Is Your eCommerce Site Ready for Halloween?

Trick or treat your way to higher sales

Love it or hate it – the UK has followed in the footsteps of America, and Halloween has become kind of a big deal over here in recent years.

If you run an eCommerce store, holidays like Halloween offer opportunities to create a buzz around your brand and boost sales, especially if you’re targeting an international audience.

If you haven’t yet brewed up a bewitching marketing plan for this Hallows’ Eve, don’t worry – there’s still time! In this article, we’ll provide tips, advice, and spellbinding strategies to help you win more sales this Halloween.

What opportunities does Halloween offer in eCommerce?

Holidays like Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween all offer businesses the opportunity to get creative, show their fun side, delight, and engage their audience. Halloween eCommerce trends demonstrate that consumers are ready and willing to spend money during holidays, creating a golden opportunity for those businesses that invest time in devising marketing strategies to boost sales.

Understanding Halloween shopping and running Halloween-themed marketing campaigns could help your eCommerce store win more traffic, enhance user experience, build your brand, engage more visitors, and win more sales.

How heavily you invest in Halloween marketing will be influenced by several factors, including your business type, industry and budget. Some businesses lend themselves better to Halloween than others – for example, if you sell Halloween-themed products like fancy dress costumes, party supplies, or kids’ toys, this could be one of the most lucrative times of the year for you, justifying substantial investment. However, if you sell building supplies or bathrooms, Halloween may be a less pertinent time of year, and your marketing campaigns may be scaled down. That said, even these sectors can still capitalise on the holiday if they get creative!

Preparing your eCommerce store for Halloween

So, where to start with preparing for Halloween sales? From frightening Facebook ads to devilish website décor, let’s explore ways that eCommerce stores can conjure up success this season.

Give your storefront a spooky twist – Grab your website visitor’s attention by giving your storefront a haunting Halloween overhaul. Opt for simple changes that won’t take forever to reverse post-Halloween – think creepy banner images, spookified navigation, chilling homepage imagery, or a Halloween countdown clock to set the mood.

Offer special Halloween-themed products – If your product lineup permits, introduce special Halloween-themed products around the holiday season. Whether it’s creepy costumes, gory home décor, or trick-or-treat goodies, offering season-specific products can help to lure in holiday shoppers and attract new audiences.

Offer bewitching discounts and offers – Give your customers another reason to celebrate Halloween by offering special offers and discounts around the holiday. Lure them in with a Halloween-themed discount code like ‘PUMPKIN666’ to increase sales and attract new customers.

Create spooky content – No matter what products your eCommerce store offers, there are engaging content opportunities around Halloween if you look for them. Think carefully about the type of content that may be entertaining, of value to your target audience, or relevant to your industry or products. Offer Halloween-themed behind-the-scenes footage, product round-ups, a Halloween quiz, or inspiration for how your products can be used during the holiday season. Create blog posts about last-minute Halloween costume ideas, party inspiration, or video tutorials for creating Halloween decorations or recipes. 

Offer Halloween-themed product bundles – If you sell Halloween-themed products, create product bundles to provide customers with great value and maximise your revenue.

Run spine-chilling social media campaigns – Don’t forget to take full advantage of social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook in the run-up to Halloween. Posting engaging, exciting, or funny Halloween-themed content can help build your brand, drive traffic to your website, and create a buzz around your eCommerce store. This could include promoting your Halloween-themed discounts or offers, sharing your spooky content, promoting Halloween-themed products, sharing user-generated content, and just-for-fun posts and memes. Don’t forget to use Halloween-themed hashtags to attract more seasonal search traffic.

Create spooktacular email marketing campaigns – Create an email marketing sequence that drip-feeds Halloween excitement into your customers’ inboxes. Start with ‘sneak peek’ emails that showcase what’s coming to your store this Halloween, followed by promotional and ‘last chance’ emails as the holiday nears. Promote everything your eCommerce business is doing to celebrate Halloween and send out exclusive Halloween promotions and discounts to your email subscribers.

Run an eerie competition – Nothing drums up engagement like a good old-fashioned contest. Run a Halloween-themed competition with prizes and promote it on your blog, social media, and marketing emails to generate engagement and create user-generated content. Encourage customers to enter and share the competition with their friends to widen your business’s reach and create a buzz around your brand. 

Invest in ghoulish PPC ads – Don’t forget to promote your store using Halloween-themed PPC ads. Platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram offer excellent targeting options to ensure you promote your business to the right people at the right moment.

Successful Halloween marketing campaigns to inspire yours

As the summer days begin to shorten and the leaves start turning brown, many brands become preoccupied with building their most haunting Halloween marketing campaign yet. From scary social media strategies to eerie product ranges, Halloween marketing campaigns are designed to inspire, engage, entertain, and convert. Let’s look at some of the most successful Halloween campaigns of recent years to inspire your hair-raising efforts.

Heinz – “The creepiest condiment”

Heinz rebranded its tomato ketchup for Halloween, producing limited edition bottles of “Tomato Blood Ketchup”. The “creepiest condiment” invited families to attend its pop-up event and try out its Halloween costume kits. It broadcast the event on a live stream on its website and allowed viewers to buy the costume kits directly through the stream. It also encouraged customers to take to social media and share gory photos of themselves dressed for Halloween and dowsed in ketchup (blood), creating quite a buzz with user-generated content.

Asos – #DayToFright

Global online fashion brand Asos leveraged the power of social media platform TikTok when it launched its #DayToFright Halloween campaign. TikTok has recently grown in popularity with its target audience, making it the ideal platform for the campaign. Asos partnered with TikTok influencers, asking them to create content where they transitioned from a casual daytime look to a creepy evening look featuring clothes and beauty products from Asos. In total, the hashtag received over 2.8 billion views.

M&S Food – Spooky night in

M&S Food expands its product range every Halloween to include creative Halloween-themed dishes and treats. This year’s range includes spooktacular skeleton-shaped skrumpets, pumpkin bao buns, and a mummy Colin the Caterpillar. The Halloween food range is part of a 3 for £12 deal. M&S uses social media in the run-up to Halloween to promote its range and generate plenty of excitement among its audience. 

Partner with Create8 to spookify your eCommerce experience

Need help getting your eCommerce website ready to bewitch your customers this Halloween?

Here at Create8, our team of marketing whizzes can help you conjure up a hauntingly effective marketing campaign for your eCommerce store. From Halloween email marketing campaigns to creepy content strategies, our team can help your business to profit from the spooky season.

Ready to learn about more Halloween sales solutions? Contact us today to start your project.