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Spooktacular Marketing Tips for Halloween

Halloween is creeping up on us, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to have a bit of fun with your marketing and engage your audience. 

Let’s explore some spooktacular marketing tips to make the most of Halloween and make your brand stand out:

  1. Spine-Chilling Social Media Content

Social media is where Halloween marketing truly comes alive. Themed content and spooky trivia is a great way to engage your audience. 

You could create light-hearted Halloween themed polls that connect with your industry, such as ‘What’s the scariest business challenge you face?’. Or share pictures of Halloween decorations in your office.

  1. Trick or Treat with Exclusive Offers & Scarily Good Limited-Time Offers

Get in the Halloween spirit by crafting themed email campaigns that offer promotions with a spooky twist. 

Use creative subject lines like ‘Grab Your Halloween Deal Before It Vanishes’ or ‘This Halloween Sale is Too Sweet to Miss!’ Include limited-time offers, exclusive treats, or even a Halloween countdown to create urgency and excitement.

  1. Halloween-Themed Product Promotions

Get your products into the Halloween action with special themed bundles, limited-edition releases, or discounts themed around the holiday. Whether it’s ‘fang-tastic deals’ or ‘spine-tingling savings’, giving your products a Halloween twist can create excitement.  

  1. Revamp Your Branding

Halloween is the perfect time to give your brand a seasonal twist. Think eerie colour schemes like orange, black, and purple, or spooky fonts that create a playful and festive atmosphere. 

Update your website, social media profiles, and email headers with Halloween-themed graphics to capture attention and set the tone for the season. Even a small change, like a pumpkin in your logo, can go a long way in showing that your brand is in the Halloween spirit.

  1. Content Marketing: Halloween Edition

Halloween is a great chance to write blog posts or case studies with a seasonal spin, like ‘The Scariest Mistakes Companies Make in [Your Industry]’ or ‘Frighteningly Good Solutions for Your Business.’ These pieces help position your business as knowledgeable while playing on the Halloween theme in a clever way.

  1. Get Charitable with Halloween

Halloween is also a great time for your brand to show its charitable side. Why not partner with a local charity for a Halloween-themed fundraiser or host a ‘Trick or Treat’ campaign where a percentage of sales go to a cause. This is a nice way of boosting your brand visibility and image.

With the right balance of professionalism and seasonal fun, your Halloween marketing strategy can leave a positive lasting impression on your audience. 

Be warned, Halloween isn’t for everyone. If you think Halloween is going to leave your audience cold, try out some of our other winning event ideas:  Unmissable dates that will generate buzz for your marketing campaigns.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming blog with unmissable 2025 dates—coming soon!

For a free virtual marketing ideas session with marketing experts, call us on 01962 600 147 or email info@tlc-business.co.uk

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Clever Halloween marketing campaigns

In case you’ve missed it over the last few years, Halloween has taken on a lot more commercial significance to businesses and retailers. Heavily influenced by the holiday’s popularity in America, Halloween in the UK has become bigger, spookier and  more important than ever for engaging with customers and prospects. In fact, businesses are even beginning to market Halloween products as early as August; and it seems to be working, with spending surveys highlighting a consistent year-on-year increase in consumer spending associated with the autumnal holiday. It seems that as the schools go back, enthusiastic ‘halloweeners’ take to the shops to find that perfect costume and start preparing for the ghostly festivities. With the eerie holiday just around the corner, TLC Business have taken a look at some of our favourite (and unnerving) Halloween campaigns of recent years. Which is your favourite?

1. Asda

This 1980s themed Halloween commercial for Asda was launched in Autumn 2017. The advert featured a family Halloween party with multiple generations, from kids to the grandparents, dancing freakishly to 1986 hit ‘Word Up’ by Cameo. The advert, entitled “Home For All Things Haunted”, showcased the wide selection of Asda Halloween costumes, cakes, pumpkins and decorations, positioning the supermarket as the go-to store for all Halloween supplies. The advert had a Shazam feature, enabling viewers to scan the ad on their devices; which would then re-direct them to a custom Halloween landing page on their website with their list of holiday-themed products. The campaign also ran alongside social media posts, a radio ad and PR.

