8 scarily good Halloween marketing ideas
Halloween is one of the best times of the year for creative content marketing. Need some inspiration for crafting creepy copy?
These spooktacular ideas will help you make marketing plans you can be proud of.
Give your site a spine-chilling makeover
Your website is the perfect canvas for a Halloween upgrade. All kinds of businesses can get involved in ‘spookifying’ their websites, but it’s an approach that works particularly well for online stores.
Just like a bricks-and-mortar store decorates around key times of the year, online shopping is an experience. Ecommerce can be easily reinvigorated with a Halloween theme, giving you a chance to generate new sales.
Some of our favourite ways to add a Halloween spin include:
Creating a dedicated landing page
Adding ‘spooky’ elements like bats and pumpkins to product pages
Updating your homepage design to reflect the season
Tweaking text with some playful puns
Remember to carefully test your Halloween updates before they go live. You don’t want to accidentally damage the user experience or your SEO!
There's no need to be a web design whiz to get it right. Some hosting platforms provide special plug-ins designed to give your store a Halloween twist.
2. Cast a spell with online ads
Use paid advertising on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to help drive interest in your Halloween content and promotions. The first step is to make sure you’re using the right keywords – otherwise, all the care and attention you pour into your ads will be wasted! Once you’re certain you’ve mastered your keywords, it’s time to put together the perfect copy to match.
Make sure it is:
Clickable
Entertaining
Clear
Ads are an important part of Halloween marketing - and can help you ensure more people connect with your content, products, and brand.
3. Transform your product packaging
For companies that sell physical products, Halloween is an opportunity to refresh your packaging and product range.
A company that has done this successfully is Heinz Tomato Ketchup, rebranded temporarily as ‘Tomato Blood’ for the second year in a row.
A smart reference to the use of ketchup as a blood substitute in Halloween costumes, this move has allowed Heinz to position itself as the condiment of choice throughout the spookiest time of year.
Another superb example of Halloween product development is M&S, which launched a new Halloween variation of Colin the Caterpillar for 2022.
This is an option that requires lots of prior thought, so if you haven’t had a chance to do it this year, then keep an eye out for inspiration and get planning for next year.
4. Dazzle with email marketing
Email marketing is another wonderful tool for spreading some Halloween joy.
Your subject line is also an opportunity to indulge in some of the word games and puns you’ll find around the Halloween season.
When creating your subject line, remember to:
Focus on making your reader click
Highlight any time-sensitive aspects (such as promotions)
Add some active language or coin a new phrase with a Halloween theme
Throw in some quirky GIFs
While it’s fun to play around with Halloween words and phrases, don’t get too carried away. Clarity and readability should always be a primary focus, so avoid confusing your audience.
Calling everything by a scary name might be attention-grabbing, but it could also prevent people clicking through if they don’t know what you’re referencing.
Parcel Monkey has great Halloween emails. The company stays on the right side of kitsch while communicating clearly and fully buying into the Halloween aesthetic:
5. Have fun with eek-tastic colours
You can express a lot with your colour scheme, and a few carefully chosen tweaks needn’t mess with accessibility. Opting for black and white or pops of seasonal colours (orange, red, brown) is a wonderful way to add more Halloween-based visual appeal.
Beauty retailer Lush made good use of its existing monochrome colour scheme, puns and seasonally-themed products to create a superb Halloween campaign:
Consider adding creepy finishing touches such as:
Incorporating Halloween-themed social media headers
Using filters on Instagram Stories
Adding monochrome or splashes of red throughout
Focusing on Halloween imagery
This approach works well for both websites and email marketing and can be adapted to match your branding.
6. Creep it real with calls to action
Like any other piece of content, adding a call to action to your Halloween marketing will help set you apart and prompt further action from your audience.
There are a few dos and don’ts in this arena.
Remember to make your CTAs:
Easy to read
Easy to find
Easy to understand
Feel free to pop in a few Halloween references or phrases, to add extra seasonal appeal.
Clothing brand New Look shows us how to engage with creative Halloween puns, seasonal imagery, and familiar wordplay, to great success:
7. Add spooky user content
Think of ways your user content can help spread the word about your company. Social media is an invaluable resource for this – so don’t be afraid to build your content around your users.
Some ‘fangtastic’ options include:
Running competitions and giveaways
Asking your followers to share Halloween photographs
Creating Halloween quizzes
Let your creativity run wild, as this is the perfect time of year to indulge in some of the content cliches you’d usually avoid.
8. Stay on-message
Not every business needs to jump on the Halloween bandwagon. Crucially, don’t try to shoehorn Halloween references into emails covering serious topics or announcements as this could warp the intended messaging or cause offence.
Avoid running Halloween promotions or placing ‘spooky’ images where they don’t fit and feel free to effectively skip Halloween altogether if you can’t find a way to make it work.
After all, there’s a holiday you can’t afford to miss just around the corner – so if Halloween isn’t for you, now is a great time to get to grips with your Christmas marketing plans instead.
Is your marketing more trick than treat?
The creative whizzes at Sookio are on hand to help make marketing less terrifying.
Contact our terrrrrrible team to find out how!