How do you think about pricing and packaging as it relates to competitive positioning?

It depends on the competitive dynamics in your market. Are you the market leader or a new emerging alternative? What are the important buying factors in your market and with your buyers? Is price a primary buying consideration (hint: it often is not unless you make it that way)? It's always important to understand how direct competitors and/or alternatives are tackling pricing. You need to determine what your differentiated value is and how you want your brand represented in your market.  Are yo ...Read More

Pricing and packaging are positioning. They're the most concrete way you are defining the value and TCO of your solution relative to the pain a customer is feeling. But it's important to remember that they're only one tool in your toolbox.  Pricing relative to competition can signal a premium product in a commoditized market. Or it can indicate a value-driven sale as a disruptor. Certainly free or freemium is the most aggressive disruptor approach (though not always the most successful).  Packag ...Read More

Really depends where you stack up in the competitive ranking.  Let's say there are three products: Mercedes, Toyota, Pontiac. The price reflects the package. That's why Mercedes are $50k and Toyotas are $25k.  Mercedes has premium leather and a host of other items "included in the price" to justify that price discrepancy.  When you're Mercedes, you double down on 1) the experience at every touch-point of being a customer (vs. at Toyota they're not giving you white-glove necessarily when you brin ...Read More

Your pricing and packaging are components of your competitive positioning - the way you group features or the value metric you use to charge a SaaS fee helps frame your offering to your target audiences. For example, suppose your packages serve different audiences with differentiated needs. In that case, your competitive positioning requires packaging that clearly states the positioning, benefits, and features each audience desires from your product category. Pricing is equally essential to posi ...Read More

Great question. I'd encourage you to think about pricing and packaging as powerful tools for competitive differentiation. In any economy, selling on value is a winning strategy. But in this economy, the B2B buying criteria pendulum has swung, from top-line growth as the #1 priority now to bottom-line operating efficiency. Companies that are exploring packaging (including bundling strategies) as a way to remove friction from the buying process and deliver more value without a commensurate increas ...Read More

They go hand in hand. You need to keep a pulse on your competitors pricing & packaging so that you can adjust or create promos/spiffs to support your sales team when needed. That said, you don't buld your pricing & packaging process based on the competition. You should undersand the market - conjoin anaylsis, willingness to pay, price elasticity, value metrics your buyers assign your product and capabilities that are seen as table stakes versus a broad or niche value driver. You should u ...Read More

I think competitive is one aspect of overall pricing and packaging, but it shouldn't solely dictate how you price or package your product. There are exceptions of course, and if your competitor is the defacto market standard then aligning it more closely to competitors is likely necessary.  Overall, focus your pricing and packaging on your customer, target segments, and unique differentiation. Then ensure it's not wildly off from competitors. A tool like Klue or Crayon can also help you track wh ...Read More

While you never want to price or package your solution based solely on what your competitors price or package theirs at, you certainly do need to monitor your competitors' pricing and packaging. Your pricing and packaging should be based on what actual value add your solution has but you do want to make sure you monitor sales deals to ensure you are not charging way more for some feature that your competitors give for free for example. I always try to research a competitor's packaging (this is h ...Read More

Pricing will be one of the elements of how your brand is perceived.  Priced low - you might be thought of as an early-stage startup who doesn't have product/market fit yet or isn't confident in their solution, Priced high - clearly the confidence in solving an issue is there and it usually correlates with the perceived image of the company.  I always like to think of real-life physical examples and then translate them into a software solution. Someone who buys a $10,000 watch or a designer bag, ...Read More

Your pricing, packaging and discounting model is going to be reliant on your offering and position in the market. It also depends on the characteristics of your target audience. Depending on your target market, pricing may or may not be highly impactful when it comes to signing on the dotted line. That’s why it’s worth sketching out your ideal customer, speaking to current customers and talking to lost prospects. Then you’ll get a good gauge on where pricing sits when your audience is looking to ...Read More

A truly successful pricing and packaging exercise can't be completed in a vacuum which means competitive positioning must be included in the discussion. The main reason is that you don't want to create EXACTLY the same pricing and packaging approach as your competitors but you also need to be aware of how customers are already being asked to buy. In addition, the competitive positioning will help to determine if the product has already moved to a commodity or is still being priced and packaged i ...Read More

The truth is most pricing problems aren't pricing problems. In fact, they are rarely pricing problems. They are just the causal impact of poorly understood and/or communicated positioning of a product leading to a lack of conviction and a whole host of downstream issues. Pricing cannot be set without the Positioning being clearly thought through.pricing is intimately connected to Positioning.  Knowing the positioning will help you answer the following questions: Is your product a 'tool/widget,' ...Read More