7 ways to write about Halloween this year

It started life as a pagan holiday and has become one of the foremost opportunities in the ecommerce calendar. And now Americans spend over $8 billion a year on Halloween and on average are willing to spend over $80 on the holiday (NRF, 2019). While the UK total is smaller – consumers there spent just shy of £500 million in 2018 according to Retail Gazette – it is very much a growth ecommerce opportunity. With the right approach publishers can find a way to make Halloween work for them and their audiences too. We’ve put together a few different options to inspire commerce content for Halloween:

1) Outfits for adults

When people think of Halloween, they likely think of trick or treating, but the holiday isn’t just for kids. Whether it’s superheroes, monsters or famous figures and faces, you should be able to find a way to create content about costumes for your audience. Targeting adults is smart too: they have more spending power than their younger counterparts.

2) Outfits for students

At the opposite end of the scale, students are on the lookout for budget outfit options too. That could mean DIY outfit posts or gallery features focused on items at lower price points or costumes around a theme like TV show characters. If you can include them in your coverage, students can be a great audience to engage with Halloween commerce content.

3) Trick or Treaters

Having talked older, it’d be remiss not to talk about younger people too. And those that are a lot younger, around trick or treating age, will have parents looking for the perfect outfit and Halloween accessories for a candy-filled October evening. So creating content aimed at parents, designed around outfits for their little ones, can be a great way to appeal to all ages at Halloween.

4) Food accessories and recipes

Whether they’re looking for a tool to carve the perfect jack-o-lantern or a ladle for some party punch, Halloween is one of many food and drink-centric holidays. You could write up punch recipes and link out to punch bowls, or focus on petrifying pastries and link to relevant baking tools. No matter how old people are, there’s a Halloween party for everyone, so whatever party food or drink post you go for, you’ll have an audience to appeal to.

5) Home decor / decorations / stencils

Halloween means homeware opportunities galore. People decorate all over their houses, from cushions, to carpets, to jack-o-lanterns and gravestones for the front porch, so figuring out furnishings you can promote during Halloween can be a great way to take advantage of the season.

6) Events / Experiences

The humble haunted house has come a long way since appearing in umpteen episodes of Scooby Doo Where Are You?. Now there are tonnes of haunted house and spooky tour experiences that people take advantage of when they fancy a real life horror movie experience. So finding travel and experience companies that offer these kinds of events can be a good way to stand out from the crowd with Halloween content.

7) Costumes for pets

Think Halloween and you might not immediately think four-pawed-friends. But, people do look to dress up their cats, dogs and other animals to take advantage of the season. Help them do that, with commerce content walking them through outfit options, and you might stand to make a fangtastic success out of Halloween.

Whether you write about pets, parties or for parents, there are tonnes of ways to write about Halloween and create commerce-related content around the holiday. Check out the merchants we work with to find merchants for your Halloween content here.