The spooky season is almost upon us, which means it’s time to ramp up your seasonal marketing and get into the Halloween spirit. This Halloween, go all out with your marketing and celebrate with your customers. Not only is this good for sales, but it’s also a great way to build a loyal customer base.
Halloween offers a unique opportunity to tell the world more about your business. People love a company that’s not afraid to be creative and think outside the box to grab their attention.
Just take a look at how successful Tide’s #ScaredStainless Vine series was. The company successfully leveraged the Halloween hype as well as the powerful video marketing tool and combined them to come up with one of the best Halloween marketing campaigns of the year.
You can also check out Chipotle’s infamous annual Boorito campaign, in which the company uses social media to build hype around their special Halloween menu items.
Whether you’re launching a social media campaign for Halloween or introducing a Halloween themed dinner menu, the goal is to make it as fun, creative, and spooky as possible. In this blogpost, we’re listing down some of the most out-of-the-box ideas for your Halloween marketing.
Let’s take a look!
1. Do the 30 days of Halloween challenge
This challenge is as simple as it is exciting. Every day, for the 30 days leading up to Halloween, share something new, unique, or exciting with your customers. For instance, if you’re running a beauty salon, share a new spooky Halloween look every day. Encourage people to get one of the looks you share for their Halloween parties.
Similarly, if you’re running a restaurant, share a new Halloween-themed recipe with your followers every day. Ask people to get in on the action by making those dishes themselves and sharing the pictures with you. The best looking dishes should be shared on your page, or their makers should be offered a prize, such as a free lunch or drink.
You can also go with a more generic 30 days of Halloween challenge. Share your favorite Halloween movie, Halloween dish, Halloween costume, you name it. But remember to ask your customers to do the same and engage with their responses.
One way of doing the 30 days of Halloween challenge is by making your own Halloween calendar, similar to our Halloween Calendar for 2021. Here, you’ll find new and creative ways to do your social media marketing everyday for the month leading up to Halloween.
2. Offer treats at your place of business
Everyone loves free candy, especially around Halloween. This is a nice, fun way to let your customers and visitors know that you’re important to them.
Get some employees together and make a bunch of tiny Halloween goody bags, with candy and chocolate bars. Place these on your reception desk and around your store. Put up a Halloween flyer on your door, inviting people for free candy. Chances are, people walking by will see the flyer and decide to pop in.
Once they’re inside, they’ll be inclined to check out your products and get familiar with your business, thereby boosting your visibility.
3. Introduce a Halloween product line
Around Halloween, people are constantly looking for things to decorate their homes and workspaces. They’re also looking for gifts and ideas for Halloween parties and dinners. If you’re aware of what your customers’ needs are, you can offer a Halloween-themed solution for them.
For instance, if you’re running a general store, introduce a Halloween product line with special spooky season decorations such as cobwebs, fake skeletons, and plastic pumpkins. And if you’re running a clothing store, unveil some Halloween clothing items that people could buy to dress up at a party, such as a white mummy dress, a scarecrow outfit or a pirate costume. Remember to share social media posts that go with your new clothing items, for example pirate invitations for a clothing line up for the southern seas.
See what works naturally for your business and wow your customers.
4. Share Halloween recipes
This strategy isn’t only good for restaurants. Regardless of the kind of small business you’re running, you can share your favorite Halloween recipes with your customer base. After all, who doesn’t love food?
Get your employees in on the action and share the Halloween dishes they make on your social media, along with a detailed recipe. Encourage people to recreate the dishes, and offer a coupon or a discount in return. For instance, how about a 13% off coupon for people with the best-looking Halloween dessert?
Here are some fun Halloween dishes you can attempt to create and share:
5. Start a scary movie club
Build your own hype around Halloween by starting a seasonal scary movie club. Ask people to sign up on your social media or your website, and then email the participants a “Scary Movie of the Week”. In your email, talk about the premise of the movie and what critics think of it. Also give it a rating for how scary it is on your spook-o-meter.
Send this email out every Monday leading up to Halloween, give people a week to watch the movie, and then follow it up with a podcast on the weekend in which your employees (pick the movie buffs among you for this job) talk about the movie and field questions.
Promote this on your social media via a special Halloween poster to get as many listeners as you can. People may not tune in every single time, but even if they show up once or twice, you’ll be able to promote your business to avid, engaged listeners.
Keep the podcast anything between 15 to 30 minutes to keep your audience engaged.
6. Host a Halloween costume contest
This is your chance to find the most exciting and creative costumes in your midst. Announce a Halloween costume contest a few days before Halloween. Create a gripping Halloween contest flyer on PosterMyWall, and put it up on your Instagram. Incentivize people to participate by offering a special discount or free goodies to whoever has the best costume. Check out the Halloween template below.
