While Christmas and Thanksgiving day are close, no holiday gets as little credit to boosting online sales as does Halloween. Just two years ago, in 2013, Americans spent $6.9 billion just on Halloween costumes, the most popular item to buy online before decorations and accessories such as wigs. As the 4th best holiday that boosts e-commerce sales, it’s very spooky to think of how much money you’re leaving on the table by not taking advantage and dressing your online brand up – for Halloween. We don’t have a lot of time until Halloween, so let’s get you started!

Halloween – Offline?

All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Eve – or simply Halloween is a celebration that takes place every year on October 31st, which is actually the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day.

In the US, the modern version of celebrating Halloween includes trick-or-treating for candy or other goodies, carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing and organizing (as well as attending) costume parties.

Are You Selling Halloween Goods and Goodies?

If you’re selling costumes, accessories or basically any Halloween items that customers will want to get ready for, it’s a bit worrying that you’re reading our “Last minute” guide at the last minute. With over 32 percent of consumers buying Halloween goods online, you’re certainly going to get customers. So if you don’t have any costumes for the kids (and 38 percent of adults who take their kids trick-or-treating) or decorations for people’s homes (50 percent of Americans celebrating Halloween will decorate their home or office), you better stock up at the last second!

Interestingly enough, 57% of Halloween spenders will shop for decorations AFTER Halloween is over!

But we’re not here to get you to sell more Halloween stuff. Instead, we want to help you sell whatever you are selling or promoting – on Halloween. With just a couple of days left until October 31st, let’s get you ready!

Before You Go #Spooky Crazy, Who Is Your Target Audience?

True, you can target anyone that celebrates about Halloween. However, keep in mind that while most of the world knows and celebrates the holiday to a point, it’s the US that really celebrates All Hallows’ Eve, with over 150 million Americans who actually celebrate Halloween! Definitely test out any campaigns and activities you have, but focus most of your efforts on Americans!

Starting Simple: Update Your Cover Images, Avatars…

Don’t wait for Christmas to put some snow on your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and pages. Get your graphic designer (or use a tool like Canva) to create some unique and spooky graphics to “scare” your customers into liking, retweeting and sharing. Depending on the images you change, you’ll have different benefits. If you change your Facebook cover, it will appear to your fans in their feed, while if you change your Twitter avatar, it will stand out from all your competitors!

With 87 percent of the most shared Facebook posts in 2014 including or being images, it’s obvious that a great Halloween visual can make all the difference!

Be Smart With Your #Creepy Copywriting!

Try to be smart and include some descriptions or jokes that combine your industry and products with Halloween. For a wine bar it could be ‘Hello-wine’ since it does sound like Halloween! Or you could get a unique, scary domain name for your campaign, such as “HostingScares.Me” to promote a project where you explain how easy it is to buy web hosting and use it!

Halloween Hashtags, Duh!

While you can’t use hashtags on Facebook (well, technically you can, but SHOULDN’T), they can get you in the eye of the general public on Twitter or Instagram, especially if you use one of the popular hashtag, such as the simple #halloween to the less obvious #trickortreat or #costumes.

Put Your Product in the Context of Halloween

Can your product or service be put into the context of the scariest holiday out there? Sure it can, even if it’s not a costume or an obvious holiday prop. A good example is Oreo’s campaign in which they engaged with their community to create custom Oreo “monsters” for Halloween. The winner of the campaign used some candy corn and Oreos to create a spooky little bat-like creature.

Does Oreo have anything to do with Halloween? Obviously not. But it took just a bit of creativity and calling up their followers and fans across their social media channels to get the contest on track. What did they need? A great prize and a simple task that’s actually a unique concept!

Engage Your Customers for #Halloween

While we can’t include our customers in bobbing for apples, or go trick-or-treating with them, we can give them something fun to do in the context of Halloween. What Adobe did last year was – they solved a murder. No, seriously! While it wasn’t a real murder, Adobe started a contest in which their users helped them solve the mystery – using their Photoshop skills.

Adobe posted a PSD (a source Photoshop file) on their Facebook page and let their users find evidence inside it. The contest was so successful that Adobe is going to do it once again this year and they even created a special video teaser to tell their users all about it. Are you ready for #PsMystery?

Like Oreo, Adobe didn’t really have to go out of their way with a big budget campaign. Instead, they engaged with their current users to build up their community, a base they can easily use in the future to increase sales!

It doesn’t take much to take advantage of Halloween, and with just a couple of days until the day – you need to get started – NOW. Change your social media graphics, redesign your website (at least a bit), or engage your community like Oreo and Adobe did! Good luck… Bu!

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