How can you use Jobs-to-be-Done innovation methods to beat your competitors? In this next installment of “How Would You Beat?” we explain how to define markets using JTBD, which is the critical first step in figuring out how to beat a competitor like Facebook. Your customer's job-to-be-done is your market. We’ll discuss innovation theory, show you how to define your customer's job-to-be-done, and explain the methods so you can put the theory into practice at your company.

Beating Facebook with JTBD Innovation Methods

Facebook's 2004 origin and rise to power is well-documented and steeped in controversy. By 2008, they had created their iOS app, introduced Facebook chat, and overtook MySpace, the original social media giant. Facebook’s market cap today is $800 Billion. Over 1.5 billion people use Facebook every day. They own 4 of the top 10-20 most used mobile apps. How can you beat them? The obvious answer seems to be “build a better social network.” However, this is an oversimplification. As we’ve seen with Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp, Instagram and a host of other competing social networks, if Facebook senses competition they will come after you. If they can’t buy you outright, they will simply copy the best features of your product (think FourSquare’s location check-in feature, or Snapchat’s Stories).

The first step to beating Facebook using JTBD innovation methods is figuring out what market Facebook is actually in. According to Jobs Theory, customers don’t want your product, they want to get a job done. What are the goals people are using Facebook to accomplish? What problems does Facebook help them solve? Those are the markets that likely won’t change much over time. Facebook helps people get the job “stay informed” done much better than other competing solutions.

Facebook’s Two-Sided Market

As Clay Christensen said in his book “Competing Against Luck,” Facebook is competing with a cigarette break. Companies compete with more than just a product that directly looks like them. The underlying job of both a cigarette break and checking Facebook is “change my mental state.” In both cases, you’re doing it to relax or de-stress.

Facebook is in a two-sided market. The first market is the users they target through the social network product they’re selling. The second market is helping advertisers sell advertising. Almost all of their revenue, profitability and market cap comes from helping advertisers sell advertising. This means, when competing with Facebook, you can compete on either the user side of the market or the advertising side of the market.

On the user side, is there something you can do to help customers change their mental state better? If so, what is the business model for that solution? On the advertising side, can you help advertisers acquire customers more effectively than they can on Facebook? These are both great ways to cause problems for Facebook.

Which Jobs Do You Focus On?

The next key question: Which job do you focus on to make this work? How you describe the job is critically important. What are the unmet needs in the job and who are the people who really struggle with these unmet needs? Answering those two questions will help you segment your market more intelligently. 

So, how can you beat Facebook? Using JTBD theory, a smart approach would be getting your foot in the door by targeting a more specific segment in your market. This will help you grow your platform over time and allow you to eventually target more jobs and more customers, as opposed to trying to target everyone like Facebook does. If you define your product based on your market -- or, worse yet, your competitors’ market -- you’re almost always going to fail. To beat Facebook, the first step is defining the market from the point of view of the customers you’re trying to target. What jobs are they trying to get done?

Check Out the Podcast!

You can listen to this episode of our “How Would You Beat?” podcast on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. We will be posting more videos to help you use JTBD at your company. If you enjoy this video, please share it and like it on YouTube.

Don’t play feature catchup. Lead the innovation with JTBD. Jobs Theory gets you the insights you need to think differently about your customers, your markets and your customers’ unmet needs. Contact us today and try thrv for free.