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New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Stacey Corrin
Stacey Corrin
John Turner
John Turner
Looking for the best Halloween giveaway ideas to attract customers and boost engagement this October? In this guide, you’ll find creative Halloween contest ideas you can run online or in-person to grow your audience, generate leads, and make your seasonal marketing unforgettable.
Whether you want spooky social media giveaways, in-store Halloween competitions, or themed promotions for your eCommerce store, these ideas are proven to increase traffic, followers, and sales without spending a fortune on ads.
Jump to my Halloween giveaway ideas:
A Halloween competition is a seasonal marketing campaign where participants complete a themed task or challenge for the chance to win a prize. It can take many forms — from online giveaways and photo contests to in-person events at stores, schools, or community centers.
Many eCommerce stores, content creators, and local businesses run online giveaways in October because they’re popular on social media and often more cost-effective than paid ads. They also create shareable content that naturally spreads to new audiences.
Halloween giveaways are especially powerful for generating leads, building brand awareness, and driving website traffic. When people receive something for free, they’re more likely to follow your brand, leave a review, join your email list, or recommend you to friends.
For example, Food Love Story ran a Halloween Instagram giveaway with a themed cake as the prize. The result? A surge in followers, likes, and engagement just in time for the holiday.
Giveaways and contests are a powerful way to grow your online brand. However, finding a unique idea to excite your audience isn’t always easy.
With that in mind, here are some of our favorite Halloween giveaway ideas and promotional products for a successful fall marketing campaign.
You can’t have Halloween without some jack-o-lantern carving. Despite being a fantastic stress reliever, pumpkin carving can make some fun and exciting creations.
Pumpkin carving is a timeless Halloween tradition that naturally produces eye-catching, shareable content. By turning it into a photo contest, you can encourage user-generated content (UGC) that spreads across social media with your branding attached. This type of Halloween giveaway idea works especially well for local businesses, community events, and any brand looking to boost engagement with a creative, visual challenge.
In this example, Wings and Waves Waterpark ran a Halloween photo contest for its audience. In exchange for submitting a photo of their best carved pumpkins, one family could win a 4-month boarding pass to the park for free.
How to do it:
You can run a photo contest easily with RafflePress, the best WordPress giveaway plugin. It offers a drag-and-drop giveaway builder and multiple ways for contestants to enter your giveaway.
For instance, the Submit an Image action lets users upload a photo to your website for a giveaway entry. You can also award bonus entries for completing extra tasks like following you on social media, signing up for your email newsletter, visiting a web page, and much more.
Around 52% of Americans decorate their homes for Halloween, making it a popular choice for the spooky season. Let’s face it, trick-or-treating at a haunted house is way more fun than an undecorated home.
Decorating for Halloween is a top seasonal activity, with millions of people searching for inspiration each year. Pinterest users, in particular, are planners who start collecting decor ideas weeks in advance.
Hosting a themed Pinterest contest lets you tap into this early seasonal buzz, driving traffic to your profile and exposing your products or services to an audience that’s already in a buying mindset.
Combine that with the popularity of Pinterest, where 85% of pinners plan new projects, and you have the perfect recipe for reaching an engaged audience.
The Swift Real Estate Group ran a similar campaign on Facebook for the chance to win a $100 gift card. However, you can easily adapt their idea for Pinterest.
How to do it:
With RafflePress’s giveaway builder, running a Pinterest contest is a breeze. For the chance to win cool Halloween gifts, you can ask participants to follow you on Pinterest, then leave a comment with a link to their spooky-themed Pinterest board.
Simply enter your Pinterest profile URL in the action settings, and select the “Make Mandatory” toggle to require completing that action for a successful entry.
You can then use the Invent your Own action, with instructions for contestants to paste the URL to their boards for more chances to win.
Chances are you can’t go a single Halloween without hearing Thriller by Michael Jackson. Just as the song is synonymous with Halloween, it’s also a popular dance challenge on platforms like TikTok and YouTube.
TikTok thrives on trending challenges, and the “Thriller” dance is one of Halloween’s most recognizable pop culture moments.
A Halloween TikTok contest built around this dance taps into both nostalgia and viral video potential. It’s a fun way to increase brand awareness, especially if you use a unique hashtag and invite participants to tag your account when they join the challenge.
If you’re trying to grow your presence on TikTok, a dance challenge can be a fun way to introduce your brand.
How to do it:
RafflePress offers dedicated actions that make running a TikTok giveaway super easy. You can use the watch a TikTok video action to demonstrate the dance challenge and ask users to watch it for one entry.
After that, you can use the Follow on TikTok action to grow your followers.
