pricing-strategy

Overview

What the pricing-strategy skill does

The pricing-strategy skill is designed to help you make confident, data-informed pricing and packaging decisions for SaaS, ecommerce, and other recurring-revenue products. It focuses on:

• Choosing the right pricing metrics (per seat, per usage, flat-rate, etc.)
• Designing tier structures (good-better-best, freemium vs free trial, enterprise tiers)
• Running pricing research (Van Westendorp, willingness-to-pay surveys, MaxDiff)
• Planning and communicating price increases without unnecessary churn
• Aligning pricing with value delivered and customer segments

Instead of generic advice, the skill follows a structured workflow rooted in product marketing context, pricing research methods, and proven tier-structure frameworks.

Who this skill is for

Use pricing-strategy if you are:

• A SaaS founder trying to figure out how much to charge
• A product manager working on a new pricing model or packaging refresh
• A head of growth/marketing optimizing conversion on pricing pages and landing pages
• A finance or RevOps lead modeling revenue impact of pricing changes
• An ecommerce or Shopify operator deciding plan tiers, usage limits, or bundles

It fits best when you want a systematic approach to pricing rather than a random guess or copying competitors.

Problems the skill helps solve

Common use cases for pricing-strategy include:

• "How much should we charge for our new product?"
• "Should we use per-seat, per-usage, or flat pricing?"
• "Should we offer a free plan, free trial, or both?"
• "How do we structure good-better-best tiers?"
• "How do we raise prices by 20–30% without losing customers?"
• "Our pricing page isn’t converting – is it the price, the tiers, or the packaging?"

The repository includes references on research methods and tier structure so the skill can walk you through:

• Gathering the right business, value, and competitive context
• Selecting and running pricing research methods
• Translating findings into clear, scalable pricing tiers

When this skill is and isn’t a good fit

Good fit when:

• You’re defining or revisiting SaaS pricing or subscription packaging
• You need guidance on pricing strategy for a product launch or repositioning
• You care about value metrics, willingness to pay, and price psychology
• You want to design or revise a pricing page, but the core problem is what and how to charge

Not a perfect fit when:

• You only need in-app paywall or upgrade-screen optimization — for that, the repo suggests the paywall-upgrade-cro skill
• You want visual design help for landing pages or UI mockups (this skill focuses on strategy and structure, not design)
• You’re doing one-off, non-repeatable project pricing with no tiers or plans

How to Use

1. Installation and setup

To install the pricing-strategy skill into a compatible agent environment, use:

npx skills add https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill pricing-strategy

This pulls the pricing-strategy skill from the coreyhaines31/marketingskills repository and makes its prompts, references, and evaluation examples available to your agent.

After installation:

1. Open the skills/pricing-strategy/ directory in the repository.
2. Start with SKILL.md to understand the core behavior and expectations.
3. Review supporting folders for depth:
   • evals/ – sample prompts and expected behavior for testing and refinement
   • references/ – detailed pricing research and tier structure guides

2. Core workflow: from context to pricing recommendation

The pricing-strategy skill is built around a structured workflow visible in SKILL.md and the references:

Step 1: Gather product marketing context

Before making recommendations, the skill looks for broader context:

• If .agents/product-marketing-context.md (or older .claude/product-marketing-context.md) exists, it should be read first.
• If that file doesn’t exist or is incomplete, the skill is designed to ask you for:
  • Business context: product type (SaaS, marketplace, ecommerce, service), existing pricing, target market (SMB, mid-market, enterprise), GTM motion (self-serve, sales-led, hybrid)
  • Value & competition: primary value delivered, alternatives customers consider, how competitors price
  • Current performance: metrics like conversion, churn, upgrade behavior (outlined in the truncated SKILL.md content)

This ensures that pricing advice is tailored to your actual product and market.

Step 2: Apply the "three pricing axes" framework

The evals/evals.json examples show that the skill evaluates pricing across three axes:

1. Packaging – What’s included in each tier or plan
2. Pricing metric – How you charge (per seat, per usage, per order, per store, flat monthly, etc.)
3. Price point – The actual numbers (e.g., $29, $79, $199 per month)

For example, when asked how to price a SaaS support tool, the skill is expected to:

• Compare pricing metrics (per agent vs per ticket vs flat rate) and connect them to value delivered
• Recommend a tier structure (commonly good-better-best) with clear differentiation
• Provide specific price ranges and explain the reasoning

Step 3: Use research methods when you need data

When you need more evidence than intuition, the skill is backed by references/research-methods.md, which covers:

• Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter – how to ask the four price questions, analyze curves, and find:
  • Point of Marginal Cheapness (PMC)
  • Point of Marginal Expensiveness (PME)
  • Optimal Price Point (OPP)
  • Indifference Price Point (IDP)
• MaxDiff analysis – to understand which features matter most and use that to shape packaging
• Willingness-to-pay surveys – practical guidance on survey design and segmentation
• Usage–value correlation analysis – linking usage to value to choose better pricing metrics

The skill can guide you through:

