Halloween Kick or Treat Cards & CANDY RUN! A lot of our marketing we do for our schools is extremely cost efficient, with a reasonable idea applied to them. The Halloween Kick or Treat cards are not just for the school or school owner to hand out. That would mean less than 100 cards probably, which isn't that many. The best plan is to have parents of your students hand them out if they are doing trick or treat at their house. So now, if you have 50 students that hand out 100 cards each, you're talking FIVE THOUSAND cards being handed out. But of course they may forget or not care, so they need some motivation. So what you can do is offer rewards for anyone that enrolls in your Martial Arts program directly from one of their cards. Offering the next rank graduation to them FREE if they refer somebody should be sufficient in terms of incentives, being that it could be worth $30-$60 depending on your school. Put out a sign up sheet over a month in advance for parents who do want to participate. Have them sign their name, the number of trick or treaters that they estimate that they will have, and tell them to just write their name on the back of the cards for tracking where the new students come from. Be sure to make the registration date at least 1 week prior to trick or treat night to allow for printing time. Knowing the exact number you need will save you from wasteful excess printing of course. Below is a ready made sign up sheet for the cards, and the Kick or Treat card. Just drop your own orange box over our text and replace it with your own school info. Enjoy! Download the Sign Up Sheet. Download the Kick or Treat card. Halloween Candy Run This next idea is great if you are in a downtown area or near a lot of other small businesses. About 20 participating businesses within walking distance (2-3 blocks) is the ideal situation. The idea is fairly simple, yet extremely effective at generating LOTS of kids in your target age group. It is essentially coordinating with other nearby businesses to do a "safe trick-or-treat" area at the businesses near you. Below is a letter that we use to approach businesses: - Downtown Shelbyville - CANDY RUN 2 Friday, October 30th, 6:00pm Setting Up: For downtown merchants participating in the Candy Run, having a table or stand set up near the front door inside of your business will work great. Be sure to have at least the front portion of your business lit up with some normal lights or decorative lights to invite trick-or-treaters in the door. Weather permitting, propping the front door open will help too. Also be sure to have your Candy Stop sign in the window. Feel free to decorate with any Halloween decorations you’d like as well. If you are not downtown, feel free to ask a participating merchant to set up a booth near them, or in front of an empty building. During the Event: At 6:00pm, trick-or-treaters will start the Candy Run across the street from Pearcy’s Taekwondo. So if you are a couple of blocks away, it may take a few minutes before the first ones start to arrive. Have your candy ready, along with any sort of advertisements, business cards, or special coupons ready. This is your chance to advertise your business! If you don’t have any promotional advertisements already made, please contact Corner Copy at 774-7806 and they will be able to make something for your business. Various ideas can be implemented such as putting labels on the candy with your business name, a sucker stick through two holes in a business card, or just passing out papers along with the candy. These can be handed out with the candy to the kids, or given to the parents as well. If you have special events or discounts in the upcoming days, be sure to invite them back during normal business hours on your pass out advertisements too. Having a couple of different people with you to handle punching the cards, and handing out candy & ads will help. The trick-or-treaters will be given a Candy Run punch card before they leave Pearcy’s at 6:00pm that will be on a necklace. When you pass out candy, you will need to mark a spot on the card, stamp it, or punch a hole in it. The kids will need to have as many spots marked on their cards as possible in order to enter into the raffle prize drawing back at Pearcy’s Taekwondo at 7:00pm. The reason for the Candy Run punch cards is to encourage the kids to visit all of the merchants instead of just a few, allowing you a chance to get the most amount of advertisements out as possible. There will be over 30 merchants, so no need to hand out bags of candy. Just individual pieces will do. We had 250 kids last year, and are expecting 300+ this year. Raffle Prizes: For participants in the Candy Run, once they bring back their filled Candy Run punch cards, they will enter them into a raffle prize drawing of various prizes. We would like to have a lot of prizes for kids to win by participating in the Candy Run, so please let us know if you have any sort of coupons, gift certificates, or other cool prizes for kids that you would like to donate for our raffle prize drawing. $5 to Participate: For the second annual Candy Run 2, we’ll be expanding our marketing a bit more to other neighboring towns. This fee covers all of the papers distributed to all of the schools, flyers around town, newspaper ads, and the marketing material to hang in your windows. We have also added something new to downtown Shelbyville this year. A very scary Haunted House on Oct 30th & 31st, Friday and Saturday, starting at 7:30pm, in the building directly across the street from Pearcy’s Taekwondo. There will also be a kid friendly version at our location on Friday night. This next set of information is what is on the flyer for the business windows, as well as what goes out to local schools, etc. All of this can be fancied up with graphics and color of course. The only other part that you'll need to do is print off a pumpkin graphic with the words "Candy Stop" on it to put in the business owners' windows. - Downtown Shelbyville - Candy Run Friday, October 30th 5:30pm – across from Pearcy’s Taekwondo (New Bigger Building! *Pearcy’s Taekwondo Xtreme Team Demonstration *Trick-or-Treat Safety Class & get Candy Run punch cards to win prizes *Costume Contest with best homemade, scariest, and funniest. 6:00pm –Downtown Shelbyville Candy Run begins *Candy Run Begins: Get your cards punched to win prizes *Kid Friendly Walk-Thru at Pearcy’s Taekwondo (Star Wars theme) 7:00pm – Candy Run prize raffle held at Pearcy’s Taekwondo *Bring Candy Run cards back to win Raffle Prizes! 7:30pm – Downtown Haunted House Begins! *Friday & Saturday Night, 7:30-11:30 both nights! Warning: Very Scary! (located directly across the street from Pearcy’s Taekwondo) Participating Business: (put all businesses here) We've combined local haunted house enthusiasts all into one building, sponsored by Pearcy's Taekwondo. Visit Main Street Massacre.com for details.