If your contest is family-friendly, you can offer a variety of promotional items for the prize bundle and add in goody bags for the kids, including:
And many other Halloween treats.
The Halloween fun isn’t limited to retailers and online brands. Live streamers can even get in on the action with a promo to grow their personal brand.
Live streaming and gaming communities are highly engaged, making them perfect for interactive Halloween contests. Running a giveaway during a horror game stream adds a layer of excitement and keeps viewers tuned in for the duration of your broadcast.
Whether you’re a Twitch streamer or YouTube gamer, this type of seasonal promotion can reward loyal fans while attracting new ones.
If you plan to spend October 31st streaming the latest horror game, turn it into an event for your entire community by running a giveaway for your stream community, like Horror Papi.
This Twitch streamer offered 5 lucky winners the chance to win a free game code. You can follow his lead by building your own Halloween bags with merch like chargers, flashlights, candy corn tins, game codes, and water bottles with your stream logo.
How to do it:
RafflePress is an excellent choice for running a Twitch giveaway. You can host the giveaway on your WordPress website and use the Follow on Twitch action to grow your community.
Because the builder includes giveaway landing pages, you can add the page URL to your Twitch profile, where users can click through to enter. Make sure you cross-promote your giveaway on other social media networks to increase your reach and entries.
Halloween isn’t just about costumes and candy — it’s also a great time for spooky stories. A themed book giveaway appeals to readers of all ages and can drive engagement in book clubs, libraries, schools, and author communities. Using Facebook for this contest lets you reach large audiences through shares, comments, and groups dedicated to reading.
The Charitable Organization, Reading Force, launched a Facebook giveaway for serving, ex-serving and veteran Forces families.
One lucky family could win a collection of 6 spooky-themed picture books, with the winner picked randomly from successful entries.
How to do it:
You can run a book giveaway on Facebook with RafflePress. Instead of asking users to send their contact information, you can use the Join an Email Newsletter action. That way, you’ll have their email address and can email the winners the good news while growing your email list simultaneously.
Additionally, there are several Facebook giveaway actions to help you grow your page. You can ask contestants to view a Facebook post or video, visit your Facebook page, and, optionally, like and share your giveaway with their friends.
What are you supposed to do with all those left-over pumpkins once Halloween is over? Instead of letting them go to waste, task your audience with a challenge for the chance to win some Halloween treat bags.
Seasonal flavors like pumpkin spice dominate fall menus, making them a natural theme for Halloween contests. Inviting participants to share their best recipes encourages community involvement and provides fresh content for your blog or social channels.
This is an especially strong strategy for food brands, cooking bloggers, and local restaurants wanting to boost seasonal engagement.
Mix & Match Mama, for example, made a simple blog post asking users to send in their best Halloween recipe ideas. The winner would receive an anniversary edition bundt pan to make future tasty treats.
How to do it:
Bloggers can run a giveaway just like this with RafflePress. However, instead of emailing their DIY recipe ideas, you could ask users to leave a blog comment with their recipe submission.
This is an excellent way to boost engagement on your blog and spark conversations with your target audience. You can also ask users to subscribe to your RSS feed to grow your blog subscribers.
RafflePress also makes it super easy to choose a giveaway winner. Use the built-in random winner picker, and you can generate the winner right from inside WordPress and display the winner on the giveaway app.
Our final Halloween giveaway idea has to be our favorite. Anyone can join in, from work colleagues and retailers to school children, pets, and online events.
Costume contests are a Halloween staple, and adding a family twist makes them even more shareable. Whether it’s matching outfits, pet costumes, or school dress-up days, this contest idea generates a flood of fun, visual content. It also appeals to a wide audience, from parents and teachers to pet owners and local businesses hosting community events.
Launch a Halloween costume contest and let the whole family join by snapping a photo. You can reward the winning entry with a prize the entire family can enjoy, like:
Check out this guide for even more giveaway prize ideas.
How to do it:
There are many ways to run this type of Halloween giveaway with RafflePress. The most popular is to use the Submit an Image entry action.
However, you can broaden your reach by adding the Refer a Friend entry method. It asks entrants to share your giveaway on other social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Email, and more.
The more people each entrant refers, the more likely they’ll enter your giveaway and refer even more of their friends. It’s word-of-mouth marketing at its best and can help your campaign go viral.
Halloween comes only once a year, so make the most of it by running a giveaway that excites your audience and grows your business. With RafflePress, you can launch a Halloween contest in minutes, collect more entries, and turn seasonal visitors into loyal customers.
You might also like these other giveaway ideas while you’re here:
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