Customer Curiosity: Which Mode Is Your Buyer Actually in When They See Your Ad?

So, I've been thinking about a framework called Jobs to Be Done lately.

The core idea, created by Tony Ulwick in the 1990s and popularised by Clayton Christensen and Bob Moesta in the early 2000s, is that people don't really buy products; they hire them to do a job in a specific moment. It sounds like a small shift in thinking, but it changes quite a lot about how you approach messaging.

A famous example of this framework in action is the milkshake. A fast-food chain wanted to sell more milkshakes, so it did what most companies do: it asked customers what they wanted. Thicker? More flavours? Sweeter? The answers weren't especially useful.

Then someone started asking a different question. Not what do you want from a milkshake, but what job are you hiring this milkshake to do?

It turned out that people buying milkshakes in the morning were hiring them for a very specific job: something to keep them occupied and vaguely full during a long, boring commute. It needed to last. It needed to be manageable with one hand. It needed to be just interesting enough to make the journey feel less tedious. The milkshake was, in that context, competing with a banana or a cereal bar, not with another milkshake bought at a different time of day.

The afternoon milkshake was a completely different hire. Often a treat for a child. A small reward. A moment of connection. Different job entirely. Same product.

That reframe, away from "what is this product" and towards "what job is this person hiring it for, and when, and why", is (I think) pretty useful. It helps move the conversation away from features and towards context.

But I've been sitting with a question underneath it.

Jobs to Be Done asks what job is being hired for. What it doesn't seem to ask much about is who is doing the hiring, specifically, which mode that person is in, and which part of their identity they're performing, in that moment.

And I think that layer is worth looking at, as it could give us further insights into how we could better connect with our intended audience.

What I mean by identity

Before I get into the scenario, it's probably worth saying what I mean when I talk about identity here, because I'm not using it in a grand philosophical sense.

I just mean which mode you're in at a given moment.

We all move between different modes depending on context. The mode you're in during a difficult conversation with your MD is not quite the same as the mode you're in at your desk with a coffee, thinking about next quarter. Same person, same values, same experience. But a different way of showing up. A different set of things that feel important. A different definition of what good looks like right now.

In a work context, those modes are often tied to role and audience. Who am I in front of right now? What do they need from me? What does doing this well look like to them? Most of us are running that calculation quietly in the background without really noticing it.

That's what I mean by identity performance. Not performance as in fake. More performance as in: we're always enacting a part of ourselves, and which part that is shifts with context.

It's something I notice in my own work. The mode I'm in when I'm deep in a Google Ads account, testing, adjusting, going down a research rabbit hole, is genuinely different to the mode I'm in when I'm sitting with a client, translating complexity into something useful and clear. Same person. Same experience. But a different way of showing up, because the context calls for something different.

So, when I think about buyers, I find myself wondering: which mode is this person in when they see this ad? And is the message speaking to that?

A scenario I've been thinking through

I want to use a scenario here that I'm speculating about, not one I know from the inside. I don't work in dental practice management. But I find it useful to step into an unfamiliar world and think out loud about what the buying experience might feel like, because it stops me from defaulting to what I already know.

So, we have a practice manager at a dental group.

This is a person who is, in many ways, the operational centre of the practice. Probably not the most senior clinically, but probably the most load-bearing in terms of keeping things running. They're managing upwards to the principal dentist or practice owner, across to the clinical staff, and to the reception and admin team. They're also connected to the patient-facing side of the practice, which sits close to marketing, reputation and growth.

What makes this role interesting, from a curiosity perspective, is the number of different audiences this person is performing competence to, often in the same afternoon.

The dentists want things to run smoothly without having to think about it. The dental nurses want to get on with their work without extra friction. Receptionists are the ones who will actually use any new system day-to-day. Patients want to feel looked after and communicated with properly. And somewhere above all of this, there's probably a principal or owner who wants the practice to grow and costs to stay sensible.

That's a lot of people to hold in mind. A lot of quiet pressure running in the background.

Now imagine a LinkedIn ad for a patient communication platform lands in this person's feed. Appointment reminders, recall messages, review requests, two-way messaging. Operational, not glamorous. But something that touches almost every part of the practice.

Two moments

I want to think about this person seeing that ad at two different points in their week.

