It’s Valentine’s Day! Not our favorite holiday, of course. We’re sure you can all guess which one is! Hint: It’s likely yours, too!

Hopefully this inspiring list of creative haunt marketing concepts ignites your Halloween heart! Happy Valentine’s Day, from Team FearWorm!

1. Use a message bot to create & execute a social media scare!

Message bots have been around for several years, but not many haunted attractions use them! If you aren’t familiar with this technology, we can break it down for you simply! Message bots use artificial intelligence to connect with and interact with people using an interaction mapping technology that is completely customizable and controlled by you!

For this idea, we’re going to use an urban legend that you may be familiar with: Bloody Mary! Now, we all know the story. Go to a bathroom, turn the lights out and stand in front of a mirror. Say her name three times and supposedly you’ll get a vision of her in the mirror! Teenagers have been scaring themselves with urban legends like this at sleepovers for many, many years!

Bringing this concept forward, message bots (like Many Chat) have the capability of sending an engaged user specific content after an engagement action has been completed. For example: Ask your social audience to comment “Bloody Mary” on a post to “get a special scare” in their inbox. You choose the image or video and special message they receive! You can make this brand specific by sharing one of your characters instead of Bloody Mary. This entire interaction is set up within the message bot application of your choice. Simply orchestrate the desired actions and fire the post off! Now, you just sit back and watch as users respond in amazement!

2. Have a community scavenger hunt & share clues with your fans!

Scavenger Hunts are fun, especially when there are prizes involved! Perhaps you orchestrate a haunted scavenger hunt of sorts utilizing glow in the dark symbols or UV paint in a local park. Share clues with your audience via social media. Make sure you share all of the information needed and the parameters of the contest.

Here is an example of a Digital Scavenger Hunt that was hosted by LA’s Department of Recreation and Parks as an example:

Notice they shared details like the name of the park, the address, the dates for the event, and a specific hashtag to use when sharing pictures. This helped the City of LA identify the winning entries easily as the first ten to follow all of the directions were automatic winners! One suggestion we would make is, be specific as to which social platform the contest is on. This way, you only have one hashtag feed to manage rather than multiple apps. This could get confusing both for your team, and the participants on the other end. You could also do a multi-platform contest and choose a few winners from each platform. All of this is up to you!

Ideas like this scavenger hunt are fun and encourage people to get out and about. As long as the prize is worth it and the contest is fairly easy to manage, you’ll get people excited about it! Make sure you have a plan for where to message the winners once they are identified. You’ll need to give them detailed instructions on how to redeem their prize!

3. Offer to decorate a local business for Halloween & let your fans choose the winner!

Now, this one is a fun, community supportive marketing idea! This is perfect for the haunted attraction that is located within a close, tight-knit community! Think about the local area…is there a downtown kind of section with lots of local businesses? What you will want to do is talk to a few popular local businesses and identify which ones might want for you to put up some Halloween decorations for them when the time comes! After all…who does Halloween decor better than a haunted house?! This is beneficial for your business and theirs for several reasons. One, they don’t have to decorate their shop! They could leave that up to you! Two, this gives fans and followers of your haunted attraction a reason to check out their shop! And of course, this also works in reverse! Patrons of their shop will see the awesome haunting atmosphere and this becomes a brand touch point for your business to possibly attract a new consumer!

Note: The decorations provided for this wouldn’t have to be complicated or very scary. You could even re-use some old props and pieces from last year’s show. Think cobwebs, and a haunting atmosphere. Simple, yet spooky. Make sure you have a sign made that says “Haunting Atmosphere provided by HAUNTED ATTRACTION NAME”. You’ll want to have that printed and ready to go come time for install!

Once you have a few, popular local businesses selected and have their approval. Make a social media graphic that shares the logos of these establishments and call for a fan vote! Let your social community pick the winner! This automatically becomes an engagement fueling post as users need to either comment the name of the business or ‘react’ to vote (the functionality for this also depends on the platform you select.)

If you choose to use Facebook, you could create a reaction vote post (see example above.)  This is where the user reacts to the post and that becomes their vote! For instance, a heart reaction is selected for one business, and a like reaction means the other. Just make sure you only choose the positive reactions to represent the options for this one. This creative marketing concept yields a fun, unique way to support your community during Halloween! When local businesses and fans unite…everyone wins!

4. Sponsor a Halloween pop-up or mini haunted walk-through at a popular, local event!

This creative marketing concept like the one that comes before it requires a bit of communication with local folks. Is there an event that happens yearly in your area that has a big draw? If this event happens before your haunted attraction opens for the fall…even better! You’ll want to get started on the communication for the set-up of this pretty early. Contact the event and offer to do a pop-up mini haunted attraction at their event! After all, you are the Halloween authority! This should be a no-brainer. Of course they would want the Halloween experts putting together something new and crowd-pleasing for their show! This is a win-win. It works as promotion and public exposure for you, but also…it gives the event something new to promote. This could help them reach those event attendees that maybe haven’t been in a few years. Something new is enticing! Especially to folks that have been before, but haven’t been in the last few years.

