Don’t Be Frightened by Social Media
When any holiday rolls around, retailers start preparing weeks (or even months) in advance to promote their holiday-related products.
While Halloween certainly isn’t the biggest holiday in terms of spending (Christmas is first, followed by Thanksgiving), it does bring in extra sales year after year.
Retailers big and small release and promote their Halloween costumes, candy, décor items, T-shirts and other promotional products.
While sending out ads and flyers is a good way to get business, it’s not the only way.
Nowadays, marketing with social media can play a huge role in gaining sales and giving your business a jump-start on holiday shopping.
Using social media to promote Halloween
There are many “spooky” social media campaigns stores can launch to bring in customers.
Between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and dozens of other social media platforms, the options are endless….
Have a costume contest – Ask your followers on Instagram or Facebook to post photos of their best scary Halloween costumes from years past. Retailers such as Walmart typically carry a wide array of costumes for shockingly low prices, so you could advertise where to purchase these costumes from in your contest. Let fans vote for the winner or choose it yourself and reward the winner with a gift card to your store.
Don’t forget about hashtags – Hashtags are used for everything from weddings to funny toddler videos to holidays. Use a hashtag of your store name followed by Halloween to promote all your new Halloween costumes, décor and more! #WalmartgoesHalloween
Take surveys geared around Halloween – Find out what your customers want by conducting surveys across multiple social media platforms. Ask followers what their favorite part of Halloween is, what types of costumes they want to see more of (baby costumes, couples costumes or simply more variety, for example), what their favorite Halloween candy is, etc. Conducting surveys are not only fun for your customers, but they also give your retail store valuable insight on what the customers want.
Have a Halloween-themed event – Offer trick-or-treating for the kids a few nights before Halloween, hold a live pet-costume contest or even host a Halloween-inspired chili cook-off. Promote and advertise your event (and your store!) on all major social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On the actual night of your event, post photos and host giveaways live on social media and use hashtags to keep everything organized.
As a retailer, Halloween is a great time to jump-start your holiday sales and promotions.
Typically, Black Friday marks the first shopping day of the holidays, but as the years go on, Halloween is beginning to mark the start of the shopping season. Give your retail business an edge by really pushing and promoting Halloween.
Think of Halloween as the starting point to your total holiday sales and really go all out on your social media marketing campaigns for this spooky, frightening holiday.
The results may surprise you even more than if you were to see a ghost!
Photo credit: Image courtesy of digidreamgrafix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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