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Oct 11, 2022
What’s keeping you up all night? Is your brain conjuring up spooky Halloween social media posts? Or is it the tap-tap-tapping at your window?
The fact that the Halloween season is just around the corner is frightening enough (where does time fly?!) And planning all your Halloween social media posts across multiple social media accounts is no walk in the park either (especially alone, late at night, with the wind howling).
If you want to plan and create the most terrifying social media posts and campaigns to celebrate Halloween, this tricks-and-tips guide will be your Jack-o’-lantern in the dark.
Grab your pumpkin spice latte and delve into our guide to creating spooky, shareable Halloween content that will have your audience screaming for more:
We’ve curated a collection of brilliant Halloween social media campaigns from various brands to draw last-minute inspiration from. A creepy Halloween campaign can be a great way to make consumers think of your brand next time they’re out shopping, so make sure it’s memorable.
McDonald’s marketing has always been on fleek and their Halloween social media posts are no exception. For this campaign, they kept it very simple, integrating their most popular product with the season’s scariest theme.
What better time to post about candy on social media than around Halloween?
In 2019, the Mars company came up with a brilliant idea for Halloween: Zombie Skittles. People got to enjoy five tasty Halloween-themed flavors, such as Boogeyman Blackberry & Mummified Melon. However, an undercover ‘rotten’ Zombie flavor was included. A terrifyingly awful taste to complement the frightening holiday. Mars also encouraged consumers to record their experience and share it on Instagram using #DareTheRainbow and @skittles.
Halloween doesn’t have to be all about pumpkins, candy, and horror costumes. Dior proved that brands could elegantly combine beauty with the dark side of Halloween. They came up with an influencer campaign featuring Bella Hadid. The supermodel showed how to create fabulous makeup looks just for Halloween, and the videos were posted under the #DiorMakeupHalloween hashtag.
Burger King suprise us every year with creative, out-of-the-box Halloween social media posts.
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In this first example, Burger King asked fans: “Would you dress up like a clown to eat like a king?” The prize was a free Whopper burger to the first 500 people who visited certain stores wearing one of the most popular Halloween costumes: a clown. There’s no need to explain who they’re poking fun at. Mic drop!
The creative minds at BK also like to show their sweet, innocent side by incorporating Halloween decorations in their content. Check out this Halloween social media post starring the Mini Whopper Jr disguised as a treat.
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Some people are afraid of creepy clowns, others are scared of nitrates. Sometimes, all it takes is a smart caption. Aqua Carpatica’s Halloween post keeps it nice and simple by making a confession: “it’s nitrates that scare us the most.” It’s a good example of how brands can integrate their product qualities (e.g. naturally free of nitrates) into a creative campaign for Halloween.
LG also found a creative way to combine its brand message with a scary experiment for Halloween. They replaced parts of an elevator with LG television screens and then tricked unsuspecting elevator riders into believing that the floor was falling away. The YouTube video was fun to watch but also proved that the screens present an ultra-realistic picture.
You don’t need to come out with Halloween-themed products to get in the spirit of Halloween. You can improvise around an existing product and create Halloween-themed videos, like Nutella did on their Instagram.
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Nutella has been celebrating Halloween for many years in different creative ways. Take a look at these ads revolving around their product with a subtle nod to the Halloween festivities.
Heineken excels at scary Halloween posts that are somehow also wholesome. Take for example this Japanese campaign where a skeleton is cheers-ing with a werewolf under the mantra “Cheers to Halloween friendships!”
For even more inspiration on Halloween marketing ideas, check out what Jeep came out with back in 2019: cheerfully-colored illustrations in that make us go “Aww!” The complete opposite of scary, but hey, to each their own!
One of the best Halloween campaign examples comes from Ikea. The Swedish furniture retailer doesn’t stray away from its utilitarian brand style. They subtly and tastefully incorporate Halloween elements in their social media posts through scroll-stopping imagery.
