Reddit Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers in 2024 [Hacks & Tools]

Reddit is an incredibly powerful channel for marketing! Not everyone and their aunty is on Reddit, but it’s influence is everywhere, often invading mainstream media too.

Reddit marketing, unlike marketing on other social media platforms, is much more difficult to navigate. The rules are different, the people are different, and your marketing needs to be different too.

Since Reddit is both a forum, news, and promotion site, it works very differently from most social media networks.

Reddit is also broken up into smaller communities called “subreddits.” Each subreddit is about a different subject and has its own rules and guidelines.

While target audiences get more and more niche, and more and more engaged (which is great!), these very active and vocal groups of users are knowledgeable and don’t like to have generic ads thrust on them… And they will tell you that they don’t like it!

Redditors want real content, that provides real value. But what does that mean for your marketing, and how do you provide that, exactly?

Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered!

In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about Reddit marketing, from how to market organically, why Reddit should be a focus point in your marketing campaign to talking about Reddit success stories and best practices.

Ready?

Let’s get right to it!

Why Use Reddit for Marketing?

Now that you know Reddit is challenging to do right, you might be questioning why you should try to use it as a marketing medium.

Well, there are several factors that make Reddit the perfect place to gain new customers and get people to notice your brand. Even if it is a complicated process doing so.

Influence

We’ve seen how powerful Reddit and its users have become over the past few years. Influence that goes far beyond the four walls of the platform and into mainstream media.

Just look at the famous “GameStop/Reddit/Wallstreet” incident of 2021, where Redditors were able to raise the stock price of a small gaming store to more than 400% of what it was worth before.

And that’s without the aid of a marketer. Just consider the benefits a well-planned marketing campaign could bring to your company.

Massive Reach

Reddit announced a staggering 1.7 billion monthly active members in May 2022, now matching the user counts of better-known social media platforms like Twitter.

This is massive!

Reddit is growing rapidly. And, because so many people are visiting this social networking site, Reddit, it is the ideal time to launch a marketing campaign there.

Trust

People these days are starting to have less and less faith in big companies and big brands. They don’t just believe whatever they are told. Good reviews are no longer enough. You need to be “more” as a brand in this new age to do well.

And Reddit plays a big role in this social movement.

This can be scary if you want to start a Reddit digital marketing campaign, but if you use it right, it can be very effective. People’s minds can be changed, and you can dramatically improve your brand image if you talk to consumers on a platform where lies and false promises are not tolerated.

A Unique and Engaged Audience

Reddit data shows that 23%, 47%, and 69% of its users do not use Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, respectively. Meaning that because so many Reddit users don’t have accounts on other social media sites, you can reach a very specific group of people there. Particularly a group of people who you would otherwise not be able to market to.

What’s more, because Reddit users only subscribe to subreddits covering their interests, they are far more likely to spend more significant amounts of time on the platform. In addition, Reddit boasts an average active user time of 34 minutes per user per day – a staggering amount of time if you consider how many people use Reddit each month.

Ads Can be Cheaper Because of Reddit Niches

Reddit ads can often cost far less than on other platforms. Their base cost might seem high, especially if you’re new to social media marketing, but there’s more to Reddit ads than you think.

Due to Reddit being divided into niche-focused groups of people (subreddits), your ads have a much higher chance of being clicked on. You’ll be interacting almost exclusively with people who are interested in the types of things you’re selling.

Moreover, these subreddits allow you to be more specific with your advertising as the consumers you’ll interact with are usually knowledgeable about the topics relating to your products. These are great places to show specs, comparisons, and niche-specific information.

Check out this video by Neil Patel, if you want to know more about this. 

Organic Reddit Marketing VS Reddit Advertising

Organic Advertising

Pros

• When advertising organically on Reddit, you can humanize your brand far more than with paid ads.
• Moreover, when using this method of advertising, you can save a lot of money if your campaign is successful.