I want to be clear before I do: I'm not suggesting marketers can track which mode someone is in when they see an ad. That's not practical, and it's not the point. The two moments are just a way to illustrate something about identity and context that I find interesting.

Moment one. It's earlier in the week. Nothing significant has gone wrong yet. They have a bit of space before the phones get busy. They see the ad.

In this moment, they're in something close to strategic mode. The no-show rate has been quietly bothering them for a while. This feels like the right moment to look into something. They click.

Which mode are they in here? Something like the proactive practice manager. The one who spots problems before they become crises. The one who brings ideas rather than just reports issues. At this moment, the platform is being hired partly to help them think through a problem and partly to help them feel like they're on top of things, ahead of the curve, doing the job well.

Moment two. Later in the same week. A patient complained about a missed appointment reminder. One of the dentists mentioned it, not harshly, but in that particular pointed way that lands. They're behind on a couple of other things. The afternoon is a bit fractious.

They see the same ad again.

The job being hired now is different. They're not looking to explore a possibility. They need something they can take back into that conversation, something that lets them say, quietly and credibly, I'm already looking at this. The platform, at this moment, is being hired to help them feel competent and in control, not curious about the future.

Which mode are they in now? Something more pressured. The person who doesn't drop things. The one who was already across this before it became a problem. The person the dentist doesn't need to worry about.

Same ad. Same person. The functional job has shifted. But underneath that, the mode they're performing has shifted too. And the message that speaks to one mode might not reach the other at all.

The layer underneath Jobs to Be Done

Jobs to Be Done gets us to the functional shift. At different moments, different jobs are being hired. That's useful, and I don't want to dismiss it. And there is an emotional element of the framework that I especially like, as it moves away from treating the potential customer as a logical robot and recognises them as human with emotions, but it's normally from an individualistic perspective.

But the social world layer adds something else.

It's not just the task that's different between those two moments. It's the mode being performed. And that changes what the message needs to do, not just functionally, but in terms of what it helps this person be.

There's a concept in sociology called role strain, the pressure that builds when one person holds multiple roles at once and those roles pull in different directions. The practice manager isn't just a buyer considering a platform. They're a manager, a mediator, a representative of the practice to its patients, a problem-solver, and probably several other things besides, often simultaneously.

Therefore, a purchasing decision doesn't land in a clean, rational space. It lands in the middle of all of that.

And so, what this person needs from a message isn't just information about what the product does. It's something that fits who they're trying to be right now.

The question I keep coming back to

It's not: how do we know which mode someone is in when they see our ad? That's the wrong question. It's probably not answerable, and chasing it would be a distraction.

The more interesting question is this: have we even asked what mode this person is likely to be in inside this role, and who they're trying to be within it?

Not just what problems they need to solve. But who they're trying to be while they solve them. What does performing the practice manager role well look like, to the dentists, to the staff, to the patients, to themselves? What would make this purchase feel consistent with who they're trying to be?

Most B2B marketing, in my experience, doesn't really get here. It speaks to the job title and the pain points. It flattens the buyer back down to a role and a list of needs. Which is understandable; those things are easier to research and easier to write to.

But I'm curious what happens when we start asking the identity question more deliberately. Not just what does this person need to fix, but who are they trying to be while they fix it? And does our message, product/service help them be that person?

I don't think that question has a tidy answer. But I think it's worth asking.

Things I'm currently sitting with

• When you built your last campaign or wrote your last ad, did you think about the job to be done, or did you also think about which mode your buyer was in, and who they were trying to be in that moment?
• If the same person can be in quite different modes depending on context and pressure, which mode is your messaging reaching?
• What would it mean to write for someone's identity rather than just their need?
• Is there a version of this platform's messaging that could speak to both moments, or does trying to serve both mean it reaches neither fully?
• And the bigger question underneath all of it: if people are partly performing a part of themselves when they make decisions, what would it look like to build that into how we think about creative and messaging from the start?

As always, I don't have conclusions. Just curiosity, and a sincere interest in what other people notice when they look at their own buyers through this kind of lens.

If any of this sparks a thought, I'd love to hear it.

Reading note

The idea of role strain comes from sociological thinking about the pressures people experience when they occupy multiple roles simultaneously. I'm not applying it academically here, just borrowing the lens to look at an everyday marketing situation a bit differently.