Halloween is right around the corner, and we expect spooktacular sales this year.
If you're a business owner or a marketer, you probably know that your Halloween campaign should have been planned well in advance to see the most ROI. That said, here we are at the eleventh hour... if you're making a last-minute plan for Halloween, there are still many things you can do to capture your customers' attention.
Here are four quick tips that will make sure you don't miss out on sales:
You can (pumpkin) spice up your website using seasonal elements to draw attention to your store and increase sales. Big brands like Crate & Barrel do this all the time, rejuvenating their promotions, stock, and marketing themes to match the time of year. Some of the website content you can play around with include:
We don’t recommend doing this often, but some brands adjust their logo seasonally to great effect. Altering your logo to be more Halloween-worthy will trigger positive emotions around your brand. It will leave an impression of a brand that cares about its customers by following seasonal trends. Take a look at this great example by Pringles where a simple creative approach makes a significant seasonal difference.
Hey, any holiday is a chance to boost email sign-ups and promote deals. Ahead of the day, try adding a pop-up that will notify your visitors and encourage sign-ups. If you’re hosting a Halloween event or having a discount weekend, pop-ups can be a great way to drive traffic.
For bonus points, combine popups with other tactics like personalisation to increase your chances of catching visitors' attention and driving sales. Around 61% of shoppers say they’re more likely to buy after a personalized experience with a brand.
Remember, how you decorate your online store during the Halloween season will affect brand perception and what you can potentially offer to your shoppers.
A seasonal landing page isn’t just a good idea to support your other marketing channels (like Google Ads, email, and organic social media) – it’s a great idea for persistent SEO (search engine optimisation).
The fact of the matter is, it can be hard to rank for seasonal search terms like ‘last minute Halloween costume’ and ‘Halloween decorations’ across your entire e-commerce store. And this is a bad idea unless your store is specific to a season. You don’t want an entire store to rank for Halloween goods all year round if you don’t have them, and most of the time your store isn’t Halloween-focused.
Instead, building a seasonal landing page that pulls in relevant inventory from your site allows you to focus your search engine optimisation work on this singular page, building authority over time (because you never need to hide it from Google or change it like you will with your e-commerce homepage). You can also gather data from this page that you know is specifically relevant to this seasonal audience.
Looking for a good Halloween landing page example? Look no further than Crate & Barrel. They’re tastefully pulling in relevant inventory while maintaining their brand aesthetic.
When building a landing page, pay special attention to
You’re an e-commerce store, so season’s greetings mean seasonal discounts, and Halloween is no different. Promotions give consumers an extra boost to buy or, at the very least, browse your products. The end of the year — including Halloween, Black Friday, and Christmas — is the biggest shopping period on the calendar for most e-commerce businesses. People have learned to expect discounts on national holidays and may search for seasonal deals. Proven Halloween promotional tactics include:
Customers love holiday-inspired discount codes! Promotional Halloween gives customers an incentive to buy products they are unsure of. When creating the codes, try using catchy Halloween words to add more fun.
There are many great giveaway ideas you can use from the simple (for example, Halloween Photo/Video & Costume, tagging a friend in the comments of social media) to the more complicated type (DIY Halloween Decoration or Foods/Drinks, Halloween Performance in the Halloween Party). No matter which one you choose, increase sales through an online contest.
However, you should keep communicating and encouraging your customers to join in the giveaway by social posts about current submissions or sharing around Halloween topics. You should show your effort in creating fresh and unique activities for your customers, especially in big holiday seasons like Halloween. Giveaways help you reach a wider audience, so they’re a strong platform for promoting new product launches and brand partnerships. Consider teaming up with a partner brand for this year’s Halloween giveaway!
If you normally charge for shipping costs, free shipping is an easy win for your Halloween strategy. Combine free shipping with seasonal discounts to unlock new levels of spending. You might think a discount code will take in more money on its own, but a recent survey found that 77% of customers expect free shipping when shopping online.
Halloween is a perfect time to get creative and send a spooky email to your contacts. While you're at it, why not take advantage of the opportunity and get them interested in your products? Email and websites are still the number one place where consumers discover promotions.
If you're looking for a way to make your emails stand out from the crowd and get people excited about your brand, then spicing them up with a sense of mystery will help your click-through rate.
This will translate into visits to your website. Here are some quick tips for a spooktacular email marketing campaign:
Halloween is approaching quickly, and if you want to launch a Halloween campaign, you need to do it now. Contact us to learn how to maximise sales volume and put the upcoming holiday at top of mind among consumers, and you’ll be celebrating with scary-good results.