2. Burger King

In 2015, the hashtag #GreenPoop became rather popular on Twitter, all down to the Burger King ‘Halloween Whopper’ burger, featuring a suspiciously black bun. The coloured bun trend started in Japan, where they have a variety of unusually coloured burger baps; including pink and red. The Halloween Whopper was brought to UK Burger King stores nationwide for a limited time until October 31st 2015. The black bun, which used a natural colourant, was also BBQ flavoured. As the hashtag that started trending might indicate, it was the burger’s effect on customers’ stools, turning them a funky green colour, that caught the public’s attention. We don’t know what’s spookier, the black bun or the after effects?

3. M&Ms

In 2016, the memorable red and yellow M&Ms featured in a series of TV commercials leading up to Halloween. Employing comical references to trick or treating, red and yellow opted to stay in for fear of getting eaten, but that didn’t stop red eating a yellow M&M and referring to itself as a cannibal. M&Ms’ clever approach to marketing has helped keep the popular chocolate treat going for over 75 years.

4. Topshop

Stranger Things is of one Netflix’s most popular original shows and with their announcement of the Season 2 release date last October, high-street retailer Topshop curated a Stranger Things product line which launched at their Oxford Street flagship store. The store itself was transformed and featured interactive reconstructions of the Stranger Things set, including the Hawkins laboratory manned by actors, where customers could be tested for telekinetic powers by moving a can of coke using the power of their mind. The product line reportedly sold out immediately in store and online, leaving many Stranger Things and Topshop fans disappointed. The release was just in time for Halloween and the store also held exclusive screenings of the show.

5. Fanta

For several years, the Coca-Cola owned brand Fanta has been releasing Halloween-themed cans featuring skulls, witches and vampires in a playful, spooky twist on their iconic branding. In 2017, the campaign also included a series of snapchat filters and lenses, where you could transform yourself into a cracked China Doll or bathe in a bath of blood.

What are some of your favourite Halloween campaigns? Get in touch by emailing us at info@tlc-business.co.uk.

 

 

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#MarketingTitbits – Facebook, Pinterest & Halloween

facebook-pinterest-halloween-final-s1. Facebook brand reputation suffers over beheading videos
In May earlier this year, Facebook released a statement saying that they will ban all graphic content uploaded to the social networking site, until it has been reviewed by them. Despite this, last week Facebook made the decision not to ban a very graphic video of a woman being beheaded. Subsequently, Facebook users  and various groups across society expressed dismay at Facebook’s new stance  – especially given children as young as 13 can have a Facebook page and therefore, access to content on Facebook. Even the Prime Minister, David Cameron, tweeted “It’s irresponsible of Facebook to post beheading videos, especially without a warning. They must explain their actions to worried parents.” In response to the public outcry, Facebook backtracked and altered their policy. Take a look at the full article, click here.

2. Pinterest is now worth $3.8billion

Pinterest is a photo-sharing site first launched in March 2010. Since its inception, it has gone on to become one of social media’s success stories. In December 2011, the site became one of the top 10 largest social media sites according to Hitwise data. In October 2013, Pinterest now has 70 million users and 2.5 billion monthly page views. It is the fastest growing social networking site and has about 500,000 business accounts. Pinterest is now valued at a whopping $3.8 billion. If you’re not already a ‘pinner’, it is well worth taking a look to see if it could help your business. To find out more, here’s a great article from Mashable, click here.

3. Halloween marketing

Halloween is seen by businesses large and small as an opportunity to tap into the population’s increasing fascination with the ghoulish festival . Restaurants, bars and cafes ‘halloween-ify’ their menus with “Scary Sausage and Mash” or “Creepy Coffee”, whilst online retailers offer ‘Spooky’ deals and discounts. Despite the plethora of cynically tenuous attempts to jump on the Halloween bandwagon, the likes of Carling, Booking.com and Lyles have been a bit cleverer. They have gone the extra mile with their Halloween marketing this year. To take a look at the good, the bad and the ghastly of Halloween marketing 2013, click here.

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