Lessons Your Trick-Or-Treaters Can Teach You About Your Marketing Strategies!

Full Disclosure: I hate Halloween. Not mildly dislike, but a full-on, white-hot seething hatred of the holiday. By far the worst thing about this obnoxious night is the fact that I'm not able to hate it in peace. Voice any dissent for Halloween -- or, God forbid, show up to a party dressed in normal attire instead of a costume -- and you will immediately be accused of deliberate subterfuge by some tool who always happens to be named Todd. “Too cool, huh? Oh what, you don't know how to have fun?” 

Well Todd, I will have you know I’ve NEVER been accused of being cool….like ever. So just let me live my life, is that ok with you, Todd?

With that weight lifted off my shoulders, I can move on. Each Halloween trick-or-treaters come out and parade their costumes across towns and cities everywhere. With hundreds of houses and apartments to pick from, what makes some places a raging success, while others can’t get a 'treater to save their lives? It turns out all of those little super heroes and skeletons can actually teach us a thing or two about our own marketing strategies.

Lesson 1: Make Sure They Know You’re Home

Remember those houses with the lights off, no cars in the driveway, and no decorations adorning the walkway? Those houses are pretty much over looked and generally ignored by trick-or-treaters.

Marketing Takeaway: Make sure people know you’re open for business. For marketers, this means always keeping your website up-to-date and providing fresh content through your various online channels such -- posting to your blog and social media accounts, making sure your landing pages are filled with valuable offers and content, etc. Your visitors should always feel like “someone’s home.”

Lesson 2: Tell a Great Tale

Whether it's like a haunted mansion, a spooky graveyard, or a zombie apocalypse – what makes your house stand out from the rest? Pull in the candy-grubbers with a great, consistent tale about your home and goodies. Parents and kids alike always remember the places that surprise, enchant, and entertain them.

Marketing Takeaway: Telling compelling stories is a major part of getting your new audience’s attention. Captivate them by telling the tales you know best. For your business, this means sharing/creating riveting reasons why they should become customers or clients.  

Lesson 3: Give Out the Good Stuff (But Don’t Just Give it Away!)

The best houses don’t hand out lollipops and hard candies. Instead, they give out the king sized chocolate bars! Make sure you’re offering the best of the best and never just leave your goodies on the doorstep unattended. The smart candy-givers know it’s a two-way street: trick-or-treaters request their loot, and candy-givers get a chance to enjoy their goofy little costumes and squeaky thank yous!

Marketing Takeaway: Give away valuable content freely and always interact with the folks who stop by! Find your customers’ pain-points, have the conversations they want to hear about most, and talk about the technologies or solutions you see revolutionizing your industry in the next few years. Just like you require a "trick-or-treat" in exchange for candy, make sure you're distributing your marketing content in exchange for lead information; use lead capture forms and plan to follow up on visitors' clicks, form submissions and downloads with a phone call or email.

Lesson 4: Reward Your Biggest Fans

Remember that polite pirate who’s been coming to your house for years? Don’t forget to say thank you and give him/her an extra candy bar.

Marketing Takeaway: When it comes to your business' top fans who absolutely love what you’re doing – send the appreciation right back their way! In this case, it likely means sending the retweeting love, celebrating your Facebook fans with “insider” perks, or running a special contest for your biggest advocates.

Now on to the full list of reasons why Halloween is actually the worst:

• This day is the single solitary reason Candy Corn exists. It is simultaneously bland and foul. It straight up tastes like rotten, congealed sugar.
• Haunted houses are about paying someone to traumatize you. The scariest thing you’ll catch me doing is Halloween Wars on Food Network.
• Since when did we decorate our homes as much for Halloween as we do for Christmas?  Do you really expect me to believe your front yard is a cemetery? I walk past your house every day – it’s gonna take more than some cheap styrofoam tombstones to fool me.
• Wearing a Halloween mask is basically the same thing as slowly sweating to death.
• Apparently, everyone is running around putting razor blades in our candy.
• Kids who ring my doorbell after I turn off the porch light. C’mon dude! Everyone knows the porch light being off is the universal sign for “I’m done with this hell.”