6 Promotions Ideas to Celebrate Halloween in 2020

by Liz Huff Second Street

Photo Contests

Use photo contests to give your audience the chance to share how they’re celebrating Halloween during COVID. There are tons of opportunities to use these contests to let your audience show off their costumes, decorations, and activities! Try something like a ‘spookiest decorations’, ‘silliest pet costume’, or ‘most creative jack-o-lantern’ photo contest.

WLOS-TV ran this super cute Halloween pet costume photo contest and secured a local veterinarian to sponsor the campaign. This zero-ed in on a targeted audience and provided a really fun way for viewers to show off their pets’ costume.

WLOS-TV pet costume contest

Quizzes

Quizzes are always a fun way to engage your audience and can be customized to fit just about any advertiser. You can utilize our library of turnkey Halloween quizzes to get started today.

The team at CISN-FM partnered with a seasonal costume shop to drive brand awareness and drive foot traffic during the Halloween costume season. They customized this ‘What Type of Halloween Candy Are You?’ turnkey quiz to include clickable branding placements and a 40%-off coupon to the shop!

CISN-FM halloween candy personality quiz

Voting Brackets

There are tons of opportunities for scary fun Halloween voting brackets! Use our Halloween candy or all-time best costume ready-made turnkey voting bracket to let your audience vote for their favorites!

Halloween candy bracket

Sweepstakes

Even with classic Halloween traditions and activities limited this year, you can still use a themed sweepstakes to engage your audience and advertisers. Consider a sweepstakes with a prize such as a costume package, jack-o-lantern making kit, or candy basket.

Abbotsford News did this with their Squeaky Floor Sweepstakes, sponsored by a local flooring company. They found a creative way to tie in a flooring giveaway with the holiday to generate engagement. They utilized lead-generation questions to identify qualified leads for the advertiser.

Abbotsford News Squeaky Floor Sweepstakes

Polls

With Halloween being so different than previous years, your audience undoubtedly have thoughts on how to celebrate. Polls provide a great way to give your audience a chance to voice their opinions and enhance your other Halloween content. Run a poll to ask your audience about their costume plans, if they plan on trick-or-treating, or what they’re doing for alternative celebrations.

KSAT used this poll to tie in with a story on local trick-or-treat incidents. They asked their audience to share their opinion on rules and traditions around trick-or-treating, including “At what age should kids stop trick-or-treating?”, and “What time should trick-or-treating end?”. The poll hit on a hot local topic and more than 5,800 people took the poll!

KSAT halloween poll

Event Sign-Ups

There are tons of opportunities to celebrate Halloween with virtual events this year. Try something like a virtual pumpkin carving tutorial, virtual candy making class, or a Halloween decorating demo to get your audience in the Halloween spirit.

Virtual events are perfect for local media companies to grow their audience and email database. These campaigns are also prime opportunities for local advertisers to align with your local media company and reach a targeted audience.

Pumpkin carving class event sign-up

There are tons of ways you can use promotions to do something fun for Halloween this year, despite the limitations of COVID. Want to chat with a member of our Success team about executing these ideas? You can chat with us via the chat box in the bottom right corner of this page.

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