How to promote a Halloween event

Halloween is one of the biggest and busiest dates in the annual events calendar.

From themed club nights and immersive jump-scare experiences to pumpkin trails and other family-friendly occasions, your potential customers won’t be short of options.

To win their attention, you need to launch early, make your event easy to discover and give customers a compelling reason to choose it over the competition.

Here’s how to promote your Halloween event without giving yourself a marketing nightmare.

1. Get your event on sale early

Don’t wait until October to start promoting your event.

Halloween fans often make plans weeks in advance, while larger groups need even more time to get out of the group chat. It can take days, even weeks and a whole lot of drama before a group decides on which event to attend and what costumes each member will wear.

You should aim to have your event listed and your first tickets on sale by August or early September. An early on-sale also gives you more time to learn what’s working and adjust your marketing plan before the crucial final few weeks – when typically more than half of ticket sales are taken on Skiddle.

Consider launching with a limited number of early-bird tickets to begin with, to help build momentum around your event.

💡The first student finance payment of the academic year typically arrives in late September or early October, creating an important sales opportunity for student-focused events.

If you’re listing multiple Halloween events, we highly recommend creating your own event brand. When you create a new listing and tag the event to your brand, your listings will appear together on one page, making them easier for customers to find. Plus, when a new event is added or a line-up or set time is changed, we’ll automatically notify all customers who follow your brand on Skiddle, providing additional visibility to your listings.

💡Launching a recurring Halloween event with multiple sessions throughout the day, such as a guided ghost tour? Save yourself hours of time manually entering each event and time slot with our Event Series and Session-Based Ticketing features.

If you’re hosting a Halloween club event with a big headline DJ, don’t forget to tag the artist on your event too, and we’ll notify those who follow them on Skiddle of their upcoming performance via mobile push and email alerts. 

More on Event Brands, Brand Alerts and Artist Alerts.

2. Make your event listing irresistible

Your event listing is your sales pitch. It’s where customer interest turns into ticket sales, so make every detail count.

Use a strong, high-quality image that instantly communicates the type of Halloween event you’re running. A family pumpkin trail needs a very different look from an adults-only horror experience. To ensure the best visibility for your event listing on Skiddle, your image should include no more than 20% text.

Then it’s on to your event description. This should quickly answer:

• What is the event?
• Who is it for?
• What makes it different?
• When and where is it happening?
• Are costumes required or encouraged?
• What does the ticket include?
• Are there any age restrictions or last-entry times

Put the biggest selling points near the top. If you have live performers, themed rooms, immersive actors, fairground rides or a costume competition, don’t make customers dig through paragraphs to find them. Use bullet points to highlight the key details and make your listing easier to scan.

💡When you list publicly through the Skiddle Promotion Centre, your event will also appear across Skiddle’s What’s On Guide, viewed by more than 4 million monthly visitors, and our Skiddle app, used by over 3.6 million event enthusiasts.

3. Give your campaign a clear identity

Halloween events usually follow the same themes, but being just another run-of-the-mill Halloween event isn’t going to hook and engage potential customers.

Choose a recognisable concept and carry it through your artwork, event description, social posts and venue decoration. It could be built around classic horror, gothic glamour, a haunted circus or a specific decade. Research your competitors and find where there are gaps in the market for something fresh.

A clear identity makes your event easier to remember and gives you more material to work with throughout the campaign.

Keep the practical information readable, though. Elaborate fonts and dark artwork might look suitably sinister, but not if customers can’t find the date or ticket link.

4. Create content people want to share

Posting the same event artwork repeatedly will quickly lose its impact. Think about the types of content you see and engage with online, and build a simple content bank with assets you can schedule to publish in stages throughout your sales campaign.

Try:

• A staged “reveal” of the event’s characters or themed rooms
• Costume polls or audience votes
• Short scare-reaction videos
• Venue transformation before-and-after content
• User-generated costume galleries
• Countdown content tied to ticket tiers

Short-form video is particularly useful for showing people the atmosphere they can expect. One well-shot walkthrough of your venue or the grand reveal of an actor or artist in all their gory makeup can say more than another “tickets on sale now” graphic, and will attract more attention.

You could also tap into timely Halloween trends and memes, adapting them to suit your event and reach new audiences. Just make sure the content still feels relevant to your brand.

Whatever content you create and publish, always be sure to include a clear next step or call to action, whether that’s visiting a link to buy a ticket, joining a waiting list or sharing the event with friends.

5. Turn customers and partners into promoters

Halloween is usually a group occasion, which makes word of mouth especially valuable. 

Encourage your venue staff, your performers, suppliers and local partners to share news of your event with their friends, families and audiences. Make it easy by sending artwork correctly sized for whichever channels they use, as well as any suggested copy and a trackable ticket link.

You can also use our powerful Skiddle Rep system to turn customers into advocates of your event and/or brand.

Skiddle Reps lets customers, partners and followers share unique ticket links and earn commission or rewards from resulting sales, giving them an incentive to promote your event to their networks.

More on Skiddle Reps.

6. Use ticket offers strategically

While the pressures of the cost of living will have some impact on ticket sales to Halloween events this year, there are ways to make your experiences more appealing and accessible.

Skiddle’s Discount Codes let you create single-use, multi-use and limited-use promotions, while tiered pricing can encourage customers to book at different stages of your campaign.

From the Skiddle Promotion Centre dashboard, you can create:

• Early-bird tickets to generate initial momentum
• Group tickets to encourage friends to book together
• Student or local resident offers using Discount Codes
• Limited promotions for partners and performers

When using these tools and strategies, be sure to keep things simple and avoid running so many promotions that customers learn to wait for the next discount.

You’ll also want to avoid running promotions over periods when ticket sales are higher, typically around pay dates at the end of the month and when student loan drops happen, such as the first term payment in late September and early October. Instead, try testing out discounts to re-engage customers who have shown interest and, if you’re running a series of Halloween events, to encourage ticket sales for quieter events.

7. Put your budget behind what works

Paid social advertising can help you reach people beyond your existing following, particularly in your event’s local area.

Start with a clearly defined audience based on location, age and relevant interests. Test a small number of creative ideas rather than putting your entire budget behind one advert.

Custom tracking links and pixel integrations can help you see which adverts, partners and platforms are producing ticket sales, and not just clicks. Check your results regularly and move budget towards the activity that is converting.

Skiddle’s analytics, available to view for free in the Promotion Centre, can also show you where customers are based and provide insights into ticket sales and audience demographics to help you better target your audience.

8. Plan for the final push

Many Halloween customers will book late this year, so be sure to save some energy and enough content for the crucial final sales push.

In the seven days leading up to your event:

• Share final announcements, last-minute offers and event previews
• Answer practical questions about costumes, travel and entry
• Retarget people who have already shown interest using paid ads
• Remind customers to organise their group
• Update your messaging when ticket tiers sell out

Urgency can help, but keep it honest. “Final 100 tickets” is far more convincing when there really are only 100 tickets left.

That wasn’t too scary, was it? 

Ready to get your Halloween event in front of more people? Sign up for your free Skiddle Promotion Centre account, list your event and start selling tickets today.