Cons

• It’s more hit or miss, and you can miss out on more conversions.
• Needs constant monitoring and interactions.

Reddit Advertising

Pros

• There are different bundles and types of ads, so you can choose the best one to fit your brand.
• Reddit handles almost everything for you, so you can focus on what you do best – making a brilliant product or service.
• This can lead to more conversions and traffic as more people see your ad and interact with your brand.

Cons

• Your brand isn’t really humanized, which means people might not connect with you as much as with organic marketing.
• This type of marketing can be very expensive.

How to Market on Reddit Organically

2 Essential Steps for Organic Marketing on Reddit

1. AMAs

An AMA, or “ask me anything,” session, which attracts a lot of user activity on the platform, is a common type of interaction on Reddit.

These AMA sessions can take place on relevant subreddits (on your own subreddit or ones that cover the topics your target audience is looking at).

Because Reddit is already divided into smaller (niche) communities, it is easy to find places where you can interact with people who will actually be interested in your brand.

Furthermore, these engaging events allow present and potential customers to get to know your company. It also allows your brand to fill out its voice and tone, allowing it to interact with customers more effectively.

2. Create a Brand Subreddit

Another tactic is to create a brand-specific subreddit for your business.

People will be able to communicate with your brand here, make complaints, leave reviews, and offer you candid feedback about what they think of your products and services.

You can also use this subreddit to inform customers about deals, new product drops, and so much more.

3 Reddit Organic Marketing Best Practices

1. Use Social Listening Tools

When creating a Reddit marketing plan, you can use social listening tools to find out what works and what doesn’t. That way, you can better spend your money using platforms that are bringing in revenue.

This category of software is able to convert extensive volumes of data into information that can be acted upon.

You can use these tools to gather information for your own subreddit, your competitors’ subreddits, and topic-related subreddits.

This allows you to learn what your brand can do better and what consumers like about similar products. Then, you can subsequently apply them to your own social media marketing Reddit campaign.

2. Choose a Customer-Centric Strategy

Developing a customer-centric strategy is a wonderful tactic for marketing on Reddit.

This implies that you and your Reddit marketing team will focus on the client experience and what clients think, feel, and desire from your company. They won’t be as concerned with selling as they will focus on providing support and improving your goods and services.

This enables your brand to market itself, primarily through recommendations and word of mouth.

3. Be Sincere

Reddit is a place of honesty and collaboration, where people’s minds are made up and opinions changed.

And as such, this user base can sniff out insincerity from a mile away.

People on Reddit are open to new ideas and products, but not when it’s shoved in their faces. And so, a delicate touch is necessary.

You can promote your products and services on relevant subreddits, but that can’t be all you do. You need to interact with people and give your brand’s opinion on things.

Basically, humanize your brand as much as possible to connect with the people of Reddit.

How to Advertise on Reddit and Get Results

2 Types of Paid Ads on Reddit

1. Takeover Ads

Takeover ads are the most expensive type of ad, as it offers the most visibility and interactions.

A takeover ad essentially takes over a subreddit by featuring your promoted ads in specific, topically-related subreddits or categories of subreddits.

What’s more, these takeover ads appear in trending sections of the platform, showing your ad to millions of users.

2. Promoted Posts

Promoted posts are more like regular ads on other social media platforms – specifically, a banner with a title and a “Promoted” tag under the title.

Reddit helps you choose your niche and set of subreddits to show your ad in, in order to get the most views and interactions.

Moreover, Reddit lets you choose the purpose of your ad, e.g., Brand awareness, Conversions, Traffic, etc.

Each of these types of ads is priced differently and is based on different factors. So be aware of that when deciding which one best suits your brand’s goals.

1 Best Practice for Reddit Ads

1. Choose Your Interest Targeting Carefully

Interest targeting is a way to show your ad to people who have already shown interest in what you are selling.

You can set up or change the ad group for your campaign by choosing the interests you want to reach with your marketing. This will get people who have joined those communities, interacted with that content, and so on, to connect with your brand.

