13 thrilling Halloween and Thanksgiving marketing campaigns with beacons

The holiday season is just around the corner with Halloween only a week away. Holiday marketing campaign ideas are afoot and we wanted to share some of the best marketing strategies for Halloween and Thanksgiving that businesses can execute with beacon technology.

Related: Holiday marketing ideas with beacons: Trends, forecasts, and shopping predictions

Last year, 179 million Americans spend close to $9.1 billion on shopping for Halloween. 30.3% of these shoppers look for inspiration inside a retail store which explains why setting up Halloween marketing campaigns with beacons inside the store is vital.

Jump to the best Thanksgiving marketing ideas for small businesses

Halloween marketing ideas: What do people purchase during Halloween?

Although costumes, candies, and decorations are the most popular purchases for Halloween, other stores such as grocery stores, thrift stores, and small businesses are also frequented. So, all kinds of business can benefit off of the spike in shopping and invest in more than a couple of Halloween campaign ideas.

6 Halloween marketing campaigns with beacons that small and medium businesses must try

1. Install talking mannequins to send out spooky greetings and clothing information

Startup Iconeme Ltd first introduced the idea of talking ‘smart’ mannequins that pass on clothing information as soon as a shopper comes within a 100 feet of the mannequin. To incorporate this into your Halloween marketing idea, greet customers them with a spooky Halloween-themed message attached to a mannequin that you can dress up as a scary character placed right by the entrance. If you sell Halloween costumes, you can pair the greeting with essential information about the costume. It is important to get in the spirit of Halloween to entice and engage customers.

2. Host a Halloween scavenger hunt to elevate your Halloween marketing campaign

As far as Halloween marketing ideas go, scavenger hunts exert a magnetic pull on customers especially if they are accompanied by young children. It is, in fact, a great way to keep young children occupied while their parents shop in the store. Read this blog to design your very own scavenger hunt. Some brands like Oreo are even experimenting with Augmented Reality (AR) to execute scavenger hunts.

3. Halloween-ize your store

A brilliant Halloween marketing idea is to dress up your store and design a unique customer experience by guiding shoppers around the store using beacons while building up a scary story. Rename some of your products to reflect the Halloween spirit and guide your shoppers to this special aisle using a beacon.

4. Engineer a virtual trick or treat as part of your Halloween marketing campaign

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Encourage shoppers to click pictures of themselves at the stores with one of your Halloween displays and use a beacon to redirect them to your social media page or Facebook business page and post a picture along with a hashtag. By offering a lucrative Halloween discount to shoppers that successfully do so, it will also encourage more customers and your store will gain more online visibility. Dunkin’ Donuts has a special Instagram contest going on where fans have to post their Dunkin’-themed costumes using the hashtag #DunkinDressUpContest and can win $1000 and a year’s worth of Dunkin’ coffee.

Related: Halloween marketing ideas for small businesses without a website 

5. Create a Halloween themed markdown card campaign to draw in more customers

A crucial Halloween marketing idea is to change all advertising campaigns to incorporate the spirit of Halloween while maintaining your brand’s logo and colors. On the Beaconstac platform, you can create your very own Halloween themed advertisement. You can either choose from a set of themes or create one from scratch complete with your location on Google Maps embedded right on to the card.

Related: How to embed Google Maps into your Halloween marketing campaigns

6. Produce a scary YouTube video – the ultimate Halloween marketing idea

One of the most ingenious marketing ideas to get more customers to your store during Halloween is creating a scary video that pranks your customers. You can partner up with other local businesses to run this scary video beacon campaign. On the markdown card, you can easily embed the YouTube video for shoppers to click on. Take inspiration from Snickers that produces scary videos as part of their Halloween marketing campaign every year that garner a ton of hits.

Related: Embed YouTube videos to enhance your Halloween marketing campaigns on Beaconstac

How much do Americans spend on Thanksgiving?

The average American will spend $175.65 on Thanksgiving according to LendEDU in 2018 which is up from last year where the average American spent $165.14. Consumers that pay for plane rides and hotel rooms end up spending a little more or about 21% of the total expenditure. But, Thanksgiving weekend also includes some serious shopping for Black Friday which is easily the most popular holiday for shoppers to spend money on. Along with Thanksgiving, businesses can also get a jump on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

7 best Thanksgiving marketing campaigns for small and medium businesses

1. Take retail therapy up a notch as part of your Thanksgiving marketing campaign

Fans of retail therapy absolutely love when stores offer an actual spa treatment or a mini massage or even a manicure. This is a great strategy to bring in more customers to your store. Offer a spa treatment using a beacon outside the store.

