Halloween gifting ideas are easier to come by while the salesmanship of these particular gifts can lend itself to more difficult endeavors. Sales are not everyone’s forte, but design is easier for most people so they tend to focus on visual media for marketing. In our experience, we find direct mail to be a useful tool, especially for maintaining a relationship with existing customers. Important tasks to consider involve designing Halloween flyers, postcards and newsletters that will be sent to your existing customer base. This can be tricky without having photos of completed fall and Halloween designs but try to concentrate on the message and general feel that you want the pieces to have and then you work to come up with a plan for distribution.
Once the new supplies begin arriving you should work with your design team to come up with several exciting new gift basket designs for the autumn season, including designs that are appropriate for Thanksgiving gifts (e.g. Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October) and of course, Halloween gifts. This is the truly fun part for most people – you can be the proverbial kids in the candy store when brand new stock arrives and you are designing for a fresh new season! Photos will be taken of the new designs, copy will be written to describe the new offerings and all of this important sales information will be added this to your marketing pieces. At this point the fun will be mainly over for you as you execute your marketing plan and begin your fall production schedule (but that’s okay because you will be doing it all over again very soon for the winter holiday season – Hanukkah and Christmas aren’t that far off!).
Hmmm, all of this talk about fall and Halloween has definitely perked me up… I think I’ll go make some popcorn and cider and then get busy with the product sourcing. I can’t wait to see what exciting new products I’ll find for the fall season. Cheers and good luck with your Halloween gift basket shopping!