The 6 P’s of pricing strategy: Unlocking Growth
Every pricing strategy relies on a set of strategic levers — key areas of focus that businesses can adjust to influence outcomes. These strategic pricing levers act as tools to shape how your product or service delivers value, attracts customers, and drives revenue.
Each lever focuses on a specific aspect of pricing that can be fine-tuned to address specific challenges, seize new opportunities, or respond to a changing market. Understanding the right levers for your business (and knowing when to pull them) is key to building a pricing strategy that supports sustainable growth.
For example, a company might adjust:
- Its Position in the market by differentiating its product from competitors, making it the go-to choice for a specific audience, thereby justifying a premium price.
- Prices to respond to shifting customer demand, rising costs or market trends, ensuring they remain competitive while maximising revenue.
- Promotions to create urgency and drive short-term sales, particularly when it’s critical to move stock or acquire new customers.
Thinking about your pricing strategy as a set of levers offers a structured way to approach pricing as a dynamic, strategic tool rather than a static decision.
Here we’ll discover 6 key pricing strategy levers and how they can be used, alongside real-life examples and actionable steps you can take, to positively impact the future of your business.
So, what are the 6 pricing strategy levers every company should know?
1. Position
This pricing strategy level looks at market position: where your brand sits in the market relative to your competition. Your positioning is based on a distinct perception of value and quality in the minds of customers, thereby influencing how they view your brand compared to others.
Everything from product design, brand identity, packaging and pricing to marketing strategy should direct audiences to this perceived value.
Perception is everything. If your target market doesn’t see your market position as you do, this can create a costly disconnect that could be driving customers away. To activate this pricing strategy lever, analyse the competitive landscape, understand what motivates your customers, and what the alternatives are. You may need to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Live example: One leading software client was hitting a ceiling with their existing customer base. Together, we identified what they now call “Rolls-Royce customers,” a segment willing to pay a premium for more advanced features. By rethinking their market position and focusing on delivering the high-value parts of their product that appealed to this new segment, they unlocked a new growth trajectory and gained traction in a previously untapped market while capturing a premium price.
Ask your team: How well do we really understand how our product or service fits in the competitive landscape? Is our value proposition clear? Do we know why customers choose us over alternatives?
2. Price
Prices may need to change depending on shifts in customer demand, inflationary pressures, and market trends. A well-defined pricing strategy and effective pricing management processes enable you to react swiftly and confidently to unexpected changes. In turn, this helps you maintain a strong market position and stay competitive for the long haul.
Live example: One online retail company we worked with recently found that their pricing was 38% lower than competitors on average. They were not only leaving money on the table; they were devaluing their perceived value in the market. We worked with them to run a series of price testing experiments. We quickly learned that adjustments to base prices alone had the potential to unlock 12% in annual revenue per year. That’s a serious Return on Investment (ROI) on a Pricing Sprint!
Ask your team: How well do base prices align with our market position? Are prices aligned with the value and brand position? Is there additional headroom on price that is yet to be captured?
3. Presentation
One powerful pricing strategy lever is how your prices appear at the moment of purchase. It’s no surprise that clear and concise communication is essential. However, did you know there is powerful pricing psychology behind how you present pricing at the point of sale that can help accelerate customer purchase decisions and nudge specific buying behaviours?
Here are a few of our favourites, but don’t just take our word for it! We love this pricing psychology guide by Nick Kolenda.
- Did you know, prices seem cheaper when they appear on the left? If possible, add prices to the left of a page or display, with CTA buttons like ‘Buy now’ or ‘Add to basket’ on the right.
- Anchor prices alongside any larger number to make yours appear smaller.
- Offer good, better, best prices (with the result that customers will evaluate ‘which shall I choose’ over a simple ‘yes or no’ response).
Live example: The same online retailer ran another set of price-framing experiments based on simple User Interface (UI) changes. These simple changes to how the price was presented unlocked another $2.3m in annual revenue by better guiding customer decisions.
Ask your team: How well are our prices communicated? Are they clear? Are there options? Discover more about strategic pricing psychology in this recent article.
4. Promotions
This pricing strategy lever looks at how you set time-sensitive discounts, bundles, or special offers to stimulate short-term demand, encourage a trial, or increase purchase frequency.
When are discounts useful? Attracting new customers, launching new products, shifting excess inventory, leveraging seasonal events (e.g. Christmas or Black Friday), incentivising a larger purchase, rewarding loyalty, or simply creating a sense of urgency.
Promotions are effective at driving spikes in revenue. However, they should be considered as part of the wider pricing strategy to avoid damaging long-term profitability.
Live example: During a pricing strategy audit, another online retail client learned that only 15% of transactions were made at full price. Sit with that for a moment. 85% of sales had been discounted. Over-discounting was undermining their profits and brand position. In online forums, customers were referring to them as a budget brand while the team was trying to build a premium brand. We adjusted their promotional lever to cut discounting and helped increase their profits.
Ask your team: How effective are your discounts, bundles, and other offers at meeting the business’s goals: driving demand, retention or capturing profit?
5. Packaging & Delivery
Is your packaging or delivery a competitive advantage? This pricing strategy lever helps you understand the impact on both brand perception and profitability.
For service businesses, delivery – be that in-person or digital – shapes the customer experience. Consider design, quality, and timings. Are you optimising costs while reinforcing your value?
Similarly, for product businesses, packaging is often a big part of the experience. A high-value product arriving in a branded presentation box, with free shipping and free, no-quibble returns, sounds great. This can build brand loyalty and fan engagement through ‘unboxings’ shared online. But how much are these extra details eating into your profits? Conversely, packaging with no frills may lower the perceived value of your products. As always, it’s a balancing act.
Live example: One online gifting retailer we worked with wanted to understand the role of shipping in customer decisions. We ran a pricing survey followed by a price testing experiment to find out. Are customers more likely to pay $17.90 with free shipping or $11.95 + $5.95 shipping? The results: Free shipping won by a landslide and reduced the feeling of being surprised by unexpected costs at checkout.
Ask your team: How do post-purchase logistics shape the customer experience?
6. Production costs
The final pricing strategy lever of our ‘6 Ps’ is about how production costs are managed to maintain healthy margins while delivering on your value proposition. Because if you’re not tracking costs, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
Live example: One client hadn’t updated their cost structure in 8 years, which meant they were unknowingly selling some offerings at a loss. Using the “Costs Lever” as part of their pricing strategy, they were able to capture a +18.4% increase in Revenue Growth and +21.1% increase in Gross Margin Growth.
Ask your team: Are costs tracked and accurately reflected in pricing? Are margins healthy?
Are you putting the 6 Ps of pricing strategy to good use?
There you have it, six effective and flexible strategic pricing levers that can be applied as and when needed to deliver value, attract customers and raise profits. Intrigued to know more? We’re always here to help.
