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Last Updated on January 20, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta Salesforce Flow is one of the most powerful tools provided by Salesforce to implement business requirements declaratively. Salesforce Flow helps businesses to save time, as well as money, by implementing solutions quickly. In theory, implementation of Salesforce Flow is straightforward – you create a
The post Getting Started with Salesforce Flow – Part 83 (Learn How to Designate a Recipient to Receive Error Emails) appeared first on Automation Champion.

When we experimented with a four-day workweek it was initially for one month. As our CEO, Joel Gascoigne, wrote about in May 2020 when we first started the experiment, “This 4-day workweek period is about well-being, mental health, and placing us as humans and our families first.”
Joel’s announcement about the four-day workweek in April, 2020.At the end of May, while we were collecting the data on how the experiment went, we continued working a four-day workweek. In June, after we saw that the results were overall good for us, we shifted to a four-day workweek for the rest of 2020. Our team was surprised by these results, having expected naturally diminished productivity with fewer workdays. At the time, our Chief of Staff, Carolyn Kopprasch, wrote:
“Since the intention was to give temporary relief from typical expectations to teammates during an especially hard and unprecedented time, we did not set goals around productivity or results. In fact, we expected a tangible drop in productivity due to reduced hours.However, due to increased rest and reflection, many of you have shared that you felt your weekly productivity was in fact not all that different, and that your quality of work was higher while experiencing improved overall wellbeing.”
In the end, we shifted to a four-day workweek for the foreseeable future at the end of 2020.Now, we’re three months away from having operated by a four-day workweek for two years. We recently ran an internal survey to check in with the Buffer team on how many days they are working, if they feel happier and more productive, and finally, if they are able to get the work required of them completed in four days.
Here are the results:
91% of our team are happier and more productive working four days a week This is a great piece of data for us — 91 percent of our teammates either agree or strongly agree that they are happier and more productive now that they work a four-day workweek, as for the remaining nine percent, on the scale they all selected “neutral.” This was our hope when we first started out experimenting with a four-day workweek and we’re thrilled that this is still the impact nearly two years later.
Most of our team is only working four days a week One of the most common questions we get is if we are really only working four days a week, and now we have the data to confidently say — yes, most of our team are only working four days a week, or they choose to work five shorter days, which is an option several parents felt better suited their families. In our most recent survey, 73 percent of Buffer teammates are only working a four-day workweek (or five shorter days which is an option). The remaining 27 percent said they are working more than four days, most commonly people work four and a half days and use Fridays to catch up on tasks. On Fridays we don’t schedule meetings and no communication via email, Slack, or Threads is expected of our team. Some people do choose to use it as an “overflow” day and that’s something we support as an organization assuming this doesn’t turn into overworking.
84% of our team are able to get all of their work done in four days a week Finally, we also wanted to know if teammates feel they can get all of their work done in four days a week, and 84 percent of our team either agree or strongly agree that they are able to get the work required of them completed in four days.This has been an adjustment as it isn’t easy to suddenly change the workweek, so each team and teammate have been experimenting over these last years to adjust their work, projects, deadlines, and expectations to be realistic with a four-day workweek. There’s always room for improvement but we’re happy to see this number as high as it is right now. We’ve communicated to our team that we know changing long-standing habits and expectations from a five-day workweek will take time. After all, we’ve worked our whole careers with a five-day workweek paradigm. So when we see responses in our survey about people who don’t feel like they can get all the work they need to do done in five days, it prompts us to question a few key things:

Is the workload reasonable for a 4-day work week?
Are these instances constant, or one-offs because of pressing deadlines or big projects?
Is there feedback we can provide to the individual or team to help streamline or work more efficiently?

