Halloween is one of those holidays people either go all out for or couldn’t care less about. Luckily for brands, economic trends support the former notion. According to financial website, The Balance, Halloween retail spending was estimated at $9 billion in 2018. Halloween celebrants spent a record $86.79 per person last year.
Armed with stats like those, it’s clear that Halloween is a treat for retailers. (I’m sorry.) And even if your brand doesn’t necessarily sell products or services that can be traditionally linked to the holiday, you can still take advantage of this time of increased search and increased spending via creative content development. According to the National Retail Federation, 35 percent of consumers surveyed cite online search as the top source of Halloween inspiration. And as many of us know, inspiration can ultimately come from anywhere — even local marketing.
Let’s look at a few ways to “Halloween-ify” your brand and take advantage of holiday marketing trends.
SPOOK YOUR DIGITAL LOOK
LOGO & SOCIAL AVATAR
Simple tweaks to your logo and/or social media avatar can attract more of the eyeballs you’re trying to eat after. You could use a monochromatic version of your brand mark and go all black or all orange. You could include a slight embellishment to your standard mark by adding a tiny bat or crescent moon. If you have a designer or developer on hand, you could even use an animated GIF to show a “transformation” of your standard brand mark to something more sinister.
Google is the master of logo transformations with its “Google Doodles.”
WEBSITE
Design tweaks to your website should complement the changes you’ve made to your logo/avatar. Consistency is key with things like this — mismatched colors, images or tones can be overwhelming to users, so keep it simple. If you add a black background to your social media image and profile headers, you could change the background of your site in the same way. Even a simple reversal of colors (i.e., white type on black background) can be enough to attract more engagement.
If you have the resources, you could add a Halloween-inspired landing page to your site and tie in a spooky lead generation element. Author Barry Bolway did this well with his free poem download squeeze page.
PRODUCTS
If you’re a retail vendor — especially one with a brick & mortar store — it may be outwardly easier for you to curate a Halloween “experience” with your products. For physical locations, storefronts and endcaps can provide perfect canvases for themed displays. Be sure to keep your target audience and overall brand personality in mind — you wouldn’t necessarily create a bloody crime scene for a “coastal casual” clothing store. Check out some inspirational displays below (and find more with the #HalloweenDisplay hashtag).
For those with service or web-based offerings, you can create special product “bundles” with a Halloween twist or offer a Halloween discount on a product. Business verticals that could implement this idea include:
- Hotels & vacation rentals
- Online service providers (e.g., new media marketing agencies, website hosting platforms, etc.)
- Home improvement or repair (e.g., HVAC, plumbing, landscapers, etc.)
- Content creators (e.g., authors, videographers, etc.)
- Law offices
- Medical providers
HAUNTING ENGAGEMENTS
SCAVENGER HUNT
This concept, particularly in a digital environment, is designed to get and keep users clicking through on your website or social media profiles. It boosts engagement in a clever and fun way. New York jewelry designer Kendra Scott did this well by adding pumpkin “Easter eggs” throughout her website. The pumpkins contained discount codes that visitors could use in select categories.
You could also provide clues to lead users to specific social media posts where they could perform an action of your choosing (e.g., comment with a specific hashtag, post a photo and tag your brand, etc.). Creativity is key, but don’t forget to incorporate a Halloween-ie twist.
TRICK OR TREAT
This concept works particularly well in both direct mail and email campaigns (or simultaneously!). Gamify your audience’s experience by providing them with a “choose your own adventure” of sorts. For email campaigns, create an email that is consistent with the design of your newly “spooky” logo/avatar and web graphics and prompt users to choose between two options: a “trick” or a “treat.” A “trick” should be something that is still beneficial to the consumer, but perhaps not as beneficial as the “treat.” For example, one option could be 10 percent off of a product/service, and the other could be 20 percent off. You still want to provide customers with a benefit that would encourage them to convert in some way. Email has a 66% conversion rate for online consumers when it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message.
For direct mail campaigns, you could use a scratch-off element that requires users to choose between two options. You could take this a step further by integrating the direct mail into the digital or email campaign for a 360º experience.
CONTESTS
Contests are a fun way to engage your target audience. They can certainly work in real-life scenarios by hosting a costume contest for employees and/or community members, pumpkin-carving contests, pumpkin pie baking contests and the like. However, even if you choose to hold your contest in a physical space, there needs to be a digital element included to encourage more engagement: a “wrap-up” blog post, social posts with photos or a video of the contest. Other digital contest ideas include:
- A “photo-a-day” contest with Halloween prompts
- A call-to-action for consumers to post a photo/video of them using your product in a creative way — make sure to have them tag you and use your Halloween-themed hashtag
- A call-to-action for users to complete a series of steps: follow you, tag a specific number of users, include a hashtag — choose winners who have followed all steps for a “Halloween” prize
- Reach out to influencers in your local market or business vertical to team up for a Halloween promotion (PRO TIP: Make sure the influencers’ target audience matches yours!)
SCARY-GOOD CONTENT
CURATED EXPERIENCES
This concept is a great way for local businesses to get noticed. If you do the leg-work to curate all the awesome Halloween events happening in your community (or even just the events that correspond to your brand’s personality), you’ll not only receive recognition for providing an important “service,” you’ll receive a boost in your website and social traffic. Further, if you link and tag the people and venues included in your curated post, there’s a good chance that they’ll show their gratitude by reposting or sharing your content.
BEHIND-THE-SCENES
Who doesn’t want to peek behind the curtain? Show your audience that there are real people behind the faceless logo they’ve become accustomed to. Holding an office costume contest? Show it off on social media! Take it a step further with a video tutorial detailing the creation of one of the more interesting or complex costumes.
In 2017, Disney posted a time-lapse video showing the transformation of the park into a Halloween kingdom. And, sure, none of us have the reach or power that Disney does; however, this post outperformed every other post of theirs for the entire year, generating more than 240,000 total interactions.
USER-GENERATED (UGC)
If all else fails, let your audience do the work for you! User-generated content is an excellent way to engage your audience while providing your brand with content that you could repurpose in a number of ways (i.e., featuring user photos on product pages). Implement one of the contest ideas listed above or create something new that encourages consumers to develop content on your behalf. For example, if you have a brick & mortar, create in-store Halloween signage featuring social icons and a hashtag — once the hashtag’s content starts populating, you can curate your favorite images and posts to share on your brand’s social profiles or blog. Hey, everyone wants their 15 minutes, right? And these 15 minutes could easily translate to the creation of a brand advocate.
Halloween is all about fun and fantasy. It’s a time where we can unleash our inner Spider-Man or “sexy” [insert literally any noun here] or zombie or vampire (or, in my case, Johnny Rose from Schitt’s Creek). It’s also a time when brands can explore the edgier side of their brand messaging. Try one (or a few) of these Halloween creative content development ideas and let us know if you scare up any new business! (Again, I’m very sorry.)
