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I hear people talk about the power of “story” in marketing.

The best marketers — and the best brands — are the ones telling the best stories.

However, I believe most brands are telling the wrong story… And it’s costing them millions.

So… Whose story are you telling?

Every story has four characters: the Hero, the Victim, the Villain, and the Guide. Understanding these roles is a game-changer for anyone looking to build a personal brand that actually connects with people.

Why?

Because how you show up in your marketing — whether you realize it or not — shapes how your audience feels about you.

The most successful marketers don’t try to be the hero of their stories. They step into the role of the guide. This small but powerful shift builds trust, shows you’ve got the goods, and makes your audience want to stick around.

Here’s why it is so important for you to be the guide and not the hero of the story you are telling.

The Four Characters in Every Story

1. The Hero

The Hero is the main character. They’re the ones taking on challenges, figuring things out, and striving for transformation.

We think of heroes as being strong. In reality, heroes in stories are actually weak. They doubt themselves. They make mistakes. They don’t know if they have what it takes. They don’t actually become heroes until the end of the story.

In your business, your customers are the heroes. They’re the ones on the journey, looking for answers to their problems. They are the ones who are struggling.

If you position yourself as the hero of your story, you are actually positioning yourself as weak.

2. The Victim

The victim is stuck, powerless, and unsure how to move forward.

While we can empathize with victims, they don’t inspire action. If your personal brand positions itself as a victim, it will come across as weak or unreliable — not the kind of person people turn to for help. There are real victims in this world, and you may even be a victim from time to time, but never play the victim in your branding.

It makes people feel sorry for you, but it doesn’t make them trust you.

3. The Villain

The villain causes the hero’s struggles. They’re selfish, dismissive, and all about their own gain. Nobody wants to work with a villain.

And yet, some brands unintentionally take on this role by being pushy, manipulative, or putting profits over people. In stories that we love, villains never win.

4. The Guide

The Guide is the helper. They’re wise, empathetic, and laser-focused on helping the hero succeed. Think Yoda from Star Wars or Haymitch from The Hunger Games. The guide isn’t the star, but they’re essential. They’ve been where the hero is, and know exactly how to help them win.

In fact, guides are actually the strongest characters in stories. They are the ones who have already won the day and don’t need to prove anything. This is the role your personal brand should play.

Why Your Personal Brand Should be the Guide

Being the guide means stepping out of the spotlight and letting your customer shine. It’s not about you; it’s about them. Even within your marketing.

This approach creates connection and trust because it shows you understand their struggles and you know how to help.

Take Apple’s marketing, for example. Their products are undeniably cool, but their messaging always puts the customer first. They don’t shout, “Look at us; we’re amazing.” Instead, they show how you can create, connect, and thrive using their tools. Apple is the guide, handing you the lightsaber so you can conquer your galaxy.

Or, look at Nike. Their slogan, “Just Do It,” isn’t about them. It’s a rallying cry for you to push through challenges and go for it. Nike’s role? They’re the trusted partner helping you get there.

How to Step Into the Guide’s Role in Your Personal Brand

The way that a guide shows up in a story is with empathy and expertise. They matter because they know the hero’s struggle, and already know how to conquer that challenge.

Think about Hamich in Hunger Games. He has empathy for Katniss because he was in the Hunger Games, but he also won, so he brings expertise to the table. If the guide doesn’t have these two qualities, they don’t belong in the story.

This is also true with your personal brand — and your customers can sense it.

If I go to a gym and say to a trainer, “I want to get is shape”, and they say “Me too,” they are not my guide. They’re demonstrating empathy, but I’m not looking for a friend. I’m looking for someone to help me succeed.

If I say the same thing to another trainer and they pull up their shirt to reveal a six pack and say, “Just have some discipline and work harder. It’s easy.” They are not my Guide, either. They may have authority, but they lack empathy.

If I say to a third trainer and say I want to get in shape and that trainer says, “I get it. Getting in shape is hard, especially with being so busy. I used to not feel great physically, but I’ve developed a tried and true way to get in shape and feel better physically, while still occasionally eating ice cream.” I just found my trainer.

You need to have both empathy and expertise to be the guide in your customer’s story.

How do you do that?

Lead with empathy.

Empathy is the secret sauce of trust. Start by letting your audience know you get it — you understand their challenges and what they’re up against. Speak their language and show you’re here to help.

Example: Instead of saying, “I’m an award-winning career coach,” try, “I know how exhausting it is to send out job applications and hear crickets. That’s why I’m here to help you land the job you deserve.”

How to do it:

• Start by naming their struggles and then talk about how you understand them.
• Talk about ways you were like them before you found a way forward.
• Speak to feelings like frustration, overwhelm, anxiety, or fear.
• Your messaging should always reflect what your audience cares about. Ditch the jargon and focus on their goals, frustrations, and dreams.
• Always lead with empathy. The old adage is true, “If they don’t know how much you care, they won’t care how much you know.”

Show you know your stuff.

Empathy is great, but people also want to know you’re the real deal. Don’t just tell them you’re an expert — prove it with results. Give a clear demonstration of your proven expertise.

Example: Share transformation stories. For instance, if you’re a business consultant, talk about how you helped a company boost revenue.

How to do it:

• Share before-and-after case studies.
• Show real numbers and data to back up your expertise.
• Create content that teaches your audience something valuable.
• On your website, show awards, certifications, media spotlights, statistics, or logos of big companies you’ve helped.

The only time you should ever talk about yourself in your marketing is when you want to show empathy for your customer’s problem, and evidence of your expertise to show you can solve their problem.

That’s it.

Anything else just positions you as the hero of the story. Your customer may be impressed by you, but they are looking for a guide, not another hero.

It’s About Them, Not You

Building a personal brand that’s all about being the guide isn’t just a smart marketing move — it’s a way to genuinely connect with people. It’s about saying, “I see you, I understand what you’re going through, and I’m here to help.” The specific way you do that is by offering empathy and showing expertise.

So, here’s the big question: Are you positioning yourself as the hero, or are you stepping up as the guide? Stop trying to tell your story and invite your customers into a story where they get to be the hero. Because when they win, you win.

It’s officially the holiday season. If the majority of your workforce is hybrid or remote, like we are at HubSpot, that means it’s time to come up with a few virtual holiday party ideas for your team.

Let’s face it — traditional in-person holiday parties were arguably easier to plan.

Just order some festive food and drinks to the office (or gather at a local restaurant), throw on some holiday music, let folks mingle for a few hours, and everyone generally left satisfied.

However, hybrid work presents some new challenges.

I’ve pulled together some virtual holiday party ideas and included a few tips from remote HubSpotters on how to host a hybrid or virtual holiday party with ease.

Table of Contents

• How to Plan a Virtual Holiday Party
• Virtual Holiday Party Ideas
• Expert Tips for Hosting a Hybrid Holiday Party

How to Plan a Virtual Holiday Party

The key to planning a successful hybrid or virtual holiday party is the same as one of the most important principles of marketing: knowing your audience. You want it to be engaging for your team, so that’s going to take some prep work.

We’ll get into the list of virtual holiday party ideas in just a moment, but I’ll start you off with five steps to get your party in motion.

1. Pick a good hosting platform.

The platform you use for your virtual holiday party can either make or break the experience, so you’ll want to pick a good one.

Zoom and Microsoft Teams are the most common options for hosting virtual gatherings. Some companies like Confetti and CourseHorse also allow you to facilitate virtual holiday parties on their platforms (for a fee if your budget allows).

My recommendation? If you already use a video conferencing for regular work activities, stick with that one. Your employees are comfortable with it, and you’re likely up to speed on what your hosting capabilities are.

And if you’re planning to include people outside of your organization, integrations like this one with Zoom make it easier to extend the invite externally.

2. Decide on the date and time.

In my opinion, you have about two or three weeks during the holiday season to schedule your party. I’d aim for earlier in December.  The closer you get to the end of the year, the harder it is to get people together.

Consider placing a calendar hold for the party a few months in advance, so your employees can plan around it. No worries if you don’t have all the details yet. You can always fill them in later.

Also, do it on company time, and limit it to two hours or less. The end of year wrap-up circus is a wild one, and your holiday party shouldn’t add any unnecessary stress.

I’d aim for a 3pm start time and plan to wrap it up by the end of the day.

3. Choose the right activity (or activities).

When planning the agenda for your hybrid or virtual holiday party, keep it light and fun. And when in doubt, provide options so people can choose their own adventure.

For example, Zoom lets you set up breakout rooms. You could have one room with an activity (e.g., holiday paint and sip), one with an experience (e.g., virtual self-care session), and another space where people can just hang out and chat.

That way, there’s a little something for everyone.

Tip for hybrid teams: One way to encourage engagement between in-person and remote guests is by placing them in groups or pairs. For example, if you play any virtual holiday mini-games, mix your teams up by location.

4. Make it optional but encouraged.

When you share the virtual holiday party invite with your team, don’t make it mandatory.

I know you may be worried that people won’t show up to an optional event, but things tend to be a little less fun when you feel like you have to be there. At least for me.

If you design a virtual holiday party that people want to attend, you won’t have to worry about attendance. And if you give folks enough notice, they’re more likely to participate.

5. Set the scene and have some fun with it.

The last step on the list is to make sure your virtual holiday party feels like an actual party.

Have some light holiday music playing in the background. Encourage your team members to use holiday-themed virtual backgrounds or dress in holiday gear.

Maybe even send them a festive treat to enjoy during the party — like a hot chocolate kit or holiday cookies.

The right ambiance will draw people in and make them stay.

Tip for hybrid teams: Create a shared experience for all attendees so everyone feels included. For example, if your in-person decor includes paper snowflakes and vanilla candles, consider sending virtual guests a smaller-scale version of these items for their home office.

