This week in XaaS Pricing: April 29th, 2022
Should we start a podcast? And other essential questions
XaaS Pricing Analysis and Resources From The Week
We’re still doing our thing with the Grade My Pricing Page service, and learning a lot about the pricing challenges of SaaS founders.
We love a good old research framework and taxonomy, and so that’s what we’ve been using to assess pricing pages. We score each page across 25 standard criteria, and provide a framework-based model for implementing changes. For the DIY types out there, we made our scoring template available for download.
One challenge that has cropped up quite a bit is how to approach freemium pricing. Particularly for founders, this can be a thorny issue, with lots of benefits and drawbacks to consider. So we shared our thinking in a blog post this week.
In the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing our monthly insights report based on XaaS Pricing data, which will focus on pricing changes, and we’ll also be rolling out a special analysis and data tool focused on PLG company pricing model best practices.
This Week In XaaS Pricing
The coolest thing I saw this week was courtesy of a LinkedIn post by MJ Peters.
She shared the below Value Proposition Framework from Team Study.
I love it and I want to write more about it sometime soon. What I really love is how it breaks down a topic that is complex and prone to analysis paralysis, and provides a simple choice matrix.
I also enjoy that it is a “relative” framework for positioning pricing to a value proposition. It inherently acknowledges there are competitive or comparative alternatives that you are positioning your product against. You are not alone, in a category by yourself; there are always choices you are positioning against.
Lastly, this is a great tool to use when thinking about designing the product around the price. If you have selected a market to play in, and identified your ideal customers, you can start by thinking about what value propositions are being offered to those customers, and what value propositions are not being offered. Once you choose a lane, you can design your offering around that value proposition.
XaaS Pricing Startup Musings
Should we start a podcast?
I can hear the groans.
But seriously, we’re considering it. Something free form and fun; just throwing out ideas, a few beers in hand, and making jokes while hopefully imparting some pricing strategy knowledge and insights.
So stay tuned on that.
There’s a bigger point here about the hardest startup hills to climb.
We’re pretty confident we’re going to have a great MVP product. We have great data, tons of it, the UI/UX wireframes and early product demos coming back are awesome.
We’ve gotten great feedback and validation from our beta group using the tool, and are seeing major traction with report downloads.
But marketing is the hill we can’t seem to climb just yet. It’s really hard to make people that don’t know you care about what you’re doing. It’s a lot of fits and starts and trying different traction channels daily, sliding back to the starting point, and then starting to climb again.
So we’ll have a Friday afternoon beverage today, reset, recharge, and then get ready to climb again next week!
That’s all for this week. Would love your thoughts or comments, and enjoy the weekend. If you enjoy this newsletter, please subscribe, and if you’re so inclined, maybe share with a friend or two? I make that easy for you below :)