Most marketers hesitate when it comes to promoting their business over Reddit. Or they might not have faith in this sort of Internet forum like they have on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Well, this hesitation can be justified. Firstly, Reddit users are considered anti-marketers, meaning that they hate promotional content. They only prefer cute, engaging, fun, and attractive content.
Secondly, there are thousands of categories or subreddits over there, with each one having their own rules and cultures. Your strategy can backfire if the community reacts negatively to your content. Although Reddit has its advertising model for paid promotion, most marketers just drop their content over there without caring for the result.
But what If I say Reddit is a low hanging fruit? It is a hidden opportunity to boost your traffic. Yeah, Reddit can be a goldmine for your online marketing efforts if done right.
EXPERT OPINION
A positive Reddit mention can mean thousands of visits to your website or your product.
- Heather-Mae Pusztai, Team Buffer
Here are some good reasons for that:
- Reddit is one of the largest social media marketing platforms.
- It is the 7th most visited website in the USA and ranks on the 18th spot
- It gets more traffic than Twitter and LinkedIn.
- It has over 300 million users.
- It accounts for over 31% of social media-referred electronic sales.
Above all, it is the underutilized platform for marketing, meaning that the competition is likely to be lower than other social media platforms.
Why not cash the opportunity to market through Reddit?
While you can promote your content free over there, opting for Reddit Advertisement can boost your content exposure.
But marketing on Reddit is tricky due to the nature of its users.
EXPERT OPINION
Do it right, and you’ll be seeing a measurable stream of targeted traffic. Do it wrong, and you’ll be downvoted into nothingness.
- Neil Patel
So here, we will find out how to use Reddit for marketing.
But first of all, here is a quick refresher about Reddit…
What is Reddit?
Reddit is a social networking and content contribution platform known for “social news aggregation, web content rating” and community threads.
Its registered members are Redditors who submit content in the form of links, text posts, and images, which are voted up and down by other Redditors. If your post gets the most upvotes, it will bring good Karma. Downvotes will decrease karma. So karma is here the indicator of popularity and credibility.
Reddit shows the most “upvoted content” on its front page. The categories are created by users which are known as subreddits.
Each subreddit gets a unique URL structure. For instance, you have created a community titled as pet foods. The URL for your subreddit will be: reddit.com/r/petfoods. Likewise, there are many categories on Reddit covering broad topics such as movies, video games, books, fitness, cooking, and image sharing.
What is Reddit Paid Ads and How to Get Started?
Now that you have known about Reddit, it’s time to understand how to market through Reddit.
The first one is to opt for Reddit Ads.
In 2018, Reddit earned just $100M in ad revenue in 2018, while Twitter generated $655. It points towards the low competition and cheap inventory over there—the two solid reasons why advertisers can make the most of their investment over Reddit.
While organic posts can ensure exposure to your brand on Reddit, the advantage of paid advertising can help you get more impression and reach your target audience.
Reddit will show your ad multiple times to you meet your requested ad budget. However, the ad will be positively or negatively affected by your karma. If your advertisement has a lot of downvotes, your impressions will be impacted.
Here are some tips for getting started with Reddit Ad.
Make Your Company Profile:
You don’t want to run Reddit ads from your personal account. You can create your business account at https://ssl.reddit.com/login.
Choose Your Objective:
To start your paid advertising campaign over Reddit, go to the Create an Ad Page. On this page, you are required to identify the goal or objective of your ad. For example, your objective can be to drive more purchases or to boost traffic to your website. Depending on your goal, Reddit will take your ad to the users that are most likely to search for that content or service, based on their past activities on the platform.
Choose Your Target Audience:
Reddit Ads let you narrow down your search using several factors to choose your target audience. For example, you can choose locations, interests, subreddits, device, time of day for the advertisement, hour or week of the day, budget, and daily time or lifetime.
EXPERT OPINION
“One of the main things we learned was targeting subreddits specifically was much more effective than broader interest targeting. However, this strategy requires a lot of research, and getting to know which subreddits are most relevant to your audience.”
- Josh Chang, a Senior Marketing Manager at HubSpot
(Tip: Categories or subreddits are a tried and tested way to locate and get connected with your target audience on Reddit. Reddit search bar can also be used, displaying the total number of reads and people active online.)
Set Your Budget:
You can choose between a daily maximum budget and a total campaign budget. The cost of Reddit ads is determined by the cost per thousand impressions (CPM). For example, there can be a fixed amount for every 1,000 impressions.
Submit Your Ad for Approval:
Before submitting your ad for approval, here are some more steps to follow.
- Choose the type of ad between a link ad or a text ad.
- Upload your headline of 100 characters using capitalizations and symbols.
- Upload an image for desktop and mobile in card view.
- Choose the name for your ad. It won’t be displayed to the users.
- Submit it for approval. Reddit will take up to 24 hours to assess your ad to make it live.
EXPERT OPINION
Of course, ROI is never guaranteed, but for marketers looking to expand their horizons and grow with a massively popular social platform that is finally making a concerted effort to build a powerhouse ad business, it’s hard to find opportunities like those being presented by Reddit today.
- Patricio Robles
How to Use Reddit for SEO?
Not all of us have the budget for Reddit advertising. Or some of us want to play safe as paid marketing over Reddit can be a risky thing, especially for beginners.
In this scenario, Reddit can be used to improve your SEO and organic traffic. It costs nothing and can bring results (if done right).
If your content gets the most uprights, there are good traffic chances to your website, even if it doesn’t appear on Reddit’s front page. Otherwise, there is no fear of losing money.
Here are some tips to optimize your content for Reddit search as soon as you create a Reddit account.
Choose Relevant Subreddits:
First of all, you need to find your audience in the relevant subreddits. For example, if you are a digital marketing business, all you need to go to the Reddit search bar to start the relevant communities or subreddits related to digital marketing. Choose the appropriate categories.
Analyze Popular Content to Get Ideas:
Don’t post your content right away as soon as you join the subreddits or categories. Make sure to analyze popular content to create your strategy. Keep in mind that your content should add value to the community and generate engagement, as well. Although making such content is difficult, analyzing the top posts can help. It will help you know the concerns and their solutions users are looking for.
Show Engagement with Other User’s Content and Boost Your Karma
The bitter truth is that the community does not trust new accounts unless they have good karma (scores). They can downvote your content, which can lead to negative karma.
Here are some ways to boost your karma score.
- Avoid spamming and creating as many posts as possible.
- Get engaged organically with other people’s posts. Upvote them, downvote them and join in the discussion.
- Always post original and unique content.
Optimize and Share Your Content:
Once you get a good Karma score, you can expect benefits as a marketer from the platform. Again, create valuable and useful content for the community, not merely for the sake of earning links. You can share the link alongside a title or show the overview of some text alongside a title. One more thing—the content should include keywords.
Bottom Line:
The success of your marketing campaign on Reddit depends on certain factors, from choosing your subreddits (audience) to make your content look engaging than promotional. However, it can’t be denied that many brands have seen success with their campaigns designed for Reddit and hiring the right digital marketing expert. You can join the party with the right approach.
What do you think? Let me know by commenting below!
Started working as a digital marketing expert, Varun Sharma is now also a well-known digital marketing speaker – a speaker on performance development, and a trusted mentor to businesses in the digital world. His keynote expositions are based on the digital marketing theories, which provide a fascinating insight into the secrets of high performance.