Virtual Holiday Party Ideas

Now, onto the fun part. I scoured the Internet, bothered my colleagues, and dug deep into my memory bank of holiday parties past to give you 21 virtual holiday party ideas to consider this year.

P.S. The ones with a 🎄 are some of my favorites:

1. ‘Anything’ Presentations 🎄
2. Holiday Recipe Swap 🎄
3. Virtual Self-Care Session 🎄
4. Holiday Card Writing 🎄
5. Ugly Sweater Contest
6. Virtual Scavenger Hunt 🎄
7. Holiday Paint and Sip
8. Virtual Escape Room
9. Holiday Cooking or Baking Class
10. Virtual Talent Show
11. Holiday-Themed Trivia
12. Virtual Coffee, Tea, or Wine Tasting 🎄
13. Home Office Holiday Decorating Contest
14. Holiday Movie Watch Party
15. Holiday Guessing Game
16. Virtual Gift Exchange
17. Name That (Holiday) Tune 🎄
18. Virtual Team Awards
19. Virtual Holiday Mini-Games
20. Holiday Icebreakers
21. Early Holiday Break 🎄

1. ‘Anything’ Presentations

You probably weren’t expecting the first virtual holiday party idea on this list to be focused on presentation building, but hear me out.

Last year, the HubSpot Blog team organized a holiday mixer where everyone had an opportunity to share a two-minute presentation on anything.

It was so much fun that we’re bringing it back this year for round two! From Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules to “What makes a good karaoke song?” — truly, no topic is off limits.

How to Execute It

• Ask team members to put together a two-minute presentation on a topic of their choosing. Give them at least two weeks of notice to prepare.
• Include a few presentation options for inspiration. They can present live with some storytelling, put together a presentation deck, or record their presentation to share.
• Before the holiday party, put everyone’s names into a random name picker, and choose the presenter order by drawing names. (It’s a lot of fun to do this live, but you can also jot down the order in advance.)
• If someone doesn’t have a topic prepared, you reserve the right to assign them a low-pressure topic (e.g., favorite vacation, best day of the week, etc.) to present on the spot.

Here’s a sneak peek at the instructions we received this year:

2. Holiday Recipe Swap

Holiday recipe swaps are great because of two reasons:

1.  It’s a quick way to add to your personal recipe collection, and
2. People usually contribute their favorites based on taste, convenience, or tradition.

In other words, you’re almost guaranteed to get some good ones. Plus, it’s a low-lift virtual holiday party option that’s pretty easy to execute.

How to Execute It

• Ask everyone to submit one or two of their favorite holiday recipes and compile them into a document. Bonus points if you have time to organize them by type (e.g., appetizer, main, side, dessert).
• During your holiday party, encourage each member of your team to introduce their recipe and why it’s special to them. If you want to take it a step further, encourage participants to cook a sample of their recipe to present (and eat).
• Circulate the document before or after the party so everyone can browse the list and try new meals over the holiday break.

3. Virtual Self-Care Session

The holidays are a time to relax and unwind.

Give your employees a head start by bringing in a virtual yoga instructor, facilitating some guided meditation, or encouraging them to take time during the party to do something they enjoy off-camera.

How to Execute It

• Decide which activities you’ll focus on. You can use resources like Let’s Roam to set up a virtual yoga session or YouTube to access free relaxation and meditation videos (see example below).
• You can also send a team poll to see which activities they’re most interested in. You may even have an employee who’s willing to lead a self-care session.
• During the party, host a full group session or consider using breakout rooms so people can pick which sessions to participate in or rotate between a few.

4. Holiday Card Writing

There are a couple of different ways to incorporate holiday cards into your virtual holiday party. Your employees can write some for their teammates.

Or you can use the time to write holiday cards for a good cause like Caring by Card does for nursing home residents.

How to Execute It

If you want to do an internal holiday card swap:

• Use an online generator to randomly pair teammates to write cards for each other, and let everyone know who their partner is ahead of time.
• Then, ask them to write a holiday card to exchange with their partner during the party. Sites like American Greetings let you create and send virtual cards, but you could also use one of Canva’s free holiday card templates.
• When folks join the meeting, you can put the partners into breakout rooms to facilitate the exchange. Then, you can bring everyone back together for an optional show and tell.

If you want to do holiday card writing for a cause:

• Find a cause you want to support. Charities like Caring by Card and The Angel Card Project can help you get your greeting cards into the hands of those who need them the most.
• During the party, you and your employees can spend time writing holiday cards for good.

5. Ugly Sweater Contest

This one’s a classic, and it requires little to no planning on your part.

To host a virtual ugly sweater contest, simply ask everyone to wear their ‘ugliest’ holiday gear for the festivities. Employees can make their own or pull something questionable out of their old winter clothes bin.

If you do make it a contest, consider offering a prize like a gift card or a work perk for the winner. Extra vacation hours, anyone?

How to Execute It

• Announce the contest in advance to give people enough time to prepare, and include a reminder in your holiday party invite.
• During the party, do a show-and-tell of everyone’s ugly sweaters. You could also use some time during the holiday party to allow guests to create them in real-time.
• Then, allow people to vote for their favorites. Zoom’s polling feature is a good option for this. The person with the most votes wins. Or if you have a larger team, you can have first, second, and third-place winners.

6. Virtual Scavenger Hunt

There are so many different ways to integrate a scavenger hunt into your remote holiday party. You can pick from tons of templates online and adapt them for virtual use.

But my favorite way to do this is to focus the hunt on items around the house. The first person to bring back an item related to your prompt wins.

Some prompts may include:

• Grab something you decorate your house with for the holidays.
• Bring back something that rhymes with ‘tree.’
• Show us something red that you use for work.

How to Execute It

• Create a list of prompts (similar to mine above) before the party. You could consider crowdsourcing ideas from your team and selecting them at random.
• During the party, the host announces the prompt and notes who finds the item first in each round. The person who wins the most rounds gets a prize. (When I’ve done this in the past, prizes have included gift cards or free company gear.)
• You can also hold time after each round for an optional show-and-tell if people are interested in sharing more about the items they found.

7. Holiday Paint and Sip

A virtual paint and sip party is an informal way for your employees to test out their holiday art skills. Everyone gets a canvas, some paint, and a few brushes to try and recreate a picture of your choice while enjoying a beverage of theirs.

It does require you to provide the supplies, but you can find low cost options on Amazon or from craft stores like Michaels. You could also consider giving your employees a small stipend to gather their own materials.

Plus, companies like Online Paint & Sip offer cost-friendly pre-recorded classes that you can screen share with your team to facilitate the experience.

How to Execute It

• Purchase a pre-recorded class or hire a live instructor to lead the paint and sip experience on your desired day and time.
• Send the paint supplies to all participants ahead of the event.
• Spend your virtual holiday party painting and socializing with your colleagues, and encourage everyone to enjoy their favorite drink while they work.

8. Virtual Escape Room

Escape rooms are fun team-building activities because they require you to solve a time-sensitive puzzle — like a series of riddles or mini-games — to accomplish a goal.

The last time I visited one in person, we had to follow a set of clues to find a hidden key that allowed us to break out of the room before time ran out. We got an hour to complete the mission. (And we got out in 59 minutes, ha.)

Companies like Puzzle Break, Mystery Escape Room, or The Escape Game allow you to host these at home and online.

How to Execute It

• Pick your virtual escape room experience, and include instructions to join the game in your holiday party invite.
• Then, break your team out into groups. Keep in mind that some platforms limit games to 10-15 people, while others allow for larger groups. You may need to schedule multiple escape rooms to accommodate your team.
• Kick off the party, and let the games begin. Once everyone is done, you can bring the full team back together for a fun debrief on how things went. And you could even offer a prize for the team(s) who escape the fastest.

Source

9. Holiday Cooking or Baking Class

Personally, I love holiday parties that involve food, and that can be hard to do in a remote setting. If you choose to do a cooking or baking session for your virtual holiday party, you have a few options.

You can hire a chef to lead the class, ask someone food-savvy on your team to volunteer, or host an unstructured cooking/baking hour.

How to Execute It

• Check out an online cooking class service like Cozymeal to book a team slot, or pick a recipe (or offer a few options from this list) on your own.
• Add the participation instructions and ingredients list to your holiday party invite. Make sure you give people enough time to pick things up. Bonus points if you can provide a small stipend to purchase the ingredients.
• When everyone joins the virtual party, the chef or team lead will walk them through the meal prep process in real-time. For more informal gatherings, just let everyone know when it’s time to start cooking.
• Eat, drink, and be merry with your teammates. Participants can ask questions and chat amongst themselves while they cook.

10. Virtual Talent Show

Calling all singers, dancers, and talents in between. Another virtual holiday party option is to host a talent show. Give your team members an opportunity to show off what they’re good at — outside of work, of course.

You’ll be surprised how many hidden talents you uncover. And you get to learn more about your colleagues and what makes them special.

How to Execute It

• Ask everyone to submit their talent ahead of time, and create a schedule for the event. Depending on the size of your team, you may want to impose a time limit (e.g., 2-3 minutes per act).
• Delegate a host to emcee the talent show and introduce each of the participants in order of performance.
• If you feel inclined to make it a contest, you can use the polling feature on your platform of choice to let people vote for their favorite acts. However, I’d recommend treating it more like a showcase so everyone feels comfortable participating.

11. Holiday-Themed Trivia

Holiday trivia is another traditional choice and usually a crowd-pleaser. You can snag trivia questions from across the web or use a formal platform like Kahoot to test your teammates’ knowledge on all things holiday fun.

