Today, a bit on demand-based pricing. Plus, Functionly launches a podcast for better work and a better world. And finally, the Harvard Business Review answers: What's really standing in women's way?

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Demand a better pricing strategy

We know there are several ways in which you can decide to price your product, but making that decision is where the real magic lies. It can make all the difference for your product or offering, its reach, and its success.

Just last week, we saw Dave Gerhardt over at Privy, the software for ecommerce email marketing, lower the price of the subscription to his private podcast, The A List.

So we're looking at demand-based pricing, which leverages levels of current general market demand, as opposed to customer-specific research, to determine pricing strategy.

With demand-based pricing, your product is set at different prices, and the customer’s willingness to purchase it is measured at each price to determine a representative set price that’s not too high or too low.

There are a few different ways of conducting demand-based pricing, and it looks like Dave’s case most closely represents what we call “skimming,” which means he started at a high price and lowered it. (This is usually done by setting a very high price and lowering it gradually.) It’s great for establishing very healthy, early profit margins.

Demand-based pricing is a good way of assessing the lay of the market while still building revenue and customer knowledge (albeit indirectly). The different ways of approaching demand-based pricing make this a versatile pricing method appropriate for a number of business models.

But, as with most things, there’s a flipside. Because the data is relatively less complete, the monetary price must be adjusted to compensate for non-monetary costs that will be involved in setting customer willingness to pay. For instance, if your product has a particularly high time or convenience cost, WTP will be affected. Making these kinds of adjustments can be hard and lead to missed opportunities, particularly when the fluctuations of market demand are also taken into account.

It sounds like this one played out well for Dave, though, so we’ll be on the lookout for what he does next. If you're interested in digging into the nuances of each method, you can read on here.

Here's another one, which is on effective pricing strategies—because guessing at pricing is just not an option.

Functionly, yours

Our friends over at Functionly, the work design platform that provides tools and visibility for team alignment, launched The Work Design Podcast last week, featuring leaders sharing their stories and secrets. 

It’s all about how they designed and built their best places to work. In it, the Functionly crew spotlights challenges and breakthroughs of designing org charts, optimizing teams, and building jobs that people love. 

Episode one features Clayton Moulynox on heading up a unicorn culture at Auth0.

But why jump into the podcast world? We know as well as the next person that creating this stuff isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, resources, and skill. Well, you’re in luck. To see if podcast and video marketing are worth the investment, we looked at data from 2.4k subscription companies. The short answer is yes (it’s worth it). But if you want all the intel, you can find all the data cuts linked here. 

We are big fans of the Functionly team, not only because they nailed it last year at SaaStr and sent us a llama upon our return home (shoutout to Frank the Functionly llama) but because they’re doing something really cool here. Solid products, and ultimately, success, stem from solid teams. So we always have our eye out for what they’re doing for the market.

What's really holding women back?

International Women’s Day was just yesterday, but we won’t stop the celebrations any time soon. And today, we wrap with a hard hitter: What’s really holding women back?

That’s what the Harvard Business Review is asking, regarding the trouble of retaining women in the workplace and promoting us to senior ranks. 

HBR reminds us, “Women made remarkable progress accessing positions of power and authority in the 1970s and 1980s, but that progress slowed considerably in the 1990s and has stalled completely in this century.”

Just last year, the publication reported on the persistence of gender inequality, drawing on a case study of a professional services firm, and found that the more time they spent with people at the firm, the more they found that the firm’s explanations for why women were held back didn’t correspond with the data. There was a considerable disconnect in what institutions reported as the problem and what problems actually existed.

Women weren’t held back because of trouble balancing the competing demands of work and family—men, too, suffered from the balance problem and nevertheless advanced.

According to HBR's research, more women were encouraged to take accommodations, like part-time gigs or shifting to internally facing roles, which derailed their ultimate career goals. But, “The real culprit was a general culture of overwork that hurt both men and women and locked gender inequality in place.”

The bottom line: “Social defense systems are insidious. They divert attention from a core anxiety-provoking problem by introducing a less-anxiety-provoking one that can serve as a substitute focus.”

As a result, these two strongly held ideologies supporting the status quo had remained in place: Long work hours are necessary, and women’s stalled advancement is inevitable.

So how do we (and how can you) take action? As we start to push back against overwork—as individuals, as families, as employees—we start to set that solid example.

And the article wraps with a moving sentiment—and hope for what lies ahead: “As more research shows the business advantage of reasonable hours, some employers will come to question the wisdom of grueling schedules. If and when those forces gain traction, neither women nor men will feel the need to sacrifice the home or the work domain, demand for change will swell, and women may begin to achieve workplace equality with men.”

That’s it for your March 9 episode of Recur Now. Remember, if you have news to spread or resources our listeners can leverage in this space, you can connect with me at abby@recurnow.com. 

This has been a Recur Studios production—the fastest-growing subscription network out there. If you find use for this show, subscribe for more like it at profitwell.com/recur.