People can share pictures of themselves in their costumes with a unique hashtag that you can then search up. The hashtag has to be eye-catching because it will encourage your customers’ followers to check out your business as well.
Based on the kind of business you’re running, you can also cater to a younger demographic by making the contest kid-friendly. Ask parents to share cute pictures of their kids in Halloween costumes to win special prizes.
Remember to emphasize that the most creative costume and picture will win something big. Make sure to share some of the best looks on your own page so people are encouraged to participate.
7. Offer a mystery discount
This is a fun way to get your customers to let their followers know what kind of business you run and what products you offer. Ask your social media followers to upload a story on Instagram telling you which of your products they love the most, in order to be eligible for a special mystery discount.
Assign one of your employees to reply to the stories individually (this is time sensitive since stories disappear within 24 hours). Then offer small mystery discounts on the products that people mentioned they wanted.
Now, the mystery discount is so called because people won’t know how much of a discount they’ve received until they’re at the checkout. This makes the whole strategy much more intriguing.
Now of course, you can’t offer a mystery discount to everyone. Before you start this strategy, have a fixed number of discounts and distribute them over the course of a week.
8. Run a spooky story-time
According to one study, user generated content (UGC) is 35% more memorable and 50% more trustworthy than traditional media. This is why for this Halloween season, you should try out every exciting UGC idea in the book. And this is one that will definitely be a hit.
People love telling and listening to scary stories, even in the absence of a campfire. Use TikTok to increase engagement for this strategy. Ask people to make TikTok videos, detailing a real-life spooky story. Also ask them to share the videos with a special Halloween hashtag so that you can go through them.
Share the best spooky stories on your page, and send special Halloween-themed goodies to the winners (pick two or three). Encourage the winners to show the goodies on their social media pages.
9. Set up a Halloween display at your store
Think about all the people that pass by your store everyday and don’t come inside. This is your chance to market to those folks. Have a spook-tacular Halloween display at the front of your store or at your window.
You can decorate it with pumpkins, brooms, cobwebs, and fake skeletons. You can also showcase your own range of Halloween items. Share your display on social media and encourage people to come up and take selfies next to your display.
You can also put up flyers so that visitors can have a look at what you offer. PosterMyWall has tons of Halloween flyer template options that you can use to create a custom flyer within minutes.
10. Host a mini-Halloween festival
This is a great opportunity for you to engage with members of your community and let them know that you exist.
Host a mini Halloween festival at your store and send out flyers and invites to all the people in your locale. Encourage them to bring their kids – this will increase attendance because it will bring entire families to your event.
Partner up with other local businesses and set up some food stalls, and a booth of your own products. Play games with the children, and have volunteers take them around the neighborhood for trick or treating.
Here are a couple of fun games you can play at your event:
- Witches’ Hat Toss – this is like ring toss except that the poles will be pointy hats made out of cardboard or chart paper. Have people throw rings around the hats to win prizes.
- Pumpkin Carving Contest – give people some pumpkins and knives, set a timer, and watch them get crafty with their pumpkins.
- Poke A Pumpkin – fill orange plastic cups with either candy or fake cobwebs, put them up on a board and seal them with a paper sheet. Then have people throw darts at the board. Depending on where each dart lands, people will win either candy or cobwebs.
Make sure to reach out to local businesses well before your event. You can call or email them and lay out your pitch – let them know that the festival will increase their visibility in the neighborhood as well.
11. Run an online scavenger hunt
Alter the layout of your website and make sneaky changes to it for Halloween. For example, add a small bat to your logo or place a tiny skeleton in the corner of your homepage. Make these “easter eggs” clickable.
Then go to your social media pages and invite people to an online scavenger hunt on your website. The goal is for people to find the easter eggs. Once they do, they’ll be able to click on them. This will take them to another landing page where they’ll either win a coupon or be told to try again with a different egg.
This strategy will draw more eyes on your website and encourage people to visit all the different pages, thereby allowing them to see the range of products you offer.
12. Leverage local farmer’s markets and harvest festivals
As Fall rolls around, there will be plenty of farmer’s markets, harvest festivals, and other events happening around town. Don’t sit any one of those out.
Set up a Halloween booth at these events and showcase all your Halloween products. This is also a great opportunity for you to direct people to your website and social media pages, where they’ll be able to participate in your other exciting Halloween campaigns.
Final thoughts
Halloween is definitely one of the most exciting times of the year, which is why people are more than happy to jump on board if you come to them with some fun things to do. And these strategies are the perfect way for you to stand out from your competitors and try something new.
So find a fa-boo-lous Halloween template and get started on your Halloween promotions today.
Senior editor at PosterMyWall.