How to Execute It

• Compile your trivia questions or choose your online trivia game. If you use a platform like Kahoot, most of the work is done for you, and employees can join the trivia game from their own computers. Be sure to include any access info in the holiday party invite.
• If you’re creating the game yourself, build a trivia slide deck and put each trivia question on its own slide. Share your screen during the party, cycle through each question, and ask participants to drop their answers into the chat.
• Whoever submits the correct answer the fastest wins the round, and the person who wins the most rounds gets a small prize.

12. Virtual Coffee, Tea, or Wine Tasting

Tastings of any kind are sure to be a hit at your next virtual holiday party.

Companies like Driftaway (for coffee), Open Door Tea (for tea), and In Good Taste (for wine) allow you to send samples to all of your employees, and they provide instructions on how to conduct the tasting from home.

How to Execute It

• Decide on which type of tasting you’ll facilitate. It’s always a good idea to get input from your team to ensure maximum enjoyment. And if you’re going to host a tasting that involves alcohol, make sure you have a non-alcoholic option available for those who don’t drink.
• During the party, have the host guide the team through the tasting experience based on the instructions provided for each sample. Some companies offer professional guides, so you could also bring in an expert to do this part.

13. Home Office Holiday Decorating Contest

I always think of meticulously decorated cubicles for contests like these, but this is very much transferable to virtual settings.

By now, remote and hybrid employees have set up some type of space in their homes to do work — whether it’s the kitchen table or an actual desk. This gives your employees an excuse to decorate their homes and get into the holiday spirit.

How to Execute It

• There aren’t many rules here. Let your employees know you’re holding a holiday decorating contest, and ask them to bring their ‘submissions’ to the holiday party.
• Admire everyone’s decor via Zoom or Teams and vote on a winner (or two). And if you have the budget for it, reward the winner for their design skills.

I have to say, this one below might be hard to beat. But if you’re looking for more inspo, take a browse through Pinterest.

Source

14. Holiday Movie Watch Party

A holiday movie watch party is one of the best ways for your team to turn their brains off. Send around an employee survey to ask for movie favorites, and consider offering multiple movie options in different breakout rooms at the party.

How to Execute It

• Decide which movie (or movies) you’ll play. Load it up using one of your personal streaming accounts or ask a few team members to contribute theirs.
• Happy watching! Screen share the movie in one large group and/or designate multiple people to share a movie in each room.

15. Holiday Guessing Game

This one is similar to holiday trivia but it’s more of a who-said-what guessing game. You can source fun holiday facts from your team and turn those into questions.

To help with sourcing, try conversation starters like ‘What’s your favorite holiday memory?’ or ‘What’s the best holiday movie?’ Then, during the party, let your employees guess which fact belongs to which teammate.

How to Execute It

• Build a guessing game slide deck and put each fun fact on its own slide. Share your screen during the party, cycle through each fact, and ask participants to drop their guesses into the chat.
• Reveal who the fact belongs to and give that employee the option to share more details with the team.

16. Virtual Gift Exchange

The season of giving calls for a gift exchange.

Apps like Elfster make Secret Santas easier than ever to execute. Users can even create wishlists so gift-givers have a few items to choose from.

This ensures everyone is happy with their receivables (and it takes some of the pressure off the Secret Santas, too).

How to Execute It

• Use a tool like Elfster to invite your team to the gift exchange. Set a spending limit (e.g., $15 or less) and ensure you give your employees enough time to brainstorm and send a gift to their exchange partner.
• You can choose to have everyone present their gift items during the holiday party or use that time to reveal the pairs and make the virtual exchange.

17. Name That (Holiday) Tune

A spin on the show Name That Tune, this virtual holiday party idea is for music lovers. If you choose this activity, you get to listen to holiday music and inspire a little friendly competition among your coworkers.

How to Execute It

• Break everyone into small teams (2-4 people), and have each team choose their own name. Jot down all of the team names, and choose a captain on each team to keep score.
• Play a short clip of a holiday song for the first team. Make sure you brainstorm a list in advance and have as many queued up as possible.
• Give the team a time limit to guess the title and artist of the song. Give them one point for each correct answer. You can also choose to open the song up to the group if the selected team guesses incorrectly. Then, the first team to get it right wins the point(s).
• Repeat for as many rounds as you’d like. The team with the most points wins.

18. Virtual Team Awards

Why not use your virtual holiday party as an opportunity to recognize your team’s hard work throughout the year? It’s the perfect time to show your employees some love.

You could even make it fun. Rather than only focusing on task-based achievements (such as top performer or most organized), try to incorporate superlatives (such as most likely to make work fun or best at small talk).

How to Execute It

• Create your list of awards and/or superlatives. Then, circulate a poll via Google Forms or a tool like Doodle and ask your employees to vote for their teammates in each category.
• Use the party to reveal the winners of each award or superlative. Allow time for each winner to give a brief speech of appreciation.

19. Virtual Holiday Mini-Games

From Gingerbread Wars to Quiplash, the holiday mini-game opportunities are endless. Sites like Team Bridge have a full suite of social games for remote teams of all sizes and interests.

If you want to keep things simple, you can set up a bingo game with premade holiday bingo cards (or build your own on Canva). You could also use skribbl.io to play Pictionary.

How to Execute It

• Pick a handful of games and designate game ‘hosts’ in breakout rooms. Let your employees join whichever activities they want throughout the party.
• Consider leaving the main room open so that people who aren’t game lovers can mix and mingle.

20. Holiday Icebreakers

If you’re using your virtual holiday party as a team-building opportunity, try pulling together a set of holiday-related icebreaker questions and popcorn-ing them around the virtual room.

Here are some ideas:

• What’s the best gift you’ve ever given someone?
• Do you prefer apple pie or pumpkin pie?
• Name your least favorite holiday movie or song.
• Would you rather have wet socks or no jacket in the winter?

How to Execute It

• Gather a list of icebreaker questions, and drop them in the chat during the party. Pass the question around to each teammate until everyone answers.
• Repeat!

21. Early Holiday Break

I may have actually saved the best for last. Instead of hosting a formal party, tell your employees to sign off an hour or two early before the holidays.

Sometimes the best virtual holiday party is no virtual holiday party at all.

How to Execute It

• Let folks know ahead of time that you’re closing up shop early so they can prepare accordingly. Then, do not work during the designated holiday time off. 

(I mean it. Yeah, I’m looking at you, overachiever.)

Ready to put one of these virtual holiday party ideas into practice? Take note of these tips from remote and hybrid HubSpotters as you prepare to host your party.

1. Pick a goal.

When you‘re planning your virtual holiday party, decide what your goal is. For example, it’s hard to play a game while also getting to know each other. But if your goal is just to have fun, a game might be the perfect fit.

Caroline Merewether, a hybrid senior director of product strategy and ops at HubSpot, says, “The biggest takeaway is to figure out if it’s more about deepening relationships or playing a game.”

One of Merewether’s favorite events her team put on was a virtual escape room.

“It was fun to do something different, and that was a nice mental shift. But it wasn’t great for getting to know people because we were trying to solve for clues. For our next party, we wanted to drive conversation between us,” she adds.

For her team‘s next virtual holiday party, they’re sending everyone international candies to try, hosting a costume contest, and playing some online trivia.

Jeff Boulter, a remote staff technical lead at HubSpot, decided to combine the interactive activity with a way of getting to know each other via an interactive trivia game.

To start, Boulter sent out a Google Form with a mixture of icebreaker questions. A few examples included:

• What was your first online handle or email address?
• What‘s the weirdest job you’ve ever had?
• What’s your least favorite song?
• What’s an unusual skill you have?

Then, they used a free online trivia site called MyQuiz.

Here, the answers were either picking one person from their squad (whose least favorite song is “It’s a Small World,” for example) or picking the correct answer amongst three other made-up answers.

The picture below is an example of what one of the questions looked like.

2. Plan in advance.

It’s also important to give yourself enough time to plan your party. Send invites ahead of time, finalize the agenda, and test-run activities before the big day.

Eimear Marrinan, the VP of culture at HubSpot (and one of our hybrid employees), says, “The end of the year is busy. Really busy! Give people advanced notice and book time in advance.”

She continues, “A lot of people are juggling right now, so being protective of time is important. Similarly, be mindful of caregivers on your team, or anyone that may have blocked time in their day.”

Navigating team calendars is always tricky, and it’s even more difficult around the holidays. Make sure you plan accordingly. Otherwise, you may have a few no-shows.

3. Use a spreadsheet to stay organized.

There are a lot of logistics involved in hosting a virtual holiday party.

Kara Korosec, a remote senior customer success manager at HubSpot, emphasizes the power of a good spreadsheet for staying on top of your plans.

“I used to coordinate Secret Santa at my last company, a 100% remote company,” says Korosec. “I set up a spreadsheet where everyone listed some of their interests. Then, we used a random generator to make assignments.”

Korosec continues, “Everyone had a budget of $50 and used the spreadsheet as inspiration for what to get. After the gifts were mailed, we had a Zoom where we shared our gifts and guessed who our Secret Santa was.”

Ah, the power of spreadsheets.

4. Tap vendors to make it interactive.

Virtual events might automatically feel a little hands-off, but this doesn‘t have to be the case. In Korosec’s Secret Santa example, they opened the gifts on a live Zoom call.

The goal here is to be creative.

Marrinan says, “There are a ton of amazing remote vendors and minority-owned businesses that we partner with on the Culture Team, and they are doing amazing work.”

I’ve already mentioned a few options like Cozymeal and Online Paint & Sip above, so as Marrinan notes, “If your budget allows for it, consider outsourcing to the experts.”

5. Incorporate food and drinks.

Providing food and drinks is typically part of in-person holiday gigs. So why can’t this be true of remote holiday parties, too?

