Share a recipe or tutorial on your blog
Show customers how to make their own Fall or Halloween inspired craft or recipe. A blog post with a video showing how to decorate a mantle with fall flowers and miniature pumpkins or a newsletter that contains menu ideas for a kid’s Halloween party are great starting points, depending on your business.
Open your doors
The weather is beautiful so literally open your doors! Get some fresh air into your business. Open doors makes your business more customer-friendly by removing a physical barrier between you and the customer. Place a chalkboard outside with your specials or stand outside when you get some down time and chat with people passing by.
Domestic Violence & Breast Cancer Awareness Month
October is Domestic Violence and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Get involved with a local charitable organization to support these causes and get your name out into the community. Host a Facebook campaign where you donate $1 for every “like” your page receives during the month to a local domestic violence shelter or breast cancer group. Check here for information on charities.
Decorate for Fall and Halloween
Get your business in the spirit of the season by decorating for Fall or Halloween. Flowers, pumpkins, gourds, hay stacks, burlap, spooky skeletons, spiderwebs, ghosts–get creative! Check out our Pinterest boards for Fall and Halloween decorating ideas. Carve your company logo into a jack-o-lantern to place in your storefront with an electric candle at night.
Host a Contest In Store
Have a guessing contest to get customer email addresses in store. Put a candy corn or Halloween colored jelly beans in a jar and have customers guess how many items the jar contains. The winner gets a prize (perhaps a free meal or service at your business). Customers enter the contest by writing their guess on the back of their business card or by filling out a form with their contact information.
Dress up for Halloween
Employees and business owners can create a fun Halloween atmosphere by dressing up during the week of Halloween. Not every small business should take this advice but the ones that cater to children definitely should! Want your patients to have a good experience at the doctor or dentist? What’s more fun than a dentist in costume? Keep costumes fun and safe–farmers, dogs, cowboys/cowgirls, and pirates are good costumes. Clowns and vampires might scare young children. Remember to keep costumes culturally sensitive and neutral.
Halloween Costume Contest
Have a costume contest or a pumpkin carving contest for your customers, staff, or even customers’ dogs. The winner gets a prize! Share the pictures on your blog, Facebook, or Twitter and ask customers to vote on for the winners! Follow up after the contest to share pictures of the winning contestants.
Participate in a Fall Event
Engage the community by participating in a fall event like a harvest festival, Halloween zombie race, or business trick-or-treating! Use social media to get the word out to customers that you will be participating in the event and invite them to come along. Take pictures and share them on Facebook, Twitter, or in a blog post!
There are plenty of ways to tailor your marketing and blog for October. Let us know what works for you! Need more blog ideas? Check out our 130 Blog Ideas to Rock Your Business Blog!
Photo credit: Local Harvest
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