Halloween is known for its pumpkins and pies, ghouls and ghosts, tricks and treats. But when it comes to marketing, Halloween is also renowned for its deluge of scary puns and spooky videos. To stand out from the crowd, brands need to shun the standard and embrace the unusual.
Here’s three unusual Halloween tricks to boost your marketplace sales.
Localise your Halloween listings
In the UK and US, everyone knows Halloween is about fancy dress costumes, carved pumpkin lanterns and too many sweets, but not every country celebrates Halloween in the same way - if at all.
In many Catholic countries, 31 October is simply the precursor to All Saints’ Day on 1 November and All Souls’ Day on 2 November (as days to remember the dead), with countries like France not traditionally celebrating Halloween (although it’s popular among young urban families). In Mexico, Halloween is overshadowed by Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), with adults and children dressing up as ancestors with a wide array of skull-shaped paraphernalia, while Poland also uses Zaduszki (1 November) to pay respects to their ancestors in a more solemn fashion. Meanwhile, countries like China and South Korea eschew the festival and date although, with the Hungry Ghost Festival (August) and Chuseok festival (September) more akin to a harvest festival focusing on feasting.
How can brands boost Halloween sales? Instead of rolling out a blanket ‘Halloween’ approach to all marketplaces you sell on, brands should consider the ‘Halloween’ customs most likely to work in country-specific marketplaces (i.e. Poland’s Allegro or Holland’s Bol.com) and localise their listings accordingly.
Update Halloween listings for 2023 trends
Over the next few weeks, you will see a wave of ‘be-spook’ listings with ‘scarily good’ deals and ‘ghostly’ product descriptions. While fun (and not to be entirely discounted if it fits your brand style), the overuse of Halloween-ified listings makes it increasingly hard for your products to stand out. But merging Halloween novelty with 2023 seasonal trends can cut through the noise.
Etsy noted that today’s sustainability-focused consumers are more likely to look for vintage, upcycled or second-hand Halloween supplies than splash out on new products that quickly end up in a drawer or bin. For example, there’s been a 67% YoY increase for searches of “vintage halloween decoration” on the site.
How can brands boost Halloween sales? Update your product titles, content descriptions and images to merge with 2023 trends and differentiate your Halloween sales items from the rest.
Do Halloween before Halloween
For some brands, especially those selling Halloween-ready goods like toys or candles, the end of October is the time to add spider webs to product images, post spooky promotional videos on social media, offer stock at spine-tingling prices and ultimately enhance their bottom line. But even those brands don’t need to wait until Halloween to do Halloween.
Get ahead of the pack by launching an early bird Halloween sale with a variety of deals in the weeks preceding Halloween, such as extending your Amazon Prime day (10 and 11 October) discounts all the way to 31 October. Your Halloween sale can also extend beyond October - i.e. to Guy Fawkes Night on November 5 if you’re in the UK.
How can brands boost Halloween sales? Dress up your marketplace pages in a ghoulish guise, offer some eye-catching discounts and grab forward-planning customers’ attention while your competitors are still waiting to get out the blocks.
To Halloween and beyond
From adopting a global marketplace strategy and localising content to fine-tuning marketing for seasonal trends and leveraging the power of tech tools, there are many ways to optimise marketplace performance this Halloween and beyond. For more advice, get in touch with Rich Insight.
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