15 Ideas Using Halloween Trick or Treat Bags to Promote Your Business

Halloween Marketing Ideas Using Personalized Trick or Treat BagsMarketing your business can sometimes be a challenge, especially when trying to stand out from the mass quantity of competitors. That’s why planning ahead, well in advance, is critical when developing your marketing strategy.

One very effective way of marketing for your business is to piggyback on popular holidays and celebrations. Halloween is a great observance to take advantage of the fun spirit of this celebration and harness that excitement while promoting your company.

Consumers spend around $7 billion dollars each year on Halloween. That’s a huge number considering Halloween is only one day out of the year and it’s not even a federal holiday. Americans don’t receive paid time off for Halloween. Businesses do not shut down on Halloween. It’s simply an afternoon celebration that takes place after work hours. However, with $7 billion dollars being spent on this single afternoon, that shows the tremendous enjoyment that kids and adults receive from this observance.

With this much money and energy being spent for Halloween, it makes sense you should utilize this energy to market your business. Whether you hold special sales or events, this can be a powerful way to easily point more attention toward your business.

One of the most popular promotional giveaways for Halloween is trick or treat bags. These are not only low-cost promotional items but also necessities for those who go trick or treating. Whenever you give away necessary items for an event, your item automatically has an increased perceived value by those recipients.

The great thing about giving away Halloween trick or treat bags each year is that your customer base will come to expect it. This means each October, your customers will think about your business or come to visit your business to obtain a trick or treat bag for their child or children to use while trick or treating.

You can use custom trick or treat bags in many different creative ways to promote or compliment your business. Below are just a few ways to use them to your advantage and to benefit your customers.

