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A B2B product strategy connects what the organization is trying to achieve with the customers it can serve distinctively well. Start by defining the strategy’s scope and goals, then investigate the customer jobs and experiences behind purchase decisions, identify meaningful segments, choose which to target, and shape the offer around those customers. This is a decision framework—not a universal sequence or a prescribed scoring formula.
Start with the strategy’s scope and goals
Before drawing market boundaries, be clear about what the strategy is meant to guide: the whole organization, a business unit, or one product. Those scopes are not interchangeable. An organization may pursue several markets, while a product team must make choices that fit its product’s capabilities and mandate.
Write down the outcomes the strategy should support and the constraints it must respect. These might include the organization’s purpose, the product’s role, available capabilities, and the kinds of customer problems it intends to address. Treat these as decision criteria rather than slogans: they should help the team explain why a market is in or out of scope.
Darden’s note on market definition, segmentation, and targeting describes marketing strategy as guided by goals, with strategy choices informing marketing-mix decisions and the value proposition for target segments. Read the Darden note.
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Define the market around customer problems
A market definition based only on an industry label or product category can miss why a buyer acts. A useful alternative is to ask what fundamental job the customer needs to get done and what makes one option preferable in that situation.
Harvard Business School’s description of its 2010 note, Integrating Around the Job to Be Done, explains that jobs-based segmentation seeks the causal roots of purchase: when a buyer needs to “hire” a product or service to get a job done. The description contrasts this with segmentations based on correlations between sales and purchaser attributes such as age, gender, income, and education. It also describes a job architecture as the fundamental customer problem, the experiences needed to complete the job well, and what a provider must integrate to deliver those experiences. A job may have functional, political, emotional, and social dimensions. Read the HBS note description.
For a B2B product, that means looking beyond the individual who signs a contract. Ask what outcome the organization needs, who participates in choosing and using the solution, and what experience each needs to complete the job. A procurement requirement, an operational workflow, and a user’s day-to-day needs may all be part of the same purchase context.
Investigate before drawing segment boundaries
Do not treat a plausible segmentation scheme as evidence that customers actually make decisions along those lines. MIT Sloan Management Review identifies interviews, surveys, observation, empathic techniques, and co-evolution techniques as ways to investigate the job a product might serve. Its article also warns that product and purchaser characteristics can obscure situational needs and the wider set of alternatives customers consider. Read “Finding the Right Job for Your Product”.
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- Interviews: Ask customers to describe a recent purchase or workaround, what triggered it, and what they needed to accomplish.
- Surveys: Use them to check how common a need or experience is across a defined group; do not assume a survey alone explains why the need exists.
- Observation: Examine how the work is actually done, including handoffs, exceptions, and workarounds that respondents may not mention.
- Empathic techniques: Explore the customer’s circumstances and constraints to understand how the problem is experienced.
- Co-evolution techniques: Explore needs and possible solutions together with customers, rather than treating the product concept as fixed from the outset.
These are methods named by MIT Sloan Management Review, not a requirement to use every method in every study. Choose methods that can resolve the team’s key uncertainties, and compare what people say with the situations in which the work occurs.
Build B2B segments at macro and micro levels
B2B segmentation can be considered at macro and micro levels. The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad’s B2B Segmentation Exercise explicitly distinguishes those two levels. Its accessible publisher summary does not spell out the variables for either one, so it does not support attributing a specific checklist of firmographic or buying-group variables to that exercise. Read the IIM-A exercise record.
As a practical team approach, use the macro level to describe the organizational context and the micro level to investigate the people, needs, and circumstances involved in a particular buying situation. Treat this as an operational way to organize discovery, not as a detailed variable scheme established by the exercise.
Keep candidate segments tied to meaningful differences in the job, desired experience, or ability to serve. If two groups differ only by a label but face the same problem and need the same offer, separate treatment may add complexity without clarifying strategy. Conversely, organizations that look similar on paper may belong in different segments if their circumstances and decision criteria differ.
Compare candidate segments and choose targets
Segmentation describes meaningful groups; targeting is the decision about which groups to serve. Positioning and the offer then need to make sense for those selected customers. HBS’s teaching resource groups these choices under market segmentation, target market selection, and positioning, while Darden connects goals to value propositions and marketing-mix choices for target segments. Read the HBS resource description.
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Compare candidate segments against evidence and strategic fit. The following scorecard is a team tool for making assumptions visible, not a validated scoring model supplied by these sources.
| Comparison axis | Questions to answer |
|---|---|
| Fundamental job or problem | What is the customer trying to accomplish, and what situation prompts the need? |
| Desired purchase and use experiences | What does the customer need to experience during selection, adoption, and use for the job to be done well? |
| Capabilities and integration | What must the provider supply or coordinate to deliver those experiences? |
| Fit with goals | Does serving this group advance the organization’s and product’s stated goals? |
| Distinct value proposition | Can the product offer a clear, relevant benefit for this segment rather than a generic promise? |
Teams may rate each axis or record evidence and unresolved questions without assigning numerical scores. If using scores, define what each scale means and keep confidence in the evidence visible; the sources do not establish a universal weighting or threshold. A segment is a stronger target when the problem is clear, the product can deliver the needed experience, and serving that group fits the goals the strategy is supposed to advance.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Translate the target choice into a segment-specific offer
Once target segments are selected, make the value proposition answer their job and desired experience. Then align the relevant marketing-mix decisions with that choice. In practical terms, the team should be able to explain what outcome it helps the segment achieve, why the offer suits that segment’s circumstances, and what capabilities or integration are required to deliver the promise.
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This does not mean every segment needs a different product. It means the team should test whether a common product, service, and route to market can credibly serve the chosen groups—or whether differences in needs require distinct packaging, support, or product work. Keep the distinction between what discovery shows and what the team is choosing to build explicit.
Keep the strategy evidence-led and revisable
The cited materials support a way to connect goals, customer jobs, segmentation, target selection, and value propositions; they do not establish a universal mission-to-market sequence, a complete B2B variable list, market-size estimates, or a validated prioritization formula. Use the framework to structure decisions, then revise segment boundaries when customer evidence or strategic goals change.
For a deeper customer-discovery resource, Harvard Business School describes Jobs to Be Done: A Toolbox as covering recruiting customers, conducting interviews, analyzing results, and applying the analysis to product development and marketing. See the HBS resource description.
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