If your budget allows, treat your employees to a holiday lunch with a digital gift card from Uber Eats or DoorDash.

If you’re planning to provide food in any capacity, Marrinan shares some important (chicken) nuggets of advice:

“Ask questions if you’re incorporating food and drinks. Are there allergies or preferences? If you’re arranging a cocktail hour, does everyone drink alcohol? This is all about being inclusive in how you’re arranging your event.”

Refreshments give people a reason to celebrate and enjoy the party. Make sure you’re aware of any restrictions so everyone can indulge.

Speaking of inclusivity …

6. Always lead with an inclusive mindset.

A major obstacle to remote meetings is making people feel included. And at HubSpot, inclusivity is at the core of our company culture.

Marrinan suggests, “We are working in a distributed and remote world right now, so when thinking through a holiday event for you and your team think big and think global.”

She continues, “Will the timezone work for all on your team? Do ‘The Holidays’ resonate across the globe? Make sure you plan something fun and inclusive that everyone can get involved in.”

7. Send something physical.

Just because your event is remote, doesn‘t mean you can’t include a physical element in your virtual holiday party.

“Can you send something out to the team in advance to spur some excitement? This doesn’t have to be a physical gift — maybe it is a handwritten card or a note of gratitude,” Marrinan shares.

“A holiday event doesn’t have to be a big, big thing. Sometimes it’s the simple acts of kindness that go a long way for people.”

‘Tis the Season for Virtual Holiday Parties

Holiday parties are fun and festive events, and hybrid or remote companies can still keep that tradition alive. Use these virtual holiday party ideas to unwind and celebrate with your team.

Morale will be all the better for it.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Many years ago, as a new online business owner, content cadence was tough for me to understand. I didn’t know how many blog posts per week were ideal or the best posting cadence for social media. But today, that’s no longer the case.

If you’re a marketer or business owner who’s clueless about content cadence — or unhappy with the results of your posting cadence — don’t worry. You’re not alone, and you’re in the right place.

In this post, I’ll explain what content cadence is, how to determine the best posting cadence for your business, and how often marketers publish content. I’ll also share my tips on how often to post blogs, videos, and social media content.

Table of Contents

• What is content cadence?
• How to Determine Content Cadence
• How often do marketers publish content?
• How often should you post content?

How to Determine Content Cadence

The right content cadence can increase engagement with your target audience, keep your brand top-of-mind, and also generate more leads. But there’s no one size that fits all. The best posting cadence for you may be wrong for others, and vice versa.

To determine the right content cadence for you, I’ve identified eight actionable steps you need to take.

1. Know and understand your target audience.

Without a solid knowledge and understanding of your target audience, you’ll most likely get your content cadence wrong.

So, identify your target audience first, and learn everything you can about them. For example, what age range do they belong to? What’s their gender, marital status, income bracket, passion, hobbies, likes and dislikes, and so on?

2. Identify relevant topics to write about.

You can get your content cadence right when you create content on topics that grab and keep your target audience’s attention. For example:

• Write about topics of interest to them.
• Create content that provides solutions to their problems and challenges.
• Give them the information they are searching for.
• Answer their questions.
• Provide tips and tricks that can help them succeed.

3. Determine the types of content to create.

Take everything you know about your target audience into consideration and create the right type of content for them. Do they love short-form or long-form content? Or do they prefer video over text?

Also, don’t forget that members of your audience won’t be at the same stage of the buyer’s journey at the same time. As a result, they will need different types of content depending on their current stage.

This means you need to be ready and able to provide content like blog posts, in-depth guides, case studies, white papers, videos, and so on.

4. Choose the right platform.

The success of your content cadence will also depend on using the right platform.

Are you going to publish on your blog or on social media platforms? Once you’re focused on your target audience, you can’t go wrong. In other words, my tip here is to go where your target audience is.

I know it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the many platforms and posting times and content types and what goes where and when, but the best advice I received on this was always: start small, but start!

If you’re just getting started on social, for instance, choose one platform and then expand after you’re comfortable and have established your content cadence there.

Or, if you already have an existing presence or cadence and you’re just tweaking things, you can also take that slow and introduce your new posting cadence gradually.

5. Identify the right content frequency.

Content frequency is an important part of content cadence, and it refers to the volume of content published within a specific period of time — for example, how many blog posts per week, per day, or even per month?

For best results, consider a frequency that won’t overwhelm your audience.

Or you.

6. Know the best times to post.

Posting content on the wrong day or at the wrong time can mess up your content cadence and reduce engagement.

I recommend you find out the specific days and times your audience is most active on different platforms. Then, try to post with this in mind.

If you’re just starting out with posting content, check out the resources in the next section to help you get started with scheduling.

On the other hand, if you already have a content calendar and just want to change your content cadence, you could slowly shift your content into a new slot you’ve chosen.

I find being methodical and making small changes is the best way to do this. Then, you can test your posting time and iterate from there (I’ll share more on that below.)

7. Create a content calendar.

Once you know your topics, content types, the right platforms, and content frequency, you need to create a content calendar.

A content calendar (aka editorial calendar) is a documented plan or schedule of all your upcoming content, where you plan to publish, and when.

A content calendar will give you an overview of all your tasks in advance, help you track and complete each one on time, and keep you organized.

Without an editorial calendar to help you juggle all these moving parts successfully, getting your content cadence right might feel unwieldy at first.

To help you hit the ground running, you can start with HubSpot’s free content calendar templates.

I have used these templates as a starting point for my content calendars for years, and whether you use one of them out of the box, or tweak it and make it your own, I always appreciated this as a solid starting point.

Without a calendar, your efforts are pretty much wasted (you’ll lack focus and strategy, trust me!), so I encourage you to take the time to make friends with your content calendar.

8. Experiment, audit, and tweak.

Identify key engagement metrics that will be measured for each platform. Then, experiment and publish relevant content for a set period of time. Next, audit your audience’s behavior and review your content’s performance.

For example, you can conduct a:

• Website audit to assess your blog and web pages.
• Social media audit to review your social media channels.

After your audits, you‘ll have comprehensive information and a detailed analysis of your content’s performance and audience’s behavior.

If you achieved your desired level of engagement, then you’ve found the right content cadence for your business. But if not, use relevant insights from your audit report to tweak, optimize, and iterate on all your earlier steps. Then, experiment again until you achieve your goal.

Remember, content cadence varies for every organization.

How often do marketers publish content?

To answer this question, HubSpot surveyed over 1,200 marketers to determine how often they publish content across various channels. The results showed that:

• 34% of marketers publish content multiple times a week.
• 33% publish content once a day.
• Only 13% reported publishing content multiple times a day.
• 10% said they publish weekly.
• 6% said multiple times per month.
• 4% said once a month or less.

But which posting frequency is the most effective?

• Most marketers (35%) who publish once daily described their 2022 marketing strategy as effective.

However, 33% of the marketers who publish multiple times a week said their marketing strategy was effective, 39% described the same cadence as neither effective nor ineffective, and most (43%) described it as ineffective.

For me, this just reiterates the advice I shared earlier: how often you should post content really depends on when and where your audience is most active online.

How often should you post content?

Next, I’m going to share a few tips for posting blog, video and social media content. You can also use what you learned from your experiments and audit to inform your decision-making here.

How often should marketers post blog content?

I think how often you publish a blog post will depend on various factors, such as:

• Your goal
• Your target audience preferences
• Your budget and resources
• Your blog’s age and size
• Number of new and old posts on your blog

For example, if your main goal is to boost organic traffic, I recommend posting optimized content as frequently as possible.

Consider educational content like how-to’s, listicles, and campaign round-ups to keep your blog posts fresh and consistent.

Running out of ideas? Check out 101 blog post ideas for inspiration.

For organic traffic, I think:

• Small blogs should post new content 3-4 times a week.
• Larger blogs should post new and updated content 4-5 times a week.

If your goal is to raise brand awareness, you likely won‘t need to post as often as you would for organic traffic. That’s because you need to focus more on building your brand‘s voice than on boosting numbers.

You’ll also need to diversify your posts and provide more informative content to boost brand awareness.

Therefore, for brand awareness:

• Small blogs should post new content once or twice a month.
• Larger blogs should post new and updated content 3-4 times a week.

How often should marketers post social media content?

With so many social media platforms out there, how often you post depends on the platform, how it works, and when your target audience is active there. But here’s what I recommend as a jumping-off point:

Facebook

Post multiple times a day, especially between 12 PM and 3 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

Instagram

Post multiple times a day from 12 PM to 3 PM or from 6 PM to 9 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

LinkedIn

Post multiple times per week from 3 PM to 6 PM on Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

X (formerly Twitter)

Post multiple times a day from 12 PM to 3 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

TikTok

Post multiple times a day between 6 PM and 9 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

Pinterest

Post multiple times a day from 12 PM to 3 PM on Thursdays and Saturdays.

How often should marketers post video content?

Video consumption has risen over the years and is still going up. For instance:

• 89% of consumers want to see more videos from brands in 2024, according to Wyzowl.
• In 2023, companies hosting their videos on Wistia saw video plays jump by 15% and total watch time soar by 44%.

According to Kyle Denhoff, senior director of marketing and audience development at HubSpot:

“There are two changes in the market indicating a need for more video content.

First, the search landscape is being disrupted by AI. Second, we’re seeing a shift to a video-first consumption of content for audiences.”

In short, consumers are watching more and more videos, and marketers can use that to their advantage.

How often you post videos will vary depending on the following factors:

• The platform and how it works.
• Your target audience’s appetite for video content.
• Types of video content.
• Length of the video.

Here are my tips for maximizing your video content output.

