Halloween is often celebrated with costumes, candy, and decorations. For businesses, it’s a chance to capture attention, increase interactions, and make sales. As a globally celebrated holiday, Halloween provides a great opportunity to engage with customers in a fun way.
Whether you are a small or a large-scale business, there is plenty of room in seasonal marketing to create engaging experiences that result in profit during the Halloween season. Let’s get started.
What Makes Business Halloween Marketing So Unique?
For most businesses, this is a chance to connect with an audience to increase sales and enhance brand loyalty in a unique way. The energy around Halloween season has consumers indulging in themed products and experiences, making last-minute purchases, and sparking demand around all industries.
From hosting thrilling promotions to creating limited-time products, businesses can use the excitement of Halloween to distinguish themselves from their competitors. In particular, this holiday enables brands to utilize more aggressive marketing tactics, which helps strike an emotional resonance and improve brand recognition at the same time. Be it through social media activity, community participation, exclusive deals, or campaigns, Halloween offers a unique opportunity for businesses to increase customer interaction and revenue during this festive season.
Customer behavior trends and Halloween
Knowing how shoppers engage with Halloween-related items, including where they concentrate their attention, will help tailor your marketing approaches and product selections, optimizing your success.
How much do people spend on Halloween?
As of last year, the estimated expenditure for Americans on Halloween was roughly $108 per person. This figure is particularly interesting for merchants in the print-on-demand sector, as it represents substantial profit potential given proper alignment of product and marketing strategies to consumer spending patterns.
Where do people shop for Halloween?
Halloween stores and costume shops take the lead, with penetration rates of 40% and 39%, respectively. Having a reputable presence on social media is imperative, as 32% of customers prefer purchasing their Halloween supplies online.
What do people purchase for Halloween holidays and celebrations?
Analyzing customer spending behavior can assist you in deciding what to offer and how to market your products to maximize sales. Make sure you take advantage of the top sellers in your designs and promotions.
- Candy: Halloween is a unique celebration, and 96% of fans participated in the holiday by purchasing Halloween candy, which marked the occasion with $3.6 billion in sales for sugary, chewy, and chocolatey delights.
- Decorations: Halloween decorations are also popular, as Halloween-themed decor is purchased by 77% of the shoppers, bringing in over $3.9 billion in sales.
- Costumes: Shoppers go all out for the trick-or-treating holiday, with parents spending an average of $1.4 billion on children’s costumes, $2 billion on adult costumes, and $0.7 billion on pet costumes.
- Greeting Cards: 35% of Halloween shoppers purchased spooky-themed cards, contributing to $0.5 billion in sales.
Skeletal Marketing Ideas for Halloween
1. Develop Halloween-themed Content
Fun, fright, and creativity are the core components of Halloween, so write blog posts, promote videos, or even create art that relates to the holiday. It not only gets people excited for Halloween but they’re also more likely to help promote your content by forwarding it to their friends.
For this promo campaign for Halloween to be successful, you need to:
- Plan Ahead: It’s important to decide on your campaign ideas ahead of time, allowing you to thoroughly consider the campaign and avoid feeling overwhelmed at the last minute.
- Leverage User-Generated Content: Ask your followers to post Halloween-themed content specific to your brand using a certain hashtag.
Remember to keep the brand voice and the message the content conveys. Focus more on content that engages the audience instead of directly selling.
2. Launch Spooky Social Media Campaigns
Creating spooky social media campaigns is also an important part of Halloween marketing ideas. A lot of people post pictures of their outfits, their house decorations, and other fun things.
Create a trend like #SpookySaleSaturday or #MonsterDealMonday.
To make this a successful promotion:
- Engaging Graphics: Incorporate pictures like pumpkins, bats, or haunted houses.
- Interactive Posts: Conduct polls and quizzes, or even a “Guess the Ghost” type challenge.
- Countdowns: Start a countdown for a big Halloween sale or party to drum up excitement.
Post regularly, but not excessively, and as always, respond to comments and messages sent to your posts.
3. Re-engage last year’s shoppers
Capitalize on past customers and utilize data from previous years to reconnect customers who already know and trust your brand. Provide them with exclusive early access to special offers, tailored promotions, or coupon codes relevant to their interests.
Show appreciation for your customers by inviting them back through social media and personalized email marketing. These incentives tend to motivate loyal customers to make more purchases.
