Halloween Marketing Ideas

Hosted by Shelby Klick and Vince Ventura

It’s clear that Halloween is one of the most popular holidays in the country and it’s clearly an important holiday in retail as it is the first major holiday in the 4th quarter.  In 2016, Americans spent about $8.4 Billion for Halloween.  This includes everything from decorations, candy, costumes, to  trips to haunted houses.  

 

Unlike recent holidays like Labor Day and Memorial Day, Halloween has a major lead up and is basically celebrated starting October 1st and sometimes even earlier. So you have more time to take advantage of this holiday and spice up your marketing to fit a theme that everyone can enjoy.  

 

1. Choose a theme
2. 1. Spooky Monsters, Pumpkins/Jack-O-Lanterns, kid-friendly, magic, etc.
   2. This can fit your business, your audience, or just what your favorite part of Halloween is.
   3. Keep it consistent! Halloween can be pretty broad, but if you choose a theme. You can tailor all your holiday marketing to match.
   1. Everyone gets excited when they see a Halloween display. You can dress up your store to create a fun or chilling atmosphere that customers will want to experience! A well decorated store can keep customers exploring for longer or tempt them to buy something just because they are in the spirit!
   2. Extend your theme beyond the storefront by updating your social media profile images, cover photos, website images or theme and more.  You can even take your current images and spruce them up by changing the colors to be black and orange or adding graphics like pumpkins and spider webs.
3. Get Spooktacular.
   1. Make sure that every week you are posting a few things that relate back to the theme.
      1. Halloween quotes (movies, books, etc.)
      2. Halloween jokes and puns
      3. Team members, yourself, pets  in costume
      4. Emails
         1. Depending on your goals, contents can be used to get a better following on social media or revenue (Spend X to be entered to win).
      5. Contests (Think about giving away tickets to a haunted house, fair, or local Halloween themed play as incentive)  
      6. Special Discounts and Coupons
      7. Ask questions
      8. Encourage user generated content like pictures, recommendations, voting, and more
      9. Share advice and tips related to your industry (Recipes, decorating tips, safety tips, etc.)
      10. Rise old product from the dead by promoting themed bundles or finding a new use for products.
   2. Some content ideas:
4. Content
   1. The Lead Up - Now until Halloween
   2. 1. Promote everything that will prepare your customers for Halloween.
      2. Give special deals
      3. Talk about the value of your products, monster sales, and more.
      4. This is the time to get people in the spirit and celebrate Halloween with your business.
      5. Talk about community events, local trick or treat times, parades, etc.
      1. Have special events like happy hour, trick or treating, special shopping hours, or more.
      2. BooGo sales, Tricks & Treats, Scary Good Deals, Black Cat Bargains, and more to celebrate the reason for the season.
   3. The Holiday (week of or day off)
      1. Lots of people wait for the discounts to stock up on decorations, discount candy and more.
      2. Send email to encourage people to. stock up for next year, recover from the candy with a good deal, or celebrate that the scary season is over.
      3. If you did have a special events, take this time to thank everyone who attended, close the loop by announcing contest winners, and make sure you switch all your marketing images from the Halloween theme to either your regular branding or something appropriate for fall, autumn harvest, or thanksgiving.
   4. Aftermath
5. Schedule Your Content

Takeaways:

1. Pick a theme and be consistent
2. Plan out you content now so it you can worry about running your business when the time comes.
3. Schedule your sales, content, emails and more in SnapRetail so you can enjoy the holiday.
4. Just because Oct. 31st is over doesn’t mean you can forget about Halloween. Follow up on loose ends and thank customers for celebrating with you.