Last year, Americans spent $9 billion on Halloween costumes, decorations and candy. Small businesses can capitalize on the holiday and drive revenue by putting a Halloween marketing campaign together early to reap in the profits.
Promoting Halloween can work to your benefit for a few reasons:
- It’s the start of the holiday season and a strong Halloween sale can subsidize lackluster revenue.
- Increasingly, Halloween is becoming more of a universal holiday that 175 million Americans celebrate in some way.
- People are spending more money on Halloween costumes, parties and decorations than ever before.
- Halloween and seasonal marketing give your business the ability to grab people’s attention at the start of the big spending season.
In this article, we’ve highlighted some key ways to ensure you’re ahead of the curve and effectively planning your Halloween marketing ideas.
4 Halloween Marketing Tricks
1. Command Audiences’ Attention with Direct Mail
Depending on how early you start your Halloween marketing, direct mail can be a great way to target customers with seasonal promotions and offers straight to their mailboxes. Consistency and frequency are crucial for any direct mail campaign, so start mailing a month or two before Halloween to keep your business top of mind when consumers are ready to buy.
2. Create a Spirited Halloween Campaign
Social media channels like Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, etc., are free ways to engage your customers with holiday recipes, DIY costumes and festive decor. Integrating your marketing plan across all channels can increase the chance of retaining shoppers through the holiday season.
For instance, you might create a mailer with a coupon code or hashtag that leads a customer to your Facebook page to get a special discount. Use the channels that make the most sense for your business to your advantage with photos, fun posts related to the upcoming holiday and a sales pitch every once in a while. Halloween social media contests for prizes can increase brand awareness and engage consumers online. Create a plan that involves any discounts you can offer, along with some ideas within this post. Some fun taglines could be:
- This sale is so good, it’s spooky!
- What should our owner be for Halloween? Vote here.
- We’re slashing prices this weekend only.
- Don’t let this missed deal haunt you.
3. Engage Your Customers
Halloween sets the momentum for what happens throughout the rest of the holiday season, so you want to get shoppers’ attention and keep it. Here are some Halloween ideas that can work for all kinds of industries, even if you don’t sell Halloween products or items:
- Give out Halloween goody bags with some candy and a coupon. This is a fun way to interact with customers and engage them around a holiday.
- Get into the holiday spirit by decorating your store. Hopefully the festive mood will transfer over to your customers too.
- Use social media to post fun, themed content like cute animals dressed up in silly costumes, pumpkins with your brand name or logo carved into them or Halloween recipes.
- Sponsor a local Halloween party or event.
- Send a direct mail Halloween postcard with spooktacular offers.
Kick-start your overall holiday marketing strategy with an attention-grabbing Halloween campaign and keep it going throughout the season for maximum results.
4. Haunt Them Early
Ever notice when Halloween candy gets cleared off the shelves, Thanksgiving decor is right there to take its place? That’s because, every year, marketing for each holiday starts earlier. Nearly a third start buying candy, costumes, decorations and more as early as September and 43% plan to begin collecting their Halloween goodies sometime within the first two weeks of October.
If your patrons are that prepared, you should be too. The further in advance you plan for any holiday, the better off your business will be. Promote your products and services consistently throughout the season, up until the day-of, to get those last-minute shoppers.
Get into the Halloween spirit and make it so your customers want to take part in the action too! You can have fun with each of these marketing strategies while driving new traffic and customers your way.
Contact your local Valpak franchise office for a free marketing consultation. We’ll walk you through how you can reach targeted consumers for as little as pennies per households.