We want the four-day workweek to apply to everyone equally, and since we apply this uniquely to different teams (like our advocacy team), we are open to creative solutions and re-iterating a flexible schedule. A four-day workweek, like remote working in general, requires trusting teammates to be honest about their work demands and workloads. It’s a dialogue between manager and teammate and something we encourage our company to continue to iterate on.
What we’re tackling in 2022
A question that comes up a lot with the four-day workweek is if there are any unexpected drawbacks or challenges. We’ve been wrestling with one in particular: how connected we feel as a team when you have fewer hours in the workweek to allow for casual conversations and team-building activities. In 2020, when we launched the pilot, we did intentionally reduce the number of hangouts and casual events to leave room for productive work in the week. We still have 1-2 team-wide events each quarter such as All Hands or Town Halls with our Executive team and those are recorded for anyone who cannot attend. Our engagement scores have decreased from the beginning of 2021 (employee net promoter score went from 33 to 19), which is something tied to many, many factors including team turnover, product direction, and external influences. One thing that has been highlighted in our surveys is the reduction in team-building events such as Zoom hangouts, guest speakers, and in-person events such as our retreat.For 2022, we’re diving back into more intentional team-building both asynchronously, synchronously, and the occasional in-person meetup where available. We still want to maintain a balance of productive work during our 32-hour workweek, but also have some purposeful events that are part of the larger building block of team connectedness. We’ll follow up with future blogs about things we’ve done in the past and initiatives we’re trying for 2022!
Where do you start?
Many companies are now exploring a four-day workweek and emboldening their employees to be flexible and efficient in their workweeks. We’ve been asked by a lot of companies were to even begin about experimenting with a four-day workweek—and here are our best resources and steps to kick off a discussion or test!

We tested it on a small scale (one month), with a few key survey questions to measure success.

We then rolled it out to a 6-month pilot trial, continually surveying our team and gathering objective productivity statistics (like lines of code written, customer satisfaction numbers, etc.)
We clarified and finessed how we approach a four-day workweek with our customer support team. (We alternate days off amongst our support staff so that we still have 24/7 in our customer support inbox.)

At the end of seven months of a four-day workweek, we felt enough momentum and positive reaction to commit to one more year of a four-day workweek, with added clarifications around the use of the 5th day as “overflow” and performance expectations for this as a perk.
After nearly two years, we’ve felt more confident than ever in our new systems, though we’ll continue to question, survey, and test out different habits to work efficiently and still bond as a company. We’re still working on the ideal balance of team engagement and events within the midst of a shorter workweek.

Even almost two years in, we still have a lot to learn about working four days a week. We’ll continue sharing as we go, and we’d love to hear from you! What questions do you have about working a four-day workweek? Send us a tweet!