4. Create Halloween contests and giveaways
Advertise themed Halloween competitions and giveaways on social media, as people love participating in activities where they have a chance to win free stuff. Engaging with your brand at this time fosters a sense of holiday spirit and allows for increased brand interaction.
Consider these suggestions for your Halloween campaign:
- Halloween Story Contest: The winner for the scariest story gets a prize!
- Halloween Decoration Contest: Submit your spookiest decorations and see if they win.
- Halloween Costume Contest: The scariest and best Halloween costume wins!
- Pumpkin Carving Contest: The spookiest carved pumpkin wins!
- Halloween Pet Photo Contest: The best, spookiest pet transformation wins!
5. Send Halloween gift cards
These gift cards sent to customers via social media or email can be activated during your sales campaign. This is a tangible, effective, and simple approach to Halloween marketing.
If you have an ample amount of regional customers and a marketing budget, consider reaching out to your best customers and sending them physical gift cards. Everyone loves receiving tangible items in the mail, so gift cards won’t be an exception.
6. Email marketing during Halloween
Email marketing is projected to become a 12.33 billion market, and with good reason. Sending spooky-themed emails during Halloween has been shown to increase web traffic to stores, thus making it a spooky season win-win situation!
Try to add holiday-specific themes into the subjects for your kitchen utensils, sticker shops, or clothing stores, such as “Spooktacular Sale On All Items!” Make sure to send out emails themed around Halloween that have:
- A catchy yet relevant subject
- Simplicity and clarity
- Persuasion
- Personalization
- Do not forget to include clear calls to action!
7. Use hashtags for marketing
Hashtags are helpful tools used in social media that can be used to locate Halloween-themed content. Utilize these tools to market your posts, videos, and reels.
This can easily drive social media users to your Halloween products through promotions and unique hashtags specific to their locations. Take advantage of the shopping season by increasing brand awareness through these tactics.
Some of the most popular themed hashtags include:
#Halloween2025
#HalloweenCostume
#HalloweenMakeup
#TrickOrTreat
#HalloweenRecipes
#HalloweenSale
#Spooky
#Enchanted
#HalloweenContest
#October
#Pumpkin
#HalloweenGiveaway
#Horror
#SpookySeason
#HalloweenDeals
#SpookySavings
#HalloweenSpecials
#GhostlyDiscounts
#FrighteningFinds
8. Create Fun Interactive Halloween-themed Landing Pages
An engaging Halloween-themed landing page should capture users’ interests and provide great click experiences. Displays should focus more on interaction and user engagement.
To fully optimize this promotion, ensure that:
- Cool Designs: Incorporate Halloween-themed pics as well as animations of floating ghosts, nocturnal skies, and flying bats.
- Engaging options: Include ‘the catch the candy’ mini-game and discount ‘spin the witch’s cauldron’ to increase interaction.
- Mobile devices are a predominant source of traffic, so ensure responsiveness.
- Remove anything that interferes with page speed. Precautions should be taken, as most interactive elements tend to slow responsiveness.
- Integration with Campaigns: If you are sending out emails or running social media marketing promos, make sure that the landing page works without any issues.
9. Work with Social Media Stars for Halloween Marketing
They’re most often known as celebrity influencers, so connect with them. Their use of your products in Halloween costumes or themed videos can grab widespread attention. In this manner, you can promote your brand or business in a thoughtful way to a lot of people.
To achieve this promotional campaign, consider the points below:
- Relevance: Partner with a social media influencer that has the audience demographic in terms of age, gender, location, and interests that you are trying to market to.
- Be Creative: Encourage them to creatively showcase your product in a spooky Halloween manner.
- Use Hashtags: Create specific hashtags that relate to this Halloween theme for the campaign.
- Authenticity: Promotion should come across as genuine and not overly packaged because of heavy marketing strategies.
Influencers offer everything from promotion and brand awareness to collaborating with industry experts. Through engaging with influencers, you can market your business in an entirely different light, gaining access to new audiences using different perspectives.
10. Provide free delivery
Providing free delivery is known to greatly enhance online sales. Since 49 percent of shoppers cite extra costs as one of the top reasons they abandon their carts, free shipping solves this problem.
Offering free shipping during your seasonal campaigns adds value to your promotions and improves the overall customer experience. It allows you to gain a competitive advantage, increase traffic, and improve brand image without spending a lot.
