Both small and large businesses have a hard time staying competitive in any industry in the 21st century. This is mostly because every part of every industry is already oversaturated with thousands of brands. And, that number keeps rising and rising every year. Fortunately, the more experience businesses and business owners know exactly which method helps to stay competitive. Of course, I am talking about finding the right pricing structure for a product. Having the right pricing strategy can go a long way, especially these days.
However, it is also important to remember that the pricing strategy that works for you today, may not work for you tomorrow. To stay relevant and to keep up with the times, you always need to be one step ahead of your competitors.
Finding the signs that can tell you whether you need to upgrade your pricing strategy can prove a bit difficult, but we hope that after reading this article, you will know exactly what to look for.
Price increases for weaker products
In almost every industry, you may notice one very common strategy to stay competitive and that is undercutting. Undercutting is the active providing the same level of quality products for a cheaper price than the competitor.
Take for example the GPU market. AMD has not been very competitive against Nvidia over the years, but they have managed to release several good products that are equal or better than Nvidia’s products. But, even when AMD’s products are better, they still undercut Nvidia’s GPUs.
This is a viable pricing strategy, but it is nowhere near perfect and you cannot ride forever on that underdog wave.
Sure, customers always like to pay as little as possible, but there are also looking for performance or value.
Source: marketing-insider.eu
In other words, if you know that you have a better product than the competitive companies in your market that it deserves a proper price tag. There simply is no need to undercut if you have a superior product.
To put it simply, if you notice that the pricing of lower quality/weaker products on the market are suddenly increasing, that is quite an obvious sign that you will need to make a move and upgrade your strategy.
More sales, but no extra profit
Another very obvious sign that your product pricing is outdated is when you make a successful number of sales throughout the month or year, but you do not see any extra profit in comparison to previous months or years.
What does this mean and how does it happen? Well, that increase in sales shows that you are satisfying your customers and that you are growing as a business. As your business continues to grow, you invest in better equipment, materials, and employees which will ultimately lead to better products and services.
However, when making such major changes in your company, naturally the upkeep cost will start to rise. To support that kind of upkeep, you will need to upgrade your pricing strategy. You can stick with the same price you started with, especially if you are constantly trying to improve your products or services.
Of course, you cannot just increase the price of your products just to satisfy your upkeep. You will need to find a balance between improving profits and competitive pricing. To achieve that, it is best to look at the competitive pricing strategy as suggested by intelligencenode.com.
Source: fiverr.com
Relying on discounts and sales to make a profit
Discounts, sales, promotions, coupon codes, or whatever you want to call them are a great way to attract new customers and to make those final sales that usually never happen. It is a great way to get rid of some extra stock and to open up some room for your products.
There is nothing wrong with that and many experts believe that every company should offer discounts now and then.
However, if you are constantly offering discounts, promotions, and sales just to make a profit throughout the month or year, that is a very bad sign. A sign that you will have to rework the pricing of your products or services immediately.
Your customers are not attracted to your products with the current price tag. As you make a better offer with a discount, certainly more customers are interested.
You are rarely changing prices
Source: meetingsnet.com
A lot of today’s companies stick to the traditional way of pricing items or services. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not efficient at all. I have noticed that many businesses are making price changes only a few times a year. Sometimes, it just once in a few years.
I understand that it is much more convenient to stick with this kind of pricing and that no one wants to waste time or resources on reworking pricing, but if you want better revenue this time around, you have to do it.
Yearly price changes are simply not enough, especially if you want to stay competitive in your market in 2024.
It is time to change your strategy and try to look at the pricing of your services several times a month. In fact, it may be better to do that on a weekly basis. This is going to have a huge impact on your company.
Conclusion
At times, even when you know which signs you should be looking for, spotting them might be difficult. But, over time as you get more experience with price readjusting and creating new pricing strategies, you will start to spot and understand the signs quite easily.
Of course, there are probably dozens of other signs that could tell you that it is time to upgrade or downgrade your strategy, but I believe these four signs I mentioned above are some of the most impactful ones.
These are the ones telling you that you must take immediate action towards the pricing of your company’s services or items.
Either way, we hope that you will find this article informative enough to help you grow your business.