We’ve all seen the cute dog videos that flood our Instagram feed on National Dog Day and the artfully shot latte photos for National Coffee Day. These holidays might not be celebrated the world over, but they can be fun way to engage online.  
In this post, we’ve outlined a calendar of all of the official (and slightly less official) holidays in 2022 to serve as a blueprint for your content, plus fun social media post ideas to jumpstart your brainstorm.
Let’s dive in ✨
Official Holidays
These are the holidays you might already know about, they often show up on your calendar automatically. A social media post for these holidays could be as simple as wishing your followers a happy [fill in the blank], alerting them to your holiday hours, providing a glimpse into how you’re celebrating with your team, or showing how your product fits into timeless holiday traditions.
 Brightland olive oil shared Thanksgiving recipes using its products. (Source)For observances, a great way to honor the group of people being recognized is to do your research and highlight relevant individuals or businesses. For example, we had a variety of posts for Black History Month, including a spotlight on Black-owned businesses and a call for followers to share their favorite Black social media marketers.
We celebrated Black History Month by highlighting Black businesses. (Source)January
January 1: New Year’s Day
January 17: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
February
Black History Month (U.S.)
February 1: Chinese New Year
February 2: Groundhog Day
February 14: Valentine’s Day
February 21: President’s Day
March
Women’s History Month (U.S.)
March 17: St. Patrick’s Day
March 18: Holi
March 27: Mothering Sunday (U.K.)
April
April 17: Easter
May
National Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (U.S.)
May 5: Cinco de Mayo
May 8: Mother’s Day (U.S)
May 30: Memorial Day (U.S)
June
Pride Month
June 19: Juneteenth (U.S)
June 19: Father’s Day (U.S. and U.K.)
July
July 4: Independence Day (U.S)
August
September
September 5: Labor Day (U.S)
September 15 – October 14: Hispanic Heritage Month (U.S)
October
October 10: Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day (U.S)
October 31: Halloween
November
American Indian Heritage Month (U.S)
November 11: Veteran’s Day (U.S)
November 24: Thanksgiving (U.S)
December
December 18-26: Hanukkah
December 25: Christmas Day
December 31: New Year’s Eve
Unofficial Holidays
There are a lot of unofficial holidays out there, this list covers some of the big ones that are most applicable to small businesses, but there are plenty more. It’s definitely worth taking a scroll through ALL of the unofficial holidays
January
National Mentoring Month (U.S)
A great way to start out 2022 is to share your experience with mentoring. You could also ask employees to share ways they’ve been mentored and create a slideshow in Canva with their quotes. Or, tag your own mentors to thank them for the impact they’ve had on you and your business.
Great North Air Ambulance tells a story of mentorship among its team. (Source)January 10: National Clean Your Desk Day
Looking at someone’s desk can be pretty fascinating. For National Clean Your Desk Day you could ask a few members of your team to take photos of their desks and share the desk accessories that they can’t live without.
February
February 13: Super Bowl Sunday
This day means pretty different things for different people, so think about what your audience might love most from you, whether that’s sharing some team spirit, delicious snack recipes, or ideas on what to do when you don’t want to be watching the big game.
March
March Madness
While March Madness is a basketball tournament, there are endless ways you could turn this into a fun social media game. Create your own bracket and use the Instagram Stories vote function to have your followers vote on their favorite. Tie it back to your business by pitting products against each other (a great way to get user feedback!).
Here, Food52 has a cookie tournament in the works. (Source)March 1: World Compliment Day
Do as the day says, and pay a frequent customer or neighboring business a compliment. Or, start a challenge for your followers to compliment a friend, co-worker, or stranger and post it.
March 4: National Employee Appreciation Day
This holiday is the perfect way to showcase your employees: Queue up a slideshow or multiple Instagram Stories sharing why they’re amazing. Not only will your employees appreciate it, but you’ll start (or continue) to build a culture of recognition.
March 8: International Women’s Day
On International Women’s Day, we asked followers to tag inspiring, impactful women. (Source)March 20: International Day of Happiness
Spread some happiness today by sharing a funny meme that always brightens your day or creating a hashtag (like #whatmakesmehappy) and featuring things that make you and your team happy. Ask your followers to join in and use the hashtag for some great user-generated content, too.
March 29: National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
Although the term “mom and pop shop” is less used these days, it’s still a great opportunity to celebrate your small business and others you love. In fact, use the holiday to share the companies you buy from. Create a slideshow and tag your favorites so your followers can buy from them, too.
April
National Volunteer Month (U.S)
Are there any causes that are near and dear to you? If you volunteer, whether as a business or on your own, shine a spotlight on the cause this month. In a video or long-form caption, share why the cause is close to your heart and a bit about your volunteer experience.
April 1: April Fool’s Day and International Fun at Work Day
April Fool’s Day pranks can be fun or fraught, so a safer approach might be celebrating how you have fun at work. Host a company lunch or mini-golf tournament and show your followers what’s happening behind the scenes. Or, ask employees what they’ve found the most fun about working at your company and share snippets—it might even help you hire new people!
April 22: Earth Day
Does your company value suppliers, partners, or products that focus on sustainability? Today’s the day to spread the word.
For Earth Day, Buffer showcased an organization that is working towards a more sustainable future, while tying it back to social media and building an engaged audience.(Source)April 28: Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day
Cute kids at work deserve their time in the limelight. You could stage photos of kids working at desks, kids taking or fulfilling orders, or greeting customers. Or, do an Instagram Stories segment asking the kids who come in what they want to be when they grow up.
May
May 21: Cultural Diversity Day
This United Nations holiday is the perfect time to share the cultural background and traditions that are important to you and your business.
PPG People honored the diversity of its employees’ backgrounds on Cultural Diversity Day. (Source)June
June 30: Social Media Day
This is a big one in our sphere! For Social Media Day you can showcase some of your favorite things you’ve posted in the last year or a big win that came from social media, or talk about the best posts you saw from your followers.
June 30: Work From Home Day
A lot more folks have experience working from home now, this is a good opportunity to share lesser-known or off-the-wall tips for being productive at home.
July

