Tips on promoting a Trunk or Treat

Are you having a Trunk or Treat at church this year?  Here are a few inexpensive ways you can let people in your community know about it.

Before I go into some ideas to promote your Trunk or Treat, I wanted to talk about a balance between the number of kids you prepare for and the number that actually participate.  Having more kids than you have candy for or having far less are both bad experiences.  Weather is one of the biggest factors determining how many people show up, something that you can do little about.

It is better to have a reserve supply of candy and give-a-ways than not enough.  I recommend setting up collection bins around the church so members who are not participating in the Trunk or Treat can help.  I've seen Trunk or Treats where there are 3X more people than planned for so hundreds of kids arrive to find all the candy gone.  That is not a good thing, but good planning can help eliminate this problem.

If you decided to open up your Trunk or Treat to people outside the church you'll need to make them aware of the event.  Here are some tips that will help:

1. If your church has a sign on the street, list the event there.  That will catch people who are driving by.
2. If your church has afterschool or daycare, send a flyer home.
3. Send a flyer home with all kids in Sunday School asking them to invite their friends.
4. If your church uses social media, put up an announcement there.
5. If your church has a Facebook page, consider boosting your announcement or better yet run an ad using your announcement as the article you are promoting. When you run an ad you can specify who you want to reach (ie people who live close to your church, who have younger kids).  You can also specify how much you want to spend and how long you want it to run.  
6. Run an ad or public service announcement in your local paper.

There are other things that can be done, but these should be enough to bring people outside the church to your Trunk or Treat.

If you have not run an ad on Facebook the video below is a pretty good beginner guide.  It is not geared specifically for a church but it does cover the basic areas of running an ad.  The four things to target will be:

1. Promote an event
2. Parents with children
3. People who live within a couple miles of your church
4. How much you want to spend and how long to run the ad.

If you are looking for ways to let children know about Jesus at your trunk or treat click this link or choose one of the Halloween Gospel Tracts below.