We have a complete list of fresh and tried-and-true Halloween ideas and examples to guide you through this process.
It is said that “where there is no imagination, there is no horror”; I say where there is no imagination, there are also no sales.
And this is the true horror you want to escape this Halloween!
20+ Best Halloween Marketing Ideas for Your Campaign
Here we will go through the most spooktacular Halloween marketing campaign ideas to trigger your inspiration and help you in your creative journey.
Ready to go for it? So let’s start the haunting.
1. Display Customized Halloween Discount Popups
Using popups is a great Halloween marketing idea to boost your email marketing, but it requires more attention.
Popups convert, and they have the power to grow your email list, prevent cart abandonment and increase your sales.
So what's stopping you from using them in your Halloween marketing campaigns?
Using an easy-to-use popup builder can save you a lot of time and boost your Halloween marketing efforts.
All you need to do is to choose ready-made templates that are fully customizable and design your Halloween popups.
Adding a countdown offer to your popup is also a great way to increase the demand and prevent people from abandoning their cards.
Don’t forget to use witty headlines and spooky graphics, as these are the keys to a successful Halloween popup.
2. Design Your Homepage for Halloween
It’s Halloween, and everybody is entitled to one good custom, so why not design one for your website?
Spice up your website with Halloween flair and add elements that are not only fun but are also relevant to your target audience.
Some festive and spooky graphics or filters on your homepage could pique your visitors' interest.
You need an innovative approach to go viral and engage your audience.
You can start by taking the easiest step first.
Just switch your color scheme to orange and black and add some Halloween decorations rather than the standard stock photos.
Go further and use gifs and animations to make the home and product page more appealing and eye-catching.
Try to stay on top of the latest trends and use Halloween-themed taglines and product headlines to promote your website.
Remember, if your homepage is appealing to your visitors, there is a greater chance they'll end up purchasing on your product page.
3. Offer Halloween-Themed Freebies
The idea of offering discounts and freebies almost always works a charm, and the Halloween season is no exception.
According to Statista's annual Halloween expenditure report for 2022, Americans are expected to spend 10.6 billion U.S. dollars on Halloween.
That’s an incredible amount of revenue you don't want to miss, and discounts are a great way to get it going.
Try to set a target and offer a free item for all orders that exceed a certain price.
The fact is, although this Halloween strategy seems simple and effective, it requires you to plan and calculate the statistics weeks in advance.
Limited-time giveaways are highly desired and generate a lot of buzz for a short time, so make the most of it and persuade users to act immediately.
4. Launch a Halloween Campaign on Social Media
The best Halloween marketing campaigns start on October 1st on social platforms and often feature creative storytelling and videos.
Thousands of marketing opportunities await you on social media; all you need to do is choose the right strategy.
Research your user behavior on each social platform and see which one gives you the most impressions and engagement.
According to video marketing statistics, 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
Take advantage of this interest and Halloweenify your Instagram and Tiktok page with spooky reels and funny short videos.
Plan contests and giveaways and promote your popular products.
Try to create a personal connection with your audience.
You'd be amazed by the results!
5. Send Promotional Spooky Halloween Emails
Halloween opens so many unique doors for campaigning, and email marketing is an excellent promotional strategy to highlight your offers.
It is more common for people to open their emails during holidays, such as Halloween, to check for the best offers and promotions.
Get creative. Write funny subject lines and use customization in your emails to trigger readers to click.
Nothing can beat a timely, well-designed, and festive Halloween promotional email campaign with a compelling incentive.
If you have a list of loyal customers, now is the time to treat them with exclusive promotional emails and make them feel special.
Is your social media marketing campaign bringing in first-time visitors to your site?
Then hook them with an exit-intent popup that looks like a pumpkin or anything remotely related to Halloween to gain subscribers for future promotional emails.
In fact, a study between Google and Boston Consulting Group shows that 90% of customers will share their email addresses for a small incentive, such as a discount.
6. Plan Halloween Custom Online Events
Halloween is a great time to get creative and have some fun!
And what better way to do that than by adding gamification to an online ghoulish Halloween event?
Spice your marketing campaign by promoting a special Halloween custom or trick-or-treating activity.
You can enter your business into a local trick-or-treating event or organize a gathering online to build brand awareness.
Make the participants feel a part of your journey and surprise them with gifts and giveaways during the event.
A gamification strategy can help you in this regard and increase user engagement.
7. Create Eye-Catching Promotional Halloween Videos
Publishing funny and scary videos on your Youtube channel, Instagram reels, or TikTok account can bring out awareness and make people notice your brand.
With a bit of creativity, a dash of current trends, and some Halloween spirit theme, you can come up with the eternal formula of a promotional video that will win you this holiday season.
If you can remotely relate your products and services to Halloween, take this chance and roll into the game.
See how M&Ms jumped onto the Halloween bandwagon in 2018 by publishing this entertaining animated video about Yellow and Red escaping a Halloween-themed party without being eaten.
Keep in mind: a good narrative is everything when it comes to video marketing, so make sure you have one.
8. Engage Users with UGC Marketing Campaigns
User-generated content for the Halloween marketing campaign is a great idea that empowers your brand to reach prospects with a new approach.
