B2B SaaS Marketing Lessons from CPG

Job To Be Done framework applied in a B2B context

I am reading this amazing book, The CEO Factory, which is packed with anecdotes, insights, and marketing wisdom from the CPG world in India. The author Sudhir Sitapati takes us through how HUL, Unilever’s Indian subsidiary, thinks about various business functions – objectives, processes, outcomes.

One of the first chapters is on marketing which discusses the Job To Be Done (JTBD) framework in the CPG context. I thought there were useful nuggets to pick for a B2B tech context too.

Photo by Nathália Rosa on Unsplash

But first, some primer.

JTBD = Get Who to Do What

Unilever defines a JTBD as ‘get who to do what’. Here’s how to think of the two JTBD dimensions – Who and What.

Who

Users of your brand or category, segmented by frequency of usage –

• Heavy users
• Light users
• Non-users

What

Outcome you want to drive –

• Increase number of users, or increase penetration, or increase breadth of usage (different ways of saying the same thing)
• Increase frequency of usage
• Increase consumption per use (very intuitive in a CPG setting, not so straightforward in B2B tech)

Selecting a JTBD

The simplest way to select a JTBD is to plot possible JTBDs on a 2×2 – with size of prize and ease of winning represented on each axis. But how do you decide what JTBD will fall in what quadrant? Especially, how do you evaluate ease of winning?

The book mentions four useful heuristics.

1. Growing a category is easier than growing a brand
2. Grow a category only if you can be salient in THAT category
3. Target non-users and light users (because heavy users are difficult to influence)
4. Increasing number of users is easier than increasing frequency of usage. Increasing consumption-per-use is almost impossible.

How well do they translate to the B2B tech context?

#1. Growing a category is easier than growing a brand

If you are solving a real unmet need for a ‘potentially’ large market, it’s easy to imagine why a small category size today is helpful to you as a brand – there is simply more room for all players to grow.

Compare this with trying to grow a brand in already large category/market. In this case, you are likely competing against entrenched competitors with significant advantages or headstart in product, sales, marketing or just capital.

(I cannot let this point slide without recommending April Dunford’s book, Obviously Awesome, if you want to think about categories and positioning.)

Like all great insights, this sounds obvious in hindsight, but we are also guilty of ignoriing this many times.

The most glaring example that comes to mind is fundraising. TAM and SAM are still cornerstones of any startup pitch deck even when products (famously, Uber and Airbnb, but also pretty much all of B2B SaaS) end up growing the TAM themselves. It’s why some VCs also think top-down market size estimates are bullshit.

TAM estimates aren’t all rubbish – they are a great reference point, but maybe that’s a point for another blog. (See Vinod Khosla’s excellent deck on how to write a fundraising pitch deck that also touches on this point.)

#2. Grow a category only if you can be salient in that category

This is again fairly obvious. If you grow a category but are not able to establish salience, your most salient competitor (in that category) reaps the benefits.

I love the choice of word ‘salient’. The dictionary defines ‘salience’ as ‘the quality of being particularly noticeable or important; prominence’.

Note – salience doesn’t mean a better product, a bigger company, more features. Salience is just a measure of how much mindspace you command in your target audience. How quickly are they able to associate you with the category.

#3. Target non-users and light users

You are better off targeting non-users and light users because heavy users are difficult to influence. This heuristic came from a CPG world, but when I read this, I had an ‘aah’ moment because it encapsulated all my observations I have made in buying/selling/evangelizing a piece of B2B tech in any company.

I could think of two reasons.

1. Business processes are heavily dependent on current tools and processes. There is an insane amount of effort in migrating to a new piece of tech or process, and so, it has to either generate a shit-ton of visible and predictable revenue/cost benefits or be a super important priority for the company you are selling to.
2. Users (not customers) of B2B software often act as gatekeepers of tech and information. Any tech that democratizes skills or access to information can be seen as a threat to their value (and even job security).

#4. Try increasing number of users instead of frequency of usage or consumption-per-use

According to the last heuristic, it’s better to try and increase the number of users than the frequency of usage. It also says that increasing consumption-per-use is nearly impossible.

I think this heuristic is most nuanced among the four when translating them into a B2B tech context. It holds true for some products, but doesn’t for a significant portion of them.

For example, consider a tax filing/invoicing SaaS product. Your customers may use it probably once a month, and will likely spend a fixed amount of time on the product every month. There’s no point to increase depth of usage here. In fact, the more time people spend on it, the less valuable you may be.

On the other hand, consider products like an analytics or a design software. They are typically used daily by their target users. And depth of usage becomes a proxy for how useful they find your product. And how likely are they to renew their monthly/annual contracts.