Making the Most of the Fall + Halloween Shopping Season

I’m a big fan of using holidays (major holidays and even the so called made up marketing holidays) and seasons as a basis for planning your shopper marketing activities, in places like social media and inside stores. Have you thought of considering the Fall + Halloween season as a series of “mini events” in an effort to stretch out the season and create more purchase opportunities?

You may be tempted to think of some holidays as just a one-day events, but in reality most holidays are made up of several mini events that we can leverage in our shopper marketing. How many mini events can you think of for the Fall + Halloween season? Turns out, there’s a lot and some depend upon age and life phase. For example, to connect with parents of young children around Halloween season, here are just a few of the “mini events” (and buying opportunities) you can build shopper marketing around:

Build Shopper Marketing Around These ‘Mini-Events’ Leading to Halloween

Home decorating (for fall and then again for Halloween) – 2 encouraging people to have the best house on the block.
Pumpkin picking.
Booing (and also the adult version, “boozing.”)
Costume hunting.
Trick or treating.
School parties.
Neighborhood parties (suburban.)
At-home parties (pizza is super popular.)

My favorite from this list is booing. If you’re located in the USA and live in a suburban area + have young children, you probably know about this trend. According to a case study presented by Mars at the 2018 Shopper Marketing Conference, 7% of Americans currently participate in booing. For retailers located in suburban areas, this is a ripe opportunity just waiting to be picked.

Some Halloween merchandising at Whole Foods Market

Fall door decor found at American’s homes

Here are some ways that retailers can connect with parents in suburban areas around the mini event of booing.

In-store shopper marketing like end caps that invite shoppers to boo their neighbors. For a limited time, curate a special selection of products ideal for booing – boo bags, tags, candy. Because you usually only boo a few houses (we do two) and because you’re likely to boo peoples’ homes that you know well, you can encourage better quality, more expensive candy for these, than candy given out in much larger amounts for trick or treating.
Educational signage that offers guidance on booing, why to do it and what to include in your boo bag.
Host a Halloween prep in-store event one weekend sampling healthier candy and sweets options + educate on fun ways for families to celebrate the season.
Website landing page and accompanying social media and email marketing driving people to a site all about making their boo bag the best on the block.

In fact, Green Purse PR creates an annual list of holidays, specifically for food companies. It’s called our Holidays List for Food Marketing. It’s a social media planning resource available here (stay tuned for the 2020 version coming out soon.)

Halloween merchandising at The Market inside The Twitter Building, San Francisco, California

Target’s Halloween section, Hyde and Eek!

Teal Pumpkin Project for Halloween at Target

- Lisa Mabe-Konstantopoulos, Founder, Green Purse PR