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5 Fun & Smart Halloween Ideas for Businesses

TimeWellScheduled

W”Americans plan to spend more than ever to make this (2022) Halloween a memorable one,” – Matthew Shay, CEO National Retail Federation (NRF)

It’s that time of year again! Halloween is an excellent opportunity to have a little fun and, at the same time, increase traffic to your business. So, it’s time to start thinking about how you will prepare for Halloween. Here are five festive ways to get into the spirit and give your customers a spooktacular experience.

According to Investopedia, in 2021, Americans spent around $10.14 billion on Halloween on retail products and service services. Moreover, Statista estimates that consumers in the United States will spend an all-time high of $10.6 billion U.S. dollars during the Halloween season.

This blog discusses how to use atmospherics, products, discounts, communication tools, and social media to prepare your business, employees, and customers for Halloween.

Pick A Halloween Theme

Before hanging decorations, consider choosing a theme to define the atmosphere or image you want to promote. 

Choosing a theme will help:

  • Focus on a specific and unique marketing campaign or promotional strategy and the Halloween elements you want to include
  • A theme will more accurately represent your brand and differentiate you from competitors
  • A theme will streamline your planning process by keeping you theme-focused. 

Examples of festive Halloween themes:

  • A (Scary) movie theme: Zombies, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Harry Potter
  • Superhero theme: X-Men, DC, Justice League, Avengers
  • Political theme: American Presidents theme
  • Gothic theme

Once you know your theme, choose the appropriate costumes, props, music, décor, and communication strategy that convey that theme.

Prepare Halloween Atmospherics & Shopping Environment

Atmospherics are the characteristics of a business that entice customers to enter the store, shop, and do business. For example, many big box retail stores use components of atmospherics to support their image, brand, and values. (Investopedia)

Almost all successful retailers use atmospherics to make their store environments look and feel more appealing. This can be done in different ways, such as making the store bright or having comfortable chairs for people to relax and soothing or fast-paced music in the background.

Some stores use trendy art, popular music, and colorful lights to attract younger crowds. Nonetheless, Halloween marketing campaigns provide an excellent opportunity to increase traffic by enhancing the shopping atmosphere. 

Decorations: Get into the Halloween Spirit

Customers appreciate the effort of seasonal decorations, and seeing your Halloween-themed store will create excitement and entice them to visit. 

Exterior Halloween displays

Consider building a display in front of your business. It’s an excellent way to highlight your location and show your enthusiasm for Halloween fun. 

Front Display

Depending on your theme, be sure to Halloweenize your front display with Jack-o-Lanterns, ghosts, cobwebs, etc. Customers will enjoy the effort and admire the hard work leaving lasting impressions. 

Interior Décor

Decorate walls, shelves, kiosks, and counters with Halloween images and props. Encourage your employees to participate by wearing costumes and sharing ideas. Be sure to use end caps and eye level spaces effectively.

For additional tips regarding store layout and design, also read: What is Retail Atmospherics & Retail Environment? & Planogram: What is it? How to build it?

Halloween Themed Music & Sound Effects

Halloween music and sound effects are another way to heighten the festive experience. The music can be popular Halloween music, reflect your theme, or be traditional spooky sound effects.

The objective of your atmospheric theme is to support your Halloween marketing campaign in a way that positively engages your employees and customers.

Offer Halloween Products

Selling Halloween products are something that mainly retailers can take advantage of. Halloween items are temporary, they are extensive and offer many sales opportunities to cross-selling and up-selling for large and small businesses.

Top 10 Halloween related merchandise in 2021:

    1. Costumes
    2. Party Masks
    3. Halloween Decorations
    4. Candies and Candy Accessories
    5. Costume Accessories
    6. Jewelry
    7. Makeup kits
    8. Greeting Cards
    9. Party Supplies
    10. Fog Machines

Fun fact: Based on sales data collected by Candystore.com, a bulk candy retailer that has been satisfying America’s sweet tooth since 2007, each state has its own favorite treat—but Reese’s Cups are America’s favorite Halloween candy for 2021 was:

 

America’s Top 5 favorite Halloween candy for 2021:

    1. Reese’s Cups
    2. Skittles,
    3. M&M’s,
    4. Starburst
    5. Hot Tamales.

Offer Halloween Discounts

Providing Halloween-themed sales and discounts will attract traffic to your location. Many strategies can be used throughout October, for instance:

  • Offer weekly promotions on different product families or categories (i.e., each promotion begins on Monday & ends on Sunday)
  • Offering discounts that end on October 31st
  • Offer discounts to customers who dress up on Halloween day

The goal is to encourage a sense of urgency, prompting shoppers to make quick purchasing decisions throughout October to avoid losing out on potential savings. Additionally, it will entice them to spend more if offered a good discount on a popular item.

Halloween Theme your Correspondence 

Email Signature & Banners

Halloween email signatures are a fun and engaging way to take advantage of the festive spirit. According to Email-Signatures.com, “Halloween-themed signatures work so well in email marketing that it’s scary.”

  • Send Halloween-themed emails to your customers reminding them that Halloween is just around the corner and that they should take advantage of the discounts you offer.
  • Use Halloween graphics and banners that are natural to your client-base and appropriate for your business image. You should be able to send Halloween-themed emails while maintaining your brand image.
  • Make sure your subject line is fun and engaging so that customers don’t miss out on the great deals or discounts you offer.

Email signatures add a professional touch to every correspondence. In general, holiday-themed email signatures are a proven technique for attracting attention to emails that people might otherwise ignore under normal circumstances.

Halloween Theme Your Website and Social Media 

Social Media

Halloween provides the perfect opportunity to have fun with your social content and showcase your business’s personality.

Social media is becoming a popular way for companies to communicate directly with customers. It allows businesses to reach a broad audience and increase brand awareness cost-effectively.

User-generated content is a fun and effective method of engaging with customers during the Halloween season to promote your store, products and Halloween / community events that your business is participating in.

You can do many things with social media depending on the type of business you operate and your brand. Here are six essential tips to get you started:

    1. Make a video of yourself and your team in Halloween costumes delivering a theme and message.
    2. Stay up-to-date with the most trending Halloween hashtags, and add them to your videos.
    3. Create or add a Halloween-themed logo and banner then post it
    4. Post exciting and appropriate Halloween visuals and videos to make your posts stand out in the feed
    5. Encourage your following to comment and circulate your content
    6. Use social media to promote a Halloween event, such as a pumpkin carving contest, trick or treating event, or Halloween party (depending on the type of business you operate)

Top Trending Halloween Hashtags for 2022:

  1. #halloween
  2. #oct
  3. #october
  4. #31
  5. #envywear
  6. #PleaseForgiveMe
  7. #scary
  8. #spooky
  9. #boo
  10. #scared

Halloweenize your Website

A business’s website is a fundamental part of its brand and image. Thus, changing it now and then is good practice to keep it interesting.

During Halloween, use your website to capture your audience’s attention by adding Halloween theme-ed images and content; try these five tips:

    1. Change the background of your landing page to a Halloween background (main page)
    2. Change the lettering and titles to Halloween fonts
    3. Change your call-to-action buttons to match the overall them, i.e., pumpkins, ghosts, black cats, etc.
    4. Add a group picture or individual pictures of your team in costume
    5. Be sure to preview Your Halloween Website to ensure it has the intended effect before posting it

Halloween is an excellent opportunity to show your customers that you’re fun and festive. It can also be an effective time to implement Halloween marketing ideas and increase sales by using the right strategies.

What tricks do you have up your sleeve for this year? How will you use atmospherics, products, discounts, communication tools, and social media to create a spooktacular customer experience?

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