Post content on:

• Your blog. Every time you publish a new blog post, find a way to incorporate a video. For example, your blog post can be repurposed into a video and published within the post itself or somewhere else on the blog. This way, your audience can choose to read the post, or watch it as a video, or both.
• YouTube. Post videos three times a week, or daily, if you can. But if not, posting once a week is also a good starting point.

• Other social media platforms. Consider videos as part of your social media content, and use the posting frequency discussed earlier for each platform.

Pro tip: If you need a quick way to maximize your video content output, try HubSpot’s Clip Creator, a free AI-powered tool that converts text to video.

Getting Your Content Cadence Right

As I’ve discussed here, content cadence varies from one business to another, and there’s no reason to copy others blindly.

At the same time, using industry benchmarks — and your own experiment results — will really help you nail the right cadence for you.

Above all, I encourage you to experiment. Establishing the right posting cadence isn’t always a quick process, so give yourself time to try things out, iterate, and see what works.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2022 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If you’re sipping an oat milk latte as you read this, you’re in luck.

Keep reading to learn the secret sauce (er–milk?) to Oatly’s killer guerilla marketing strategy.

Find out why global chief creative officer fired the entire marketing department, why Oatly is a big fan of posting their lawsuits online, and Brendan Lewis’ belief that growth marketing needs to be “neutered, if not totally destroyed.” 

Lesson 1: Put creatives at the forefront.

Brendan Lewis, Oatly’s EVP of global communications and public affairs, says it all started when global chief creative officer John Schoolcraft was tasked with turning a small Swedish milk company into a global sensation.

His first step towards world domination? Firing the entire marketing department.

Then he took the creative department and put them at the center of the business. The creative team is involved in everything, from sales meetings to supply chain meetings.

Lewis says this allows his team at Oatly to ignore traditional marketing tactics in favor of feeding off the moment, and allows them to be more transparent with people.

A prime (and hilarious) example: When the Spanish dairy lobby sued Oatly over its ad proclaiming, ‘It’s like milk, but made for humans‘ ad, Oatly didn’t get defensive. It just posted the entire lawsuit online.

Or, my personal favorite: FckOatly.com — Oatly’s website dedicated to gathering all their bad press and negative comments in one place.

It’s like if Yelp one-star reviews had a baby with the worst Reddit trolls, curated by Oatly themselves.

Lewis tells me the meetings about FckOatly.com were some of the most hilarious of his career. There are countless permutations of FckOatly.com (like FckFckOatly.com, and on, and on) and if you follow it to the end, you’ll find a phone number you can call to register your displeasure.

None of which he ran by legal.

“And now,” He concludes with a mischievous grin, “When our marketing doesn’t land, it’s just more content for FckOatly.com. So everybody wins, even when we lose.”

Lesson 2: Don’t let growth marketing dominate your strategy.

A favorite rant of Lewis’ is his belief that growth marketing needs to be “neutered, if not totally destroyed.”

“It’s nothing more than spreadsheet marketing,” he tells me. When marketers are buying clicks and perfecting their emails for click-through rates, Lewis says they’re leaving out an essential ingredient: emotion.

“If you water down your message to optimize it for clicks, you lose your soul,” he tells me without a trace of grandiosity. “The emotion and the belief has to be there. It can’t just be somebody looking at email click-rates all day.”

(Got it – I‘ll stop obsessing about this email’s subject lines…)

For Oatly, this means taking the leap without testing it to death first. Like in 2023, when the company bought billboards in Times Square to proudly endorse its climate label. (The Oatly team invited the dairy industry to join them. They declined.)

The secret sauce? Oatly is a mission-led company that happens to sell oat milk; it’s not a product-led company in search of a mission. So its leaders are able to act on impulse and hunch as long as they know their messaging caters to their larger goal of promoting sustainability.

Lesson 3: Good marketing is like free-falling from outer space.

When asked which brand he looks to for inspo, Lewis spitfired a quick response: Red Bull.

Endearingly known as a “heart attack in a can.”

Lewis’ eyes light up when he talks about them: “They don’t do product marketing. They’re all about lifestyle and people jumping from outer space. They get people talking.”

They do, and so does Oatly. And while maybe we all can’t find the budgets (or the adrenaline-junkie volunteers, for that matter) to fling humans from the edge of space, there’s something to be said for pushing the boundaries of our marketing campaigns to connect with people emotionally… CTRs be damned.

This week’s master is always down for some fun, and he’s got the receipts to show it.

“The most fun brand in the world hired us to make them fun,” he grins. “We’re certified fun and we can prove it.”

Case in point: When I asked Chandler Quintin for an interview, I failed to mention what it was for (I’d blame Monday brain, but it was a Thursday) and he still gave me more laughs and insights than I could squeeze into this blog.

Lesson 1: Have an entertainment strategy.

“People are subject to marketing all day long, whether we ask for it or not,” says Chandler Quintin. I immediately think of scrambling for the mute button on the gas pump that’s blaring ads at me. Is no place sacred?

“If it’s at least interesting to watch and checks a box of ‘Hey, I didn’t mind seeing that,’ then everybody’s life will improve because we won’t be so inundated with boring stuff.”

Quintin fully believes we’re at what he calls “the peak of white noise on most platforms.” (And that goes double for you, B2B marketers.)

Do you use an ad blocker? Does your thumb have lightning-fast “skip ad” reflexes? Do you scroll past sponsored posts on LinkedIn? Well, so does the audience you paid so much to reach.

Quintin believes that the best way to cut through the white noise is to make content fun — and that one day soon marketing departments will have entertainment strategies the same way we now have editorial strategies.

“Now, I do want to clarify that when I say fun content, I’m not saying all of it has to be funny.” Funny is just one kind of fun, and fun looks different for different brands.

He gives the example of a campaign Video Brothers created for an outsourcing company. On the fun-ness scale, outsourcing usually ranks somewhere around popcorn kernels stuck in your gum line. Quintin and his team created an ad suite that focused on bleeping out the word “outsource” like a curse word. By tackling the taboo of outsourcing head-on, their ad stood out from competitors that danced around the topic.

But he emphasizes that the keyword is still “strategy” — you need an overarching plan for a well-connected marketing campaign based on audience insights.

“It’s not just about making one flagship piece of content and relying on that, it’s building a strategy around the fun content.” The outsourcing series, for example, was built on direct knowledge of customers’ attitudes toward their industry.

“Think less about the marketing and more about the people on the other end. What things might they be interested in?”

Lesson 2: Think less about marketing and more about people.

For Quintin, good marketing is all about people.

Even if you’re B2B, you’re not actually selling to a business, right? You’re selling to a CMO, a director, a manager — and, contrary to the jokes, those are people.

And the thing about people is that they’re not thinking about your great new feature. They’re thinking about meeting deadlines, or what’s for lunch, or getting the kiddo to band practice.

“A lot of marketers focus on product, features, benefits, all the things that their product or service can do,” Quintin says. “And, 9 times out of 10, the audience is just looking for a pain to be solved. They’re not getting excited about this new integration.”

For most businesses, this means not leading with your brand or even your product or service. Instead, lead with something your customers can connect to… then connect the dots to your product or service.

And, bringing it full circle, that’s also how you find the entertainment value.

“When you look at what pain your audience might have — that you’re solving for — there’s probably some humor or something clever within that pain, right?”

Lesson 3: Engage with the people who engage with you.

While you’re busy figuring out how to connect with your audience, don’t forget to actually connect with your audience.

“The number one thing you can do to maximize any budget you’re spending is to simply engage with the people who are engaging with you.”

And he’s not just talking about reactive engagement, like answering social messages or responding to emails. That stuff’s a given. He’s talking about proactive outreach to the people who interact with your business presence. Quintin himself sends a message to anyone who views his LinkedIn profile or watches a video he posts.

“We have booked almost 80% of our calls through simply engaging with people that engage with us versus them going to our website and filling out a form.”

And I’m a living testimonial to this tactic. Thursday morning, I’m sipping tea and cruising LinkedIn in search of marketing masters. (I do it for you! Well… not the tea. That’s for me.) Minutes later, Quintin messaged me asking for help because he was upside down. (See the hero image above.) Friday morning, we’re scheduling an interview.

Quintin acknowledges that this takes effort.

“It does take a lot of time. There might be some ways to automate it. But at the end of the day, I think people can kind of see through automations a little bit. Especially when you’re trying to make an authentic connection. The bar for that is: Just be authentic. Be a human being.”

But the return is worth the effort.

“If you only have $1,000, you’re going to be able to turn that $1,000 into the power of five or 10,000 if you just go that extra mile and engage.”

Throughout our interview, the conversation kept returning to two points: Being human. And having fun. That seems to be the soul of Chandler Quintin, who smiles as he drops the moral of our story:

If you commit to making fun content “the worst that can happen is someone remembers your brand.”

The SEO landscape has been a rollercoaster lately, and many marketers and SEO specialists are doing their best to hold on. However, HubSpot’s Senior Director of Global Growth, Aja Frost, remains optimistic about the future of SEO as new competitors enter the arena.

“In fact, I think the arrival of new competitors is one of the most exciting developments in the last two years,” she says. “For so long, we have all just been oriented toward Google and reverse-engineering the Google algorithm in many ways that have stifled innovation in content marketing and SEO.”

If you‘re unsure how to change your approach to keep up with the ride of SEO marketing, I’ve got you covered with five tips from Aja Frost on navigating the future of SEO.

AI is your tool, not your replacement.

I‘ve repeated this so many times in previous blog posts, and you might be sick of hearing it, but I promise it’s true— marketers must see AI as a tool or a marketer’s best friend and not as a replacement. And Aja agrees.

“AI tools excel in research, organizing ideas, outlining, and providing the scaffolding for a great piece of content,” she says. And she’s not just talking about written content like blog posts or emails; AI can also lay the groundwork for top-notch videos and images.

