Scary Good Ideas For Your Next Seasonal Marketing Campaign

Need to create a seasonal marketing campaign, yesterday?

With new marketing and retail “seasons” like BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday – it now has its own acronym), Prime Day and countless others, there’s truly a “holiday” campaign for everything. And those who revel in the holiday spirit, (or perhaps spirits,) aren’t holding back. (Including us. Call 585-IF-U-DARE for this year’s NumberBarn Halloween Haunted Hotline!) 

What once was a single-day celebration of the spooky, has transformed into a months-long revelry dedicated to summoning the supernatural. With “Summerween” gaining significant traction last year in 2024, the undead have awakened to an extended season honoring their cryptic presence, along with their ghoulish friends. 

This year, countless businesses and residents have adorned their establishments with terrifying tarantulas cascading down walls, wicked witches breezing by on broomsticks, and skeletons emerging from earthen graveyards on many a front yard lawn. 

Whether you like it or loathe it, if you aren’t taking advantage of these new marketing and retail seasons, you might be missing out on huge opportunities.

Why Halloween Marketing?

Did you know that in 2023, 56% of consumers began their holiday shopping in October? While it’s a bit premature to start Christmas-themed campaigns in October (in our opinion), it’s the perfect time to tap into the Halloween spirit and utilize Halloween as an avenue to get your product or service in the minds of early-holiday shoppers.

If you’re a bone-efied, zombified Halloween super-fan, or if you’re a brand wondering how to integrate “Summerween and Halloween Month” into your current and future marketing campaigns, we’ve got a few ideas to send your way. And as a “treat,” we’re whispering in some of our best “secrets” to help guide you into some clever ways to capture your customers’ intrigue this holiday season. (If you feel like Halloween might not be your jam this year, you can always tailor these campaigns and tools into your upcoming Christmas campaigns, etc.) 

Here’s how you can enjoy everyone’s favorite scary holiday while also crafting the perfect seasonal marketing campaign for the holidays.

Vanity Numbers for Campaigns

Believe it or not, phone numbers (more specifically, vanity phone numbers) are a crucial tool in your marketing toolkit to reinforce your brand and help your leads reach you faster. Likely, we all have at least one phone number haunting us from some radio ad years ago. (We weren’t even trying to memorize those numbers. Talk about effective not-so subliminal messaging!)

And we still inch through traffic, bombarded by those unmissable billboards with memorable spellings like “CALL-NOW,” or we hear catchy commercial jingles (that one’s a personal favorite, thanks SNL!) repeating digits like 222-2222.

Did you know that you too can utilize numbers like these in your seasonal marketing campaigns? You can even lease a themed number to temporarily use for seasonal marketing outreach and engagement. It’s not too late to use a Halloween-themed vanity number for your October campaigns.

This season, dozens of customers searched for (and purchased) some of the following words to use for custom vanity numbers:

Are these numbers stirring the pot (so to speak) and brewing some piping-hot ideas for your next campaign?

You don’t need to be a Halloween-related company (haunted mazes, candy, decorations, etc.) to use numbers like these. You can use themed custom phone numbers for a variety of different campaigns you plan to roll out.

Halloween Campaign Examples from NumberBarn

But back to Halloween, we’ll nurture your creative juices by divulging how we created some of our own campaigns. Naturally, we first tapped into resources and products from NumberBarn and our ClearHello family of companies. 

We’ll start with our latest, “NumberBarn’s Halloween Haunted Hotline.” For a scare, dial 585 IF-U-DARE. “It’s alive” … and those who lurk in the night beckon your call! (Go ahead and call it now, 585-438-3273!)

Consider this a complimentary “How-To” for your next DIY seasonal campaign. Here’s how we did it. We:  

1. Collaborated on our concept, deciding to keep it slightly shorter than previous years and a little less brand-centric. Basically, just a little creepy, scary and fun for audiences of all kinds. 
2. Purchased from NumberBarn (yes, that’s us!) the custom vanity phone number, 585-IF-U-DARE (585-438-3273). 
3. Crafted our characters, script and any extra incentives to reward callers for their bravery in stepping into the mystical and menacing unknowns of the “otherworld.” 
4. Caved … While we always prefer living-human talent, due to time constraints, this year we tapped into something truly scary … the eerily accurate talents of AI voice overs and sound effects. After hours of research, we chose to use a very robust but user-friendly platform called ElevenLabs (no affiliation or connection here, just who we ended up with) for our characters, etc.
5. Uploaded our finalized audio files into the auto-attendant menu feature of NumberBarn Business Line, allowing callers to “press 1 to …” select their creepy character. (Shoutout to our talented Social Media Coordinator who is now haunted by the hundreds of different sound effects and vocal stylings she navigated in order to carefully construct each character.)
6. Posted our hotline across all of our social media platforms, with special attention to offer several “sneak peak” interactive video content to lure our unsuspecting potential callers.

The Cord Cutter

Traveling back in time a couple of seasons, in 2023 we brought to life our curious pig mascot, Portly, in an interactive mystery involving an unknown and shadowy figure called “The Cord Cutter.” We purchased the vanity number “424-PUMPKIN” and then integrated the number with String SMS messaging and NumberGarage (now NumberBarn Business Line, a virtual business phone system), allowing us to create two different “campaigns” all from one phone number. 

While the text campaign is no longer active, you can still call 424-PUMPKIN (424-789-7546) to follow the Cord Cutter.  On this campaign we’re proud to say we used the vocal stylings of our very own unassuming and multitalented in-house Graphic Designer!

Text “TRICK” or “TREAT”

String is a robust business SMS marketing platform with tools like auto-replies, mass messaging, personalizable templates and more. It’s perfect for brands needing 10DLC-approved business text messaging with extra features like contact segmenting and integrations. 

And while not Halloween-related, last year we also launched our lovable and a-moosing Reindeer Hotline for our December / Christmas seasonal marketing campaign (and it’s still live if you’d like to hear from Santa and his reindeer friends!)

Resurrect Your Marketing With A Thrilling Number 

Spin your own interactive holiday adventure with a custom vanity number from NumberBarn. Whether you need a permanent number for your customers to reach you, or you want to license a number for a seasonal campaign, we’ve got you covered. Plus, here are a few more Halloween phone number ideas to inspire you:

Looking for more unique vanity numbers to cultivate your imagination? Subscribe to our YouTube channel and click on Shorts for a world of possibilities!