Five Halloween Marketing Campaign Ideas

Marketing isn’t just a bunch of hocus pocus...

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As the holiday season starts to ramp up, make sure your marketing campaigns are ramping up as well! Nothing turns away potential customers more than a drab and uninviting website amid a festive and fun holiday. Nothing says fall like colorful leaves, pumpkins, pumpkin spice, sweaters, and some frighteningly good deals!

While Thanksgiving (Black Friday and Cyber Monday too), Christmas, and New Year’s are right around the corner; Halloween spending has seen impressive growth over the years and marketing campaign ideas should not overlook this spooky moneymaker. Halloween is our CEO’s favorite holiday!

If you’re ready for your business to jump into the Halloween spirit, here are five marketing campaign ideas that will add some pumpkin spice to your business.  

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Decorate to Promote Key Products

There is nothing quite like seeing the storefronts decorated for Halloween. Seeing the products and apparel for sale will no doubt get anyone excited and in the holiday spirit and most consumers are willing to buy products they might not otherwise have if it had not been for the product placement encouragement/arrangement.

Decorating does not only apply to brick and mortar stores but it applies to all other facets of e-commerce and social media strategies. Using intangible Halloween “decorations” such as pictures, videos, emojis, and memes on your website or social media generates that same consumer feeling of impending holiday excitement.

Whether you are setting up physical end caps in your store with specific product placements or you are temporarily changing the color scheme, cover photos, or adding pictures/videos to your website or social media page you are drawing in consumers with the change.  

Contests

Who doesn’t love a contest, especially when it’s Halloween themed? A contest is a great way to entice consumers and tap into the power of user-generated content and customer advocacy too. Halloween is all about dressing up and decorating.

Invite your consumers and customers to participate in a fun and friendly Halloween costume contest where they have a chance to win a business product for yours. Let social media drive your contest.

Make sure to post on your social media accounts your contest with a creative #hashtag and encourage your customers to post pictures, as well as liking and sharing the contest post. By hosting contests, your business is gaining free advertising through user-generated content and will gain exposure to a new audience.  

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Offer Seasonal Sales

If you capture the attention of a first-time buyer/user through a sale, you are more likely to get them to follow your business or be a returning customer. October is a great time to do short-term mystery deals via email or text to get more sales.

Nothing screams Halloween like a spooky good deal! One way to not “scare” off your customers is to offer them a discount or deal they cannot refuse.  Whatever type of promotion you decided to offer, it will no doubt lead to an increase in overall sales.

You are now capturing an audience of consumers that may not have bought from you without a sale, and now that they are buying they might purchase even more items.  

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Branding

Do not forget to add Halloween elements to your branding. This is a simple way to alert and capture your consumer’s attention when they are scrolling by. Google does this all the time; they change the way their name looks when you go to search that suit the holiday.   You can add these elements to your webpage or social media accounts:

• Halloween-focused hashtags
• Spookify your logo with Halloween themed symbols  
• Temporarily update your cover and profile photos on social media with Halloween graphics
• Launch limited edition Halloween themed products

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When you add Halloween elements to your brand, it helps to connect on a more personal level, which in turn can lead to more passion-driven consumption. If you see references to your favorite Halloween movie, Hocus Pocus, or IT, you may stop and take a second look and feel a deeper connection with that business.  

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Email and Content Marketing

Spice up your email marketing campaign and your content marketing with a Halloween themed topic.  If you are already running a marketing campaign through email make sure you add some ghoulish holiday references. When you connect your services to a holiday, you can share the same information you might otherwise have, but in a more entertaining way that can potentially boost sales or drive brand awareness.

This is also a time you can mention your current Halloween contests or sales. This can also be applied to content marketing. If your website has a blog, your topics can coincide with subjects that can offer some Halloween spirit.

For example:  

‍Scary Plumbing Noises You Shouldn’t Ignore
‍ 4.5 Ways to Trick Yourself into a More Intense Workout

‍8 Reasons to see the Dentist after Trick or Treating

‍These are what’s called evergreen content pieces you can promote every Halloween to fit your overall marketing campaigns!

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Market Your Business this Halloween

Even just employing one of these marketing campaign ideas this Halloween season should give your business engagement and sales that extra boost! No matter what type of business you run—from brick and mortar to e-commerce you can use your website, email, and social media channels to run marketing campaigns this holiday season.  

These ideas are easily interchanged from holiday to holiday and with a little effort, you can capture a higher audience of excited buyers, which in turn leads to higher profits and future customer loyalty.  Ready to take the next step, but are still marketing still spooks you?!

Get extra help in the marketing department and have Charisma Communications do the work for you to increase sales this Fall. We partner with businesses of all sizes, contact us to help make your business “dress up” for Halloween.