Halloween Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses to Boo-st Sales(Online & Offline)

You may be thinking that promoting Halloween isn’t right for your business. Perhaps you worry it doesn’t fit your brand or your clients won’t respond to it.

The good news is you can still stay true to your business, brand, and clients all while celebrating Halloween in the right way. In fact, Halloween can be a great way to promote new products, get creative, and most importantly, keep your business fresh in your client’s minds before the upcoming holiday season. 

Here’s a spooky stat for you: in 2023, Americans spent $12 billion on Halloween with an average spend of $86.27 per person. With spending like that, every business should want a slice of the (pumpkin) pie.

How to do Halloween marketing offline

From traditional to more unique Halloween celebrations, there are many ways to thrill your clients this year. Decorating is only one way to get your shoppers into the spirit. There are plenty of other ways to treat them. Here are a few of our recommendations.

1. Run a trick-or-treat event

A simple way to do this is to hand out small pieces of candy or a freebie at the cash register when clients make a purchase. It’s a relatively cheap and easy way to make your clients smile and remember their shopping experience with you. You can also team up with a few stores nearby to run a safe trick-or-treating event for the local kids.

But, why should kids get to have all the fun? You can make your trick-or-treating more grown-up-friendly by turning it into an event at your store. Hand out discount coupons to clients at the door, hook them up with a Halloween-themed bag to use while they’re shopping, and if you can, offer free samples of products throughout the store as treats. 

2. Discounts for dress-ups

Offer a discount to anyone who comes to your store dressed up on Halloween. Instead of a discount, you can also offer a free gift with a purchase.

The benefit of this tactic is that you’ll get clients who come to your store in good spirits, your employees will get a kick out of it, and it also encourages shoppers to post online about their costume or the promotion. You can even set up a decorated photo station in your store where costumed clients can snap a photo and post it with a branded hashtag for an extra promotional item or discount.

3. Throw a “guess-how-many” contest

You’ve probably seen those jars filled with jelly beans or candy corn where people are asked to guess how many bits there are inside to win a prize. You can use the same concept for your business. Pick the candy (or another small object) of your choice, offer a spooktacular grand prize, and set up a big jar somewhere noticeable in your store.

In order to participate, clients need to jot down their guesses with their email addresses, and as a bonus for you, they’ll need to agree to sign up for your mailing list. 

4. Offer Halloween-themed products

This is a fun and easy way to create buzz and excitement with a limited-time offer. It’s simple to do if you have a business where items are made to order or change depending on the season, such as a food-related business.

For example, you can create special limited-edition baked goods and decorate them with a Halloween theme, or include unique flavors. Run a special Halloween-themed menu at your restaurant or cafe, or create a Halloween-themed course if you offer services like fitness or cooking classes.

5. Add some spooky decor

Perhaps the most obvious way to prep your small business for Halloween is to decorate your place of work. Aside from the standard fall and Halloween decorations like pumpkins, leaves, ghouls, skeletons, or cotton spiderwebs, there are other ways you can create a festive atmosphere that may fit better with your business’s brand. 

Think outside the box when it comes to Halloween decorations. For example, you can create a creepy window display if you want to go with a scary theme. Or, you can go for a more chic theme with a display of fall-inspired hues like muted oranges and reds to promote new products or limited-time Halloween specials.

Use items like colored balloons, tablecloths, streamers, or colored light bulbs and get creative. You can also create a Halloween playlist mixed with holiday classics and modern favorites. 

6. Treat your clients to deals and discounts 

Aside from offering discounts to clients who dress up, you can still create special promos and deals that run through the month of October.

To make it more time-constrained , you can run a different promotion each week, focused on a different product or service. By offering discounts with a time limit, you’re creating a sense of urgency that will make shoppers want to make quick purchases. It will also entice them to spend more if they’re offered a good discount on a popular item.

7. Get into the local spirit 

It’s always nice to be a part of your local community, and your clients will surely take notice. One way to do this is to get involved in local Halloween fairs or events. For example, you can have a table selling your products, be a sponsor for a Halloween event, or even donate a product for a raffle. 

Another way to do this is to use Halloween as an opportunity to give back to those less fortunate. You can ask clients who shop at your store to donate a small “treat” to a charity you’re collecting for or let shoppers know that a portion of proceeds from your Halloween-themed products will go to a local charity or organization. 

How to do Halloween marketing online

If your business is online, there are plenty of ways to use Halloween promotions online and to take advantage of the holiday spirit. Here are some great Halloween marketing campaign ideas.

1. Decorate your website with a Halloween theme

Your website is like your storefront, so instead of creating fun window displays, you should focus on getting your site ready for Halloween. Your customers will be pleasantly surprised (or spooked, depending on how well you designed your theme!) when they land on your websites and it’s all decked out in Halloween decor.

You can add creepy web effects like rolling fog, switch to a darker website theme, or add some playful ghouls or witches around your website. Another fun way to do this is to give your logo or mascot a Halloween costume. Make sure to focus these digital Halloween decorations where it matters, like on banners, CTAs, or even welcome pop-ups.

2. Offer Halloween freebies with a purchase

Discounts are nice, but free treats without any tricks are nicer. Offer your clients a free Halloween treat with a purchase on your website to entice them to shop. You can make it a Halloween-themed limited edition gift, or simply some samples of a new product you’re launching.

Be sure to market this promo on your website, so include it when you think up your Halloween web design and place it in noticeable areas like your header, a pop-up, or even in an email campaign. 

3. Get social this Halloween

Don’t disregard the power of social media when it comes to promoting your business or holiday deals. You can use social channels like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook to begin creating buzz around your Halloween campaign. 

