‘Tis the spooky season and if your business sells goods that celebrate Halloween, you may be on the lookout for extra marketing ideas. The same principles apply to Halloween as all seasonal marketing; start early and do your research. Without a considered strategy, you will likely run the risk of spending time and money on ineffective campaigns.
Does Seasonal Marketing Work?
Seasonal marketing is all about a specific event or time of the year. It may be one day like Black Friday, or it could be several months such as the autumn of a year. Seasonal marketing takes the same approach as all quality marketing strategies; relevancy and timing. You need to show your potential customers the right campaigns at the right time. Halloween is just one of those seasonal holidays that can be incredibly beneficial for many companies. However, not all businesses can make gains in the same way. So, you should only pursue a large Halloween campaign if it is relevant to your customers or you can utilise the holiday effectively to market unrelated products and services.
Get Your Site Ready for Halloween Marketing
Halloween marketing should be approached in the same dedicated way as your year-round marketing. Create a plan that fits your business and audience and most of all have fun with it.
Start Early
Those who fail to prepare should prepare to fail. Planning your strategy early provides you with plenty of time to do proper social, audience and keyword research. Without this first step, you will be creating campaigns blindly and they may not have the results you want. Create SMART goals as you would any other campaign to work towards. Starting early also allows you to get the work required done well ahead of time. Not rushing about will reduce errors and allow you the time to respond to changes that may be needed last minute.
On-Page SEO for Halloween Marketing
Once you have established what your audience is looking for on search, you can refresh your web copy for relevancy. Updating your on-page SEO inline with your chosen keywords can help get your products and services ranking on SEs for those terms. This is especially vital for businesses where the focus isn’t macabre throughout the year but could benefit from a Halloween angle.
A few B2C businesses I can think of that would match this would be jewellery & clothing, candle shops, home interior stores and any retailers whose products could be used for the spooky season as well as any other time of the year. B2B companies could include businesses like event space, security or corporate party organisers. Seasonal SEO can work but it needs to be worked on early enough to gain traction with search engines.
Produce supporting content
Once your pages on your site are updated, you can create supporting content to drive traffic and boost rankings. Halloween content can often fall into the trap of being a little bit ham horror! Often tenuously linked to the season, my main advice for businesses producing content is to keep it relevant to your audience and your brand. Cheesy is fine if your branding is a bit more fun than formal. But, don’t just stick a pumpkin on it and be done. Your Halloween content should focus on your chosen keywords or provide entertaining content that could go viral on social media.
Switch up your design
We often see changes to website design over the Christmas period such as falling snowflakes or festive photos of the team. But, you rarely see spooky inspired changes to a website during October. It can seem like a lot of work for such a small period but these little details give personality to your company. This is especially true for ‘boring’ businesses that may not get to show the people behind the profile frequently. I’ve discussed on the blog previously one of my favourite website adaptions for the season. An interactive ghost hunt that the hosting company 20i provided during October. It provides the right balance of fun and promotion whilst still sticking to their brand aesthetic.
Social Promotion
Of course, social media is a vital part of any seasonal campaign especially holidays like Halloween which are incredibly visual. If your products receive a boost of sales through October, you should up your posting with a focus on the spooky side. Competitions, decor styling or team shenanigans in costume can all build your association with Halloween and get people clicking through to your website. Businesses that are not directly impacted by Halloween can still use this as an opportunity to boost their profile. Have fun with it, just stay on brand.
Don’t forget PPC
For one-off events, PPC advertising is an excellent tool. You can gain a vast number of qualified visitors to your site through PPC ads. Search ads are all about getting the right results to the right people at exactly the right time. If you’ve not done any PPC adverts for your company previously then ensure you engage a professional PPC marketer to help. You can end up spending a lot of money for not much gain if your campaigns and ads are not set up correctly or honed effectively.
Invest In Your Marketing Strategy
I hope I’ve provided some helpful ideas for your spooky strategy. If you are looking for more help on developing and implementing a quality marketing strategy, look no further. I provide freelance marketing consultancy to independent companies looking to boost their business. Get in touch with me today to check availability and let’s see if we can grow your business together.