Halloween is certainly coming up quickly, isn’t it? While you stress about coming up with a clever and unique costume, companies are also trying to figure out how they can stand out and capture new visitors. But Halloween marketing doesn’t need to be scary. Treat yourself to some tricks your company can follow to celebrate the holiday and become the most popular house on the block!
Tip #1: Carve, don’t eat raw pumpkin.
User-Generated Content
For the past several Octobers, Progressive Insurance has encouraged customers to “dress like Flo.” Readers can submit photos of their best Flo customers using the hashtag “#dresslikeFlo.” These pictures are then featured on Progressive social media pages. By encouraging people to dress like the iconic Progressive spokeswoman, the company is able to get a month’s worth of user-generated advertisements (and web content), for free! What sort of user-generated content can you inspire this Halloween?
Special Products
The Internet was abuzz when Burger King announced their spooky all-black Halloween burger (and not just because it turns your poop green). Creating limited-time offers creates a sense of emergency, and we know no one likes that dreaded FOMO (“fear of missing out”, the scariest thing this Halloween!) Consider how many special Halloween products you see every year. Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, Halloween Oreos … all these products are the same as their non-holiday counterparts, yet people are driven to buy them because they can only get them for a short month. Think about how you can make your product special for Halloween.
Spooky!
Halloween Articles
We often talk about how content marketing should be useful for the reader. Halloween is the perfect time to craft an interesting, timely, and informative article. Halloweencostumes.com makes many different lists and infographics about different costume ideas. Google Photos recently sponsored an article on Buzzfeed about the eleven Halloween costumes everyone has worn once. MTV has been blogging about how to dress like various pop-culture icons. Is there a way you can relate Halloween to your brand. Then craft an insightful and simple article about it, while subtly plugging your product.
Themed Videos
In 2013, Tide’s Vine channel went viral with their #ScaredStainless campaign. In 6-second clips, they parodied famous horror movie scenes while working in Tide products. These five short videos (30 seconds of content … total!) earned 280,000 views on Vine, plus thousands more on social media and YouTube.
Similarly, in 2014 IKEA Singapore released a video paying homage to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. This video promoted IKEA’s extended store hours while tying into pop culture.
While both companies took a very different approach to their affectionate parodies, both IKEA and Tide found success by using Halloween-related pop culture to sell their brand. They made sure their videos were enjoyable content first, advertising second. How can you make a clever Halloween video to sell your brand?
Special Promotions
Last year, Arby’s offered customers a chance to get free bacon by saying “Trick or Meat” when they ordered on Halloween. This promotion drives customers directly to Arby’s stores. Other companies may do this by offering a Halloween discount or a free gift. Is there a Halloween promotions you could run to bring in customers?
Multi-platform marketing
During October, Food Network is playing a weekly series called “Halloween Baking Championship” where contestants compete to create the best Halloween dishes. Recipes and photos are then shared on the Food Network website (and inevitability linked on sites like Facebook and Pinterest). Food Network is doing a multifaceted marketing approach, providing content for their TV channel and driving web traffic to their site. When people look for Halloween recipes online, you can bet that Food Network will be right on top of the search list. This works in the reverse too; someone who finds the recipe may be inspired to watch the Food Network show. Consider how you can use Halloween to market your brand across multiple platforms.
The key goal with any of these tips is to celebrate Halloween in a unique way. We don’t want to see a thousand Donald Trump or “The Dress” costumes this Halloween. When you dress up your brand for Halloween, think outside the box and you’ll find your pillowcase filled with rewards.
Ready to have customers flocking to your door? Take a piece of content-candy out of the Media Shower bowl; we are offering your first piece free!