October has arrived, the leaves are beginning to turn yellow and the Halloween season has officially commenced. With Halloween just around the corner, customers are in the mood for creepy, eerie and fun brand interactions!
According to a report from 7shifts, over 20% of restaurant employees have reported that Halloween is the busiest holiday in their store. This is a perfect opportunity to spook up your store and make this scary holiday an unforgettable experience for your customers and a revenue generating one for your business!
Check out our marketing tricks and treats to increase traffic and boost your sales for a boo-tiful and successful Halloween season.
A. Spookify your Front-of-House
Want to get people off their feet and in your store this Halloween? From dressing up your store to organizing some activities—turn your store into a spooky destination.
1. Decorate your store: It is essential to create and set the mood for your store and one way to do that is to put up decorations that can help you stand out from the competition. Using fog machines and dimming the lights in your restaurant are simple and cost-effective ways to create a mood-setting and spine-chilling atmosphere!
Get your team involved by having them dress up the interior and exterior of your store by stretching out cobwebs or placing the classic jack-o-lanterns. You can also display trick or treat bowls by the entrance or near your POS system because who wouldn’t love free candy? When buying decorations, ensure that you can reuse them for a long period of time.
Additionally, design Halloween costume for your staff or have them put on scary-looking makeup to complete your store’s look and feel!
2. Customize your menu: Your customers will love customized menu items, with seasonal food like pumpkins and spice. Keeping this in mind, why not personalize and add Halloween-inspired dishes for your customers to rave about? One of the most famous examples is Starbucks’ pumpkin spiced latte, a seasonal drink that has sold more than two hundred million units since it has been launched.
Be creative and take it to the next level by getting innovative with your menu names and dishes to emphasize the October vibes in your restaurant. Redesigning your regular menu offerings with a hint of red or creepy crawlers is an effective strategy in bringing the Halloween spirit into the dining experience. Some suggestions of names you can use include Burger Brains, Bloody Spaghetti, or even Frankenstein Fish & Chips.
3. Prepare Halloween-themed activities: Halloween is one of the holidays that many people look forward to in a year—particularly your younger customers. You can organize various activities for the children, such as face painting, pumpkin carving, trick or treating, and so much more.
According to a survey by Proper Insights & Analytics, 46% of consumers are planning to celebrate the holiday this year by dressing up in costumes. Therefore, you can host a costume party or competition to have everyone on board. Involve incentives and prizes for an optimized participation rate.
You can also set up a Photo BOOth section at your location for an even more memorable experience. This can also be used as a marketing tactic to spread word about your restaurant as these photos can be published on your social media pages and your customers’.
B. Boost your Halloween sales with Marketing Campaigns
4. Turn your BOGO into BOOGO: In a survey from AMG, 66% of shoppers say that they like BOGO the most out of all kinds of promotions. Offer “Buy One, Get One Free” promotion deals that are limited during this particular season only. For instance, who wouldn’t love a Boo-rific offer where kids eat free with the purchase of an adult entree or buy 2 for 1 Dracula’s Juice during haunted hours?
5. Halloween-themed gamifications: Gamifications are an effective way to engage your customers and will give ‘em pumpkin to talk about. Therefore, a Halloween-themed Spin the Wheel might be the answer you’re looking for! Create a wheel of treats where your guests can win exciting prizes on menu items you’ve personalized for the holiday and enable them to spin the wheel only when they spend above a certain amount (20% above the average spent for instance).
6. Top-up your wallet during the Halloween season and receive extra cash: Introduce a new top-up amount in your wallet feature exclusively during the week of Halloween and enable members to pay $50 and get $55 (or any other relevant amount) charged to their loyalty account!
7. Personalize your promo codes for Halloween: Promo codes introduced in-store and on your social pages and granting an amount off, a percentage off or gifting free items can be very powerful in bringing existing members and non members to your locations. Give your customers tailored promo codes such as 666 (the devil’s number), 3010 (30th October)!
C. Optimize your Social Media platforms and Website for a more frightening experience
Social media is a great avenue to market your businesses’ Halloween promotions in-store and online. This is where you can let your followers/customers know about your new menu items, share snaps of your in-store decorations and offers they can redeem during the season.
8. Leverage social media gifts to bring in current and new customers: According to Statista, experts predict that the use of digital coupons will rise in 2021, reaching 145.3 million users by the year’s end. Recruit new members and bring more customers to your store by setting-up a Traffic Acquisition coupon during the Halloween season! You can either include a link to the page on your social media channels or on the website.
9. Create short videos on Facebook & use Halloween themed polls to boost organic traffic: Want to show off your in-store Halloween decorations or spread the word about your Spooktacular sales? Create short videos and upload them to Facebook! Convey a clear, simple message and make sure the video is no longer than 15 seconds (so you don’t lose your viewers’ attention). Feel free to go wild with puns to make the video more fangtastic to watch!
Facebook polls are a great way to boost your online presence like engagement, connectivity with old & potential customers while gaining valuable feedback on your business. During this season, engage with your audience by creating polls where you can ask them what food item they loved best from your Halloween themed menu or test how much they really know about All Hallows Eve and give them a chance to win exciting goodies.
10. Use personalized hashtags on your Instagram posts and host Halloween-themed giveaways: When used strategically, hashtags can be beneficial for your businesses’ organic growth. Using precise hashtags, for example, “Burgerfactoryhalloween” (or to make it more fun, use puns like #Boo-gerfactory) is much better than just “#Halloween”. Customers following you on Instagram will also be encouraged to use the same hashtags when they post pictures from your store!
Get your followers under your spell and host special giveaways! Who doesn’t love free goodies? You can either do a series of small giveaways or a massive one on the day itself. Encourage your followers to tag their ghoulfriends for a higher chance to win!
11. Leverage the fastest growing social media platform – Tiktok: According to Marketing Dive, “Heinz is challenging TikTok users to share videos of their Halloween preparations for a chance to win a bottle of its limited-edition Heinz Tomato Blood Ketchup.”
Take advantage of Tiktok’s popularity by launching fun campaigns to engage the younger audience. Trends are the backbone of Tiktok. You can use viral Halloween-inspired songs to get your videos on users’ ‘For You’ pages! To find out what is trending during this season, open the app, click on ‘Discover’, and you can view all the viral songs & hashtags for that day.
Instead of deploying ads, you can also use influencers to get the word across! Note that Tiktok’s algorithm is unique so even if you do not have a large following, as the app prompts videos outside of a user’s follower base, you may get a lot of visibility on your impactful content!
12. Spruce up your website to attract viewers during the season: Add a wicked Halloween banner to your website. Promote your Halloween sale on your website to grab the attention of the viewers. These can either be static images, gifs or short videos! Make your banners extra skele-fun and add a splash of the holiday’s themed color schemes like orange and black!
13. Dress up your logo for the holiday: Halloween is a good chance to draw some attention to your business and what better way to do this than dressing up your logo for the season? It helps enhance your relationship with customers and makes you stand out from the crowd. Change your logo’s colors or incorporate witches, skeletons, pumpkins or anything else ‘spooky’ to your original logo and display it in-store, on your website, social media pages or App to stand out!
So there you have it – 13 fearsomely effective campaign ideas for your business! When done right, it can really boost your businesses’ revenue. We hope these ideas help you set up the best experience for your in-store and online customers! Looking forward to discovering the ideas you went for!
Have an eek-tastic Halloween!
