Over 157 million Americans (64%) planned to celebrate Halloween in 2015 and spend $6.9 billion. $2.1 billion was spent on candy alone, which was bought by nine in 10 shoppers who on average spent $74 each.

Moreover, Halloween is a particularly social event since it is so visual and participants, young and old, turn to social media to plan their costumes and parties and spread the word about festivities. Did you know that there are already 273 million Halloween Pins on Pinterest?

Make your social media marketing a treat with these recommendations for Halloween:

• While Halloween is a big holiday for consumers, it can be a less-natural social play for brands, so it’s important to identify if and how your business objectives can be tied to the holiday and to begin planning this content way ahead of the season. 
• Know what works for your audience: Halloween revolves mostly around candy, costumes and decorations, so unless you are selling these items your content will likely be tangential and therefore make the most sense as a brand awareness play. 
• Tap into live conversations about Halloween or Trick-or-Treating on Twitter and capitalize on the buzz. Create a spooky Halloween Pinterest board showcasing all your offers. And make sure to engage the users efficiently by running Placement Optimization across Facebook and Instagram, reaching your target audience at the right time. 
• The competition tightens around Halloween and the following Holiday season, which means you’ll need to be willing to bid aggressively in order to get a piece of the pumpkin pie.  Remember, even though this period may be slightly pricier than usual, you’re reaching users while they are most receptive to offers and costume ideas and the purchase intent is at its peak.
• Use Pinterest’s new engagement targeting capabilities to identify Pinners already interested in Halloween content. Keyword targeting will help your Promoted Pins reach users who are actively looking for Halloween ideas on Pinterest.
• Use Carousel Ads on Facebook and Instagram to showcase several offers or Halloween-specific content in the same ad. Use Link Ads on Facebook and Instagram, Website Cards on Twitter and Promoted Pins to put one product or holiday-specific piece of content into focus.
• Raise awareness about your upcoming offers or Halloween-related tips and “how-tos” with short videos across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and retarget these audiences with a conversion message later down the line.

Adaptly helps brands advertise on social media.