So, it’s really important to choose the correct interests when setting up your ads. Otherwise, you won’t be reaching people who are interested in what you are offering.

2 Reddit Marketing Success Stories

1. Toyota

Formula 1 fans on Reddit recently saw a post from Toyota in the form of a video. This subreddit is for talking about anything related to Formula 1 race cars, so Toyota’s video of two drivers racing in a Supra fit in well with the other posts.

Toyota still prioritizes telling Redditors an exciting racing tale rather than imposing a more conventional advertisement, even when its content is pushed as an ad.

Further, they are capitalizing on an audience that has shown a keen interest in cars and racing, the subject of the video, by pushing a post, particularly on a Formula 1 subreddit.

If you decide to advertise content on Reddit, take a cue from Toyota and select a few subreddits that exactly match your business. Then, develop content that engages or benefits your target audience rather than simply advertising a post.

2. The Economist

The London-based news outlet The Economist frequently offers AMA, or Ask Me Anything, threads on Reddit.

The Economist does this frequently, giving Redditors an inside look at the inspirations behind the publication’s authors.

The publication features a wide variety of authors, and readers can discover more about why each section might be interesting.

After reading a couple of these, users may feel connected to and trust The Economist’s writers. And later down the line, they may turn to this paper while looking for a reliable source because of their faith in its honesty and trustworthiness.

4 Great Reddit Marketing Tools and Hacks

1. Phantombuster

Phantombuster is a single tool that compiles all the resources you need to expand your business more quickly.

Phantombuster enables you to scrape user data from social media sites like Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other websites while automating your sales and marketing procedures.

Additionally, it enables you to automate interactions with your prospects and add that information to your CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

Last but not least, Phantombuster is remarkably user-friendly because it allows you to create complex workflows without writing a single line of code.

2. Interact With Users

This might seem like a no-brainer, but so many people lose out on this key tactic to gain customers because they just don’t think about it.

And when working on Reddit, trying to funnel people to your product or service, you need them to engage with you. As Reddit works on a vote-based system, the number of people who interact with your post or ad is crucial – especially for organic advertising.

But this extends to more than just your ads.

It doesn’t matter which type of advertising you choose, but with either, you need to interact with people in your post’s comment sections and on other similar posts. That way, you connect with as many people as possible.

A great place to talk to your customers is in question threads or complaint threads. This will make people feel like you care about them and that you want to make their lives easier, not harder.

3. Subreddit Stats

Subreddit Stats is a tool that allows you to see the stats for each subreddit. This tool can be used to better understand who you want to connect with and where you can find them on the platform.

Its features include:

• Graphs of statistics
• looking at how relationships between subreddits are shown in network diagrams.
• Find users and comments that appear in more than one subreddit.
• Look at how the use of keywords in Reddit comments has changed over time.

4. Howitzer

Created by a group of marketing experts, Howitzer is an innovative marketing tool for Reddit that is unmatched by anything that has come before.

You can use it to find Reddit users interested in your industry. Additionally, it allows you to send these users personalized messages at scale.

The first marketing automation software in the world, Howitzer, makes it simple to leverage Reddit for direct outreach and to quickly gather response rates.

Final Thoughts on Reddit Marketing

And there you have it!

We’ve talked about everything you need to know about marketing on Reddit; how to market organically, how to best use ads, as well as the best tools and hacks.

And if you follow the strategies and concepts we’ve put forward in this article, you’ll be raking in those customers before you know it.

So, what are you waiting for? Get to marketing!

References

The Trade: The Reddit revolt: GameStop and the Impact of Social Media on Institutional Investors

CNBC: GameStop Shares Jump after the Reddit Favorite Raises $551 million in Stock Sales

Statista: Worldwide visits to Reddit.com from July to December 2023

Social Media Today: Reddit Now Has as Many Users as Twitter, and Far Higher Engagement Rates

Reddit: Discover What Makes Reddit Ads Unique