TL;DR: Replacing usage-based pricing with a model aligned to customer value shortened sales cycles and improved renewals and average contract value.
The growth challenge: Pricing was getting in the way of growth
The company’s web presence product helped multi-location brands publish dedicated pages for every location, making it easier for local customers to find addresses, hours, and services. But pricing was based on visitor traffic, a metric customers couldn’t predict, and sales couldn’t confidently quote.
The model created friction throughout the customer lifecycle.
- Stalled deals. Unpredictable traffic made quotes difficult to build and extended sales cycles.
- Renewal risk. Customers who bought more traffic than they used felt they had overpaid, leading many to downsize or churn.
- A penalty for success. When pages outperformed expectations, overage fees turned success into friction.
The problem was a mismatch between how customers received value and how they paid for it. Customers bought the product to improve visibility across locations, but pricing depended on traffic they couldn’t control. The opportunity was to simplify buying, encourage adoption, and align revenue with customer value.
The insight: Price around how customers realize value
Redesigning the pricing model started with three questions: what customers valued, how they bought, and what would make the product easier to adopt and expand. A research sprint combined customer interviews, product usage analysis, and win-loss data. Three findings shaped the new model.
- AI search made each page more valuable. The pages were originally built to help consumers find a location’s address, services, and contact details. As consumers turned to AI assistants such as ChatGPT to find local services, AI-generated answers frequently cited these pages. Publishing more pages that answered specific, high-intent questions became a new way to increase local visibility. Pricing needed to encourage more pages, not limit them.
- Customers budgeted by location. For multi-location brands, particularly franchises, location count was already the unit used to set budgets, allocate costs, and measure performance.
- In-house IT was seen as the zero-cost alternative. Many customers assumed building pages internally would avoid the expense of new software. Pricing had to make the platform’s value clear: pages live faster, traffic captured sooner, and no opportunity cost from waiting on internal teams.
Together, these findings pointed to a model priced on a unit customers already understood, with no limits on the pages that drove value.
The pricing transformation: One price per location, unlimited pages
Traffic-based pricing was replaced with a flat price per location, including unlimited location pages and AI answer pages, which addressed the core weaknesses of the old model:
- Predictable costs: Customers could budget by location without forecasting traffic or worrying about overage fees.
- Simpler sales: Quotes became easier to build, shifting conversations from traffic estimates to customer value.
- Room to grow: Unlimited pages encouraged broader adoption without additional usage charges.
- Portfolio fit: Per-location pricing aligned with the company’s other products, simplifying upsells and bundles.
The result was a pricing model that better reflected how customers budgeted and how the product delivered value.
The migration strategy: Turn every renewal into a reset
Existing customers moved to the new model as their contracts came up for renewal.
Marketing worked with the deal desk and customer success teams to introduce the change proactively, reframing renewal conversations around value rather than defending the old pricing structure.
This gave account teams a way to address concerns about unpredictable costs while offering customers a simpler model and more room to grow.
The GTM strategy: Sell the value, not the price change
The pricing overhaul launched alongside the new AI answer pages use case. Customers weren’t simply being asked to adopt a different billing model; they were being shown a new way to get value from the product.
The GTM strategy connected three elements:
- Pricing: One predictable price per location, aligned with how customers budget.
- Customer value: A new way to maintain visibility as consumers increasingly use AI to find local businesses.
- Product adoption: Unlimited pages, allowing customers to pursue that opportunity without worrying about usage charges.
Together, these elements positioned the change as an opportunity to get more from the product, not just a different way to pay.
The results: Faster sales cycles and stronger renewals
Within one quarter, the new model delivered measurable impact.
- Shorter sales cycles, with quotes no longer requiring traffic estimates.
- Higher average contract value, with pricing tied to the budget unit.
- Reduced churn, as more customers renewed and expanded.
The shift created a more predictable revenue model aligned with the portfolio and AI search strategy.
The takeaway: Price around what customers value and can control
Usage-based pricing works when customers can predict and control the metric. When they can’t, it creates sales friction, erodes trust at renewal, and discourages the behaviors that make a product valuable.
Here, customer research, usage analysis, and win-loss data pointed to a more natural pricing metric: location count.
The lesson is straightforward: price around a metric customers understand, remove constraints on value-creating behaviors, and connect the commercial model to a compelling reason to buy.
When pricing, product strategy and go-to-market work together, pricing transformation can accelerate sales, strengthen retention and unlock adoption.