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Fanta’s social media presence is bold, colorful, and young. And their Halloween social media posts don’t stray away from this brief. Featuring mixed media, this Halloween social media post idea can be a fun way to incorporate your product into a short video that you can use on Instagram, TikTok, and even Facebook.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B37BHEIlZ42/?igshid=YmM
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You couldn’t have Halloween without Snickers. Both when you go trick or treating and when you talk about Halloween social media posts. The Snickers marketing campaign that made us look went something like “No need to drive 30 minutes for an overpriced pumpkin. We got you.”
Snickers’ pumpkin-shaped jack-o-lantern chocolate bar treat is advertised in this social media post against a simple background. Sometimes, less is more.
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‘Tis the season to be creative and give your audience a reason to talk about your brand. Here are some dos and don’ts to remember when you start working on those amazing Halloween marketing ideas.
Do you worry about the backlash that a holiday-specific phrase can bring? Are you having nightmares about that post you scheduled for Thanksgiving? Stop right there. Take a closer look at your audience. Where are your customers from? What kind of content do they share? Avoid guesstimating. Do your research and give your audience what they want, not what you think they might like. Data never lies.
Thinking about changing your logo to something more holiday specific? You might want to think again. Don’t get us wrong, we love it when brands add a twist to their marketing campaigns. And we trust that you’ll find clever ways to incorporate holiday-specific elements without actually changing your brand. People are confused enough after having a bit too much to drink at family dinners. At least make it easier for them to recognize your brand.
The holidays are all about sharing. Sharing presents, meals, special moments, and sometimes sharing too much information at family gatherings. This is a huge opportunity for you to engage with your audience. Ask them to tag a friend, share their photo using your hashtag, or share your content with their friends and family. Ask them questions, create polls, initiate conversations, do AMAs. The sky’s the limit.
There’s nothing wrong with rolling out some special offers to attract customers. In fact, you should do it… without crossing the line into overdoing it.
People love discounts, but they also appreciate entertainment and education. So if your only plan is to make it rain with discounts, you might want to rethink that. Mix those special offers with some friendly content. The internet will be flooded with discounts and aggressive marketing. Stand out.
Take a moment to express gratitude. Thank your customers, your followers, and your team. It can be anything from a simple “Thank you!” to a more creative way of showing how much you appreciate them.
For instance, Avon created a customer appreciation week, offering its clients a new deal every day of that week. It doesn’t have to be around Thanksgiving. Think about it. People are going to receive tons of special offers & coupons that day. Surprise your customers. Pick a random day. Make them feel special. After all, your brand is alive and kicking, thanks to everyone supporting it.
Not all people are the same. Not all channels bring the same results. Then why use a one-size-fits-all approach? Your goal is not only to reach as many people as possible but also to provide them with content they’ll love, in a format they’ll enjoy.
Divide your audience into smaller groups such as existing customers, warm leads, people you want to reach, and so on. Stalk them a little. Where do they hang out? What are they sharing? What’s their mother’s maiden name? Scratch that. This will help you narrow down your channels of distribution and content formats. More time for creativity. Yay!
Get in front of as many eyes as possible. Not everyone’s on Instagram. Some prefer Youtube. Or good old email. Make sure your holiday marketing plan isn’t limited to one channel. Also, keep in mind that your message should be consistent across each channel and be true to your brand.
Your Black Friday campaign doesn’t have to focus on discounts or sound salesy. It can be quirky and funny if your brand’s that way. Think about Cards Against Humanity and its long history of pulling Black Friday stunts. In 2013, it actually raised the price of its game, and people still bought it like crazy.
So you went over the top to create this amazing, out-of-this-world content. Graphic designers and videographers were involved. The legal team approved it. And now it’s going to become viral. Except you forget to schedule it.
Here’s a different scenario: with Planable, you can strategically plan and schedule your content by dragging and dropping posts in your predefined time slots. It takes seconds. You can then resume sipping on your Pumpkin spice latte while seeing everything at a glance across all your pages.