But here‘s why they can’t replace you, according to Aja.

“AI tools are not as strong as humans in the actual development of the content itself,” she says, “such as taking an idea or a concept from good to great and turning it into the full-fledged post or taking that proof of concept for a micro app.”

And that, says Aja, is where you, the human marketer, must color the lines and make content that pops. Think of it as you’re Batman, and AI is your Robin.

Marketers need to evolve beyond just information content.

Google’s algorithm has been … tricky… to say the least. However, one thing has been consistent through all its changes: its preference for unique, expert-driven content that humans can only craft.

So, when you’re creating content that you hope Google will pick up and push to users, consider going beyond typical clinical information and thinking creatively.

“Differentiate your content away from basic informational types and look for deeper, more nuanced, and complex questions that require human expertise,” Aja says.

You might think, “But does expert-driven content even matter in a world where people can just ask ChatGPT? Doesn’t that render SEO useless?” Well, no!

Aja explains, “I don’t believe 90% of queries will be on AI search engines. Searcher behavior is ingrained, and there are lots of jobs to be done and tasks that still require traditional web searches.”

Aja recalls when the SEO industry was in a tizzy over the prediction that up to 50% of queries would be handled by voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa.

“Now, the only things I ask my Alexa for are the weather and to set a timer, so I definitely wouldn’t write traditional searches off,” she says.

Expertise and authenticity matter.

As I said earlier, expert-driven content is a must for SEO-optimized content. But what should that look like? Do you just write that you’re an expert in your blog post and hope for the best? No, according to Aja.

“Using the first person doesn’t automatically equal expertise,” she says. “It requires explaining why the author is uniquely positioned to give advice.”

For example, whenever I write about topics I have personal experience in, I bolster my expertise by:

• Sharing personal professional anecdotes
• Linking to my work or website
• Sharing scenarios that shaped me as a marketer and content creator

So, when you‘re establishing yourself as an expert in your content, find ways to highlight your expertise. Show, don’t just tell.

Diversify your portfolio.

Like many SEOs and content marketers, you may notice some steep dips in organic traffic as the SEO landscape shifts. Trust me when I say we’ve been there. Fortunately, Aja says diversifying your portfolio can address the issue.

“Look for more defensible sources of demand,” she says. “For HubSpot, it’s YouTube and micro apps, but it could be Substack for another company.”

Aja also says doubling down on working with creators could benefit your audience.

“It’s about saying, ‘If Google is really changing, then where else are we investing?’” she says.

No channel is a dead channel.

Don’t be quick to write off a supposedly “dead” channel when diversifying your strategy.

“What bugs me is when people say any channel is dead,” Aja says. “Search is not dead, and neither are podcasts nor any other channels. You can make any channel work really well if you understand your persona.”

AI has gone mainstream. 

Although the technology is still evolving, it’s already changing how we work. With the help of AI-powered tools, us workers can automate a variety of tasks, from drafting email subject lines to understanding search performance. 

If you’re curious about where AI is going — and how you can leverage it — I’ve listed 7 of my AI predictions for 2025.

1. Efficient and specific use of AI will give companies a competitive edge.

Our 2024 AI Trends Report found that 53% of respondents think fully implementing AI/automation at their company will bring unprecedented growth. 

I agree with this opinion, but to take it a step further, companies that will achieve this growth in 2025 will be the most strategic and efficient implementors of AI.

The AI-powered processes and tools they use will be specific to their business needs, which is a stark contrast to when the proverbial AI boom started, and many were using it in any way they could (which made sense because it was so new). 

How to Stay Current

There are so many AI tools out there, so how do you narrow your focus and choose what works best for you? Here’s my advice: 

• Catalog the processes that help your business run and identify areas that can be streamlined and improved with AI, and areas where implementing AI will give your employees time back to focus on critical parts of their role. 
• Give the tools you use a ‘testing period’ to ensure they work for the processes you want them to work for and that they’ll perform as you need if implemented.
• Create clear use cases, outline where and how AI should be used, and provide general guidelines for usage so employees know exactly how to get the greatest benefit and use AI to their full potential. A great example of this is creating an AI prompt glossary.

2. Personality-driven and human-led content will win. 

I’m not surprised that AI has entered the search space; it’s helpful. AI-powered search engines and AI overviews (AIO) in Google results have already changed how search works. 

But while AI is helpful (and despite how I’ll later talk about AI as a secret weapon for SEOs), businesses in 2025 have to remember that people still want to hear from humans, and personality-driven content will win. 

Take me, for example. I read AI overviews, but I scroll past them for more information. I want a first-person perspective or experience to really help me make a decision.

How to Stay Current

I think this quote from Holly Bowyer and Julie Neumark, partners at Media & Marketing Minds, said it best: “Don’t get so seduced by [AI’s] shimmer that you neglect ‘human intelligence.’ You need to be at the helm in order to maximize the efficiency AI brings.” 

My best advice for meeting this need is to follow Google’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust (EEAT) framework to create content that AI tools can’t replicate. 

Understand the true intent behind consumer searchers, and use your subject matter experience and expertise to create helpful and useful content that answers what they’re looking for.

Your content should be filled with your personality and first-person perspective that can’t be found elsewhere (or replicated by AI). All of this helps you build trust, and trust inspires people to come back. 

Some other things to do: 

• Conduct original research and offer thought leadership that establishes your site as a primary source for new information. 
• Write for other websites to build up your authority
• Create content around follow-up queries that dig deeper into subject matters so you can truly flex your expertise. 

3. AI will give content marketers a significant lift.

Artificial intelligence isn’t close to writing the next New York Times bestseller (although I feel we’re due for a scandal like this sometime soon), but it can streamline many content marketing tasks. 

Next year, I predict that content marketers will become even more empowered by AI, which will help them execute repetitive tasks like coming up with ideas, writing rough drafts, and summarizing large amounts of data.

For example, the algorithms behind AI tools can do a lot of the legwork in gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information from across the web.

How to Stay Current

My advice:

• Use AI tools to research your market, target audience, and industry to make data-backed decisions about the type of content you should create and the channels you should create it for. 
• Overcome the creative blocks that many of us content marketers are troubled with and use AI to find and brainstorm content ideas that align with your content strategy. 
• Use AI-powered analytics tools to understand the performance and effectiveness of your content marketing. These data-driven insights will help you understand what went right and what to optimize for better results in the future. 

If you use AI as part of your content marketing strategy, don’t forget what I mentioned before: consumers still want a human perspective.

Using a gen AI tool to write a blog post and then publishing that post without any edits or personalized insight isn’t the best way to service your audience. Leverage it as a first-step tool, and always input your perspective and insight.

4. Consumers will demand more personalization, and AI will deliver.

78% of marketers say personalization has a “strong” or “extremely strong” impact on customer relationships.

While creating these experiences with older marketing techniques and technology was once extremely difficult, AI has opened the door to more pinpointed personalization opportunities. 

We’re already seeing heavy AI personalization in the marketing industry. For example, many tools allow brands to send marketing emails with names and personalized information based on contact list information.

In retail, consumers regularly get emails or e-commerce recommendations for certain products based on what they’ve recently viewed or purchased.

In 2025, businesses will use AI to take personalization a step further, especially for solid one-to-one personalization. 

How to Stay Current

AI is definitely used to help us “get things done,” but it can also help scale, personalize more, and find target audiences easily.

Here are some ways to stay up on this trend:

• Use AI to build in-depth buyer personas and ideal customer profiles that help you understand exactly who your customers (and potential customers) are and how you can best reach them with outreach strategies, dynamic content suggestions, etc., that directly align with their interests and needs.
• Process customer data with AI in real-time, such as pages visited or products viewed, and adjust marketing content, messaging, and recommendations based on these insights on a customer-by-customer basis for an individualized experience.

5. Responsible AI is a requirement.

Talking about using AI for personalization is a perfect segue into my next prediction for 2025: companies embracing responsible AI practices and prioritizing privacy. 

AI systems rely on data to make decisions, and the data comes from various sources, such as social media posts, online databases, public records, and general online activity (e.g., posting a review on Yelp). Sure, this process seems harmless enough, but it reveals a lot about a person’s life. 

So, any time you collect customer data (especially individualized customer data), you need to be careful. Customers trust you to use (and store) it safely, responsibly, and exactly as you promised. 

The data these AI systems rely on can also be biased because society is biased. The data it has access to likely isn’t representative of entire populations, so it can produce results that uphold these biases. 

To boil it down, consumers are wary of AI, especially about how businesses use it to process their data, and you’ll have to stay aware of that sentiment. 

How to Stay Current

Things you can do include: 

• Be transparent about how you use AI for your customers. If you use it to analyze their data, make that clear and easy to understand. If opting out is an option, make that clear. 
• Be clear about how you’re using AI to service your customers. 
• Train your AI tools with diverse data sets to ensure outputs are representative and inclusive. 
• Prioritize customer safety and data protection to make sure any data you have about your customers is used and stored safely.
• Educate yourself and your employees on responsible AI use and enforce your safety practices. When people know how to use AI, they’re more likely to do so safely.

6. AI will become a secret weapon for SEO strategists.

AI can automate necessary but time-consuming tasks for SEOs, like keyword research, competitor analysis, and website optimization. 

Those using it for this have already seen the benefits: Campbell’s Soup started to use AI-powered SEO automation to compress 75,000 images in a single day. This helped the brand rank on page one of SERPs for 4k keywords within a few weeks. 

Because it benefits web traffic and results, I expect investment in AI-powered SEO tools to grow. 

