Doing a Halloween marketing campaign? Here are my best tips and ideas for how to promote your business or products during the Halloween seasonal holiday! make sure to snag the free seasonal holiday printable included in this post!
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A Note About Halloween Marketing Before We Start
If you are reading this post having found it somewhere out there on the interwebs, you probably are not too concerned with offending your clients or customers with Halloween, but I think this bears saying….
If your client base is Evangelical Christians or more geared towards religion, maybe skip the witches and goblins and stick to a super mild pumpkin or some cute trick or treaters rather than hard core spooky Halloween themes and graphics. Here is a good post that talks about the history of Halloween and how it could be interpreted by the bible.
Halloween Is My Jam
Okay now that that is out of the way, let's just say that Halloween is my jam! I was born on October 29 so growing up I had two birthday celebrations, one where my family came over and we had cake and one where all my friends came over and we dressed up played games and trick or treated!
Now that I am a grown up marketing woman, I love Halloween even more (if that is possible)! The graphics are cool and it plays right into my “corny” side with things that I can say on my social media posts!
When Should You Start Marketing For Halloween?
I am a bit of a data nerd when it comes to marketing holidays so I tend to go to the source to find out when the Halloween “rushes” start!
For Halloween Blog Posts and General Interest
There is different “intent” when people are doing Halloween marketing. Some people (like me) are looking for awareness and trying to attract seasonal traffic. These types of peeps could include food or family style bloggers, authors writing articles, real estate agents planning open house parties, etc. This requires a longer lead time to get ready, get on people's calendars or to get indexed in Google so we should start at the early end of the scale.
According to Google, searches for Halloween in general start right when August ends and September begins.
Pinterest says it starts in August and ends in November, but that seems long to me based on years of personal experience.
For Ecommerce and Halloween Shopping
Shopping is a little different! If you are selling Halloween decor, costumes, or food products, you want to get out there when people are planning for the holiday.
My pals over Marmalead are awesome! They have started tracking real Etsy search data which lets us see when SHOPPERS are searching. I found it super interesting that the search term “Halloween Costumes” had a bigger spike in August than in September (shown) while “Halloween Decor” was starting in August but peaked in September & October.
Knowing this kind of data for specific type of product is great for knowing when to start promoting your items.
I did a search for Halloween posts on Facebook this morning (August 19th) and found that the WDW Magazine Facebook page had a post showing their Halloween “merch”.
THIS is why you want to post early and often! Consumers are asking questions about these shirts and now Walt Disney World has “dibs” on some of their spending dollars for the season!
For Services Business
I think that my service peeps can have fun with Halloween too, but maybe not expect a huge surge of sales as a result. It is more for branding and connecting with your customers on a more personal level.
You can just kind of “record” the fun things you are doing to gear up for the holiday. Do some Instagram or Facebook stories of picking your holiday costume. Snap a quick picture of taking your kid out to get their pumpkin or of your house all decorated with witches and pumpkins!
Your timeline is closer to the holiday than the rest of us.
Cute Halloween Sayings For Marketing
I am a total dweeb when it comes to marketing and love using cute quips and puns! When I was a real estate agent I used this cute little tag on Halloween popbys (fun little gifts to give your customers).
You can use cute Halloween sayings like these on your social media posts, postcards, in person or even as your email subject lines for your Halloween newsletters!
- The real estate market is fang-tastic
- No Tricks Only Treats
- Fangs For Being My Client
- Witching You The Happiest Halloween Ever
- Orange You Glad We Are Friends (with a pumpkin)
- We Are Having A Scary Good Sale
- Make Sure To Check This Out
- Back In Black (with a black cat)
Additional Resources: 100 Cute, Spooky Sayings For Halloween
Halloween Hashtags
There are three main social media sites that use hashtags heavily, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram (LinkedIn appears to be using them also, so worth putting them in there).
#halloween
#halloween2018
#happyhalloween
#halloweendecor
#halloweencostume
#halloweenmakeup
#trickotreat
#pumpkin
#scary
#spooky
#halloweenparty
#jackolantern
Halloween Graphics For Social Media
While I love writing blog posts for seasonal holidays, I know most of my peeps are going to be doing most of their online graphics on social media! With that in mind, here are a few different ways you can do that super easily!
Here are some fun Halloween graphics ideas…
- Pumpkins
- Witches
- Witch's Hat
- Broom
- Mummy
- Spooky Houses
- Gravestone
- Black Cat
- Spiders
- Bats
- Full Moon
- Skulls
- Ghosts
Instagram Halloween Posts
We all know that Instagram is all about the pictures, square pictures for the most part! But what you may not realize is that people also read the words and computers use the words and hashtags we include in our posts to decide what to show in our followers feeds.
The great thing about that is that you can pick a fun, obviously “Halloweeny” picture like this cute graphic witch from Shutterstock that is already formatted the correct way and not have to do even a little bit besides downloading it to be obviously celebrating Halloween.