Promote this offer on your social media and Halloween marketing campaigns to harness its full potential.
11. Halloweenify your packaging
Get creative with Halloween-themed marketing. These simple changes can be added as an accessory to an entire campaign to make it ‘spookified.’
While stickers and themed designs are a viable option, adding cute and creepy treats or graphics to the box would elevate the experience. This not only caters to your target audience, but it also allows them to enjoy an experience that resonates with their unboxing during this spooky season.
12. Provide “build-your-own” themed Halloween products
Customize your Halloween promotional strategies with a product campaign. Allow customers to use pre-made Halloween designs to create custom text and patterns to add onto t-shirts, phone cases, mugs, and even rugs.
Promote the offering through a dedicated ad buy social media campaign featuring customization videos. Encourage clients to showcase their designs on your Facebook page or any platform using unique hashtags, enabling them to market their own designs.
This strategy drives sales and fosters community involvement through user-generated content. It’s a great way to celebrate Halloween while showing off the versatility of the business and differentiating the small business in a festive, yet personalized way.
What are Halloween promotional essentials?
High Spending Event: Halloween is a notable spending event and has now become a notable holiday.
- Opportunity to Be Noticed: Businesses looking to capture attention should assert themselves during this period.
- Boost Product Sales: Retailers can use Halloween promotional offers to increase product sales.
- Attract New Customers: New clients can be brought in by using the festive period as leverage, especially when offering new services.
- Show Off Your Brand Personality: Marketing is all about embracing the spooky spirit, having fun, and demonstrating to your audience that your business is dynamic.
The Best Promotions to Drive Sales on Halloween
Sales are not just about the candy or costumes. Halloween also brings great opportunities for businesses to push and promote their sales. Below are a few promotion ideas that are bound to make sales this Halloween.
Flash Sales That Shout Spook!
When conducting flash sales, imagine these deals appearing unexpectedly and persisting for a brief period; this is beneficial for business as it encourages customers to rush to the store before the deal expires.
How to do it: Selecting a few pieces in your store and giving them small discounts for a set few hours. Add a twist to the sale’s name by calling it “Midnight Ghostly Deals.” It puts you in the spooky spirit.
Mystery Discounts Or Lollipops
For shoppers out there, it’s like days filled with trick-or-treating because for every purchase customers make, they are rewarded with surprise gifts or mystery discounts.
How to do it: Customers who purchase selected items need to choose a sealed envelope. Offer them the opportunity to select a potion bottle, or wrapped surprise lollipop. They will guarantee receiving coupons from their last surprise enchanting discounts, and even small goodies.
BOO!-GO (Buy One Get One) Offers
This is the quintessential offer where, in a ‘buy one, get one free’ or ‘buy one, get another at half price’ fashion, you offer an item to the customer if they buy something from your store. Great for Halloween buddies shopping together!
How to do it: Choose items that can be sold together, like Halloween-themed mugs. When a customer buys one, she gets the second for free or at half price.
Special Discounts for Costumed Customers
This will perk up your customers and encourage them to celebrate the spirit of Halloween. Offer special discounts to clients who turn up at the shop with a costume. In fact, 48% of people,almost half, actually put on alluring costumes for Halloween.
How to do it: Advertise this initiative prior to Halloween through posters or promotional online posts. When a costumed customer walks in on Halloween, offer them an exciting discount or a complimentary item.
Conclusion
This holiday is all about marketing and there is a great opportunity to tap into the people’s interest creatively, particularly on social media. Through the use of social media, Halloween adverts, or even in-store Halloween games, businesses can capture the attention of customers. By offering themed pop-up shops stocked with items within that season and gamifying the user experience, the creativity to maximize on this holiday is boundless.
As with any holiday, the value of marketing during Halloween isn’t in the sales themselves, but in understanding the demographics of your audience. Tapping into industry innovation or even seasonal excitement through scavenger hunts, eerie packaging designs, and mystery boxes can foster renewed customer loyalty while boosting sales.
As the spooky season draws near, unleash your creativity to create lasting impressions that go beyond generating revenue. With strategy and the right mix of creativity, the customer won’t be the only one treated during Halloween. Horror masks filled with fun, excitement, and surprises can go a long way when crafting magic for your marketing.
