Jobs to be done for AI search: a practical guide
How to turn what buyers say into the jobs they need done, the questions they ask, and the pages that answer them.
Steen Stones · Reviewed
Photo: Vitaly Gariev / Pexels
A job to be done is the change a buyer wants to make in their situation. Work it out from what buyers actually say, not from a keyword list. Then turn each job into the questions buyers ask and the pages that answer them. In our research, keyword lists missed the situations and concerns that buyers’ questions were really about.
Avouch’s free scan shows which companies AI recommends in your market.
What a job to be done is
The Christensen Institute describes a job as the progress a person is trying to make in a particular situation. Every job has a practical side, a social side and an emotional side.
“Buy managed IT” names a service. “Change provider without losing access to our systems” describes the job: the change the buyer wants, and the situation that makes it hard. When you know the job, you know what a useful answer has to explain.
Why jobs, not keywords
A keyword names the product. A buyer’s question carries their situation and their worry. In our study of keyword lists and real buyer questions:
| Keyword phrase | Real buyer question |
|---|---|
| what is a dpo | How do solo devs handle a DPIA without breaking the bank? |
| income protection | Income protection worth it for 28yo engineer? |
| equity release | Equity Release Alternatives? |
- Situations were missing. 63% of the insurance buyer questions described the person’s situation, such as their age or family. Only 10% of the keyword phrases did.
- Concerns were missing. 25% of the data protection buyer questions were about cost or contract terms. None of the keyword phrases were.
- Buyer questions were longer: eight or nine words, against three or four.
A plan built only from keywords answers “what is it?”. A plan built from jobs answers “should I, how much, and what could go wrong?”, which is what a buyer needs before choosing. See what SEO keyword lists miss about buying decisions.
1. Collect the stories behind buying decisions
Choose one service you want to grow. Then read what buyers said around recent decisions: sales calls, customer interviews, support requests, lost-deal notes and reviews. Add public forums and community discussions.
Check who is speaking. In our voice harvest for a data protection and cyber security market, only 40% of the posts first marked as buyers were buyers. The rest were mostly people who do or sell the work. Our tech companies guide shows which sources were mostly buyers.
When you can talk to a customer, ask them to walk you through what happened:
What first made you look for help?
What did you try before?
What made the old arrangement hard to keep?
Who else needed to agree?
What nearly stopped you buying?
Record each useful comment:
| Record | What to keep |
|---|---|
| Evidence | Their original words, the source and the date |
| Situation | What made them look for help |
| Desired change | The outcome they wanted |
| Obstacle | What nearly stopped them |
| Decision | Bought, decided not to buy, or still looking |
Keep your own reading in a separate column, so a colleague can challenge it. Remove personal details, and ask permission before you publish a customer’s words.
2. Write the job in one sentence
Use this structure: “When [situation], I want to [change], so I can [outcome].” Leave your product name out of the first draft, so you can see the need clearly.
Worked example. One public buyer question in our research asked: “How do solo devs handle a DPIA without breaking the bank?” A DPIA is a data protection impact assessment. Our reading of the job:
This is our interpretation of one question, not a customer quote. Group comments that point to the same change and the same obstacle. Do not merge a buyer who wants routine support with one dealing with an urgent incident just because both mention IT.
3. Turn each job into questions
List what the buyer needs answered before they can choose. For the DPIA example:
- What must a DPIA include?
- Can I do it myself, or do I need outside help?
- What does outside help cost, and is a template enough?
- How long does it take?
These are planning questions, not measured searches. AI tools also run their own extra searches while they build an answer. This is query fan-out. Our guides show how to see those searches in Google and ChatGPT. Keep the searches you actually see separate from your own ideas.
4. Turn the questions into pages
Give each distinct answer a clear home. A guide to doing a DPIA on a budget and a page about your DPIA service do different jobs. Keep closely related questions together when separate pages would be thin.
List the evidence each page needs before you write it, and ask the people who deliver the service to check it.
Link the overview to the detailed answers, and keep the important explanation in the page text.
5. Prioritise, then test in AI search
Compare the questions with search demand, competing pages and the work you want to win. Improve an existing page before you create a new one. Give each page an owner and a next action.
Then keep a fixed list of buyer questions to test in AI tools, worded the way buyers word them. Do not reword a question because your company did not appear. Our guide to choosing the questions to track shows how.
How Avouch can help
In the Recommendation Index™ assessment, we collect buyers’ own words for your market, check who is speaking, and turn what we find into jobs, questions and a plan. As part of content and website and SEO work, we build the pages that answer them, with scope and price agreed before we start.
Want to know where you stand?
Start with the free scan. For a fuller review and a written plan, choose the paid Recommendation Index™ assessment.