Facebook, Twitter, & Google Plus Halloween Posts
These social media properties are a little more wide rather than square so you want to find a great, graphic picture that you can add some words to for a plain post like this…
photo source Shutterstock
It is super easy to add this kind of text using PicMonkey! Simply upload your picture and then add a layer of text with your fun Halloween message overlaid!
Pinterest Halloween Posts
A Halloween post that you use to promote your product should have more of a call to action like this one for my vintage shop where I feature “Halloween Decorations”!
Admittedly this is a more “designery” graphic than just overlaying some text. If you are not super web savvy it would be a great idea to use a site like Fiverr to have someone make it for you rather than taking a huge amount of time to do these yourself!
Ecommerce Pro tip: I tend to link this kind of banner to my category page rather than the individual item. That way if this exact item sells then the shopper can see the other items I have for sale in my store!
I did a search for “social media banners” and found a selection from $5-20 for graphic banners (skip the videos for this kind of seasonal holiday!)
Halloween Newsletters
One super fun way to participate in the holiday is to send your newsletter list an email for Halloween! You could use one of the clever headlines or something that makes sense for your business.
The nice thing about “holidays” is that you can get caught up if you haven't sent a message in a while (something that happens to us all from time to time!)
Here are some things you can send!
- Pictures of cute dogs wearing costumes
- Invite to your Halloween party
- Announcement of a sale
- “Weird and Interesting” things you find
- Funny great ready for Christmas message
- Recipes for Halloween cocktails
Additional Resources: Cool roundup of creative ecommerce email campaigns
Halloween Content Marketing Ideas
If you are in business you do content marketing, you just may not know that you do! Here are some Halloween content ideas for all different kinds of businesses…
Service Based (Realtors, Financial, Medical)
I could think of a 1000 different ideas of blog posts you could write with Halloween in mind for service based people!
- How To Avoid Getting Dinged By Your Homeowners Association For Your Halloween Decorations (real estate agents)
- Can Your Child Overdose On Halloween Candy
- Does Your Homeowners Insurance Cover Trick or Treaters?
Functionally what you want to do is write blog posts or social posts that coincide with subjects that are interesting around Halloween.
Etsy, Shopify and Ecommerce Sellers
It is easy to get stuck thinking about selling products, but if you are doing content marketing you want to get beyond that “buy my stuff, buy my stuff” thinking.
Here are some ideas for product creators for the Halloween season!
- 10 Fun Earring Styles To Upgrade Your Halloween Costumes (feature just yours if you have a big shop or do a roundup and show other kinds that would work too!
- How To Wear Just A Tshirt And Still Get Complimented On Your Halloween Costume (have some scary or clever shirts and don't forget this is about people realizing you have a shop, not just selling Halloween items)
- 5 Hot Halloween Decorating Trends This Year (include your product!… great for vintage sellers)
- Skip Trick or Treating, Treat Yourself To A Spooky Halloween Bath (feature your bath bombs, candles, etc.)
Everyone
Halloween Marketing Quotes – This is fun because it can be super creative! Find a great picture and a good quote to share on your social medias during the season!
5 Creative Halloween Marketing Ideas
1. Throw a costume party
If you are super social and love throwing parties then have a party! The great thing about having a party is that it gives you a chance to talk to everyone, even the people who can't come. Every time you get to “talk” with your peeps via email, phone or social media is a reminder that you are there and ready to serve them.
2. Make something with your own hands!
These cute cupcakes from Sweet C's Designs are absolutely adorable and everyone appreciates when you take the time to do something yourself!
3. Take your best clients to the corn maze or haunted house
image source Shutterstock
4. Halloween popbys
Popbys are fun little gift bags that you can take around to your clients or customers. They are super easy to make with things from the dollar store or you can search “Halloween Party Favors” on Etsy and get a whole selection of them ready made to hand out!
5. Get some fun halloween treats to hand out to clients
How cute are these mummy cake pops from SparklingSweetsShop? Get a bunch of these and hand them out one at a time to your clients!
Halloween Marketing Campaign Wrapup
Well there you have it…all my best Halloween marketing campaign ideas!
I KNOW, sometimes it can feel like you do all this work for a holiday that will come and go, but come to find out that making your offerings at the right time in the right way makes it work.
Additionally it is cool when you do something this year and it pays off year after year like my Halloween quotes or this post will do!
Real life retailers… As you can see, Michaels Craft Stores PAID to show me an ad about Halloween in August! The big box retailers are spending A LOT of money and wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't some kind of payoff to them.
Real life results… I sold my spooky eyeball box two days after I listed it on Etsy. Whoo whoo! When you get these kinds of wins it is easier to get excited about marketing for the individual holidays.
Additional Holiday Marketing Resources
- Seasonal Marketing Holidays…. Dates, Hashtags and Keywords (Case Study Included)
- Black Friday Sales Worksheet | Map out your Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sales Plan
- Free Holiday Marketing Worksheet
- Halloween Quotes | Scary and Spooky Quotes With Pictures
- Shutterstock for Pretty Pictures
- Halloween Picture Quotes To Post and Cheesy Halloween Email Subject Lines
- 11 Halloween Marketing Ideas to Scare Up Sales This October
