Treat Customers with 9 Halloween Marketing Ideas to Jump-Start Holiday Sales

Chances are your holiday wares are already on the shelves. These nine Halloween marketing ideas can help retailers looking for ways to jump-start holiday season sales engage customers.

Don’t wait for the Christmas rush, jump-start holiday sales by tying Halloween marketing to the rest of the season.

For retail and consumer service businesses, holiday sales can represent as much as 30 percent of annual revenues (National Retail Federation).  Given how busy the holiday shopping season becomes, it can be difficult to get the attention of local shoppers long enough to remind them about the great products and services your business offers that would make perfect gifts for their friends and loved ones.

The holiday shopping season presents many opportunities for your business to reach out to customers and local consumers in order to let them know that you appreciate them personally – outreach which can lead to greater levels of customer engagement and loyalty.

9 Halloween Marketing Ideas Tie Halloween and Holiday Marketing Efforts Together

1.  Launch a holiday shopper rewards program. 

Even if you already have a customer loyalty or customer rewards program, you can create a special rewards program or offer double rewards for holiday shoppers.

2.  Hold a Halloween or holiday open house event.

Holding an open house event or a grand re-opening one day event is a great way to attract new shoppers and reengage customers who haven’t been to your store in a while.

3.  Help Trick or Treaters Get Ready for Halloween.

Parents can shop while their kids have custom face painting applied prior to trick-or-treating on Halloween or before Halloween parties; Local stylists or estheticians who do face painting might be more than happy to partner with you on this event.

4.   Working with other local merchants, market your business as a Halloween Trick-or-Treating destination. 

Many parents look for malls and retail areas where they can take their kids for trick-or-treating that is safe and immune from cold or inclement weather.  At the same time you’re giving candy or toys to trick-or-treating kids, you can be handing out marketing materials to grown-ups with new customer, introductory package and bounce back offers.

5.  Decorate and display.

Make sure that shoppers can easily find the goods or services that they should buy for Halloween (or during the holidays) by decorating and creating eye-catching displays that put these items – which have a limited shelf life – in the spotlight.

6.  Create and promote signature LTOs (limited time offers) for Halloween or the holidays.

LTOs that are unique and have the ability to create cravings or a strong level of demand have the ability to drive traffic for “while they last” items or cause consumers to stock up on favorites that are only available for a limited time.  LTOs like this that can also be given as gifts could be especially profitable as consumers will buy for themselves and a friend.

7.  Extend BOGO (buy one-get one) offers to treat customers and their friends.

Building off the last idea, creating personalized offers for your customers that allow them special pricing on their favorite products when they buy one for a friend (or stock up for themselves) is a great way to boost sales of specific items for Halloween and throughout the holiday season.

8.  Treat a local charity with proceeds or free products or services.

Your organization may already support a local charity or cause.  Your customers will feel even better about doing business with you when they know that a portion of proceeds benefit a local charity, cause or people in need in the community.

9.  Expand communications with special themed holiday marketing collateral.

Halloween and all of the holidays represented in the holiday marketing season represent additional opportunities for you to build brand awareness, customer engagement and interest in your business.  Take advantage of the holidays by adding non-promotional themed Halloween and holiday marketing greetings to your regular business marketing plan.

If you want to engage holiday shoppers for the rest of the season, start by winning them over before Halloween with these nine Halloween marketing ideas. This could jump-start the holiday season by bringing new clients, sales and customer engagement.

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