• Deciding which method fits your stage and customer base
• Framing survey questions in your preferred tool (Google Forms, Typeform, etc.)
• Interpreting the results into actionable price bands

Step 4: Design your tier structure and packaging

The references/tier-structure.md file gives a concrete framework for packaging, which the skill uses to help you:

• Decide how many tiers you need (2, 3, or 4+)
• Implement a good-better-best structure:
  • Good (Entry): low-friction, core features, limited usage
  • Better (Recommended): full features, strong value, your anchor tier
  • Best (Premium): advanced capabilities, high limits, power users/enterprise
• Choose tier differentiation strategies such as:
  • Feature gating (basic vs advanced features)
  • Usage limits (seats, orders, storage, API calls)
  • Support levels and SLAs

For SaaS and Shopify-style ecommerce apps, this helps you map features and limits to:

• Clear SMB vs mid-market vs enterprise plans
• Logical upgrade paths that improve conversion and ARPU

Step 5: Plan price increases and communication

The evals include scenarios around raising prices (e.g., a 30% increase after new features). While the full text is truncated, the expected behavior is:

• Use a structured "when to raise prices" and price increase strategy
• Recommend segmentation (who to increase and by how much)
• Outline communication tactics (notice periods, grandfathering, emphasizing new value)

You can test and tune this behavior by referencing evals/evals.json and adjusting prompts or guardrails in your own agent setup.

3. Using the skill in day-to-day work

Once installed, you typically:

1. Provide the agent with:
   • A short description of your product and current pricing
   • Any existing pricing page URLs, landing pages, or Shopify plan descriptions
   • Your goals (e.g., "launching a new plan", "raising prices", "improving conversion")
2. Ask targeted questions like:
   • "Help me redesign our pricing tiers using a good-better-best framework."
   • "Evaluate per-seat vs per-usage pricing for our B2B SaaS."
   • "Suggest a plan for raising prices 25% with minimal churn."
3. Use the responses as input to:
   • Update spreadsheets or Google Sheets models
   • Revise your pricing page copy and plan breakdowns
   • Prepare internal pricing memos or board updates

The pricing-strategy skill doesn’t push code changes directly; instead, it gives structured reasoning you can translate into pricing pages, Shopify plans, or billing configuration.

4. Files worth reviewing in the repository

To get the most from pricing-strategy, open these files in the skills/pricing-strategy directory:

• SKILL.md – The main specification of the pricing-strategy skill, including its purpose and context-gathering steps
• evals/evals.json – Realistic prompts and the behavior the skill is expected to exhibit
• references/research-methods.md – Detailed walkthroughs of pricing research frameworks
• references/tier-structure.md – Practical guide to tier design and good-better-best packaging

These documents show how the skill is meant to reason and what “good” output looks like in real pricing scenarios.

FAQ

Is pricing-strategy only for SaaS companies?

The pricing-strategy skill is optimized for SaaS and subscription-style products, but many of its frameworks also apply to ecommerce tools, Shopify apps, marketplaces, and recurring services. If your business relies on plans, tiers, subscriptions, or usage-based pricing, this skill is likely relevant.

Can this skill set exact prices for my product?

It can propose specific price ranges and example price points, but those should be validated with your own data and research. The built-in references (like Van Westendorp and willingness-to-pay surveys) are designed to help you move from opinion to evidence.

How does pricing-strategy choose between per-seat, per-usage, or flat-rate pricing?

Based on the evals examples and SKILL.md, the skill:

• Evaluates multiple pricing metrics (e.g., per agent vs per ticket vs flat rate)
• Checks which metric best aligns with the value delivered and how customers think about your product
• Considers industry norms, competitive benchmarks, and your business model
• Recommends a primary metric and, if helpful, secondary usage limits for scale

Can pricing-strategy help with free plans and trials?

Yes. The tier-structure reference includes guidance on freemium vs free trial and hybrid approaches. The skill can help you decide:

• When a free plan makes sense vs a limited-time trial
• What to include in free vs paid tiers
• How to design a trial that converts to paid plans

How do I evaluate if the skill is working as expected?

Use the prompts and expected behaviors in evals/evals.json:

1. Run similar prompts through your agent after installing pricing-strategy.
2. Compare the responses to the expectations listed in evals/evals.json (e.g., does it check for product marketing context, apply the three pricing axes, recommend tier structures, and explain rationale?).
3. Adjust your agent configuration if the behavior diverges from the intended pattern.

What if I only want to optimize my paywall or upgrade screen?

If your main goal is conversion optimization of in-app upgrade flows or mobile paywalls, the pricing-strategy skill may be more strategic than you need. The source skill description explicitly points to a separate paywall-upgrade-cro skill for in-app upgrade screens.

Does pricing-strategy integrate with spreadsheets or Google Sheets directly?

The skill itself does not write or sync spreadsheets, but its structured outputs (tiers, metrics, ranges) are easy to translate into spreadsheet models or Google Sheets for forecasting revenue, ARPU, or scenario planning. You can copy its recommendations into your finance or reporting templates.