Why it matters
Every channel and experiment works better when you know exactly who you are growing for and why they buy. Teams that skip this step test endless tactics on the wrong audience with the wrong message.
This station covers how to define your ideal customer, understand the job they hire your product for, run interviews that tell you the truth, and turn all of it into clear positioning.
After this station you can
- Write an ideal customer profile with real criteria
- Describe a product in Jobs to be Done terms
- Run a customer interview without leading questions
- Draft a positioning statement and test it against competitors
Every resource below is free to read or watch online. Links open in a new tab.
2.1 ICP & personas
| Resource | Type | Level | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ideal customer profiles and buyer personas: How are they different? — HubSpotSeparates the ICP (which companies to target) from personas (which people inside them) and how to use both. | Article | Beginner | 10 min |
| How to create detailed buyer personas for your business — HubSpotWalks through researching and writing buyer personas from real customer data and interviews. | Guide | Beginner | 20 min |
2.2 Jobs to be Done
| Resource | Type | Level | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Understanding the Job (milkshake story) — Clayton Christensen (Christensen Institute)The classic milkshake story that shows customers hire products to make progress in a situation. | Video | Beginner | 5 min |
| What is Jobs to be Done (JTBD)? — Alan Klement (JTBD.info)A short, clear definition of JTBD focused on the progress customers want, not product features. | Article | Beginner | 10 min |
| Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done — Intercom [free with email]How a software company applied JTBD to research, product decisions and marketing, with interview advice. | Guide | Intermediate | 2 h |
2.3 Customer research & interviews
| Resource | Type | Level | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Talk to Users (YC Startup School) — Eric MigicovskyWhich questions to ask, which to avoid, and how to turn user conversations into decisions. | Video | Beginner | 25 min |
| Ask Teresa: What Are the Best Customer Interview Questions? — Teresa Torres (Product Talk)Shows how story-based questions about past behaviour give more reliable insight than opinion questions. | Article | Intermediate | 15 min |
| How to Build a Startup — Steve Blank (Udacity)Customer development course: test your business assumptions by getting out of the building and talking to customers. | Course | Intermediate | 15 h |
2.4 Positioning & messaging
| Resource | Type | Level | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Quickstart Guide to Positioning — April DunfordThe core components of positioning and a short process to define them for your product. | Article | Beginner | 15 min |
| A Product Positioning Exercise — April DunfordA hands-on team exercise for working out your positioning from alternatives, attributes and value. | Guide | Intermediate | 20 min |
2.5 Competitive analysis
| Resource | Type | Level | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is competitive analysis? How to outrank your competition — HubSpotStep-by-step method for researching competitors' products, pricing, content and channels, with templates. | Guide | Beginner | 20 min |
| Positioning and Competition — April DunfordExplains how customers' real alternatives, not your feature list, should frame competitive positioning. | Article | Intermediate | 10 min |
2.6 Choosing a growth model
| Resource | Type | Level | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is Product-Led Growth? — OpenViewDefines product-led growth and when the product itself should drive acquisition, conversion and expansion. | Article | Beginner | 15 min |
| How to Create Your Lean Canvas — Ash Maurya (LEANSTACK)A one-page template for laying out customers, problem, channels and revenue model before you scale. | Guide | Beginner | 20 min |
| Five ways to build a $100 million business — Christoph JanzShows how deal size (flies to whales) determines which acquisition model can work for you. | Essay | Intermediate | 10 min |
| The Four Fits: A Growth Framework — Brian BalfourExplains how market, product, channel and model must fit together, and why product-market fit alone is not enough. | Essay | Advanced | 45 min |
Exercise.txt — Interview three customers
- Find three people who use a product you work on, or one you know well.
- Ask each about the last time they chose it: what happened before, what else they tried, what nearly stopped them.
- Write down the job they hired the product for, in their words.
- Rewrite the product's one-line pitch using what you heard.
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Terms in this station
ICPPersonaJobs to be DoneSwitch interviewPositioningMessaging
On the bookshelf
Paid books that go deeper on this station: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, Obviously Awesome by April Dunford, Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, Positioning by Al Ries & Jack Trout, The Startup Owner's Manual by Steve Blank & Bob Dorf, Running Lean by Ash Maurya, Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres. See the full bookshelf.