Asking users to send you visual content is a great way to build social proof for your brand and increase organic traffic.
No matter how small or large your business is, with the right approach and strategy, you can interact with customers in a way that is authentically engaging.
You can add a question box on your Instagram story asking users to tell the scariest horror tale in 3 words.
The ultimate goal should be to find a way to be personal with your customers and connect with them on a human level.
Another idea is to ask them to send you pictures of their Halloween customs and publish it on your landing page.
Create a dance or theme on TikTok and ask other TikTokers to join the contest.
The UGC campaign needs to be pitched differently on each of your social media channels in order to drive organic traffic to your website and landing page.
Overall, UGC Halloween campaign ideas work, and it helps you attract customers’ attention and generate real, positive business results.
9. Treat Your Users with Informative Content
Don’t make it all about marketing and promotions!
Value-added content appeals to users and increases your engagement rate.
Share informative blogs, write about Halloween history, give them ideas for this year's customs & decorations and show them how it's done with video recipes.
Cosmetic brands often use influencer marketing and create Halloween makeup videos for users to get inspired.
If you can add a dash of Halloween spirit to your products or services and share valuable information that actually helps your users, you can win them over.
10. Offer a Bundle of Best-Selling Products on Sale
Bundling your best-selling products for Halloween is a great marketing idea to increase your sale and customer satisfaction.
You know you’re playing on the right field when you include high-in-demand products in a bundle and set a limited discount offer.
You can design a custom package for your Halloween product bundle and promote it with creative spooky slogans.
Give your email list early access to the exclusive bundle and make them feel special.
Remind them how much they will save by purchasing the bundle products now.
Try to use numbers instead of percentages. Having them know they can save 20 dollars now is more effective than sending a 35% discount.
It's more likely that people will purchase these special offers on holidays if they feel they will save money in the long run.
11. Don’t Forget Treating Your Loyal Customers
There is no better time to showcase your loyalty programs than during special holidays like Halloween.
It's the best way to reward your customers' loyalty and make them feel like all their previous purchases weren't in vain.
Your loyal customers deserve a thank you email or card, and you should offer them something beyond what you offer your regular clients.
Planning your Halloween marketing campaign ideas is the best time to consider what value you want to add to your loyal customers' lives to keep them happy.
Customize your offers considering past purchases, and offer targeted products that suit their tastes and needs.
Even a small amount of personalization can do wonders for loyalty programs, and Halloween humor can take the results to the next level.
12. Apply Nostalgia Marketing
Halloween is all about nostalgia, and it’s a great chance for your brand to take advantage of it by reminding prospects of the positive concepts from the past.
People generally tend to relive the emotions associated with the original episodes. Think of happy childhood memories, family dinners, road trips, game nights with friends, etc.
Take advantage of old nostalgic Halloween movies, costumes, and events.
By triggering memories of comfort and security, nostalgia links your brand and these emotions.
13. Present a Limited-Edition Product for Halloween
“Last Chance”, “Limited Edition”, “Only Now”.
All these words and phrases aim to emotionally trigger the users and make them feel if they don’t act immediately, they’ll miss a great chance for a sale.
Launching a limited edition product line for Halloween is the cherry on top of all your marketing ideas.
Don’t bore customers by offering the same old product with a discount.
Don't be afraid to go wild!
Excite your customers with a new product line and generate buzz around your brand.
14. Create a Spooky Landing Page for Your Special Offers
The headline says it all!
Having a Halloween landing page helps you navigate your users and drive conversions.
Try to follow the landing page designs best practices and create something eye-catching and entertaining for your target audience.
Using festive graphics and concepts can be fun, but adding some personal touch from your brand can take it to the next level.
By appealing to the emotions of humor and horror, you can design a landing page that will encourage visitors to convert.
15. Use Wordplay in Your Copies & Product Headlines
The wordplay or pun is a rhetorical technique that uses different meanings of polysemic words, literal and non-literal meanings of idioms, or combining two homonyms to create witticisms.
Playing around with Halloween-based phrases in advertising and marketing is a compelling idea for capturing readers' attention and maintaining their interest.
If you’re launching a new product line for Halloween, you better use wordplay in the product titles and call to action to drive more attention.
The following wordplay examples may help you come up with unique marketing campaign ideas this Halloween:
- Bat to the bone.
- Don’t ghost us.
- Spook me up.
- Ghoul me in!
- Start the hunt.
Don’t forget about the power of #hashtags by the way.
Make your funny tag into a hashtag and encourage other users to share content and use it.
16. Let Users See the Funny Side of Your Brand
Creating personal connections with your customers can begin by sharing a video of your team wearing Halloween costumes and fun Halloween facts.
Remember, when it comes to Halloween marketing ideas, there is no limit to what you can come up with.
See how Pepsi spooked and roasted Coca-Cola with this hilarious Halloween ad in 2013.
To generate buzz and promote the brand, Pepsi ran a social media campaign resembling Coca-Cola's look and wished everyone a scary Halloween.
Not long after, Coke’s fans came up with a winning follow-up message roasting back Pepsi using the same photo but with "Everybody wants to be a hero!" caption.
