7 Halloween Marketing Ideas for Your Small Business

As the spooky season approaches, businesses are looking everywhere to try and make a splash with their customers, setting themselves apart from the rest of the crowd. If you’re on the lookout to do just that, whether it be your first time giving it a go or if you’re a seasoned business owner with plenty of ideas to mark the month of Halloween, here are a few of our own Halloween marketing ideas for your small company:

1. Create some themed products & content

It might seem obvious, but producing themed products and publishing themed content will help to put your business on the map, especially if you’re one of few who will actually look to mark Halloween. If you own a bakery, for example, bake some Halloween-themed goods, like cupcakes or cookies, and sell those for a limited time only. 

If you offer a service instead, make sure you’re publishing some Halloween-themed content on your blog or adding some theming to your website in general, for a short time. Perhaps have some spiders coming down on a web from your header, or change the featured image to something more spooky. Not only does this make you look fun and on-trend, but it also prompts people to make purchases, especially if it’s just through October.

2. Offer some spooky discounts & deals

This ties in, somewhat, with the previous point we have touched upon. Making offers and discounts available only throughout the month of October, or in the week leading up to Halloween, will encourage people to make a purchase. This is an effective tactic for those who are looking for stellar deals. 

Where it could be tempting for you to only offer up to 10% off or a deal like ‘buy one get another half price’, you should refrain from advertising offers and discounts that just don’t seem worth it. If you want to stand out from your competitors, make the offers and discounts worthwhile. 

If you’re generous, you might even find that your customers come back to you again the following year, just to see what deals you have, because last year’s offers were so good. Most business owners will only advertise those unrivalled deals for a short time, so make sure that you’re making that absolutely clear to your customers as well.

3. Send themed emails

It’s important that your customers know that there’s an offer, a discount, a competition or a sale going on, but how can you do that as a business owner? One of the most effective ways of reaching your existing customers is to send them an email. Make sure those emails are written and scheduled to be sent out as soon as the scary season hits. This gives them enough notice of when offers and discounts are due to start, among other details that would be worth knowing well in advance. By giving your customers enough time to look at what you’re offering, you could get ahead of the competition.

4. Host a Halloween competition or giveaway

Another way to draw attention to your business during the Halloween season is to host a competition or a giveaway. You should encourage participants to fill out details about themselves or to send in some photos of their best Halloween costume attempts, among other things. 

Make the competition fun and something that’s actually worth entering. Think about the prize as well. Is the prize enough for people to take part in the competition or not? It’s recommended that you make the gift Halloween-themed in order to keep the spooky thread going throughout the entire competition or giveaway, from start to finish.

5. Partner up with some autumn-themed businesses & activities

Autumn-themed businesses could be places like ‘pick-your-own’ pumpkin patches or businesses that charge for people to go around their scary cornfield maze. Look for anything and everything that is Halloween-themed or that is hosting some autumnal activities and look to partner up with them. 

Perhaps offer to do some sponsoring for them or provide them with products and/or prizes that could be won. It doesn’t mean that you have to get involved with what they do directly, but you could just make sure that your business name gets out there in some way, especially if you’re planning on doing everything that has appeared on this list.

6. Take to social media

As well as making sure you’re sending out emails to your existing customers, you also need to try and target other parts of your audience, such as your prospective customers. These are people who suit your customer profile, but who either aren’t aware that you’re offering something they need, or who haven’t made a purchase from you yet, but they’re looking to. 

It’s up to you to sway them to make that purchase, and an effective way to make sure this happens is to be active on social media. Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok, make sure you’re targeting your audience on social networking sites, but ensure that the content you’re putting out there is Halloween-themed for good measure.

7. Keep things simple

Above all other things, you need to ensure that you aren’t going overboard with your marketing campaign this Halloween. Although it’s important that it looks as though you’re putting the effort in, you don’t want to go too far, almost to the point of desperation. Keep things simple and effective and you’ll soon be reaping the benefits that Halloween marketing campaigns have to offer.

Kumo is a digital marketing agency with over two decades of experience in the industry. We have a team of specialist professionals who are able to deliver a wealth of marketing services that are bespoke to your business, including PPC, SEO, content writing, graphic design and website design, to name just a few. If you would like further information about how we can help you and your business today, get in touch with a member of our dedicated team – we’re always pleased to hear from you.