Boo! Hallothanksmas has come upon us! While there’s much to love about this season, keeping your brand visible amidst the relentless holiday hustle might feel like a nightmare, (whether you’re a team of one, or a team of many).
Good news, navigating your upcoming seasonal marketing during the holiday marathon doesn’t have to be terrifying! As a “treat,” we’re conjuring up some of our best “secrets” to help guide you with some clever (or cleaver) ways to capture your customers’ intrigue this holiday season. (If you feel like Halloween might not be your jam, you can always tailor these campaigns and tools for your upcoming Christmas campaigns, etc.)
New Holiday Marketing Seasons
With new marketing and retail “seasons” like BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday – complete with its own acronym), Amazon Prime Day and countless others, there’s truly a “holiday” campaign for everything.
And those who revel in the Halloween spirit(s), aren’t holding back. (Including us. NumberBarn’s Halloween Haunted Hotline has returned “for a spell” as they say. For a scare, call 585-IF-U-DARE!)
What once was a single-day celebration of the spooky, has transformed into a months-long commemoration dedicated to summoning the supernatural. With “Summerween” gaining significant traction 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 spectercle and 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 help you bring your vision to life.
Here’s how you can enjoy everyone’s favorite scary holiday while also crafting the perfect seasonal marketing campaigns for the holidays.
Vanity Numbers for Campaigns
Believe it or not, phone numbers (more specifically, vanity phone numbers) can be 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 radio ad haunting us from childhood.
And we still inch through traffic, bombarded by those unmissable billboards with memorable spellings like “CALL-NOW,” or we hear catchy commercial jingles repeating digits like 222-2222. (Thanks SNL!)
Did you know that you too can utilize numbers like these in your seasonal marketing campaigns? You can even license a themed number to temporarily use for seasonal outreach and engagement. It’s not too late to use a Halloween-themed vanity number for your October campaigns.
Dozens of customers search for (and purchase) some of the following words to use for custom vanity numbers:
(***) * SCREAM
(***) *** FEAR
** BE-SCARED
(***) ** GHOST
(***) * HORROR
(***) * SWEETS
(***) ** WITCH
(***) COSTUME
Are these numbers stirring the pot and brewing some piping-hot ideas for your next campaign?
You don’t have to be a Halloween-related company (haunted house, costume store, etc.) to use numbers like these. You can use themed custom phone numbers for a variety of different campaigns. Here’s what we did:
Halloween Campaigns from NumberBarn
We’ll start with our latest, “NumberBarn’s Halloween Haunted Hotline… For a scare, dial 585 IF-U-DARE.” It’s a-live and creatures of the night await your call!
Here’s our complimentary “How-To” for your next DIY seasonal campaign. We:
- Collaborated on our concept, shortening it from previous years and making it a little less brand-centric. Basically, just a little creepy, scary and fun for audiences of all kinds.
- Purchased the custom vanity phone number 585-IF-U-DARE (585-438-3273) from the NumberBarn marketplace. Activated Call Forwarding.
- Crafted our characters, script and threw in a few gifs to reward callers for stepping into the mystical and menacing unknowns of the “otherworld.”
- Caved. While we always prefer living-human talent, due to time constraints, we utilized something truly scary … the eerily accurate talents of AI voice overs and sound effects. After hours of research, we chose a very robust but user-friendly platform called ElevenLabs (no affiliation) for our characters, etc.
- Uploaded our finalized audio files into NumberBarn’s auto-attendant menu feature, allowing callers to “press 1 to …” select their creepy character.
- Posted our hotline across all of our social media platforms, including several “sneak peak” video vignettes to lure our unsuspecting potential callers.
The Cord Cutter
Traveling back in time a few 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.” From the NumberBarn marketplace, we purchased the vanity number “424-PUMPKIN” and then integrated the number with String SMS messaging 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 (424-786-7546) 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”
We created an SMS marketing keyword campaign using the keywords “TRICK” or “TREAT” and posted it on our social media channels.
When an individual texted either word, the String SMS marketing platform auto-replied to the sender with a “Trick” (entertaining reply coupled with an exclusive promotional offer) or a “Treat” (a different hopefully-amusing reply paired with the promo offer.)
String is a robust business SMS marketing platform with tools like auto-replies, keyword campaigns, 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.
Thanksgiving and Christmas Campaign Ideas
“Better together.” Pardon the cliche, but there’s genuine truth in it and November brings the perfect opportunity to lean into the idea that “sharing is caring.”
Thanksgiving is all about gratitude and partnership. Here we’ll shamelessly diverge from heavy Black Friday pushes, because honestly, Thanksgiving deserves its rightful place without Black Friday devouring it with a very different message (even as early as Thanksgiving night)! If Halloween gets it’s own extended season, why shouldn’t Thanksgiving as well? (There. We said it!)
While November’s marketing themes default to fall, autumn leaves and PSLs, consider taking your November campaigns in a more “mindful and intentional” direction. Partner with local non-profits, schools, food drives or brands with social impact to cultivate both gratitude and generosity, incentivizing giving and engagement with these organizations from your customer-base and their supporter base. And of course as an added bonus, both entities get more eyes on their brand or cause by partnering with each other. (We confess that historically, our own similar campaigns have inevitably landed in December. But, that’s ok because they’re still aligned with Christmas and the message of giving and sharing.)
Speaking of Christmas, last year we also launched our lovable and a-moosing Reindeer Hotline for our December / Christmas seasonal marketing campaign. We used real-human voice actors for the Reindeer Hotline. We contracted vocal artists on Fiver, local voice actors, and our own amazing in-house talent – again our graphic designer, and a Support team member with some unique vocal stylings.
We will warn you, with nine reindeer, plus Santa, plus writing the script, crafting the characters, hiring the talent, adding the sound effects, etc. this campaign certainly evolved. If you decide to go a similar direction for your Christmas campaign, you might consider early planning, or scaling it down a bit.
Resurrect Your Marketing With A Thrilling Number
Don’t worry if you feel late to your Halloween marketing game this year. Know that you can easily spin your own interactive 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!
