Long gone are the days of running to the local department store to spend a few bucks on a cheap Halloween costume and maybe a plastic pumpkin to tote your Halloween goodies. Today, Halloween is the fourth most popular holiday for consumer spending behind Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. More often than not, however, businesses choose to jump right into Thanksgiving and Christmas, skipping Halloween, and potentially missing out on a lot of great marketing opportunities.

In the U.S., Halloween is a big deal with consumers predicted to spend just over $8 Billion (yes, that’s billion with a “b”) in Halloween-related items. The average expected consumer spending per person is $92, up from the National Retail Foundation (NRF) 2019 average of $86.

But beyond spending trends, Halloween is a holiday that allows people to express themselves, be creative and celebrate, even during a worldwide pandemic. Why not capitalize on positive Halloween sentiment and incorporate the holiday into your marketing plans during the month of October?

Halloween Themes

If your business doesn’t sell Halloween items, you might be scratching your head trying to figure out how to get a boost in revenue this holiday season. Regardless of your business, you can get into the Halloween spirit by following a Halloween theme or motif. Consider theming your products, rebranding your services, or designing your items in a festive way to bring in the Halloween shoppers! With a little creativity, the possibilities are endless!

Here are a few examples of themes for different business types:

  • Restaurants: offer some Halloween desserts like pumpkin pie and candied apples and have a coloring contest for youngsters with a Halloween photo
  • E-commerce business: create a line of Halloween-themed merchandise
  • Fitness center or gym: create a fitness event that raises money for local charities and encourages participants to dress up in costume
  • Tech company: create content that talks about how something “bytes” with vampires on it and do a Halloween photo contest giveaway to the best use of your products for Halloween.
  • Retail store: offer “spooky savings” and activities with special giveaways

The key to following a Halloween theme is to adapt the holiday for your products and business to get people involved and excited about participating and supporting your efforts.

Use Video

Sharing a creative video via social media is an effective way to communicate your brand’s message. Halloween offers you the opportunity to get creative with your products or services to generate some buzz and get people’s attention. Fun, spoof, or satirical videos are a creative way to share in the Halloween spirit. Even if recording on a mobile phone, you can quickly create content that can easily be shared with your social media followers. By creating videos that explain what your business does, showcasing products and their features, or simply showing your staff dressed in fun costumes, you connect with your audience.

Halloween-Themed Branding

One of the simplest ways to get your business in on the Halloween fun is to just incorporate popular Halloween symbols into your branding. Whether it is including a jack-o’-lantern in your signage and logo throughout the next month or having fun with scary pop culture references, you can create buzz around your business. One idea would be to swap out your usual brand colors on your website to Halloween orange and black. You could also have a happy Halloween “spirit” take over your social media accounts for a day or two, posting Halloween-themed images and messages to attract likes and shares from your Halloween-obsessed followers. When focusing on social media, remember to incorporate hashtags, a staple of effective social media posts. Hashtags effectively organize events, ideas, and trends into channels so people looking for specific content on a topic (like #spookysavings or #halloweenpromotion, for example) can easily locate those photos and videos that interest them.

Halloween-Themed Content

People love specialty content, so a great way to drive more holiday shoppers to your website is by publishing Halloween-themed content. You can easily create marketing content that is Halloween themed to educate customers using tools like your website, blog posts, infographics, and visuals. Here are a few examples of ways to incorporate Halloween-themed content:

  • “Scary Things” [About Your Industry] You Didn’t Know
  • Myths and Ghost Stories About [Your Business]
  • Pumpkin Carving Stencils with your brand, logo, or product images

Remember that you want to create content that is fun to read is engaging to both customers and prospective customers.

If you’re a marketer, this holiday season is a great time to build your business through Halloween-themed campaigns that encourage consumers to engage with your brand. Hopefully, these spooktacular ideas get your creative juices brewing and ultimately keep you top of mind this Halloween!