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Positioning Strategies That Protect Margins Under Price Pressure
Positioning that protects margins when prices are squeezed. See how to shift comparison sets, prove outcomes and hold price with confidence.
Summary
At moments of major change, cutting costs feels like the easy lever. Yet as price pressure mounts and discounts become default, the signal blurs and belief fragments. Progress comes when leaders read cost patterns as signals of brand clarity and fund proof moments. That’s how organisations regain pricing power and steadier growth.
Watch The Video
In this video, Dipendra Mistry (CSO & Managing Partner) unpacks how cost patterns signal brand alignment — and how misreading them stalls growth.Our Perspective
What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.
When Prices Push Back
Price pressure is rarely just about inputs and procurement. It often points to a value story the market can’t quite grasp. When buyers hesitate unless prompted by discounts, they’re telling you your positioning isn’t earning belief at the moment of choice. That’s a brand issue expressed through the ledger.
Marketing Week (via Kantar & Google research) reports a telling gap: while 87.9% of marketers agree stronger brands can command higher prices, only 58.9% say their organisation actually does so compared with competitors. The space between those numbers is where brand clarity either compounds or erodes.
Reading The Cost Pattern
Costs form a narrative if you read them horizontally, not as isolated spikes. Watch for correlations across the funnel and through delivery, especially when growth ambitions raise the stakes. Patterns matter more than incidents.
- Acquisition spend rises while conversion holds flat or dips.
- Discounting becomes the default, not the exception.
- Service recovery and rework expand faster than revenue.
Taken together, this is positioning drift. The market hears a promise it can’t reconcile with proof, so it demands a price concession. That concession, multiplied across cycles, hardens into expectations that are expensive to unwind.
Where Belief Breaks
Belief is built in sequence: promise, proof, price. If proof lags the promise, or the narrative prioritises features over outcomes, buyers question the premium. Internally, that same ambiguity drives duplication and decision churn, because teams are compensating for a story that isn’t crisp enough to guide choices.
We often see the tipping point appear as “temporary” discounting that persists. That’s not just a sales tactic; it’s a brand signal. Treat it as a prompt to re-clarify who you’re for, the precise problem you solve, and the moments where your difference is felt. Do that, and price becomes a consequence of clarity, not a workaround for confusion.
Leadership Moves
Make price pressure your early-warning system by linking investment to the experience you intend to deliver at critical moments.
- Define the non-negotiable moments of proof and fund those first.
- Tighten your price architecture so each tier communicates value, not just cost.
- Set explicit discount guardrails that force a strategic conversation before habits set in.
- Align product, sales, and marketing on the outcomes you enable, not the features you ship.
When leaders adopt this framing, internal alignment steadies, discounting recedes, and pricing power returns organically. Over time, treating cost signals as a diagnostic—not an efficiency score—shifts the organisation from reacting to price pressure to earning the right to set terms.
Sources:
- Marketers on the struggle to link brand equity and price power — Marketing Week (via Kantar & Google research)
Further Resources
Curious how this applies in your market? We’re speaking with leaders across industries every week. Let’s talk.
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