’re not alone.
There’s a better way: Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)
Let me show you how shifting from ‘personas’ to ‘progress’ sharpens your focus, strengthens your messaging, and drives growth rooted in real customer motivation.
The Fatal Flaws of Traditional Buyer Personas
1. Personas Are Static. Your Customers Aren’t.
Real people evolve. Their needs change with circumstances. User personas, however, stay frozen in time. They are oversimplified snapshots based on location, age, job title, watering holes, or lifestyle. The result? Marketing built for an idea, not a living customer.
“Hyper-Saver Helena” might crave budget tools today. But when she lands a pay rise, she’s no longer who your persona says she is.
2. Personas Reduce Humans to Demographics
Slicing your audience by location, age, or income may sound scientific. But it often leads to false assumptions.
A 24-year-old and a 58-year-old might both “hire” a Tesla for the same reason: status, sustainability, or acceleration. Their age is useful data, but what they’re trying to accomplish by getting a Tesla… that is gold.
3. Personas Miss Context and Motivation
Personas don’t tell you why someone decides to buy now. What triggered the search? What progress were they trying to make?
“Savvy Sally” doesn’t say, “I’m desperately trying to prove to the board of directors that our marketing spend isn’t wasted.” But your real customer might.
4. Personas Encourage Persona Theatre
Let’s be honest. Most persona documents get written, passed around, praised, shelved, and then forgotten. They’re a form of corporate theatre, created to signal strategy, not drive it.
- 77% of the marketers have created buyer personas at some point in their careers.
- 77% of marketers don’t refer to their buyer personas before creating campaigns.
- 85% of them don’t refer to their buyer personas before a product launch.
A strategy day that takes your entire team out of action. A persona canvas design day to populate rectangles with assumptions and fake photos. No wonder, marketing agencies love billing you to enact persona theatre!
💸🗑️🔥Let that sink in!
5. Personas Assume That One Size Fits All
Your “Techie Tom” might combine a dozen conflicting behaviours. One-size personas collapse nuance. They leave your marketing targeting everyone and resonating with no one.
Shift From Identity to Intention, Using Jobs-to-Be-Done
Instead of asking “Who is this person?”, Jobs-to-Be-Done asks: “What is this person trying to do?”
This one question changes everything. It forces you to stop marketing to segments and start marketing to moments.
What’s a Job-to-Be-Done?
A Job-to-Be-Done is the functional, emotional, or social outcome a customer is trying to achieve in a specific context.
For example, people don’t want a drill. They want a hole in the wall. People don’t want a gym membership. They want to feel confident in their clothes. People don’t want your CRM system. They want to nurture leads without chaos.
These are jobs. And unlike personas, jobs are:
- Contextual (What triggered the need?)
- Temporal (Why now?)
- Motivational (What outcome do they want?)
Persona vs. JTBD. A Real World Example.
Meet “Sleepless Sam”, a persona:
Sam, 35, lives in London, is a mid-level manager, enjoys hiking, and values tech.
You might market a mattress to Sam like this:
“Advanced cooling memory foam for high-performing professionals.”
Now let’s meet Sam’s job:
“After months of waking up in pain, I want to sleep through the night and feel human again—so I can perform at work without needing three coffees before 10 am.”
That insight observed through the jobs lens changes everything.
“Tired of waking up tired? Discover the mattress designed to end your back pain. 28-night risk-free trial included.”
Lit 🔥
The Four Forces of Progress Show Us Why People Switch
Every customer considering change is caught in a battle:
- Push of the Situation: “I’m sick of waking up exhausted.”
- Pull of the New: “This new mattress could fix that.”
- Anxiety of Change: “What if it doesn’t fix my tiredness?”
- Habit of the Present: “Shopping for mattresses is a nightmare. Maybe I’ll just try sleeping in a different position.”
Your job isn’t to pitch product or service features to a persona. It’s to:
- Agitate the push
- Elevate the pull
- Soothe the anxiety
- Break the habit
Do that, and the customer moves from A to B.
Why This Matters to Founders and Marketers
Switching from customer personas to Jobs-to-Be-Done doesn’t just sharpen your messaging. It also:
- Guides product strategy (what jobs are underserved?)
- Clarifies positioning (what outcome do you enable?)
- Improves targeting (who is in that struggling moment now?)
- Aligns your whole team (everyone rallies behind the customer’s job)
Jobs-to-Be-Done transforms marketing from persona theatre into a customer-powered growth engine.
Let’s Get Practical. If you’ve ever looked at your customer personas and thought “how is this supposed to help me write copy / make decisions / run a campaign”… trust that instinct. You’re not broken. The tool is.
Here’s what to do next: Start with a Job. Interview customers who recently bought. Ask what triggered their search, what they were trying to achieve, what nearly stopped them, and why they said yes.
Need help mapping this out? Let’s talk. I’ll help you ditch buyer personas and uncover the real forces driving your customers to act. Book a Jobs-to-Be-Done discovery session.
Your customer isn’t a persona. They’re a real person, trying to make progress.
Don’t market to “Marketing Mary” or “Startup Steve.” Market to the moment your real customer says:
“The status quo isn’t working. I need something better.”
Find that moment. Map those four forces. Solve that job.
And you’ll never build a customer persona document again.