The Strategic Role of Positioning in Pricing Conversations

If you have ever sat in on a pricing conversation as a product marketer and felt like the decision was already made, you are not alone.

Pricing is one of the most protected levers in a business. Unlike messaging, which PMMs are often trusted to shape and iterate on freely, pricing decisions tend to be more guarded. They are often influenced by Sales, Finance, Product, and Executive leadership, and they usually come with a lot more weight and far less flexibility.

But here is what I have learned: pricing and positioning are deeply connected. And when you treat them as separate conversations, you end up missing the most important part of the strategy.

Pricing Is Often Treated Like a Fix

Teams reach for pricing when they are trying to solve a problem:

Deals are stalling.
Adoption is lower than expected.
A competitor launched something new.
Sales wants a “lite” version for smaller accounts.

And pricing becomes the lever to pull. Lower it. Raise it. Discount it. Slice it up differently.

The problem is not the instinct to adjust pricing. The problem is doing it without considering how it reframes your product’s perceived value.

Positioning is the story you are telling the market. Pricing is one of the most visible expressions of that story. When you change one, you are also changing the other, even if you do not say it out loud.

The Invisible Thread Between Pricing and Positioning

Let’s say you drop your price to close a few deals faster. From a revenue perspective, it looks like a win. But what message are you now sending about the product?

That it was overpriced before? That it is only worth what the customer negotiated it down to? That it is interchangeable with cheaper competitors?

Even if that is not your intention, it is how your market starts to think.

On the other hand, if you introduce a premium tier without clarifying what value it unlocks, you may create friction instead of momentum. Customers will not just evaluate the feature set. They will start questioning whether your original positioning still holds true.

Pricing changes have downstream effects on positioning. And if you are not accounting for that in your go to market motion, your message becomes fragmented. Your sales team starts improvising. Your customers start getting confused. And your product’s value becomes harder to defend.

One Change at a Time

Here is the principle I try to follow: if you are going to change pricing, change only one thing at a time.

Do not raise your prices and change your packaging.
Do not introduce new tiers and reposition your target segments.
Do not offer discounts and test new messaging in the same sprint.

Because if everything changes at once, you cannot read the signals. You will not know what actually made the difference. And you cannot confidently say whether your strategy is working.

Strategic product marketers are not just advisors in pricing conversations. They are the ones who track the ripple effects. They notice how price adjustments show up in sales conversations, in onboarding drop-off, in win loss feedback, and in long-term retention.

How We Repositioned Instead of Discounting

At one early stage startup, we kept running into the same problem. We had a specific customer segment that liked the product but pushed back hard on price. Sales would discount constantly just to get deals across the line.

It worked, kind of. But it also created two problems. One, we were undercutting the perceived value of the product. And two, we were creating internal confusion about what the “real” price actually was.

So instead of treating it as a pricing problem, we reframed it as a positioning problem.

We created a new package tailored to that segment, with slightly different features and a price that reflected their needs and expectations. This allowed us to frame the offer as a strategic choice, not a discount. Sales felt more confident. Customers felt more seen. And we regained control of the narrative.

Product marketers may not always set the price. But we always shape the context.

Pricing is not just a number. It is a signal. And when you treat it as a strategic part of your positioning, rather than a reactive fix, you build trust, clarity, and long-term value.