Halloween marketing magic we’re loving in 2022

Halloween is an exciting time of year for marketers. It’s a time when you’re allowed to throw out the marketing rule book and get imaginative, playful, and come out all puns blazing.

Big brands spend months preparing for the season, in which UK consumers are believed to spend more than £687 million.

In this blog, we look at some of the best Halloween marketing tricks from 2022 so far, with an aim to give small businesses inspiration for their own marketing treats.

Warburtons

This bread brand has knocked the ball out of the park this year with its Halloween marketing. The company has transformed the packaging of its Toastie loaf, which has always been orange, to make the loaf look like a spooky carved pumpkin. There are six different designs for customers to choose from.

On top of this, the brand has temporarily altered its name to Warbootons. In other Halloween messaging, it’s using phrases like ‘unboolievable’ and ‘squad ghouls’.

Take away for small businesses: Consider how you could give your business or product names a spooky twist and use this new wording in your seasonal communications with clients or to inform the titles of any sales or giveaways you might be holding to grab customers’ attention this Halloween

Boohoo

The clothing brand Boohoo has dedicated an entire section of its website to Halloween outfits in 2022, under the clever heading ‘Haunt couture’.

A Halloween tab has also been added to the brand’s navigation menu on its homepage so customers can easily find their range of seasonal clothing.

Take away for small businesses: If you sell Halloween products, from spooky manicures to Halloween candles, be sure that they’re easy to find on your website. This might mean changing your navigation menu or adding a new header to your website.

Heinz

Inspired by the knowledge that many people use tomato ketchup as fake blood during Halloween, Heinz has rebranded some of its tomato ketchup bottles as ‘Tomato Blood’.

To coincide with this, the company has enlisted the help of TikTok influencer E J Marcus, to produce a promotional Tomato Blood video.

In this video, Marcus plays a vegetarian vampire, who is trying to persuade other vampires to drink tomato blood instead of human blood.

Take away for small businesses: As with the Warburton’s example above, Heinz has taken a creative look at its product offering and given it an imaginative Halloween spin.

There’s another take-home for small businesses here, though, too. The Heinz team has understood that a lot of the consumers that will be celebrating Halloween this year will be Gen Zs and the company has deliberately created marketing content that meets these consumers where they are active, on TikTok.

Burger King

The Burger King marketing team are crackerjacks when it comes to coming up with stunts and eye-catching campaigns.

For Halloween 2022, it’s rumoured that the brand will be bringing back its ghost chilli Whopper.

Take away for small businesses: Burger King is constantly releasing limited editions and themed versions of its statement product. Have a brainstorm to see if there’s anything you can put a Halloween twist on in your business. Consider everything from the ingredients and materials used in your products to the ways your products are utilised.

Innocent Drinks

Okay, so this one isn’t from 2022, but we thought it was worth a mention because it’s timeless.

In 2020, Innocent Drinks brought out a new product called Beetle Juice with the tagline ‘It’s dead tasty’.

The beautiful thing about this campaign was that it was inspired by a tweet from an Innocent Drinks fan.

Take away for small businesses: Engaging with your community is always a great way to spark new ideas. Listening to what your customers are saying about and to you on social media can help you do everything from spotting gaps in the market to coming up with seasonal marketing campaigns.

Websites and professional email from tsoHost – for a successful Halloween

At tsoHost, we offer everything you need to set your business up for Halloween online.

Our WordPress Hosting simplifies the task of setting up a website. With these plans, you can build a highly customisable website, without needing a high level of technical knowledge.

Our WordPress Eccomerce Hosting plans, meanwhile, make it easy to set up a fully-brandable ecommerce website.

We also offer Professional Email packages, so you can send communications to customers from an email address that reflects your brand and makes your company appear more trustworthy and credible. Packages start at just 99p a month.

Finally, we sell a wide range of affordable domains, which could come in handy for developing a Halloween microsite like Heinz has done with its Tomato Blood microsite. You can search for your seasonal domain on our domain names page.