Association Pricing: Leveraging Value as the Driving Force for Pricing Success with Michael Tatonetti

Michael Tatonetti is the Founder and CEO of Pricing for Associations. He is also a Pricing and Value Speaker and Consultant and a Certified Association Executive as well as a Certified Pricing Professional.

In this episode, Michael discusses the importance of aligning pricing and value with the mission of associations and non-profit organizations. He emphasizes that value should be the central factor in creating a pricing strategy, as it resonates more with members and strengthens their connection to the organization.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Discover the three factors that distinguish associations from traditional subscriptions and find out their similarities in some aspects
• Find out how to price an association and why these two components of value and price tie in together to create the best pricing
• Learn how associations communicate better value in their pricing and the formula you can use to best convey your pricing

"Focus on the value. Always put the value before the price."

- Michael Tatonetti

Topics Covered:

01:01 - How he started a career in Pricing

02:36 - What differentiates non-profit associations from subscription businesses?

03:59 - How does competition feels different in an association space?

05:37 - Looking at an associations membership bylaws, pricing objectives, their competitive positions in the space

07:16 - Three things that makes an association different from subscription business and what makes them the same with it

10:15 - What to consider when shifting from annual to monthly billing for associations and what he advocates as the biggest thing that differentiates association from subscription

12:32 - Pricing an association and when does he consider competitors when pricing?

15:08 - Questions to ask to come up with the best pricing

17:17 - Using Van Westendorp to help in data analysis for pricing [and the number of samples needed for this tool]

18:17 - Michael letting Mark share his own idea of the right number of responses needed for Van Westendorp data analysis

20:49 - Relying on value and not on cost when communicating pricing

24:38 - Michael's best pricing advice that could impact any business

Key Takeaways:

"Most subscriptions, not all, of course, run on like a monthly basis. Of course you can do annual, but most of them, you think in monthly terms where most associations are billing annually." - Michael Tatonetti

"Most subscriptions for profit are able to just auto-bill where some associations, depending on state, cannot auto-bill, they can opt in, but for some they cannot." - Michael Tatonetti

"Associations are typically divided into one of two categories, either organizational or individual. They're typically called trade or individual, trade is organization. Now, when you have an organization, then yes, typically they're not going to have it on renew." - Michael Tatonetti

"I think of traditional subscriptions as an individual, I sign up and then I cancel when I want. Where with associations, there's typically more thought-power that goes into the decision to continue year over year." - Michael Tatonetti

"I lean in on value a lot. I typically will not do work with an organization on just price. I typically require that we're doing value and price because most organizations don't change their value too often." - Michael Tatonetti

People / Resources Mentioned:

• Robbie Kellman Baxter: https://impactpricing.com/podcast/ep94-powerful-pricing-insights-from-a-subscription-expert-with-robbie-kellman-baxter/
• Van Westendorp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp%27s_Price_Sensitivity_Meter

Connect with Michael Tatonetti:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtatonetti/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: mailto:mark@impactpricing.com