Related: The best holiday marketing ideas using beacons for 2018

2. Partner up with a local charity

Thanksgiving is all about giving back to the community and partnering up with a local charity can do wonders for Thanksgiving marketing campaigns. 9 in 10 millennials have reported that they would switch brands to one that is associated with a cause. Millennials also want to be included in an opportunity to give back – either through time or money. You can either have a Thanksgiving marketing campaign to get shoppers to directly donate to their favorite charity using beacons or donate a percentage of their expenditure when they shop at your store and send them a ‘Thank You’ beacon notification letting them know how much money was donated.

3. Remember your loyal customers and welcome them back

When associated with an app, beacons can be used to keep track of repeat customers and you can use that information to welcome customers back to the store. As far as Thanksgiving marketing campaigns, this one seems elementary but has a profound effect on your customers.

Related: How to build a beacon-powered app to boost your Thanksgiving marketing campaign

4. Reward your social media followers to solidify your Thanksgiving marketing campaign

Ask shoppers to take a Thanksgiving picture at the store and use a beacon to direct them to social media and have them post it there and tag and follow you. Offer redeemable points or a Thanksgiving basket to those who take part in your Thanksgiving social media campaign.

5. Extend your hours with beacons

Black Friday madness means having customers wait in lines since dawn. This can lead to more than a few disgruntled and sleep-deprived shoppers.

Augment Salespersons

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One way to get around this is to extend your hours by deploying more beacons that can augment salespersons. As soon as a shopper walks in, have a beacon welcome them as a greeter would.

Offer product information and comparison

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Place beacons strategically to offer information about products, offers, deals, and coupons. Borrowing from Scala’s Lift and Learn technology, Bluetooth beacons can also be used to compare the features of two different products.

Related: Beacon-powered digital signage – the ultimate Thanksgiving marketing idea

Provide in-store navigation and product availability

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Beacons can also be used to provide in-store navigation, knowledge about the availability of a product and alternatives to a certain product.

Related: Airports use beacons to provide navigation is a fantastic Thanksgiving marketing idea

Beacons can offer a seamless shopping experience allowing you to extend your business hours on Thanksgiving without hiring extra help or your staff pulling extra shifts.  

6. Get rid of queues with beacons

Consumers do not like waiting in queues. In fact, they will do everything to avoid the queue. And, having a long queue can affect your Thanksgiving marketing campaign adversely.

Offer store pick-up to boost your Thanksgiving marketing efforts

You can offer online purchase and store pick up. Beacons alert you when the customer is close by and no time is wasted in handing over the order.

Design an Amazon Go or Zippin experience

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A cashier-less experience can also be replicated using beacons. This allows customers to pay from anywhere in the store allowing them to avoid standing in unnecessarily long queues.

Related: Build an Amazon Go experience in your store as a Thanksgiving marketing idea

7. Let your customers know your Black Friday and Cyber Monday plans

While your shoppers are in your store for Thanksgiving, gently nudge them with beacon notifications that let them know in a nutshell what to expect on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you are planning on changing your store timings or if there is a heavy discount on a certain product category, get your customers excited for what’s to come.

Related: Learn the secrets of beacon-based messaging to solidify your Thanksgiving marketing campaign

If you’re looking to engage customers in-store without an app, consider using NFC tags and stickers as well as QR codes. Almost all Android and iPhones natively support QR and NFC without an app.

Read more about how SMBs can use a blend of NFC, QR codes and BLE beacons to design a comprehensive solution.

Are you going to try any of these Halloween or Thanksgiving marketing strategies? Let us know in the comments below.

Get an end-to-end cost-effective solution to execute all of these holiday season marketing strategies today. Start your journey with Beaconstac.

• Author Details

Author Details

Sneh Ratna Choudhary

Sneh is a Content Marketing Manager at Beaconstac and has a penchant for all things tech and startups that improve human lives. She adores dogs, Radiohead, and Michael Gary Scott.

[email protected]