The walk-through you offer doesn’t have to be scary. You could cater the pop-up to the event in question. Maybe even work with the event to create something that works specific to their patrons! If the event has a target market that is a bit more family oriented, you could dial it down and focus more on the pumpkins, hay, and overall autumn aesthetic. When it comes time for the event, especially if the event is family friendly, make sure you send a stilt walking character to the event with a handler. This character’s objective is to be entertaining, and to take pictures with everyone! Stiltbeast Studios has some excellent crowd-pleasing stilt walking characters that are great for family events (and scarier even) should you be in the market for a new character! So bookmark that link as they’ll be releasing their new characters very soon!

If you feel like a walk-through might be too much to tackle for you during this season (and of course we understand!) Consider contacting the event in question very early on and offering to tackle a themed photo op build. This could be branded for you creating a brand touch-point, and it becomes a fun, interactive area for folks to engage with during the event which becomes supportive of the event in question, as well! Now that is a what we call a HalloWIN!

5. Create a fun social media contest where your fans can scare their friends & share in the scare!

What would you say you do best? Well, we sure hope it’s scare the pants off of the public! Scare entertainment is your wheelhouse! It’s important to dial into this part of your brand as often as you can. For this creative marketing idea, we are suggesting you give your audience the opportunity to “share in the scare”!

You’ll need to create a few promotional materials that give people the information needed in order to participate or to enter this contest (if you decide to make it one.) The idea behind this one is to put the scaring power in the hands of the general public! You’ll want to instruct them to record the experience and to share it on social media using a specific hashtag. Make sure you ask users to also tag your account for even more exposure! This type of contest yields really fun videos that are exciting to watch…for both you and your audience!

We’ve all seen scare videos! People love watching people get scared! This concept does many excellent things: It promotes laughter, fun, and it shows the WHY behind what it is that you do! Scaring in a safe place provides a wonderful stress release…we all know the service you provide your community! It’s time everyone else got that memo!

As with any contest, don’t make it complicated. You will want this to be very easy for the end user! Be sure you are clear on what the prize is (if any) and how the winners are chosen. No matter what you do with this concept, it’s well-suited to reach a younger audience. Remember, younger members of our community are very social savvy! Make sure you orchestrate this in a way that is speaking to Get Z and plans to meet them where they are! Might we suggest TikTok? 

6. Host a Halloween Costume Drive & Giveaway in early September!

Our final creative marketing concept in this collection is especially great if you have some costumes in your costume department that you could get rid of! You know the ones! Outdated, discontinued creatures or characters, etc. What you will want to do first is decide if you are wanting to partner on this event with a charity, or if you want to manage the event yourself. Either way, this is another kind of event that is community supportive! As with all of these concepts, you’ll need some graphics or promotional materials to advertise this event and get the word out. You’ll also need some costume racks that you can put outside in your parking lot and perhaps some rubbermaid totes for the collection of costume accessories!

The idea here is to host an event that people can come to with an old costume of theirs. They donate the item by handing it to a member of your team. You disinfect the costume with whatever processes you might use after a show night, and hang the items up on the rack. Whoever brings a costume to donate can now shop and sort through whatever costumes are available. You can market this event by saying “Donate a costume or find a new one!”

With any of the costumes leftover, donate them to the charity or organization of your choice. Or, maybe there’s even a few pieces you decide you might want to work into your show! Either way, what’s left is up to you! This marketing concept is intended to give members of the community a reason to interact with your brand! And in a way that serves them! One – they got rid of those old costumes they’ll never wear again: All Hail Free Closet Space! And two, maybe they walked away with something useful to them! Perhaps a new-to-them costume! This potentially could save them some money come Halloween time! And perhaps they’ll choose to spend that saved money on a ticket for your attraction!

No matter how you slice this, your brand welcomed the public and provided a service that is Halloween-centric. Creative concepts like this are perfect for your haunted attraction! This type of event will be popular with the folks in the community that like to be thrifty. Be sure to put up flyers promoting this event in your local dollar stores, and thrift stores! If you have a great local thrift store, consider letting them sponsor the event and perhaps donate the leftover costumes to their business!

WHAT TO EXPECT

With any one of these marketing concepts you should expect, when executed thoughtfully, to get more impressions, engagement, and reach on your social media! This should inspire new fans and followers for your haunted attraction and at the very least generate some excellent local buzz!

These strategies are fueled by brand exposure and are designed to reach new people in your area! The creative marketing concepts shared above are meant to take you just a little bit outside of the box! Some of these concepts even get you working with other businesses and events. After all, communities thrive when we support one another!

GET INSPIRED

We hope that one or several of these concepts have inspired you! However, these strategies are not meant to be used in bulk. Choose one of the above marketing concepts that best fits your brand! As long as the concept is a good fit, this should be well-received by your social audience and community!

Feel free to take these ideas and run with them! Make them yours! Create your own creative marketing concept and don’t be afraid to challenge yourself! You never know what magic may follow!

Be sure to let us know if you decide to run with any of these ideas or if we’ve inspired something new for your haunt! Shoot us a message at admin@fearworm.com! We’d love to hear from you!