Should Aussie businesses do Halloween marketing?

Halloween can be a heated topic in Australia. Some say it has no place being recognised here and are disgusted by the decorations, costumes and increasing number of trick or treaters.

Others are embracing the chance to show their love for all things spooky or simply love a good costume party.

It can be easy to let your personal opinions of the holiday leak into your business and whether you go along with marketing for the occasion.

However, the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) in collaboration with Roy Morgan have found Australians are set to spend $430 million on costumes, decorations and sweet treats this Halloween season.

So, should Aussie businesses do Halloween marketing?

If you read our pre-Christmas marketing checklist, you’ll know building your audience for email marketing, paid ads and other types of advertising is crucial. And Halloween could be your gateway to easily getting customer or audience data

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All it takes is for you to offer something exclusive to people who subscribe to your email newsletter list. It could be a discount code, to enter a competition, give feedback, etc. Simply theme whatever it is a little spooky and voila, you have a trending content piece that will help you reach the most people possible over the holiday season.

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#spookyseason is here.

This means there will be videos, posts and content for DIY decorations and costumes, Halloween makeup, food and drink recipes, history for the event and more. What this also means is people will also be looking for this content — and it could be yours they find.

Now, to the tradies out there, don’t think you can’t get involved. Remember, it’s spooky season. What are some horrifying things you see in your industry? Why do pipes sound like ghouls in the walls? Pest controllers, this is your time to shine with some education around types of spiders! The list goes on as to how you can tap into the season on social media, blogs and more.

If you’re going to post (whether it’s on social media or a blog), make sure you optimise your content and images, utilising hashtags (if relevant), keywords and more so you can get your content seen!

In the marketing world, there’s a known — if not a little questionable — technique of deliberately publishing content you know will spark fury in the eyes of keyboard warriors to get engagement (likes, comments, shares, etc.). For example, news outlets have been known to deliberately scatter typos in social media posts and online articles to get comments from those who consider themselves language aficionados.

While we don’t recommend this strategy as negative sentiment is never a good thing, it is a reminder that engagement on your social media posts does help the social media platform to know to push the post to others. So, if you get a few bad reactions or comments from those who haven’t caught onto the Halloween hype, don’t stress. It’s all working in your favour.

Of course, if the comments are getting offensive, we do recommend hiding or deleting them.

In 2021, Big W reported a 33% increase year-on-year on seasonal product sales from those wanting to feel the childlike delight Halloween can bring.

But this is a big business. Does Halloween marketing work for small businesses? It sure does!

Ashley King, founder of the online retail store The Kringle Company, decided to launch her first Halloween-themed mug in 2021. The mug not only sold out in 7 minutes, but it also generated $7,000 in sales — from a mug.

So, if there is a way you can incorporate a Halloween-themed product, menu, service, etc. or even just add some cute little ghosts to your social media graphics (hello, Canva templates), do it.