At PayPal, I once wasted $1M on a marketing segmentation to build personas. Here’s what we actually learned, plus what I now do instead. 👇🏼
First of all, the research was exquisite. Ipsos started with dozens of interviews, then fielded thousands of surveys and clustered their findings into a segmentation. The work was par excellence.
It teased out nuances among our merchant segments: eBay sellers, DtC, multi-channel, etc. Each persona had scores for risk tolerance, price sensitivity, ambition and tech savvy.

Eventually I asked myself “how will this help our marketing?” And realised it never would.
These differences were fascinating but inconsequential. Merchants basically want the same 6 things; a payment system that:
1. Buyers trust
2. Makes checkout easy
3. Works with merchants' existing systems
4. Isn't too expensive
5. Helps manage fraud
6. Has good customer service
You don’t need to be a PayPal expert to know that, and I definitely didn’t need to spend $1M to figure it out! But here’s my real lesson… Personas, even well-researched ones, are worthless for marketing.

Try this thought experiment...
Imagine you own a beachside restaurant and you’re trying to get more customers. Which one of these facts is more useful to you?

1) Tammy is a 39 y/o divorced mother of 2, from Atlanta, she works in compliance, earns $58K/yr, throws right, votes left. Or...
2) Tammy is on the sweltering hot beach with two kids, they’re getting hungry, and one of them has to pee.

Option 2 wins, it tells us that ice-cold air con and a no-fuss kids menu will draw Tammy in, where #1 leaves us guessing.

As a marketer, I need to understand 5 things:
1) What do prospects stress about? So I can play up that pain in ads & headlines. (It usually converts better than talking about the product.)

2) Where do they look for solutions? So I can turn up there (e.g. good search terms, complementary services that can send referrals).
3) Which alternatives did they try and how did those come up short? So I can position against them.

4) How do they describe success? So I can write a great landing page!
5) What are they nervous about? So I can call out and address each objection on my landing page and in my nurture emails.

How do I get those 5 answers? (For a lot less than $1M?)
Eventually, I discovered Jobs To Be Done. And here’s how I use it specifically for marketing.

First, I interview people who recently signed up for my service or a competitor and ask questions like:
1. What were you hoping to do?
2. Why is that important to you?
3. Where did you look?
4. What else did you try?

Instead of a persona, I fill out a “Job Card.” You can download my template here, plus a full list of interview questions. startupcorestrengths.com/jtbd-insights-…
At this point, some folks may argue: “Wait, don’t good personas include people’s struggles, goals and anxieties, not just ‘demographic stuff’?” True, but I have two problems with that reasoning, and still favor “Jobs To Be Done.”
1) The biggest “jobs” span across multiple personas. Remember, at PayPal, 5 personas all wanted the same things. And our single mom at the beach could just as easily be young parents, single dad, even grandparents.
2) Each persona has multiple “jobs.” E.g. our single mom. Next weekend she might leave kids with her ex and return to the beach with her friends. Now our “single mom” persona is looking for a place with live music and margaritas.
Bottom line: I wasted $1M to get the right answer to the wrong question. Don’t be me. 😕 If you want the right questions, grab our interview guide and Jobs To Be Done card template: startupcorestrengths.com/jtbd-insights-…
Big thanks to Greg Engle for the allegory of the beach, and @destraynor and @mattnhodges for the "Job Cards" idea! And @aprildunford @ajwaxman @ludaniel @Orengreen for reviewing drafts!

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30 Mar
After 17 years, we finally “cracked” a $100M churn problem at PayPal. Zero fancy tech. Just a spreadsheet, some simple SQL, and a physicist named Ben. 👇🏼
@benramsden studied physics @ Cambridge, and I seriously envy his ability to work through a thorny problem from first principles. So I gave it to Ben, and Ben gave it to his intern. 😏
But first... Einstein said “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes on solutions.”
PayPal prob loses 1,000,000 merchants per year for various reasons, so step 1 is to narrow down the problem!
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