July 17: World Emoji Day
Fun fact, this date was chosen because the calendar emoji 📅 has a date of July 17th on it. There’s an existing community around World Emoji Day so this is a great day to get involved. You can share the top emoji for your brand/business or ask your community to vote on which emoji best represents you. 🛍
August
August 19: World Photo Day
This is a great day to share your favorite photo or start an Add Yours sticker on Instagram Stories.
August 21: World Entrepreneurs Day
For small business owners, this is a great day to highlight your journey so far and share anything you haven’t had the time to share yet. A few prompts: How did your journey start? What has been the biggest challenge so far? What’s next for you and your business?
September
September 26: Love Note Day
While this could be interpreted in a variety of ways, an easy way to jump on this holiday is to send a note to your customers or community. You can design a quick graphic in Canva, and write a heartfelt thank you to your customers for their support.
October
October 7: World Smile Day
Sometimes, these unofficial holidays just call for a simple photo. You can post a meme of an animal smiling, or showcase team members smiling big!
Smiling faces—what could be better? (Source)October 16: Boss’s Day
If you have managers who work at your business this is a great day to recognize them, or to ask a few teammates what they’ve learned from their boss. You could also share some of the best advice you’ve ever received from a previous boss.
November
National Entrepreneurship Month
This month is a great time to really dive into all things business. You could start a weekly “Ask Me Anything” series on all things entrepreneurship and answer any questions that your followers have about how and why you started your company.
November 19: Women’s Entrepreneurship Day
This day is all about recognizing women business owners. You could share wisdom from famous women entrepreneurs in your industry or highlight some of your favorite women-owned brands.
November 25: Black Friday
The biggest shopping day of the year always feels like a big deal, especially if your small business sells a product. If you’re offering a Black Friday promotion, let your followers know about it—you could even do a social media-only discount.
November 26: Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday is solely dedicated to shopping small. If you are a small business you could share top products or host a special giveaway. The main takeaway of today is to show off your small business and the customers that keep you going.
Partner with other small businesses to create a special giveaway. (Source)November 28: Cyber Monday
To round out the shopping weekend, you can talk about any e-commerce promotions you’re running, or offer a gift guide that curates a few of your favorite sale items.
November 29: Giving Tuesday
This is a wonderful opportunity to highlight charitable efforts or organizations that you support. We give back at Buffer every year, and love highlighting businesses like Frères Brachiaux, who donate 10 percent of their sales to homeless shelters.
December
December 14: Free Shipping Day
If you sell a product, this is a great day to offer free shipping today. You can post about the flash sale on all of your social media channels and frame it as an early holiday present or a way to get your loved ones their present in time for the holidays.
What Will You Celebrate?
The best way to go about deciding which holiday trends to jump in on is to consider your business and brand. What are your values? What do you sell? What matters most to your customers? Look for holidays and events that align with those aspects of your company and allow you to authentically showcase your business.
Most importantly, don’t feel like you have to post for every one of them. The goal isn’t to get overwhelmed by the options, but inspired by all the creative possibilities.
Ready to plan out your 2022 content calendar? See how Buffer’s scheduling tools can help.

Looking for the right marketing software that offers automation, campaign elements’ templates, analytics and more? Heard Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign are the best? Let’s see who’ll be the ultimate winner!

Peter Drucker once described customers as the “most important stakeholders.” While this may be true, your customers are dependent on one thing.
No, it’s not your product (though that’s definitely important). It’s actually your employees. Without your employees, products won’t get made, customers won’t learn about those products, and there will be no one there to sell or deliver those products, or provide customer service to them after they’ve purchased.

While your customers may be your most important stakeholders, in a business or organization, your employees are your biggest asset. Their performance, mindset, attitude, and loyalty can make or break your company’s performance and determine whether or not you will have any customers to sell to.
Because of this, you will want to ensure that your employees are meeting expectations, and improving in necessary areas. Performance management aims to foster the best possible employees so your organization can thrive well into the future.
What is performance management?
Performance management is a process that allows managers to assess their employees’ work and support of business objectives. The goal of performance management is to track and improve the skills employees need to perform their necessary job duties.
Elements of performance management include giving performance appraisals, utilizing key performance indicators (KPIs) and management dashboards, peer review, 360-degree feedback (multiple individuals from managers to subordinates assist), and the use of employee management software.
A similar term, performance appraisal, also focuses on goals and self-improvement, but is focused on the individual and does not take the strategic goals of the organization into account.
Performance management is not only important to the organization, it’s essential for the individual as many growth opportunities including bonuses, promotions, and ultimately dismissals, are tied to this process.
Effective Performance Management
Effective performance management will look different depending on your specific industry and your organizational goals. However, there are two approaches you can take to get started.
Behavioral Approach
This works well when your employees work (and achieve) as part of a team and measuring individual results is difficult to do. In this approach, you evaluate your employees based on their behaviors and effort. Feedback looks like identifying current behaviors, communicating desired future behaviors, and providing training or coaching to bridge the gap between where they are and where you would like them to be.
Results-oriented Approach
This approach is ideal when performance metrics are easy to quantify such as meeting a sales quota, clocking billable hours, or reaching certain call statistics. In this approach, you focus on the quality and quantity of the end result.
Performance Management Process
A performance management plan consists of a five-step process. Let’s take a closer look at the five steps.