How to Stay Current

To stay current and use AI in your SEO strategy, you can use tools to: 

• Monitor search data to uncover trends and topics
• Conduct keyword research and understand search volatility, search volume, and level of ranking difficulty for keywords
• Understand keyword success and pages with positions you can improve
• Detect and fix technical issues to optimize page experience and UX (technical audits)
• Analyze site metrics like page views, clicks, and bounce rate
• Generate structured data and schema markup

A new element to SEO optimization is ensuring your site appears in LLM search engines and AIOs. Our new AI Search Grader can help you do exactly that by analyzing your site to see how visible it is in AI-powered search engines, how it’s being talked about, and where you can improve. 

7. AI will fit naturally into the daily lives of all workers, not replace them.

People were worried, and some still are, about AI leading to a reduction in human-led jobs. The more than likely reality, going into 2025, is that it will fit more naturally into the daily lives of all employees, not replace them.  

It will complement the work we do and supercharge the skills we already have. I’m not alone in this belief: 60% of our survey respondents say that, in marketing, they see AI working in conjunction with marketers and assisting them in performing most of their job duties. 

How to Stay Current

Those who embrace this technology — and integrate it into their workflow— can maintain a competitive edge while saving time in the process. Here’s how you can stay up in a world where AI is more embedded in our daily work requirements, 

• Build a baseline understanding of how AI works and helps us do our jobs, regardless of industry. 
• Learn from others’ experiences with AI and how they’re applying it at their jobs, or how similar businesses to the one you work at are adopting it. 
• Think about how it will benefit you, specifically in your current role, and how you get things done.
• Test out and try different AI tools and how you can leverage them in your day-to-day role to help you supercharge your abilities.

 As John McCarthy, one of the fathers of AI, once said, “As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.”

Back to You

It’s 2024, and AI has gone mainstream. There’s no denying its potential to transform a variety of industries, and marketing is no exception. It can help companies create more, scale faster, and build more personalized experiences.

But to pull it off, marketers must stay agile as they embrace and innovate with AI.

Of all the real or AI-generated rounds so far, this one’s the toughest yet — I challenge you again to spot AI-generated content and select human-made pieces.

From text and images to videos and music, I’m throwing examples that will make you question everything.

Let’s see how many you can get right. The answers are at the bottom. But, no cheating, please.

1. Is this photo real or AI?

2. Was this said by a real person?

 

3. Is this audio story narrated by a human or AI?

 

4. Is this bird image AI-generated or a National Geographic shot?

5. Is this painting AI-generated?

6. Is this passage human-written or AI?

They picked a way among the trees, and their ponies plodded along, carefully avoiding the many writhing and interlacing roots. There was no undergrowth. The ground was rising steadily, and as they went forward, it seemed that the trees became taller, darker, and thicker.

There was no sound, except an occasional drip of moisture falling through the still leaves. For the moment, there was no whispering or movement among the branches; but they all got an uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched with disapproval, deepening to dislike and even enmity.

The feeling steadily grew, until they found themselves looking up quickly, or glancing back over their shoulders, as if they expected a sudden blow.

7. Is this ad AI-generated or real?

8. Is this audio story narrated by AI or a human?

 

9. Which bike is AI-generated?

A

B

10. Is this video filmed by a real camera?

Answer Key

1. AI — The photo is AI-generated with Gemini.
2. REAL – The voiceover is by marketing expert Camille Moore. It’s taken from this TikTok video.
3. AI – Generated by ElevenLabs
4. AI — The image was made using AI, Gemini in particular.
5. REAL – The painting called Noosphere was created by artist Emanuel Schulze.
6. REAL – The passage is from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.
7. AI — The soundtrack was generated by AI through Suno.
8. AI — The ad was created by AI with Clipchamp.
9. REAL – B is narrated by Victoria Gordon.
10. A is AI-generated by ElevenLabs, while B is narrated by Victoria Gordon.
11. REAL – The video was filmed by a drone. The creator is Andreas Eholst, and you can check it out here.

Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better.

As an inclusive marketing strategist and consultant, one of the things I talk about consistently with my clients is brand values.

Many of them want to win over a bigger and more diverse customer base, but I have to make it clear that those efforts won’t be successful or sustainable if they don’t practice what they preach since brand values are now an important part of consumers’ purchase decision strategy.

In fact, HubSpot’s Consumer Trends Report found that 82% of consumers want to engage with and buy from brands that share their values. I’ve even found that I use my credit card as a form of activism and intentionally buy from brands whose values are ones I believe in and want to reward.

My hot take is that, despite its importance, most brands don’t do a very good job of showcasing their values, but those that do it well do it well. Read on to find some high-quality examples from brands that stand out.

How Smart Brands Demonstrate Their Values to Consumers

Brand values are usually developed when leaders are building a brand and determining a mission, vision, and or purpose. When I work with clients on this, we often do it in the context of revisiting and revising their mission, vision, and brand values, to make them more inclusive.

In this episode of the Inclusion & Marketing podcast, I do a deep dive of why values are so important to building an inclusive brand, but the gist is that consumers care deeply about brand values because it signals whether or not a brand cares about the same things they do.

A recent study even found that ¾ of shoppers stopped buying from a brand based upon a conflict of values.

So, given its importance, how can brands make their values clear and speak to customers that share their same beliefs?

My top tip is to show, not just tell. Consumers can read your mission, but those words are just lip service if you don’t show how those values are lived. I recommend focusing the majority of your efforts on highlighting how your brand practices its values

The brands that do this well do it with content on their websites and social media channels. Below I’ll go through some examples of brands that I think do a stellar job of making their values clear to consumers.

1. Ben & Jerry’s lives values through activism.

Ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s makes it clear from first look on its website that it cares about a whole lot more than just selling ice cream. The brand leans hard into activism, and considers it core to achieving its mission of linked prosperity.

From its hero image, to the ‘Activism’ highlight on its Instagram profile and playlist on TikTok, the brand makes it clear to anyone engaging with its assets that it is very involved in the causes it cares about. It also encourages its customers to get involved in supporting those causes as well.

Ben & Jerry’s values: human rights & dignity, social and economic justice for historically marginalized communities, and environmental protection, restoration, and regeneration.

2. Patagonia lives values through large scale donations.

Since 1985, outerwear maker Patagonia has pledged to donate 1% of sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment..

In 2022, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard “gave away” the company by donating his majority stake (worth millions in profits every year) to an environmental charity, holding true to its values by touting that Planet Earth is its only shareholder.

It also features an “Activism” section in the main navigation of its website, which highlights how itgoes about achieving its mission to “Save our home planet.”

Patagonia’s core values are: quality, integrity, environmentalism, justice, and not bound by convention.

3. Seer Interactives lets consumers know they are a B Corp.

A B Corporation Certification is a designation that signifies a brand upholds standards of high social and economic performance, accountability, and transparency on important factors (like fostering an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy) related to a company’s social and environmental impact.

Seer Interactive is a marketing agency that leads with messaging around its B Corp status right in the description in search engine results.

The brand goes deeper by sharing its B Corp status with a page clearly visible in the main navigation of its “About Us” page.

The brand also highlights some of the charitable work they do as part of its values on its social channels.

Seer Interactive’s values: uplift others, pursue truth, and strive to be better than yesterday.

4. The Home Depot and Tory Burch highlight their support of communities.

Supporting the communities of the customers they serve is important to a lot of brands.

The Home Depot has a long history of investing in the Black community as part of its work to live its values. For example, its Retool Your School Program has provided grants to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) for the past 15 years.

The program is featured prominently on its brand’s website (shown above), and with content on its YouTube channel (image below).

The Home Depot’s values: creating shareholder value, entrepreneurial spirit, taking care of our people, respect for all people, doing the right thing, build strong relationships, giving back, and excellent customer service.

Fashion brand Tory Burch focuses on community and support through the Tory Burch Foundation, which has a number of programs designed to empower women entrepreneurs, including through a fellows program, providing access to capital, education, and other online resources.

On its Instagram account, you’ll find a direct link in the description to the Tory Burch Foundation account, where you’ll find lots of details about all the work the brand does.

Tory Burch’s values: empower women (expressed as the company’s purpose).

5. Warby Parker has baked its value of giving back into its business model.

If you buy a pair of glasses from Warby Parker, a pair of glasses are distributed to someone in need. Because this aspect is core to its business model, it’s something the brand doesn’t hesitate to communicate about, hence why it’s featured on its homepage.

It also clearly highlights this in its social media profiles, especially on Instagram, as shown in the image below.

Warby Parker’s values: inject fun and quirkiness into everything we do, treat others the way you want to be treated, pursue new and creative ideas, do good, take action, presume positive intent, lead with integrity, and learn, grow, and repeat.

6. Michael Graves Design has baked accessibility and inclusion into its product offerings.

Michael Graves Design is known as the most accessible design brand, with its focus on designing for all and enhancing lives, regardless of age or physical ability.

Thus the mission and purpose of the brand is fulfilled with the actual product the brand produces. As such, with every product launch, collaboration, and promotion, it showcases how it is living its values and purpose because they are intertwined.

The brand itself doesn’t necessarily talk a lot about inclusion on its website and social channels, because consumers know it because it is baked into the product. For many, that’s what attracted them to the brand in the first place.

In this interview on the Inclusion & Marketing podcast, I spoke with Ben Wintner, CEO of Michael Graves Design. During our chat, we go deeper into how the brand is meticulous about living its values.

Michael Graves Design’s values: delightful, purposeful, pioneering, and extraordinary.

Tell Your Customers How You Live Your Brand’s Values

Customers won’t know what you stand for or the good you do if you don’t. It isn’t about being performative. Rather, it’s about highlighting the positive impact you are making in a way that inspires others, and helps the customers who share your values find you.

I’m much more the “spend Black Friday at home in my pajamas” type, but I have a few family members who for some reason enjoy getting up at 4 a.m. to wait in lines for doorbuster deals.

