The Do’s and Don’ts of Nailing Halloween Digital PR

Now we are approaching the end of September, Spooky Season is truly upon us. In the digital PR world, Halloween provides the perfect opportunity to get creative and lean into topical features. By nature, some PR topics can border on risky from a brand standpoint, so we’ve put together some do’s and don’ts of Halloween PR.

Do make use of unique and updated data

Finding relevant and up to date data to support your campaigns can give you the edge on your competition. What will set you apart is creativity. There can be fierce competition from PRs to secure coverage and there is nothing worse than discovering someone has launched a similar campaign to yourself. Securing original or recently updated data can give you the edge and make the difference between coverage and failure. From hotel reviews which mention ghosts or spooky occurrences listed on bespoke websites which mention haunted locations, there are loads of potential data sources out there. A good tip if you are worried your data will be used by someone else is to add more data to make this unique. You could take one data point and turn this into an index or cross-reference this with different adjacently themed data to give your campaign a unique narrative.

Don’t use real-life crimes in your campaigns

There is always a moral line in the world of PR that we should me mindful not to cross. In my years working in the industry I have seen campaigns which reference crime data, such as reported murders in relation to Halloween. We should all try to remember these statistics relate to real life victims and it can come across as extremely insensitive to spin real life traumatic events into campaign data. My motto is to go for ‘spooky not scary’ and keep your campaigns light-hearted and mindful of both the impact on the brand’s and your own reputation.

Do find regional angles

Got some great data on Halloween sweets or spooky events to visit? Invest the time in curating bespoke regional angles and your campaign can gain much broader coverage. You should never treat digital PR as a one size fits all approach, as every publication has it’s own ways of working and audience interests. When creating regional campaigns, aim to break down data or highlights linking to cities over entire regions. Journalists prefer to focus on their own areas, for example reporting on Manchester versus the North West as a whole.

Don’t miss the boat on when to outreach

Timing is key with any seasonal campaign and you always run the risk of missing out if you go live too late, which can waste months of planning and execution. This is not only a time cost but a resource cost to agencies, staff and brands. You can start to outreach Halloween early into October, to plant the seeds of ideas before the competition gets too fierce. This should be really dialled up in the two weeks leading up to the date. Launching the week of Halloween or later leaves too much risk of gaining nothing for your release and making it a potentially wasted effort. Whilst it’s less likely to secure coverage on the day before or the day of Halloween, you can always target any reactive opportunities ad hoc to top up the waves of outreach you’ve previously done.

Do monitor the news leading up to Halloween

A lot can change in the news agenda which could render an idea no longer feasible. It’s important for PRs to keep an eye on different news outlet’s news stories to see where ideas may need to be swapped or adapted. News monitoring can also be a great way to find new and innovative ideas to jump on which you hadn’t previously thought of.

Don’t sacrifice relevancy with your campaign ideas

It can be tempting to pick an idea you know works well for Halloween themed stories, but if this has little relevancy to your brand then it won’t garner much traction. The weight of any links you do gain could be lessened by the lack of relevancy in the content on the media outlet site. A good tip is to hold an ideation session for yourself or your team, note down the brand, their products and their core audience groups. Expand two steps beyond each area in a mind map, use useful tools such as SEMrush’s Topic Research or Ahref’s Content Explorer to get more inspiration around what questions consumers are asking. This helps you build a profile of the brand’s core customer and their secondary interests. Secondary interests can be targeted for PR to allow for broader media targeting whilst still remaining close to the brand identity.

Do find suitable experts

Enlisting an expert to give weight to your campaign has remained a successful tactic which has worked throughout 2024 and Halloween is no exception. Lifestyle journalists love campaigns which use bespoke experts, such as mediums or astrologists, as these lean into their audience’s core interests and give some more authority to any advice your campaign may be offering. Putting out media requests on Twitter or using journo request services from Cision or Response Source can be great ways to build up your network of experts to lend commentary to enhance your campaigns.

Don’t forget to add rich assets to your campaigns

Journalists are highlighting more than ever before that having strong imagery, video and rich assets is beneficial to their content. Sharing a unique recipe of Halloween snacks? Be sure to include imagery of the end result if you have this as it can highly increase the chances of pick-up. If you have the resource, consider creating a supporting video telling the story of your PR data campaign on spooky road trips, this can be shared alongside a traditional release and imagery to offer journalists something your competition may not be able to match.

Hopefully these tips have given some food for thought this spooky season. If you’re interested in reading more, take a look at the content and digital PR sections.