1. Plan
While employees’ goals and responsibilities are outlined in the job description when they come on board, it’s essential to review this information with them regularly. Clearly set and communicated goals will help your employees understand what is expected of them and when they are falling behind.
2. Monitor
Management should be monitoring their employees’ performance continuously. If you only check in once or twice a year, a slight veer off the prescribed path could have lasting impacts on one’s performance. That’s why staying in constant communication with your employees, and keeping an open environment for feedback is essential all year long.
3. Develop
If you have identified areas of improvement for your employee, you can work with them to provide training, mentoring, educational courses, or other materials that can help them get back on track or fill any skill gaps.
4. Rate
Without a rating scale, it can be difficult to recognize whether employees are improving from their development plan. Additionally, with a rating scale that is communicated to employees, they know where they currently stand, and what is needed to move them to the next level of performance.
5. Reward
While every step of the process is necessary, the reward may be the most important. Positively reinforce employees who are hitting their goals or working towards them. Recognize them for their hard work and for striving to be better and do better for the organization.
This can be in the form of bonuses, thank you cards with token gifts, public recognition, or through an employee rewards program. It not only inspires the employee who is being recognized but motivates others who may need an extra incentive.
Remember that the performance management process is a cycle that must be continuously employed throughout an individual’s time at your organization.
You’re never “done” with performance management and this should be conveyed to your employees when they join the company, and then communicated to them throughout their employment. Without open communication throughout the process, employees may become complacent in their lackluster job performance or disengaged.
Performance Management Best Practices
This concept and process have been around for years and thankfully, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. There are a number of performance management best practices that you can incorporate into your plan.

Re-evaluate goals regularly. If there’s anything the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it’s that societal shifts can demand a new approach to business. Goals may need to change and clinging to old decisions in a new world could cause you to penalize (and lose) good employees.

Employ SMART goals. In order to be achievable, goals must be clearly defined and communicated, and Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Employees will be more likely to achieve goals when they are properly crafted.

Utilize the objectives and key results methodology. The OKR methodology can help your team set, communicate, and track organizational goals. This will foster accountability among your employees.

Have performance conversations throughout the year. Performance management conversations should not reveal any surprising information to the employee or manager. Ideally, managers are having open conversations with their team members about performance throughout the year, and performance reviews should serve as a check-in documenting performance over a specified time period. When you communicate regularly with each of your employees, they learn to expect constructive feedback and look forward to these encounters.

Standardize and automate your process. All employees should follow the same performance management process, and be held to an even standard. In addition to making the process fair, there comes a tipping point when you may have too many employees to manage throughout a continuous cycle, and having a set process and automated software solution to manage performance reviews can be a helpful asset.

While creating a performance management plan in your organization will take some time and effort, it’s a necessary process for a thriving organization. Knowing which employees are excelling in their roles and reaching (or exceeding) goals, which employees need more support is priceless information.

Social media platform LinkedIn has more than 800 million members, and has carved out a niche for itself among giants like Facebook and Twitter for its ability to connect job seekers and employers across the globe.
Less talked about, however, is the potential of this work-focused networking site for marketing, advertising, and sales opportunities. While it’s true that the primary purpose of LinkedIn is streamlining employment and recruitment efforts, the platform also supports more social connections and in turn, opens the door for targeted campaigns that speak to the needs of its specific user base.
The challenge? Measuring the impact of these efforts. Sure, visitors might see your ads on LinkedIn, but what then? How do you know if they subsequently stopped by your website, signed up for your newsletter, or actually made a purchase?
This is the purpose of the LinkedIn Insight Tag, more commonly called the LinkedIn Pixel. Here’s what you need to know about what it is, what it does, how it works, and why it matters for your website.

