Halloween is the fourth most popular holiday, behind Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. It is also becoming a globally popular shopping and marketing event, notably in the United States and the United Kingdom, making it almost as lucrative as both Christmas and Easter. It presents an exciting chance for companies to demonstrate their brand’s individuality via celebration-themed marketing promotions, social media postings, and entertaining messaging.
If you are not sure how to get started with a digital marketing strategy for Halloween, here are 10 ideas to inspire you. Even better, most of these ideas can be adapted according to your holiday calendar, giving you a handy template for the next quarter. Let’s get started with these top 10 Halloween marketing ideas!
1. Tweak app logos for the holiday
Your logo must always be an easily-recognized icon that embodies your brand identity. During the weeks and months immediately prior to Halloween, however, you may add a festive touch to your logo by using pumpkins, bats, haunted homes, and other common Halloween imagery. Therefore, you may demonstrate your Halloween passion while maintaining the fundamental design aspects of your logo. Google provides holiday-specific logos for several occasions, such as Halloween. This is a popular Halloween marketing idea for B2C companies, and it’s relatively easy to implement.
2. Take to social media to promote your Halloween-special products
This is among the most effective methods for generating interest in your products. It is free publicity via your consumers. The criteria for employing this strategy is that your Halloween-specific product line must be visually distinct, or you must be setting a trend. Once the conditions have been satisfied, it is time to release the activity (or game) to social media. The easiest method is to generate a distinctive hashtag and await consumer adoption.
Starbucks is an exemplary user of this Halloween marketing strategy. The Zombie Frappuccino, a purple and green beverage that stands out from the crowd, was introduced in 2017 with the hashtag #zombiefrappuccino.
3. Dress up the website with Halloween-themed elements
Holidays offer several marketing and promotional possibilities centered on a particular theme. To make the customer feel more festive, you must therefore adapt the visual aesthetic of your site and other platforms to the zeitgeist. Remember, that the marketing options during the holidays are unlimited.
For instance, Halloween is drawing near, and everyone is talking about outfits, ghouls, pumpkins, tricks, and goodies. Then why not optimize your e-commerce platform using scary and horror imagery? When Christmas approaches, you may modify your visual cues from creepy to wintry.
4. Consider a fun snail-mail campaign
Direct mail will no longer be the most preferred marketing strategy – but it can be very effective during the holiday season. To generate new sales, marketers might put out Halloween-themed direct mailers with a holiday offer code. You can even add pop-up cards, spooky hats, etc., to the mail package to make the experience more engaging. Direct mailers are a chance to demonstrate your individuality and generate eagerness to work with you. It is especially suitable for B2B and account-based marketing, where you are dealing with a small number of leads and clients.
5. Give your products a quick Halloween makeover
You may also get creative with the titles of your goods by infusing them with a Halloween-inspired spirit. For instance, if there are red items on your eCommerce site, you may temporarily rename them “blood red.” These little additions may make any store even more cheerful. They accentuate your Halloween marketing initiatives.
And if you are unable to host a formal trick-or-treat session, you can stay in the Halloween mood by offering little treats or themed presents with customer orders during or around Halloween. This could be a small candy hamper sent with e-commerce purchases, or even a Halloween-special gift card for new software subscriptions.
6. Design a “creepy” remarketing campaign
One of the best Halloween marketing ideas focuses on being frightening, so why not increase the creepiness of your remarketing initiative in a manner that is bound to capture the attention of the audience?
Millennials are a massive spending demographic for Halloween, and they invest a significant amount of time online. That gives you a chance to effectively shock/startle them with your remarketing initiatives — and leave a lasting impression by reinforcing the ideas, with horror-themed banner advertising while they browse your site. Most ad targeting tools will give you the option to choose a remarketing audience – rework the ad messaging so that it looks like the ad is intentionally popping up wherever they are.
7. Prepare an online sales event
Online shoppers are constantly a step ahead of their peers. They possess exceptional intelligence and intuition. Before finalizing a purchase, it is normal for individuals to compare the lowest prices on several sites.
To attract clients with promotions, marketers must be very active and forthright with varied offers on various product categories. You may provide Halloween marketing promotions that are exclusive to certain consumers, like a lucky draw or extended business hours. Try implementing upsell and cross-sell methods on high-demand items. These strategies have been shown to enhance sales during holiday hours such as Halloween, as well as the day after the holiday when your audience is likely to be at home and browsing their favorite online store.
8. Edit your Google ad copy for Halloween
If properly executed, paid advertising initiatives always offer enormous potential advantages for the business. But if not well-planned, it may be expensive and be a disappointment.
Before bidding on keywords for your advertising, you must be prepared with a well-researched study of keywords and their historical patterns in order to maximize your returns. Emphasize the importance of your ad content/copy for maximum impact. Your Google advertisements must incorporate a significant portion of any Halloween marketing strategies. Try getting creative even with your post-Halloween copy – for example, why not a banner that says, “Missed our 50% off Halloween sale?” and follow it up with a special “treat” of a discount.
9. Host a Halloween game online
If you can be imaginative with game designs, there is no end to what you may accomplish. However, for the sake of simplicity, the most prevalent sorts of online games for Halloween marketing are social sharing and online sweepstakes.
The first category, social sharing, is rather straightforward. You post a reward and a contest and request that consumers share their own experiences and images with the items. You then reward the Halloween-themed gift to the customer who has received the most likes, comments, or shares. This is an excellent and inexpensive method for generating user-generated content. The sole expense is the goods being given away.
The second category – sweepstakes – is likewise straightforward. You may also provide a free reward, have consumers write anything beneath your social media postings, such as a random value or a tale, have them tag five friends if applicable, and then randomly choose a winner.
10. Release a Halloween-themed filter
Since you operate an eCommerce site — and possibly in a place where COVID is still prevalent, using filters to attract online interest is a wonderful strategy. This Halloween marketing strategy is simple and incredibly successful if you or your site already have a strong social media presence. Social media networks, notably Instagram and Snapchat, are your allies.
Remember that it’s Halloween, and a multitude of rivals may have the same concept as yours, so one will need to distinguish oneself. Bring out your heavy artillery, as it were, and add your flagship products into your filter.
Halloween – indeed the entire holiday season – will be a special time in 2022, given the challenges of the last two years. It is predicted that 93% of Americans intend to celebrate the holiday in a big way, and Google’s consumer insights found the event to be an “emerging micro-moment” even in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). By embracing these Halloween marketing ideas, you can reach this vast audience. Don’t forget to bookmark this article for use in the upcoming holidays!