Although it was risky to mention the competitor in the campaign directly, it showed a fun side of both brands and created a lot of buzz around them.
17. Win Back Your Last Year’s Customers
When planning your Halloween strategy, you must analyze your last year's performance and check the sales.
This way, you can see what worked for your target audience the most and which medium brought you more engagement and conversion.
On top of that, you can target the customers who purchased from you last Halloween with an exclusive and customized email and win them back.
Customer retention is a smart and cost-effective method to boost your Halloween sales, and the right email marketing can help you in this regard.
18. Add Countdown to Your Product Pages
By adding countdown features to your product pages showing the number of items left in the inventory, you create a FOMO effect.
This emotion outweighs even freebies and giveaways!
Doing so triggers customers' fear, which is a far more powerful emotion than joy and satisfaction.
Seeing the product countdown or limited time for purchase can be the last motivator for them to finalize their purchase.
19. Collaborate with Popular Brands & Build Buzz
Co-branding is a strategic marketing partnership between two brands in which one brand's success benefits its partner.
This can be a great marketing campaign idea for Halloween to boost awareness and break into new markets.
In case you are looking for more inspiration, you can take a look at this co-branding example:
The release of "Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens" in 2015 led to a co-partnership with CoverGirl cosmetic brand to capture a broader audience.
In addition to raising awareness about Star Wars, the co-branding also promotes CoverGirl contouring makeup.
It's a win-win collaboration for both brands.
20. Utilize Referral Marketing to Drive More Sales
Take your Halloween campaign awareness plan a step further by turning current customers into brand advocates with referral marketing programs.
Use the existing clients' networks to expand your business's customer base by asking them for recommendations.
You can use referral marketing in various ways, but at its core, it's about getting your biggest fans involved in your brand's promotion.
Give your loyal customers a unique referral code so that every time anyone makes a purchase through it, they will earn points and discounts.
Happy customers are your best marketing tool to increase the perceived value of your products and boost sales.
21. Extend Your Offer to Capture Late Bloomers
Yes, you can start your Halloween marketing campaigns from the 1st of October and still have people falling behind and missing out on sales.
I mentioned above how FOMO marketing can be a good motivator for prospects to take action, but you must also consider the late bloomers.
Don’t extend your limited offer, but keep some of your Halloween campaigns open until the last minute and give the customers their last chance to purchase.
Give your prospect the last chance to join your Halloween party!
What are the Best Halloween Marketing Campaign Examples?
The following are the best Halloween marketing campaigns from previous years that hit their targets and went viral, which are still remembered today.
Lego/Star Wars/ Disney+ | Terrifying Tales
This is one of the top brand collaboration marketing campaigns from Halloween 2021.
In the first Disney+ "Halloweenstream," Lego Star Wars premiered a Halloween special, Terrifying Tales.
See how cleverly they created a storyline promoting the three brands and created buzz for their Halloween season.
Obviously, these are three of the world's most famous brands, but any brand can enhance its power using this marketing idea.
LG | So It’s Real
This video marketing campaign from LG was launched in 2012, showing technicians installing hidden cameras and pulling a stunt by adding IPS display screens to the floor of a lift.
Making it look almost real, giving the participants an adrenaline rush while promoting a new line of high-quality screens.
Ford | Spooky Carwash
Ford’s spooky carwash is one of the funniest and most scary Halloween campaigns on our list.
Even the video starts scary by telling us that On September 30, 2014, 30 strangers were asked to stop for a car wash on the way to a filmed test drive.
And then, it goes on with the following sentence, making it even scarier.
“They never reached their final destinations.”
This viral prank has been viewed 1.8 million times and is still considered one of the best Halloween marketing campaign ideas until this day.
Wrapping Up
Halloween is the ideal time for online marketing.
Despite the irony, it's the only time of the year when people truly dare to be themselves, blithely showing off their scary costumes and engaging in dark jokes or activities.
A savvy marketer can capitalize on that by designing a campaign that resonates perfectly with Halloween, making their brand the clear choice for all spooky needs.
Here I mentioned more than 20 marketing strategies to ace your campaign; however, these ideas are just the starting point.
In the end, the timing and right combination of content, tone, and target audience will make your campaign a success.
Respond to what's trending and what people like now by using your brand's voice, not just the generic "Halloween" one.
Remember, creativity always works positively if you don't use uninspired ideas that only work for a limited period.
FAQs
When Should I Start Halloween Marketing Campaigns?
Most brands start their marketing campaigns around Halloween and the fall sales on the 1st of October. However, planning ahead is essential if you want to be that early.
What are the Best Platforms for Halloween Marketing?
In short, your brand's best chance of winning Halloween marketing this year is using your customers' favorite platforms. You should analyze your website and social media to see which one your target audience interacts with most.
How to Win Halloween Marketing Campaigns in 2024?
A futuristic approach and creativity can help you win this year's Halloween marketing campaign. Take inspiration from last year's most successful Halloween campaigns and blend it with new ideas to create a unique campaign for your brand. To excel at Halloween marketing this year, you must be as personalized and relevant as possible to your customers.
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