Worth noting? This isn’t a piece of third-party code — it’s provided by LinkedIn directly and is designed to streamline the process of connecting ads campaign data with LinkedIn user information. According to the platform’s official LinkedIn Insight FAQ, the tag shouldn’t impact website performance since it’s both lightweight and designed to load asynchronously with other web elements to reduce resource demands.

In effect, the LinkedIn Pixel works like a beacon that lets the platform keep sight of users after they click through onto your website and then provides a detailed report to help you measure the impact of your campaigns.
Of course, it’s worth mentioning the obvious caveat here: Always make sure you’re up-front about the use of the LinkedIn Pixel on your site. While user agreements with LinkedIn provide the legal framework to make using this Pixel possible without users having to opt-in on every webpage, it’s a good idea to be straightforward about your policies around data collection and use.
Otherwise, post-Pixel contacts may not go as planned if visitors start asking questions about where you got their information — and don’t like the answers.

Part of this process comes from basic website engagement metrics. Overall statistics about how many unique visitors your site sees each day, how many newsletter or email signups occur, and how many users move from browsing to cart to purchase all impact your broader marketing approach.
When it comes to drilling down and pinpointing target market segments, meanwhile, tools such as the LinkedIn Pixel are critical. Here’s why: As noted above, the social nature of LinkedIn skews toward business and employment, which means that marketing campaigns must take this perspective into account when designing any ads or promotions. While general data about conversions and customer contacts offers a generalized view of success across all platforms, it doesn’t tell marketing teams if LinkedIn-specific ads are effective.
The LinkedIn Pixel makes it possible to segment traffic and determine where visitors are coming from, in turn allowing your teams to see how many click-throughs and referrals come from LinkedIn and how many are from the web at large.
Ready to get the LinkedIn Insight Tag up and running on your website? Follow this step-by-step guide.

Now, let’s explore each step in more detail.
1. Sign into your Campaign Manager.

First, sign into your Campaign Manager. To do this, head to your personal or company LinkedIn profile and look for Advertise in the upper right-hand corner. Click it, and you’ll be taken to the Campaign Manager page.

2. Select Your Ad Account.
Now you need to select your ad account. In the example image below, there’s only one ad account but if you have more than one, make sure you’re selecting the one that’s associated with the right campaign and website.

3. Click on the Account Assets dropdown.
Once you’ve selected your account, look for the Account Assets tab on the right-hand side of the top navigation menu. Click it to get the next dropdown menu and select Insight Tag.

4. Select Install my Insight Tag.
If you don’t have any Insight Tags installed, click on the blue button that says Install my Insight Tag.

5. Decide how you’ll install the tag.
You have three options when it comes to installing your tag: You can do it yourself, send the tag to a developer or use a tag manager — such as Google, Adobe, or Tealium — to install the tag.

6. Copy the tag.
If you decide to do it yourself, click I will install the tag myself and then copy the code in the code box that appears.
7. Add the code to every page.
Now you need to paste the Insight Code tag on every page in your domain. LinkedIn recommends pasting it just above the closing HTML <body> tag in the global footer.
8. Check that the process worked.
Finally, head back to the Insight Tab page in your Campaign Manager and make sure your domains are listed. As noted by LinkedIn, this could take anywhere from a few minutes up to 24 hours.
Linking Outside the Box
The LinkedIn Pixel makes it possible to connect ad campaign performance with LinkedIn-referred traffic, in turn making it possible to better understand how your ads are performing and also allowing you to follow up with LinkedIn users to help drive increased conversions.
Ready to start linking outside the box? Opt for the LinkedIn Insight Tag.

According to a 2020 survey, most businesses have an average of 29 competitors. Do you know who yours are?

