Halloween has hit hysterical heights of marketing, PR and comms activity in recent decades, with most businesses or organisations dedicating massive budgets to campaigns with mixed results. An increasingly saturated landscape means brands are vying for a finite amount of media space, which makes the need to be inventive and imaginative more important than ever.

We look at how you can maximise your exposure in a period of frenetic PR activity, cut-through the noise and make people stop, think and engage with your brand. Here are our top tips to avoid a Halloween Horror Show:

1) Interaction

Halloween is all about communities. Children spend the evening getting into the spirit with costumes and face paint, and then knocking on the doors of their neighbours seeking out tasty treats. Parents and adults often get together for Halloween themed drinks and parties within their local communities/work circles, and so we should be looking at building on that interactive feel in our comms. Content that requires people to get involved (such as quizzes, animations and online surveys) is far more likely to be shared both online and verbally during the Halloween season. Interactive content also gives the public a conversation starter or party-game during the Halloween period, maximising the reach of the campaign.

 2)  Coverage, Coverage, Coverage

Clever creative is ultimately the key to a cracking campaign, but creativity is nothing if no one sees the content. In a season with so much creative scope, ensuring a press release stands out from the crowd, and isn’t dismissed in a matter of seconds by a harried news editor is often a question of timing. Understanding the news agenda at that time, cleverly written toplines and knowing what the publisher wants during the Halloween period all go a long way to maximising the exposure of a campaign. And if you need a cheat, we’re always on hand to help.

Our 40-year heritage as part of the SWNS Media Group and our ability to produce content with mainstream media appeal coupled with our confidence in our creative work is backed up by a solid guarantee of coverage, and vast experience in media relations that will help ensure your campaign travels far and wide

  3) Visual Content

Halloween is a season that is bursting with visual content. Commercial, digital, print and retail landscapes are dominated by content and items produced with spooky themes in mind.

The opportunity presented to brands is to create a campaign that focuses on Halloween visuals, allowing them to tap into the agenda and enhance how engaging their project will be. Infographics, animations, videos and puzzles are all great ways to capitalise on national buzz and ensure that a piece of content gets clicks, views and plays. Make sure that all your visual assets are striking, colorful and on-brand.

 4)    SEO – What Google Wants

An overwhelming 90% of users click on the first 3 results in Google and only 6% click on paid search results. This means that businesses who make a conscious effort to position themselves as thought-leaders and have the nause to craft content that suits Google’s guidelines are at a massive advantage when it comes to generating web-traffic. Here are five top tips on how you can optimise content so it gets seen in search:

  • Utilise keywords. A keyword strategy is key to any piece of content for optimisation. Make sure that you identify key search terms that the content can attack, and include them in valuable places such as the title, headings and subheadings and introductory sentence.

 

  • Reference quality sites within the copy by linking to them. Not only is it good etiquette but they may also notice and link back to your content, showing google that it is a well respected piece.

 

  • Use social media to broaden the reach of your campaign, with cleverly timed and/or targeted posts.

 

  • Build pages and embed assets on your site. This will allow you to generate a traffic funnel of users/potential customers to your site. Not only does Google’s algorithm favour sites with many relevant pages, it will also add value to your site, giving people a reason to visit your page.

 

  • Optimise your images for SEO, by making them relevant to the content, choosing a good file name, adding a caption to the image (for easy scanning), and reducing the file size if possible.

 

5)   Shareability

Social content is a primary driver of traffic to websites. Roughly 3.2 billion social media users globally in 2018 means more consumers are engaging with content on social media than ever before. In fact, it has become the one-stop-shop for users to also share content with friends. This means, to maximise exposure on social platforms, the shareability of the content has to be the primary focus. The way to create shareable content is to tell a story and provide a feed for your audience of what they want to see – so, there’s no better time to create an experience that’s both haunting and brilliant than at Halloween.

Our breakthrough package incorporates social media optimised content, and detailed targeting, to ensure your message gets put in front of the people most likely to engage with it.

The opportunity presented to well-known brands at Halloween is to think outside the box and maximise exposure.

Here at 72Point, we specialise in cutting through the blur of competition to deliver high-quality coverage, even at periods of frenetic PR activity. Our unique relationship with publishers perfectly positions us to provide engaging content-driven solutions to your PR requirements that are newsworthy and most importantly, news-ready.

Last year’s Halloween saw us land 597 pieces of coverage across 38 projects – showcasing how we are able to use popular festivals/events to help brands springboard into the spotlight and connect with more diverse and wider audiences. Campaigns varied from news generation projects, visual assets/video projects, radio and PR surveys. Our versatility in working with brands is unrivalled, and our experience vast.

Avoid a Halloween Howler this year, come to 72Point to ensure your brand’s key messaging travels far and wide this Halloween season.