10 Spooktacular Halloween Contest Ideas to Boost Your Business

Your marketing initiatives need to be exciting and creative to receive substantial customer engagement. Holidays are perfect times to interact with your audience — from social media to email marketing, and your website too. Need some primo Halloween contest ideas?

This fun-filled holiday is a natural fit for competition, and there are a number of easily executed options to help you connect with your customers and drive them to take action.

10 Fun Halloween Contest Ideas You Can Use Today

1. 1. Halloween Costume Contest

Whether you let your audience decide the winner (s), or judge it yourself, a costume contest for Halloween is a definite excitement generator. Perfect for social media too. From Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and more, costume contests can generate a LOT of likes, shares, and comments.

Motivate customers with prizes such as a brand new product yet to be available. Choose wisely. Your prize should have a strong value proposition. Costume contests can be personalized for your business such as pet product lines, baby clothes, accessories, and more. To add a little more personalization and connectivity, encourage employees of your company to participate in the contest and dress up too.

Be timely, and find your most dedicated fans and share their posts. Let them do some of the work for you to maximize the efficiency of the campaign.

1. 1. Best Scream Contest

The ever-powerful video. Continuing to rise in power, short videos are easily watched and shared. A screaming contest would more than likely be the best fit for companies with a younger audience and utilized on such platforms as Snapchat and Instagram.

When choosing your contest, take into close account your demographics and know the places your target audience exists most frequently online. Consider having a time-limited contest and promoting it as a special event for later in the evening for an increased impact. Perhaps a Friday the 13th? Or a Scary Saturday Scream Night? Be creative, but be focused on maximum results.

1. 1. Creepily Delicious Halloween Recipe Contest

Food pictures are everywhere online. Holiday recipes are no exception. But a recipe contest doesn’t have to be exclusive to photos.

Your fans/customers could even post videos of them tasting their “Zombie Brain Shrimp Dip” or “Creepy Creature Cupcakes.” People love sharing favorite foods, and adding in the bonus of the gross-out factor of Halloween can spur some real creativity — and lots of interaction.

1. 1. Halloween Hashtag Contest

Creative hashtags can make for an exciting campaign. Connecting your company, products, and services to hashtags on social media is a real win for exposure. Set up a challenge for your customers to compose Halloween-centered hashtags in posts, tweets, etc.

They can even add in media too. You can crown one winner with the prize for the most shared hashtag, or create a tiered prize system.

1. 1. Caption a Spooky Photo Contest

This is a low-maintenance, high-impact contest. All you have to do is create a spooky picture, preferably related to your products or services, and post it to your social media sites for a caption contest.

Make sure the photo is high quality and unique. Incorporating a humorous element can also light the post on fire too.

Caption contests are easy for you and your customer. A win-win.

1. 1. Kid’s Halloween-Themed Drawing Contest

Parents love to share how proud they are of their children. Nurturing this type of business-customer relationship can really promote loyalty and create an overall positive impact on your company branding.

The drawing contest can be a general Halloween theme or, depending on what you sell, you could ask for product placement in the pictures too. A powerful contest that is family-friendly and effective.

1. 1. Halloween Candy Guessing Game

A challenge of numbers, this contest sparks the competitive nature of your customers with mathematical flair. Choose candy corn, fall-colored M&Ms, or other favorite candy to fill in a big jar or container and hold a competition to see who can guess the closest.

You can tease them with giveaways on new or in-demand products.

Promote increased interaction on social media by calling out users who are getting close and challenging your audience to beat them at the game.

1. 1. Scary Story or Poem Contest

There’s a wide range of possibilities here. From short stories to silly limericks, ask your audience to get creative and incorporate at least one product or service from your company in the piece.

You can also encourage them to take videos (if the composition is short). Be clear that you will be sharing the best selections with your network to encourage participation. This is another type where either you or your employees can be the judge or give the task to other customers to vote for their favorite.

1. 1. Best Dance Video Contest

From the Monster Mash to Thriller by Michael Jackson, you can get people off their feet and dancing for a great prize. People of all ages can participate to win this fun and very shareable content. The contest can be further specialized with time limitations like a Friday night dance party close to Halloween where you have concentrated online interactions. If you want to be playful and show employees getting their groove on, that can be an added element of enjoyment and connection for your target audience too.

1. 1. Halloween Couple Selfie Contest

Couple’s costumes are awesome. Let love rule this contest and bring your coupled customers to the forefront with a fun selfie costume contest. You can even be creative with the prizes and offer diverse selections of pairs of gifts to go along with the theme. Happy couple photos are a real magnet for likes and comments on social media — generating positive emotions in connection with your brand.

The amount of time involved in the creation and execution of these contests will differ. As in much of life and business, you get out of it what you put into it. A social media team can manage the contest for you and capture the all-important data derived from user interactions. No matter which one (or more) you choose, taking advantage of holidays is an excellent decision to bOOst your business.