All businesses have competition — and knowing yours is key for innovating your products, services, and marketing strategies. But identifying the competition isn’t always obvious. Some are direct, while others may take more time to uncover.
Here, we’ll cover the three types of competitors to watch, and five ways to identify them.
3 Types of Competitors in Business
1. Direct competitors.
A direct competitor probably comes to mind when you think of your competition. These are businesses offering similar (or identical) products or services in the same market. They also vye for the same customer base.
Some famous examples of direct competitors include Apple versus Android, Pepsi versus Coca-Cola, and Netflix versus Hulu. But direct competition isn’t exclusive to well-known national or international brands. Two shoe stores in a rural town are direct competitors. So are a handful of realtors servicing one area.
Digital companies also see direct competition. For example, after the success of Twitter’s Periscope app, Facebook pivoted its focus to live video to keep up.
Since direct competitors sell similar products in a similar manner, this type of competition is often a zero-sum game — meaning, a customer that buys a competitor’s product won’t buy yours. For example, if you buy a hamburger at McDonald’s, it’s not likely you’ll swing by Burger King to buy another one.
2. Indirect competitors.
Indirect competitors are businesses in the same category that sell different products or services to solve the same problem.
For example, Taco Bell and Subway fall under the same category — fast-food — but they offer entirely different menu options. While they both seek to solve the same problem (feed hungry people), they provide different products to solve it.
Here’s another example — residential painters experience indirect competition with home improvement chains like Home Depot or Lowes. Again, the category is the same but the product offerings differ.
Indirect competition isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game. Consider someone buying supplies from Lowe’s to re-paint their home —only to do a sloppy job. They may call a local painter to fix the mistakes.
3. Replacement competitors.
A replacement competitor offers an alternative to the product or service that you offer. You both seek to solve the same pain points, but the means are different.
For example, a restaurant and coffee shop in the same neighborhood could be replacement competitors. Walking down the street, some customers may choose to grab a to-go lunch from the coffee shop, while others prefer the restaurant.
The idea here is that customers are using the same resources to purchase the replacement that they could’ve used to buy your offerings.
These competitors are potentially dangerous if there’s more than one way to solve the same problem you seek to resolve. Additionally, these are the most challenging competitors to identify. After all, we can’t read people’s minds and understand all the choices that led them to us.
But we can find other ways to uncover this information — such as requesting feedback from customers or keeping an eye on their social media mentions. With this insight, you can better understand your audience and identify your replacement competitors.
As you work to identify your competitors, you may discover more than you anticipated. Don’t get overwhelmed. Remember that not all competitors are built the same — some are less of a threat than others.
Now let’s discuss ways to identify the players above, below, and next to you.
5 Ways to Identify the Competition
1. Check the first page of Google.
An easy starting point is doing a quick Google search. Think of a few keywords someone might search to find you, such as [service or product] + [location]. For example, general contractor Sacramento.
Then, note the top companies on the first page of your search results. You may notice your keywords return thousands of results, but you shouldn’t stress. The most relevant section is the first page and the competition directly above and below you on it. Those tend to be your direct competitors.
2. Research targeted keywords.
Check the keywords you are currently targeting to identify other businesses targeting the same ones.
This is a solid strategy for finding your indirect competition since they likely target the same keywords. For example, the keyword “fast-food” may reveal Subway and Taco Bell — both indirect competitors —as the top two results.
3. Monitor social media conversations.
Opinions are aplenty on social media — so it’s relatively easy to find what your customers are saying. To find relevant conversations, enter your businesses’ name in the search bar and check the results.
For instance, someone may post a question to Twitter asking what hair salon they should visit in your city. A follower may respond with the name of your business, along with a handful of others.
You can expand your search beyond social media to include community forums, such as Reddit or Quora — along with review sites like Yelp. Both of these resources can reveal helpful insight into your customers and why they chose your business over the competition.
4. Perform market research.
Check the market for your product or service and note any companies with a competing offer. Market research can be done a number of ways — whether that be with a Google search, by browsing through trade journals, or by talking with your sales team to see what other companies are commonly brought up by customers (to name a few).
5. Ask your customers.
Customers are crucial to identifying your competition — after all, they likely sifted through most of them before landing on you. There are many ways to solicit feedback from customers — both online and in-person. That could mean striking up conversations while cashing them out or sending an email survey after each sale. One way or another, try to find the best approach and regularly check the feedback for any trends.
Every business has competition, and it pays to know the top players. But remember, as your business grows and evolves, so too will the competition. A direct competitor may go out of business, or an indirect competitor may become a direct one. All this to say, make a habit of routinely checking those above, below, and next to you.