Capitalizing Halloween sales is now easier for small biz

While the American population is busy preparing for October 29th, 2018, small business owners must start drawing up their strategies for increasing their Halloween sales. Since 2012, the world has been welcoming Halloween as a ‘holiday’.

In the UK, Halloween sales went up to Euro 310 million in 2017.

Although Halloween is not that much celebrated as Christmas, it is an occasion that allows businesses to tweak their offerings to engage and attract the masses.

Halloween 2018 is going to be the best platform for every ecommerce, retail, and even SaaS-based business owners to connect with their customer base.

With every Halloween-themed sales and marketing promotions, you can be one of the businesses’ that successfully pique the Halloween crowds’ interest and get them to your website or brick-and-mortar store!

But let us be very clear, if your idea of attracting the Halloween crowd involves the general trick-or-treat quotes or putting of jack-o-lanterns, you must read this article to optimize your Halloween marketing ideas for increasing your sales revenue.

So, without much ado, let’s get into the mode for welcoming Halloween 2018, shall we! But before we delve deeper into the marketing tips to increase your Halloween sales revenue, it’s time for some fun facts regarding Halloween that small business owners can use in their favor.

With more than 179 million Americans planning to partake in Halloween festivities in 2017, up from 171 million a year before, spending was slated to reach a record high in survey history. In 2017, consumers were expected to spend $9.1 billion, up from $8.4 billion in 2016.

The top costume for children is reported to be an action hero or superhero, while the top pick for adults is a witch. Pets will not be left behind, with 10 percent of consumers dressing their pet as a pumpkin.

Let’s give you some sales revenue increasing tips for this Halloween

1. Offer freebies that can be used as Halloween gifts by your customers

Discounts on holiday seasons.

• We are not asking you to join the bandwagon but look at your customers last year’s purchasing patterns and then strategize your holiday season discounts.
• If your competitors have not been providing any such thing, be ready to do so.
• The holiday season gets everyone in a festive mood, and if you are putting up signages or posters or online promotions regarding your seasonal discounts, people will surely stop by, be it your store or website.
• What else rushes the millennials to take more interest in Halloween purchases than discounts?
• As Halloween approaches, gifting family members becomes part of their holiday spirit.

Halloween Sales Tip:

Instead of just relying on discounts, prepare freebies that people can give to their friends, family members, colleagues as Halloween gifts.

2. A spooky look for your store “front”

• Store owners often use this strategy of decorating their store to give it the look & feel of each coming holiday.
• The same can be done to welcome the Hallows Eve. However, do not design a totally new theme.
• For online businesses, we would advise that you must go for something beautiful yet simple that does not take its toll on the back-end. We would not like you to have trouble in executing something that will only stay temporarily on your website.

Halloween Sales Tip: Focus your energy, money and time in decorating flexible yet catchy Halloween elements that make an impression on your visitors.

3. Infuse Halloween elements in your branding

• You can easily get your business in the Halloween celebration mode; just incorporate popular Halloween symbols into your branding.

Halloween Sales Tip: A little jack-o-lantern, a random witch’s cauldron or everyone’s favorite Frankenstein on your business signage, website or store bags will send out the festivity feeling to your customers and other prospects.

4. Call-to-actions in your Halloween ads

Online retail stores send out emails for every purchase you make, for any notification customers have subscribed for attaching one of the below CTAs in your emails will get more crowd into your site or retail store.

General Halloween CTAs

1. Shop today! Or you will miss out on Halloween time!
2. Don’t be the one who is left to choose from what’s “left”. Visit us today!
3. Halloween is in October. Oh, sorry!! We meant it’s Halloween time. Visit now and save xx%

CTAs for parents

1. Your kids love Pikachu/wolf/fox? Get the perfect costume/toy that they’ll love!
2. Your kids will leave an impression this Halloween. Visit our outfit stores now!
3. We are sure your kids love Halloween? Buy the outfit they will love!

CTAs for millennials

1. It is October. Spooky is socially acceptable! Buy now.
2. You want to be the one who didn’t dress up! Wait till you have gone through our Halloween collection!
3. Be in the spooky spirit with our options of the perfect Halloween styles! Pick yours today!

5. Market early and often

• Don’t wait too long for executing your Halloween sales and marketing strategies.
• If you are a costume company, you will agree with the fact that you start sending out catalogs as early as the end of August.
• Costume companies make the most profit with the theme-based holidays.
• Send out more catalogs by the time October rolls in.
• Sending out postcards are a great method for promoting special events, sales and discounts.
• If you are successful in putting your message in front of your customers, they will surely make purchases from you on the All Hallows Eve.

Halloween Sales Tip: Use a direct-mail marketing campaign, prepare a good mailing list and keep the dynamic flow ongoing.

6. Capitalize on Columbus Day

• As we mentioned in the previous point, starting out early helps your business to be in the know-how of the trend and capitalize on the same.
• We are sure that you have this knowledge that Thanksgiving kicks off the Christmas shopping season.
• Being business owners, you will be happy to know that you can draw a lot of attention Halloween shopping season using the momentum that Columbus Day starts.
• Columbus Day lands two or three weeks before Halloween day, making it the perfect time for making the best of your Halloween campaigns.

Let’s look at the breakdown of when people do most of their Halloween shopping:

Halloween Fun Fact: Halloween is not just celebrated by kids

Average spending of $42.39 compared with $31.03 for all adults.

Millennial consumers between the ages group of 18-34 are the largest adult age group that takes part in Halloween. As a business, you must target both parents and young adults and be in the know-how of the trend.

Total planned spending is estimated to reach $9.1 billion, up from last year’s $8.4 billion. Costumes will make up the largest share of spending, coming in at roughly $3.4 billion. Men ($96) plan to spend nearly $20 more, on average, than women ($77).

Get even better results by keeping your customer data organized

Already doing everything for increasing number of customers online and offline? Are you keeping track of every customer you meet? Isn’t it exciting if every customer or prospect you communicate with become your potential buyer? With proper contact management, you can easily qualify and organize your customer data.

Avoid the last-minute unorganized rush and sell anything to everyone by keeping yourself organized this Halloween season. If you are not already using a proper contact management system, start using it from today. It will keep you updated and sorted with every information about your customer.

Closing thoughts

By the time you finish reading this article, most people have already shortlisted their website and shops for their Halloween shopping.

It is the first week of October, and we can deduce that you are into the fourth quarter of the year that includes Halloween alongside Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all the December shopping days. Did your eyes just blink dollars and pounds? We sure it did.

To execute your outreach, sales, and marketing campaigns, you need a system that properly executes all your strategies without many hiccups. Having a CRM for example, allows you to automate most of the tedious task that is generally involved in handling customers and their inquiries during the holiday season.

Salesmate CRM as your contact management and sales automation tool

With Salesmate CRM, it’s now easy to capture online web inquiries directly from your website to sales CRM. Never miss a single follow-up by sending them automated follow-ups. Increase your chances to close more business with sales email tracking.

Salesmate CRM is the best CRM software for assisting you in your task of capitalizing on Halloween sales. With features that allow businesses to make the most of the sales time and increase the overall sales revenue, you can never fall short of your strategies.

Take a 15-days risk-free trial and use every feature without any restrictions!