The holidays always remind me of all the unique marketing strategies eCommerce companies come up with for their specific holiday or event promotions, seasonal linkbait and other cool holiday specific ideas. We often report on eTail promotional efforts specifically related to seasons, holidays or events surrounding a time of celebration or remembrance. In September, for instance, we posted about how Walmart used Facebook and how PayPal used TheFind.com for their unique back-to-school promotional efforts.

Back-to-school season is over and it’s Halloween time now, so what better way to get into the spirit than to point out some of the trendy and unique ideas that other companies and eTailers are using to leverage linkers, social media and site traffic towards their seasonal campaigns or holiday promotions.

Clever Seasonal Linkbait Idea:

One clever idea I saw yesterday and the day before was a cool linkbait idea from the folks over at Get Elastic (they have been known to create these clever posts and linkbait ideas to leverage traffic to their eTail blog). Although they aren’t exactly eTailers, I thought the idea was still valid and worth a mention here, as many merchants can learn from what they did (as long as it’s applied to their business model or online selling niche).

The idea involves custom Halloween costumes and accompanying sketches of those costumes for some of the most influential Internet retailers and other large Online companies like Google. They came up with several awesome costume ideas, got a professional artist to sketch mock designs of them and had users vote on which were the best. The sketches were then ranked in order and even had 1st, 2nd and 3rd place runners up. After the large post with the top ten and runners up, Get Elastic released a completely crazy costume sketch of Larry Page and Sergey Brinn (Google Founders) dressed-up as a scary ‘Ghoul’gle’ for Halloween.

I thought this idea was so clever and creative that I couldn’t help but share with you all so I hope you enjoy and appreciate the effort and results these types of campaigns are capable of generating for nearly any type of Online business (if you did, be sure to Digg it or Sphinn it to help their efforts along). Not sure if there was any cost involved to hire the artist or whether it was a trade, but either way I am sure it was well worth the compensation. So many bloggers and social media posters are linking to that post and sharing it with others that I am sure their blog subscribers have grown up to double what they were getting a few days before that post was published. It’s one perfect example of seasonal linkbait and a clever holiday promotional idea.

Holiday Promotions & Unique Ideas:

Almost all companies can launch seasonal or holiday promotional campaigns. Even Carnival Cruise Lines offers a special Halloween promotion during the month of October 2007 and even last October. Their ‘Frightfully Fun’ cruise features Last years promotional efforts must have paid off big time, since this year Carnival announced the promotion with M&M’s, Coca Cola and others as this seasons partners.

And with the “Frightfully Fun” promotion, guests sailing with Carnival can enjoy a variety of fun-filled activities, everything from costume contests and Halloween-themed giveaways to scary movies, and, of course, trick or treating, with candies and other goodies from M&M’S. The “Frightfully Fun” promotion, which is also sponsored by Coca Cola, will be held on all Carnival voyages departing between Oct. 13 and 30, 2007. Guests sailing on Carnival during the period are encouraged to bring their costumes and they can compete for a variety of prizes during the always-interesting costume contest and parade.

This is a great idea and probably brings in a lot of business during the month of October (typically not one of the best months to take a cruise, depending on where you go). I thought this was a fantastic idea from the Carnival Cruise Company and they are doing a perfect job by announcing their promotions for others to link to and read about on the Web. Bravo guys on such a well executed holiday promotion two years running.

Cool Halloween Themes & Logos:

Caught wind of this earlier on Search Engine Land and found a few other examples of some cool holiday themes and logos that companies throw up as new holidays come around or as seasons pass.

The first example is from Ask.com, which posted their Halloween Front Page Preview for this year.

The second is from Barry Schwartz at SERoundtable who uses a cool Halloween graphic as his logo.

Third we have a Halloween Logo Contest by Zelixy.

Lastly, we show off a Halloween logo by Rebelscum for a contest they are having.

Practical Example Seasonal Linkbait:

Personally, I like to use lists. Quite frankly, they work well and they are usually easy to put together. Some seasonal linkbait ideas require a lot of planing and previous thought, other don’t require as much time and effort to launch. To me, lists cost the least amount of time and work the best, just my opinion. Obviously, there are many ways to attract an audience towards your seasonal linkbait, this is just my personal preference and what I choose to use an an example. I saw another good practical example of quality seasonal linkbait and top ten linkbait posts on Get Elastic this past month. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do, it’s packed full of insight into linkbait lists.

Since my blog audience ranges from merchants to industry colleagues I have to pick a top that will appeal to both. For this practical example I am going to use Halloween Costume Searches from 2007, which should appeal to marketers and eTailers, as on one end you have search stats for marketers, and on the other merchants can see how powerful niches like costumes can be if they are setup to appear in search engines correctly.

So here’s an example of a linkbait list I would do…

• Pirate Costume
• Master Chief Costume
• Tinkerbell Costume
• Fairy Costume
• Bumble Bee Costume
• Edward Scissorhands Costume
• Devil Costume
• Stormtrooper Costume
• Beetlejuice Costume

In 2006 the top nine costume searches were…

• Pirate Costume
• Darth Vader Costume
• Wonder Woman Costume
• Belly Dancing Costume
• Tinkerbell Costume
• Fairy Costume
• Batman Costume
• Dorothy Costume
• Gorilla Costume
• Beetlejuice Costume

Typically, I prefer not to use EVEN numbers for my lists, so for this example I chose to use the TOP 9 Halloween Costume Searches, rather than TOP 10, as reported on HitWise in 2006 and 2007. Extensive testing has determined that ODD number lists perform much better than lists that contain EVEN numbers in the title, in case you were wondering why I used 9 instead of 10.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

No matter how you draw in new users and potential buyers, it’s a good idea to follow what works. Lists, contests, logos, humor, controversy. They all have a place in social and seasonal linkbait ideas and, if used correctly, can increase brand recognition, order amounts, customer interaction and may even help entertain or retain users for longer periods of time (plays into bounce rate and length of visit statistical benefits).