One of the basic principles taught in marketing is to suss out why someone buys a product. That seems a simple enough thing to do, but is it? What makes this complex is the fact that different jobs demand different products.
Let’s say you’re sending a physical object to someone who’s on another continent. You aren’t going to take it there yourself, so your likely option is to mail it. To you, the mail service fits the mold of the product you should buy in this case. But let’s pretend this object is a birthday present and their birthday is tomorrow. Now, what you require is a ‘it-absolutely-positively-has-to-get-from-here-to-there-overnight’ product and for that, only a global courier like FedEx fits the mold. Not every product in a category suits the job the customer has in mind, so those of us selling products must know the job our product is bought to do. And these jobs can loosely be divided by whether they:
- help us improve something we may not feel an urgent need for – Vitamins
- immediately solve something we absolutely positively need – Painkillers
That’s how someone I know describes these two job types. She’s joining us to explain how knowing which type we have impacts positioning, customer service, product roadmapping and more.
Dipalli Bhatt is the head of marketing at Evidence Partners. She has 15 years of product and corporate marketing experience and has worked with organizations like Disney and TD Canada Trust which listed her as one of ’30 under 30′ marketing professionals to watch. Honoured by Adobe as ‘Fearless 50 Marketer 2019-2020’ across the world.
She is a member of Forbes Communications Council and is involved in mentoring tech-startups and women in leadership. Dipalli also volunteers at Tie Ottawa Chapter and Invest Ottawa.
She has a Master of Business Administration from University of Ottawa
People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show
- Clayton Christiansen originator of the jobs-to-be-done framework
- Asana
- Trello
- Contact Dipalli on her LinkedIn and Twitter profiles