Online or in-store, consumer or marketer, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are formidable forces.

HubSpot polled 250+ people to discover how shoppers and brands fared on Black Friday 2024. We last ran this survey in 2022, so we’ll take a look at how things have changed in the last two years.

(One note on our data: Our 2022 poll had 325 respondents, and our 2024 poll had 250 respondents.)

I’ve also got some marketing tips on creating Black Friday ads and some examples to get you thinking creatively about next year’s campaign.

Table of Contents

• What We Learned About Black Friday Shoppers & Brands in 2024
• 4 Tips for Creating Effective Black Friday Ads
• Black Friday Campaign Ideas

What We Learned About Black Friday Shoppers & Brands in 2024

You already know that the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday are some of the biggest shopping days of the year, but let me set the scene with a few quick stats:

• $235: The average amount spent specifically on holiday gifts during Thanksgiving weekend (National Retail Federation)
• $925: The average amount that Americans are planning to spend during the 2024 holiday season (NerdWallet)
• 197 million: How many U.S. shoppers made purchases between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday 2024 (National Retail Federation)
• $13.3 billion: How many dollars U.S. consumers spent on Cyber Monday 2024 (Adobe Analytics)
• 1950%: The increase in traffic to online retail websites from 2023 to 2024 (Adobe Analytics)

Here’s what we learned from our survey about Black Friday 2024:

1. The “Browse But Don’t Buy” effect has increased.

Virtual window shoppers are on the rise. According to our research, there’s an equal split (34% each) between people who purchase something after clicking an ad and those who click but don’t buy. That’s up from 2022 (27%), suggesting that consumers are evaluating deals more carefully.

We’re also seeing more passive deal-hunters this year, which might suggest that shoppers are more opportunistic and less strategic than in past years.

2. Digital advertising dominates — but don’t abandon social media.

We asked where respondents saw the Black Friday ads that they clicked on.

In 2022, social media (32%) and online ads (33%) were nearly equally effective at earning clicks. Our research shows a widening gap in 2024, with online ads pulling ahead.

There’s a few possible reasons we saw this increase in our research.

Consumers may be more responsive to online ads; AI tools may be driving better personalization and segmentation, so consumers could be getting more relevant ads; it could be a combination of factors.

A 2024 Statista report that measured awareness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (as opposed to evaluating clicks, as our study did) suggests that social media and online advertising are equally effective channels.

That study also showed some differences in age demographic, with 18- to 34-year-olds more engaged on both channels as opposed to 35+.

Social media remains an important marketing channel, and it’s certainly not going anywhere — U.S. marketers put a total of $72.3 billion into social media ads in 2023 — but it’s a good time to take a closer look at your playbook.

4. Store traffic has declined.

Our survey saw a dip in visits to brick-and-mortar stores, with 29% of respondents in 2024 saying that they visited a store as a result of a Black Friday ad, compared to 39% in 2022.

To be fair, it was cold over Thanksgiving weekend in 2024 (70% of people in the lower 48 got what the New York Times describes as “freezing cold” and what I describe as “miserable”).

But when you can get doorbuster deals without taking your house slippers off, retailers are offering fewer reasons to face Black Friday traffic and more reasons to shop from home.

5. Email marketing remains a challenge.

Have marketing emails hit their saturation point? My inbox, at least, says yes.

Although the number of people who responded positively to marketing emails hasn’t changed much (11% in 2022 and 10% in 2024), the consistently low percentage is noteworthy given just how many Black Friday email campaigns there are.

I searched my personal email for “Black Friday,” and I could practically hear Gmail groan under the weight of my request. The following emails all arrived within a two-hour window 48 hours after Black Friday ostensibly ended:

When you build your BFCM email marketing strategy, remember that every single one of your customers will have an inbox that looks very similar to mine. What will make your target audience click?

4 Tips for Creating Effective Black Friday Ads

1. Focus on online ad placement.

Our research showed an uptick in receptiveness to online ads versus ads on social media. AI tools can help you effectively segment and target your audience for a more sophisticated take on traditional online ad placements.

We also asked respondents an open-ended question about their overall impression of Black Friday ads, and then used sentiment analysis to determine how positive or negative their impressions were.

There’s a slight increase in neutral impressions from 2022, but overall, consumers are still solidly positive. That’s good news for marketers, whether you focus your digital efforts on social media, elsewhere, or both.

2. Address virtual window shoppers and passive deal-seekers.

Shoppers are less decisive and less proactive when it comes to those sweet sweet BFCM deals. When creating a Cyber Week marketing strategy, consider how you’ll close deals and attract new customers.

Although a substantial number of shoppers still actively seek out online Black Friday deals (46% in 2022 and 44% in 2024), a growing number are letting the deals come to them.

Twenty-four percent of our respondents in 2024, compared to 17% in 2022, said that they waited for Black Friday deals but didn’t research them beforehand.

That puts the burden of proof on marketers to get their campaigns in front of the right people — and those deals better be good if you want consumers to click.

3. De-emphasize in-store components.

Can you offer the same doorbuster-type deals online as you can in a brick-and-mortar store, and maybe throw in free shipping?

Unsurprising to anybody who knows the joy of spending Black Friday in their loosest sweatpants, we’re seeing more consumers shopping from home.

When asked if they went to a physical store after seeing a Black Friday ad, nearly three-quarters of our 2024 respondents said “nope.” Two years prior, that number was 62%.

4. Use positive, practical messaging that focuses on the customer, not the brand.

I asked a Slack channel full of content marketers what made for a losing Black Friday ad.

Pamela Bump, manager of HubSpot’s content innovation and research team, said that she saw a few brands whose “deals” weren’t really about the customer at all.

“We’re seeing the same TikToks we saw last year from big-box stores with thousands of unbought TVs. Customers are noting that the product stickers said 30% off — but the price isn’t that different from a few days before.”

Bump says, “Without competitive discounts, special gifts, or personalizable rewards, a Black Friday campaign just feels like a ploy to get me to empty the brand’s excessive inventory rather than a genuine pitch to reward customer loyalty.”

Black Friday Campaign Ideas

1. Anti-Black Friday Campaigns

The Green Friday movement began in 2015 as an environmentally friendly alternative to rampant consumerism.

That’s also the year that outdoor gear giant REI introduced its #OptOutside campaign, in which the retailer closes its real and virtual doors, postponing any online orders so its employees can enjoy a paid day off.

REI

Source

More than purpose-driven marketing or brand awareness, REI is living its core values. Even the most hardened cynic would be hard-pressed to ignore the simple goodness at the core of REI’s message: Our employees are more important than Black Friday sales.

Plus, REI still offers BFCM sales and discounts — just a few days later.

Cards Against Humanity

Environmental awareness isn’t the only way to craft an anti-Black Friday campaign.

Back in 2015, I participated in CAH’s most infamous Black Friday stunt, which was either delightful or infuriating, depending on your sense of humor. The deal was this: Send them $5. You’d get nothing in return.

The company did exactly what it promised. Twelve-thousand three-hundred sixty-seven people, including yours truly, sent at least $5 to CAH, which split the cash among its 17 employees.

What did they do with the $4,185 each CAH employee earned overnight? I’m so glad you asked.

One person bought 760 pounds of cat litter; another blew $1,500 on a custom suit of men’s armor. All 17 employees listed how they spent their windfall on CAH’s website, calling the bluff of anybody who doubted in their unusual campaign.

I can’t recommend taking this approach with your own Black Friday campaigns, but sometimes a huge gamble pays off. CAH’s Black Friday games and pranks have become a tradition of sorts, with fans looking forward to the next year’s creative endeavor. There’s even a subreddit.

2. Upgrades, Bonuses, Freebies, and Novelties

Many online retailers offer freebies and bonuses like free shipping, extra points, free personalization, and other little luxuries.

Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble runs a special Black Friday deal on signed books — available online or in-store — that includes exclusive special editions.

Source

Leuchtturm1917

I’m obsessed with my Leuchtturm notebooks, and usually have two or three going at any given time. I like to splurge and get them personalized with my initials, which costs me an extra $10. So seeing the words “free personalization” in an email subject line catches my attention every Black Friday.

Source

I’ve also seen retailers offer free shipping on all orders, free expedited shipping, an extended return period, and other little luxuries that make customers feel appreciated.

3. Giving Back

Everlane

Online clothier Everlane began its Black Friday Fund in 2014, and each year it chooses a different non-profit partner. This year, it made a $50k donation toward regenerative agriculture.

Source

National Park Service

Retailers aren’t the only ones leveraging Black Friday deals. The National Park Service runs a very clever #GreenFriday campaign to get Americans off our La-Z-Boys and into the wilderness.

Modeled after traditional BFCM deals lists, NPS’ list includes “Deals for Phones” that promote its free NPS app to help you plan your visit.

And if you’re not near a national park (or just prefer your La-Z-Boy; no judgment), NPS offers a great deal on streaming bundles: a list of the 200+ webcams at parks around the country.

Source

4. Real Deals

At the end of the day, shoppers like Black Friday because they want to save money. So if you’re offering real deals on items that your customers want, you’re already a step ahead.

Dyson

Dyson, the maker of heartbreakingly expensive vacuum cleaners, ran a BFCM deal of $270 off its $500 slim model. That’s 54% off, and it puts the vacuum within reach of a lot more customers.

Think big when it comes to discounts — it centers the customer experience, and the payoff might be an increase in new customers who otherwise couldn’t or wouldn’t splurge on your product or service.

Lessons in BFCM Marketing

Every Black Friday campaign is an opportunity to learn about your customers and target audience. Put them first — whether that’s with a traditional BFCM discount, doubling up on loyalty perks, or by giving back to your community.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.