One way to do this is to run a photo contest through your social media. Ask your clients to upload a photo in a costume or even with one of your products if it’s relevant and create a branded hashtag. Or, ask them to share their Halloween decorations or recipe ideas on social media to compete for a grand prize. User-generated content is a great way to increase customer engagement and brand awareness.

Looking for other contests ideas this Halloween? Check out suggestions for five more Halloween contests you can run to boost your marketing. 

4. Who says you can’t trick-or-treat online?

As many people will likely avoid celebrating Halloween in person in 2020, they’ll look for other ways to get into the spirit of the day. Host an online trick-or-treating event for your clients to find special promotions or items. You can even gamify this by hiding promo codes and asking your clients to find them on your website, like a scavenger hunt.

It’s a good idea to make this a timed event so that it feels more exclusive. Promote it as much as possible in the weeks leading up to the event, and then on a certain day or between specific hours you can put a game on your website or introduce a limited-time discount code.

5. Generate Halloween-themed content

Do you have a company blog? Now’s the time to get creative and find content that’s tied to the holiday, even if it’s just loosely. Have some fun with your current content marketing strategy by crafting content that is seasonally appealing. Use a few fun Halloween marketing puns and publish some creative posts that could be related to your business.

For example, you can create a blog post about Halloween recipes to make with kids, DIY costumes using pieces from your clothing store, or even just add some Halloween-themed keywords to a marketing piece. 

6. Add some treats to your email marketing campaign

Don’t forget about your newsletter this month! As with any holiday, clients have come to expect promotions and deals when a holiday rolls around, and Halloween is no exception. Use your email marketing campaigns to promote upcoming promotions, online sales events, or to introduce limited-edition Halloween products.

7. Create a branded Halloween video

If you normally release online promotional videos or product commercials, then add a Halloween theme to boost your video engagement. Video marketing is highly effective for small businesses, so don’t overlook adding a seasonal theme to make your videos even more memorable. Grab people’s attention with a scary video, or reel them in with a lighter comedic tone.

For example, the above “So Real It’s Scary” ad from LG went viral for setting up their new monitor as an elevator floor that suddenly collapses. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your Halloween marketing videos, you never know when you can go viral!

8. Add a Halloween email signature with a holiday campaign

A really cool thing you can do to bring Halloween to the front of your online marketing effort is dressing up your email signature for the holiday and effectively Halloween-ify your email signature. The WiseStamp email signature generator makes this extremely easy each year, by giving your signature a Halloween theme with specially designed banners, GIFs, social media icons, and more.

Halloween is a great opportunity for companies to show the fun side of their brand through creative marketing campaigns that will get people talking. Here are 5 of our favorite Halloween marketing campaigns:

1. Trulia: Halloween real estate marketing example

If you’re looking for a new home with Trulia, you might want to wait to keep your eyes out for ghosts… Trulia really knows how to get into the holiday spirit, and last year’s Halloween marketing campaign included a haunted house prank that went viral. Watch this video to see how they pranked unsuspecting house hunters by rigging up a house with falling books, screaming dolls, and a “dead grandma” popping up out of the bed.

Aside from sharing links to the video, which continues to receive high amounts of traffic, this year Trulia is keeping in the holiday spirit by highlighting on their Facebook page a different haunted house each day. They also created maps of “Unnatural Hazard” highlighting locations of zombie infestations, ghost sightings, and vampire bites, which they shared on Twitter.

2. Target: Virtual reality experience

Target has created a fantastic virtual reality experience through a series of YouTube videos that allow viewers to explore various creepy rooms using their smartphones. By tilting the phone’s lens, viewers can get a 360-degree view of each room, for an eerily realistic experience.

Target also scored some major points this year with parents of special needs kids by including in their advertisements a little girl with crutches and leg braces dressed up as Princess Elsa.

3. Tesco: In-store setup

A Tesco supermarket in London had some spooky fun with their customers this year with haunted shopping cards, bloody severed hands in the freezer and ghostly heads hiding behind the paper towels.

Hidden cameras were also put in place to record the shoppers’ startled reactions so that the internet can enjoy the fun as well.At the end of the video viewers are invited to learn how to create for themselves some of the effects they just witnessed, making the video campaign both entertaining and educational. Just five days after being posted, the video garnered 1.3 million views.

Checkout some useful how-to videos for creating cool props for your Halloween marketing campaign:

• Paint a creepy clown face
• Make a petrifying pumpkin
• Make a horrible head-in-a-jar
• Make a chilling severed hand

4.  Victoria, British Columbia: Dressing up city streets

The City of Victoria is pulling out all the stops as it transforms its downtown area into a spooky Halloween metropolis. Pedestrians strolling down Fort Street will likely be startled as a portrait of a beautiful woman slowly mutates into a horrifying skeleton.

The city has also commissioned a local artist to create ten black cats with solar-powered illuminated eyes, which will be installed throughout the downtown area, because nothing says creepy like a black cat with glowing eyes. And, of course, there are plenty of haunted houses to explore, as almost every building in downtown has its own ghost story.

Smart Halloween marketing ideas to make your audience remember you

Halloween marketing can be challenging to figure out. Using these five Halloween contest ideas can help simplify the process, so you do not miss this fabulous opportunity to get in front of your ideal audience. After all, everyone loves a good holiday idea.

None of these Halloween marketing ideas are difficult or time-consuming to implement. You likely spent more time decorating your shop for the holiday. It’s a matter of deciding what rules you would like the contest to go by and putting up the post on your channels. From there, you can randomly select the winner easily.

Marketing for Halloween that works does not need to be a nightmare, and it’s an amazing opportunity to boost your business beyond regular holiday sales. Let’s save the scary stuff for the costume contests and trick-or-treating.