This is something we should all do. At all times. We know it. You know it. Everybody knows it. Here’s the deal. It’s easy to get lost in execution and lose sight of the bigger picture.
So before you go into overdrive, set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. It will make your life easier and your manager happier. Don’t forget to track the return on investment and adjust along the way if needed.
We all need some sort of approval process. As a general rule, our industry has to internalize that review and approval are important because more brains add up to better results, flawless content, and more types of expertise add up to progress.
We’re pretty sure your audience isn’t going to overlook that typo. Shockingly (not), we recommend trying out Planable. It’s not an add-on, it’s not a feature; it’s an entire tool built for the sole sake of making social media collaboration seamless.
Now let’s take a look at some inspiring social media ideas to drive engagement and make new users fall in love with your brand.
Who doesn’t like to show off? Especially with their Halloween costumes and makeup. Start a contest and encourage your audience to virtually share their costumes from this year.
You can organize it anywhere on social media – with a photo in a comment on Facebook, or with hashtags on Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. If you opt for hashtags, make sure you mention that all posts must be public.
Is the costume contest not to your liking? Go with the horror story idea instead. With a similar mechanism, the story works for everybody, whether they have a costume this year or not.
All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Create the contest around your main product, decide on a specific theme, or choose up to 10 words to be included in the scary story. You can create the contest however you want and reshare the stories in social media posts. User-generated content and a happy audience.
Pro tip: if you choose to use a specific hashtag to follow your contestants, make sure it’s a new hashtag, so you won’t count some old posts that have nothing to do with your awesome contest.
Instagram is on a roll with its story features. So why not take advantage of it? “This or that” stories work wonders, and Halloween interactive stories make no exception.
The mechanism is pretty straightforward: prepare your visuals in advance. Choose two types of opposite items from the same topic: costumes, cookie decoration, cats or bats, etc. Then use the POLL option from IG stories to let your audience say what they prefer.
Similar to Instagram Polls, but in Facebook’s feed, you can use emoji reactions to engage with your audience. Thumbs up for superhero costumes, love for Disney characters, HaHa for funny outfits, etc. Let them vote on what they’ll wear this year with one simple emoji.
Bonus points: it only takes one Facebook post to get all the engagement you need for this year’s Halloween.
LinkedIn may not seem like the right place to have a Halloween campaign. Not for your audience maybe, but it never hurts to make your employees feel appreciated. Organize a virtual costume contest and encourage them to share how awesome your company really is.
Plus, Zoom Halloween backgrounds will be a great hit. Create some for your next meetings and be sure your employees will brag about it.
These times are in Eastern Standard Time (EST). You’ll need to convert them to the timezone of your audience.
While planning can start 3-6 months in advance, the moment you begin communicating with your audience is pretty standard.
More than half the people on Earth use social media and that number is still growing daily. This means your audience is probably out there. All you have to do is publish your holiday campaigns, engage, and make that sale.
If you’re in need of some inspiration for your marketing campaigns, check out this collection of topics to get in the Halloween spirit.
So you know when to publish your Halloween social media posts, you have the tools, and you’ve chosen your favorite Halloween ad and got inspired. Now it’s time for some holiday-themed backgrounds for Instagram stories that any marketer can personalize. That easy? Why? So you can have enough time to enjoy your pumpkin spice latte.
You also need high-quality images to impress users. That’s why we prepared a curated Unsplash collection containing 30 drop-dead gorgeous images that go well with any Halloween marketing slogans you can imagine.
Halloween posts should be planned ahead of time. No doubt about that. Get into the holiday spirit by customizing your own posts using Planable.
Ready to create spooky social media posts for Halloween? Go make magic happen!
Raluca Cîrjan, Digital Marketing Specialist @Planable.io. Advertising and social media enthusiast, fast learner & ailurophile. I believe that one joke a day keeps the doctor away. Feel free to share a funny story with me.
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