Today is Halloween. Tonight will be filled with trick-or-treaters knocking on your door expecting candy. There will be carved pumpkins and spooky decorations (the latest craze where I live is mammoth-sized skeletons to adorn your yard.) If you are in marketing, what should you be focusing on at Halloween? Would you be surprised if I said Memorial Day?

Marketing is always planning ahead. When you are in a business that counts on seasonal sales, you need to be looking at least six months ahead. This helps you make all the necessary arrangements for your marketing to work, but it also helps you take an objective look at a period of time without being caught up in the emotion of the season. Do seasons have emotions? They do, or it may be more correct to say they bring out emotions in us. Think about it: you get warm, sentimental feelings at Christmas, but other emotions on Valentine’s Day, and another mood on the Fourth of July. They all make us happy, but in very different ways. Part of it is driven by the holiday and part of it is driven by the environment we find ourselves in during that season. For instance, Thanksgiving is a holiday that has all kinds of traditions tied to it that include food, gathering together with family, watching football and beginning to plan for Christmas. Memorial Day is a holiday that kicks off the summer and the beginning of outside activities. They both feel good, but in different ways. This is something a good marketer will use to attract consumers to their brand.

Good marketing includes promoting the positive emotion of the season with your brand. Here are some tips to do so.

• Keep your promotions simple. You can kill a good marketing campaign by making it too complex.
• Stay upbeat in the messaging tied to your brand. You want the consumer to hear your brand in association with warmth and good feelings.
• Make your brand the solution to their problem. Figure out what obstacles stand in the way of the consumers’ happiness and unite your brand to the fix. In essence, your marketing should be telling the consumer that they cannot find happiness unless they use your brand to eliminate the barrier that keeps them from being happy.
• Make it very easy for the consumer to buy your brand.
• Follow up with your customers to see how they like your brand.
• Offer your customer a deal for buying from you again, especially on a holiday that has good vibes.

Here is an axiom of marketing: happy people buy stuff more often than unhappy people do. If you are in charge of marketing for your company, it is your business to promote your brand in not just a favorable light, but as a gateway to positive emotions. Plan ahead, but do so with the emotions of the season in mind. In keeping with the Halloween theme, your marketing should promote the treat, not the trick!