15 Ways to Use Custom Halloween Trick or Treat Bags

  1. Promote Safety – Trick or treating can be dangerous if basic safety rules aren’t followed. Kids get excited during Halloween and often neglect personal safety they have been taught. That’s why it is so important to remind trick or treaters each year about safety rules such as staying in well-lit areas, inspecting candy thoroughly before eating it, wearing reflective clothing, using a flashlight, and looking carefully before crossing roads. Most trick or treat bags have safety tips on them for this very reason – to remind them about staying safe. If children are too young to read the safety tips, parents should go over the rules BEFORE trick or treating and your trick or treat bags will hopefully remind the parents to do so.
  2. Buy Custom Halloween Trick or Treat BagsTop of Mind Awareness – When your customers start to expect that you will give away trick or treat bags each year, those with trick or treating age children will remember you every October. Parents don’t want to buy trick or treat bags, so receiving free bags from one of their favorite stores or businesses is a great option. This keeps you at the top of their mind every single October. Now that these candy bags are taking care of top of mind awareness for October, you can find 11 other giveaways for the other 11 months to stay at the top of their minds.
  3. Shopping Bags – When customers come to your store and buy merchandise, you place the purchased goods in a plastic or paper bag after they check out. Since you have to buy those shopping bags anyway, substitute those bags with trick or treat bags and suggest to your customers to let their kids use the bag for trick or treating or give it to someone else who has kids. While Halloween bags will be a bit more costly than traditional, cheap plastic merchandise bags, you will save some money from the substitution and it keeps your store staying festive during the weeks leading up to Halloween.
  4. SWAG Bag – Everybody loves to receive free stuff, right? That’s true as long as the free stuff is useful. Using Halloween trick or treat bags during the month of October to fill with promotional items from your company is a great use for the bags. Not only do you they hold your giveaways, but the recipients can re-purpose the bags on Halloween night for trick or treating.
  5. Credit Card Sign-Up Gift – Every time someone makes a purchase at a major department store, the cashier asks if that person wants to sign up for a store credit card. It’s a way of getting those customers back into the store to shop, further increasing the top line revenues. Offering sign up incentives, such as gifts, are great promotions to encourage new sign-ups. However, instead of simply handing over a promotional Bluetooth speaker, stainless steel tumbler, or another promotional gift for signing up, put it in a Halloween bag during the weeks preceding Halloween. The bags have a dual purpose of providing a convenient way to carry the free gift and being able to be used as a trick or treat bag on Halloween night. Additionally, the Halloween bags are branded, further strengthening the department store branding.
  6. New Member Gift – Enticing new members to sign up for a service can be aided by offering a free gift or gifts. New member gifts are common for banks, credit unions, home maintenance service contracts, and many more. During the month of October, instead of using your standard shopping bags to hold the new member gifts, use trick or treat bags.
  7. Giveaways at Halloween Events – Many shopping centers host a trick or treat event encouraging parents to bring their children and go from store to store to trick or treat to get candy. This provides a controlled environment for trick or treating and keeps the kids safer than knocking on random neighborhood doors. If you host an event, event-themed giveaways are needed and what better to give out for a trick or treating event than trick or treat bags? Participating stores in the shopping center complex can have their logos added to the candy bags.
  8. Thank You Gifts – Every company has large clients or VIP customers that contribute to the company’s success. In order to strengthen relationships, it’s important to show your appreciation for your top clients. Giving thank you gifts is a great way to show your appreciation to your best clients. Giving away branded merchandise or personalized items that your clients will love is extremely effective. Be sure to bag those thank you gifts in a Halloween trick or treat bag during October.
  9. More Info Bag – You don’t typically make the sale on a first visit or after the first inquiry from a prospect. However, some prospects are hungry for more information before making a decision and signing on the dotted line. Having a bag full of literature providing more detailed information about your products and services is important to help potential customers make up their mind. Have a branded bag to hold this literature, but during October, change it up to a trick or treat bag.
  10. Co-Branding – If you could figure out how to give away promotional products with your company logo at half price, would you be interested? Of course, you would! You can buy co-branding Halloween bags. Find a complimentary business to yours and each business can go in half on the cost of the trick or treat bags. Then you simply split the imprint area in half and each print your logo and contact info. Finding non-competing businesses that compliment each other is most effective. A few examples of complementary businesses include 1) a nail salon and a day spa, 2) a Realtor and a title company, 3) a graphic designer and a printer, 4) a web designer and a software developer, or 5) used car lot and an auto mechanic.
  11. Party Bag Favors – If you host a Halloween party, giving away party favors may be in order. If so, use Halloween trick or treat bags to hold those party favors. The bags add a nice festive touch, but they are also useful for those with kids who need a candy bag for trick or treating. The design on your bag can be designed to match your party theme.
  12. Mail-Outs – Halloween trick or treat bags fold flat and are great for mailing to your customers and prospects. This is a cheap way to reach people and get a useful item with your branding in their hands. Doing a mail-out to your customers with kids is a great opportunity for a touch point during the month of October. You can also include coupons, sale info, or other enticements to come shop in your store.
  13. Donations – Many non-profit organizations hold events surrounding Halloween to raise funds for their causes. Whether the event is a haunted house, haunted forest, or a costume party, you can donate trick or treat bags for them to give out to their participants. This gives your company an opportunity to get in front of additional people as well as helps the charity. The charity can use the bags to include additional literature about getting involved with the organizations, how to donate, and other giveaways from event sponsors. Churches commonly host trunk or treat events at which members from their congregation decorate the trunks of their cars and pass out candy at the event. Trick or treat bags are needed and this gives a great opportunity for your business to step up and donate the candy bags. When donating to churches, be sure to stay clear of witches and hardcore designs that may be offensive; stick with classic designs.
  14. Schools & Day Cares – Where do you find the highest concentration of kids in one place? At schools, of course. Talk with your local schools and daycares and ask if you can donate trick or treat bags to them to give out to students who want them. Your donation may be useful at school-sanctioned functions such as a Fall festival, which many elementary schools host around Halloween.
  15. Pre-Trick or Treat Gifts – Halloween night brings a lot of excitement due to being able to dress up in creative and sometimes scary costumes as well as the anticipation of obtaining large amounts of candy. Your business can give out trick or treat bags with candy already in it before Halloween night and encourage them to use that bag when trick or treating. Too much candy is always welcome, so the kids will love it and a bag full of candy will likely be more well-received than an empty bag.

Halloween is filled with fun events and lots of candy. At the center of it all is trick or treating, which brings you the opportunity to get your name front and center with hundreds or thousands of families in your local area. Custom trick or treat bags are low priced promotional items that are a perfect way to capture the spirit of the holiday, promote the safety of children, provide useful items, and remind customers and potential customers about your company.

When buying Halloween trick or treat bags, find designs that you have never seen before. If you have been buying treat bags for the past few years, you may have noticed many of the designs are the same, year after year. If you are buying the same designs as your competitors, you are not standing out very much from them. That’s why each year our designers create unique Halloween designs that you can’t get anywhere else. We want you to be different. We want you to be remembered.

Shop the whole selection of our unique designed trick or treat bags here.

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