Promoting Halloween in your Business
- Karen Barnes
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
It’s that time of year again!
Autumn is here, with leaves falling, colder days and dark evenings drawing in quickly. But, it’s not all doom and gloom until Christmas……….we have Halloween!
Halloween is growing in popularity in the United Kingdom and it’s a fantastic seasonal opportunity for a floral business to stand out. Over the past 5 years you will have seen that the big High Street and ecommerce companies have really embraced Halloween.
We can now find from early September, light-up pumpkins, fancy dress costumes for little ones (and big ones!), confectionary, balloons, spooky garden decorations, scented candles etc. I could go on, but you get the sense of what I am talking about. In other words, these large retail businesses have recognised that consumers want to buy into this occasion.
So…. why shouldn’t you? You personally may not like Halloween, but don’t ever ignore an opportunity to create extra business, increase sales and customer growth because you don't ‘like’ Halloween. This occasion has been massive in the USA and Canada for more than 30 years and is a real event in most people’s lives. I was working in Canada one year, and was invited to a Halloween party. I have never forgotten it. It was incredible. Everyone, and I mean everyone, threw themselves into the spirit of Halloween, dressing up not only themselves, but their homes, streets and businesses.
When I came back to the UK, I started to think, this is something that is going to grow in popularity here and sure enough, it may have taken a while, but Halloween is now so big that it's definitely worth considering promoting in your own floral business.
Some simple facts that may change your mind if you are not certain…
Consumer spending/retail value in the UK in 2024 was £776 million. WOW! We should all have a piece of that (pumpkin) pie! If you don’t already, here are a few simple ideas for you to think about promoting Halloween in your florist shops. I have made plenty of these simple ideas and customers love them!
Make your shop feel festive with pumpkins, cobwebs, candlelight, and spooky displays. Display is so important, particularly if you have shop windows and flexibility to decorate externally round your window and entrance doorway. London in particular is a fabulous example of shops really getting behind Halloween and the Autumn spooky season with fabulous décor outside their premises, giving a real sense of hey, come and visit us for your Halloween party arrangements and gifts.
Perhaps create and market a Halloween Weekend Special: Offer free mini-pumpkin floral gifts for customers who buy a bouquet.
Instagram opportunities: Set up a decorated spot where customers can take selfies with their purchases (encouraging them to tag your shop).
Create Halloween themed bouquets, for example, use orange lilies, deep red roses, black calla lilies, purple Lisianthus, and foliage like eucalyptus or dark greenery, then add Halloween accessories such as small pumpkins, witches’ hats or spiders etc and place amongst the flowers and foliage.
Use Halloween-inspired packaging. This could be in colour or have prints of Halloween type characters.
Make mini pumpkin arrangements: hollow out pumpkins and use them as vases for fresh or dried flowers. Offer arrangements with black-dyed grasses, dried seed pods, and dark roses, customers love them!
Halloween door wreaths are a must! Autumnal door wreaths are becoming very trendy and for Halloween with berries just add little spooky accents (like artificial spiders, bats, or ribbon).
Offer gift bundles: mini pumpkins + dried foliage bunches + scented candles.
Pumpkin Workshops: Offer flower crown or mini-pumpkin arrangement workshops during half-term for children and mums.
Promote Halloween on social media and on your website
Here are a few ideas that I have found work:
Share behind-the-scenes videos of spooky bouquets being made.
Run a “Spookiest Bouquet” contest where customers vote for their favourite design.
Post styling tips: “How to decorate your Halloween table with flowers.”
Add a section to your website showcasing “Spooky & Seasonal Florals.”
Create urgency with a limited edition of Halloween designs.
A great way to encourage more orders is to offer “Trick or Treat” discount codes online.
For Instagram what about this for a post
Create a dark bouquet with orange lilies, black calla lilies, and deep red roses. Take a few photos and add “Witching you a Happy Halloween! Our limited-edition Spooky Blooms bouquet is here. Perfect for gothic dinner tables, Halloween parties, or just treating yourself. Available until 31st October only. Order now before they vanish into the night…
And add hashtags such as:
It is always good to partner with local cafés, bakeries, or costume shops for cross-promotion, it encourages a community spirit and their customers could potentially become your customers and vice versa.
With over 35 years’ experience, Karen Barnes is one of the UK’s leading consultants to the floral industry and an expert in product development, future trends & colours, and floral photography design & planning. She’s an interior floral designer, high profile wedding and event floral planner, and prominent international competition judge.In a distinguished career, Karen has been awarded gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, selected to judge two Floral Design World Cups and been voted one of the top ten florists in the UK by The Independent on Sunday Newspaper.Her style and influences come from new and popular flower varieties, fashion, art, travel and emerging trends on a global scale.Karen Barnes NDSF, IoPF, AIFD, CFD, CAFA, UKFJG
