We think about this as a layered approach, of which time is an important consideration. Here are some ways to think about the differences:
- Jobs To Be Done (JTBD): Essentially, what is the 'job' someone is 'hiring' your product to do? What is the outcome they're looking for? This is extreme helpful when you need something actionable, fast. In fact, it's good to consider this as a preliminary research step so that you have a clearer picture of your audience when developing a Segmentation RFP
- Personas: Allow you to paint a picture of who your audiences are - great for internal education among a broad range of internal stakeholders. Personas leverage quantitative data but also heavily uses qualitative data to support narrative empathy-building with customers. I've found Personas to be especially helpful in a b2b context - you can leverage LinkedIn to cultivate keyword trends and definitions across job types, which can be further useful for account-based marketing and sales training / enablement.
- Segmentation: JTBD and Persona work can be layered into (broad) segmentation analysis, which can go even deeper. In fact, the inputs we receive from the JTBD are critical so that we have confidence in some of the underlying assumptions. Segments should be constructed with the key differentiating inputs and contextual information already in hand, so they can be powerful and easily relatable across for teams to execute on.