Product, Service, or Pricing: What Impacts Business Growth?

Every business can agree that it wants to grow. However, not every business can agree on the best way to see growth. Where should a company focus on building sustainable growth opportunities?

Business growth falls into three key areas: product, service, and pricing. Companies can see strong growth by focusing on creating quality products, delivering a personalized and convenient customer experience, and adjusting prices to maximize revenue. 

But what do each of these areas mean? And does one impact growth more than the others? Let’s dive into the three pillars of business growth and how companies of all sizes can put them into action.

Creating Quality Products

To start, every company needs a product or service to sell. This is the heart of your business and sets the tone for other areas of growth. The product or service largely dictates the target customer and customer experience. As you dive into the product process, getting the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) correct from the beginning is crucial. Understanding your target clients, their needs, pain points, and buying tendencies can help create products and services that resonate with them. 

A good product meets customer needs. It is innovative to solve problems in a new way or address problems that have never been solved. It’s also high quality and reliable. 

Growth comes from products that have a clear value proposition. What makes your product quality stand out from other products on the market? It could be safer, easier to use, have a unique design, integrate with other products, perform tasks efficiently, or address a problem customers didn’t know they had. The product needs to be valuable to customers, serve a purpose, or improve their lives in some way. In the B2B SaaS world, product evaluation means solving an urgent need or providing a detail or feature that isn’t available from the competition. 

Innovation doesn’t have to be complicated. Some of the most successful and effective products are simple. They stand out because they are easy to use and make customers’ lives easier by solving problems and anticipating their needs.

Customer Experience Drives Loyalty

Another cornerstone of business growth is quality service. Even a great product doesn’t guarantee growth without strong customer service to back it up. 

Customer experience includes every step of the customer journey, from when customers first learn about a product or business to when they make a purchase and the service they receive afterward. Good service makes customers feel valued and provides a seamless and efficient experience. When companies prioritize customer experience through personalized, convenient service, they see incredible returns and significantly faster revenue growth compared to companies with poor service. Creating a customer value chain helps companies understand their customers’ needs and how they use the product so that the company can continually improve the experience and lead to repeat purchases and upselling. 

Customers have choices when they want to make a purchase and are much more likely to return to a company that provides great service. On the flip side, when customers have a poor service experience, they overwhelmingly will move to another company—even if they were previously loyal to the first brand. With that in mind, prioritizing customer experience can lead to loyal, valuable customers who make return purchases and recommend the company to family and friends, leading to a ripple effect of growth opportunities.

Balancing Pricing With Growth

The last pillar of business growth is good pricing. Customers want a quality product and consistent customer experience, but they also want to pay a fair price. That means companies need to adopt a competitive and strategic pricing strategy. Pricing products too high drives away potential customers, while pricing products too low cuts into profits. 

One of the most effective pricing models is the Good Better Best (GBB) model, which uses tiered pricing to address customer needs and maximize profitability. Each tier is strategically designed to meet unique customer needs, which allows the company to appeal to a broader audience. Customers can pay a lower fee (perhaps to test a product) or upgrade to the premium cost and item (a higher-quality product for a higher price). No matter their needs or price sensitivities, all customers have a pricing option that meets their needs. 

It’s a strategy commonly seen in streaming services: Customers can pay a lower monthly fee for standard definition and ads, a slightly higher fee to get a better quality picture, or the highest fee to get high-definition content and a large streaming library. The same approach can be used by nearly any company in any industry. As a bonus, the GBB model empowers customers to make the right choice for their needs, which can improve the customer experience. 

Pricing gives businesses a chance to be creative to appeal to customers and meet their needs. Freemium pricing models, for example, give a basic version of the product for free and then charge for additional features.

A Sustainable Growth Model

So, which pillar is the most important in driving business growth? The simple answer is that no pillar is more important than another. Companies need to use all three pillars to create sustainable growth for a well-rounded strategy. Integrating products, services, and pricing into a business model provides multiple ways to grow a business and appeal to a wide range of customers.