A Spooky Discovery

On October 31, I did a small search and social experiment on the impact of Halloween. It's no secret that the last day of October has become big business for costumes, candy, alcohol, events, bars, museums, zoos, theme parks and so much more. But, where are you in this surge of activity that generates millions of searches, tons of pictures, and plenty of conversation...?

The stats courtesy of http://halloweenstats.com/

41 million

The estimated number of potential trick-or-treaters in 2010 -- children 5 to 14 across the United States. Of course, many other children -- older than 14 and younger than 5 -- also go trick-or-treating.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census,

116.7 million

Number of occupied housing units across the nation in 2010 -- all potential stops for trick-or-treaters.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census,

24.7 pounds

Per capita consumption of candy by Americans in 2010.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Industrial Reports, Confectionery: 2010, Table 1,

1,719

Number of costume rental and formal wear establishments across the nation in 2009.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2009 County Business Patterns, NAICS code (53222)

The word "Halloween" gets over 20 million global monthly searches, and over 11 million local monthly searches with an obvious peak this month. This doesn't count all the variations, modifiers and the other 800 key words that represent the occasion that add up to over 114 million queries.

However, when I took a moment to search Halloween, and several variations of this hot topic happening in several major and medium markets around the country, I didn't find many media outlets ... and worse, almost no radio stations with any presence at all in organic or paid search!

Here's a quick idea that could have put you in the moment. Lady Gaga costumes (and several modifiers around it) are getting hundreds of thousands of local searches, which presents a great opportunity for any station who plays her music. Have a listener or personality put on one of the costumes (there are multiple looks and versions to choose for your Lady Gaga look), snap a photo and post it on a blog entry on your site talking about the popularity of the outfit for Halloween. Or, put a spin on it and find the ugliest people doing Lady Gaga this year to present on your site.

The key is getting inside of the critical moments as people are searching for items and conversations that are topical now.

Our client WTOP in Washington, DC did a great job of writing a Halloween Guide to spotlight the market's spookiest thrills. We used it to generate paid search around the many keywords, phrases and modifiers to drive traffic to their website over the past two weeks as the Halloween moment gained momentum.

Or, you could create a similar idea to what our partners at Greater Media in Philadelphia did this year with phillyscreams.com. They launched an entire branded Halloween portal to feature area attractions, a costume gallery, scary stories and presenting sponsors that has built tremendous value and revenue around this big occasion.

The takeaway is what I always advise ... and this is no different ... the moments are where you have to be as people are talking, searching, and sharing what's topical right now. The spooky result of this experiment is that 99% of the industry (you) were a ghost on this major occasion where there was an opportunity to connect with your audience. #fail

I'm hoping by sharing this type of information and ideas, you won't have a RIP sign when next year (or the next moment) comes.

Happy Halloween.