Reddit Marketing: An adventure in Big Data, keyword trends and Mom jeans

M.A. Byrne
Aug 22, 2017 · 10 min read
© Copyright Reddit

My Mission

I was setting out to uncover trending topics, keywords, keyphrases and even products and services on Reddit, and then I was going to work out how to sell related products to a (theoretically) receptive audience.I thought: if these were the most talked about keyphrases, then by logic, selling related products & services would produce a good yield. If, for example, I looked at the /r/food subreddit, and found that there were at least three mentions of the phrase “steamed rice” and three mentions of the phrase “cheap steamer”, then I could (by sheer brilliant logic) infer that selling a good value steamer, via Reddit paid ads, at that particular time, would be a good idea. With some things, you didn’t need to delve any deeper than the initial keyphrase. For example, in the /r/sex subreddit, I noticed that ‘coconut oil’ was being spoken about A LOT. Turns out you can use coconut oil for many, many things.

Coconut Oil Can Be Used For Many, Many Things

So with just one really good keyphrase, you could — as it was so popular — be confident in the success of advertising that product to that audience.

Furthermore, I would be able to mention stuff in my ad title/copy that would resonate with that portion of people. All subreddits communicate differently. There are terms and phrases used that are not seen in other subreddits. Such as “Meal Prep Sunday” and “Photo Friday” for example. Use familiar terms and you stand out among the ads.

And so, the theory began…

Why Reddit Paid Ads?

As an internet marketer, I understand the terrifying proposition of advertising on Reddit. Bloggers have written about the difficulty of advertising on the behemoth forum for years, so I won’t bore you with more of the same. I will say this, however; Reddit does not like advertising. In fact, you might already know about the subreddit /r/hailcorporate (a special little hell for shill advertisers).

You see, nobody likes being sold to. Especially not in an environment that is set up to entertain, educate and enable procrastination of the highest order. So, what the hell was I doing trying to crack Reddit ads?

I realised early that it was going to be a hard task. Any video or blog you find regarding Reddit paid ads usually starts out telling you that you’re on to a loser. However, if you get the perfect blend of humour, contextually appropriate content, and most importantly value for the reader, then you actually do quite well. So… the usual ingredients for a perfect advertisement, wouldn’t you say? However, on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter — or any other advertising medium right now- you are not going to be mocked, jeered, trolled, or berated as mercilessly as you would on Reddit. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, in answer to the question “Why?”, I would There’s something a bit special about getting karma or recognition for being “alright” on Reddit. Anyone who gets more than ten upvotes on a comment or post will say the same, I’d wager. The real attraction is — I love a challenge. In my mind, in 2017, there is no bigger challenge for a marketer than cracking Reddit.

The Great Data Adventure

Nothing makes me happier than data. And I have six children.

In all seriousness, I really love how smart manipulation of data and historical analysis can produce better results than the other few hundred guys selling the same stuff you are. When I sold internet marketing courses, I always enjoyed hearing how my students had taken my methods and made them fit their product or service, and it was always built on careful deliberation over data. That’s what I taught, really. In the cake of internet marketing, data, knowledge and information of your chosen niche was critical; and if you decided to leap over that part of the recipe, and tried to get the cake made too quick, then you inevitably got your fingers burnt and had a shitty cake to show for it.
- I promise my metaphors will get better.

Credit: http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/

So I knew damn well that Reddit was going to be a mammoth data task. Up until this point I had never used Google BigQuery, but I hit the ground running, as it is essentially just about good SQL and even better datasets. I found a few guys on Reddit and Stack Overflow who I credit with 90% of the thought process of this adventure. Reddit users like StuckInTheMatrix, fhoffa and Justin Beckwith (who has an incredible resource on GitHub) were a source of amazing theory and practical work, and without them I’d have been lost.

In essence, I used the resources of these fine Reddit specimens to analyse over 1.7 billion comments, which were lovingly curated on BigQuery. Google is kind enough to throw some free usage of their cloud platform at you, and I had $300 worth of data usage and 1TB free per month. Nice. I thought. Until a few queries burned right through 50TB over a few days. So keep an eye on that…
Tip: I ended up setting up triggers in the billing section so I wouldn’t have a nasty surprise and have to sell one of my livers.

So, here I was, able to query every comment ever written on Reddit. I became quite addicted to running queries, if I’m honest. I would edit each one slightly to return — what I thought was — better data. I just couldn’t get enough. I finally tweaked my query running to the point where I only wanted to look at the previous month of data, and I also wanted some recent stuff to look at, which would be the last 24 hours of comments in a given subreddit.

For the smaller chunk of data, I used a Python script to download the JSON files from Reddit, and then dumped them in a local MySQL database. After that, a simple spreadsheet export would allow me to manipulate like a demon.

And manipulate I did.

Incredibly, most of this had never been spoken about online. I pieced together everything I possibly could to get me up to that point — where I could download recent data and play with it offline. There seemed to be plenty of people wanting this sort of analysis, too.

Anyway, I had exactly what I needed at this point, so I began to run tests on various subreddits, and try to think like a marketer.

Proof in the pudding

It was time to get my hands dirty.

I was now capable of looking at a given subreddit, and finding the most popular two word (n-gram) phrases within a set time range. This was pretty powerful, I thought.

I started with a subreddit that would have marketers champing at the bit for cheaper CPCs…

/r/personalfinance had quite a few really good two word phrases coming up. I began to get curious how much you’d expect to pay in Adwords for these keywords…

/r/personalfinance popular two word phrases on Adwords

I hadn’t run a Reddit paid ad for these keywords, but I knew that the CPC on Reddit had to be better than £32.49. In the last four hours, these keywords had been mentioned the following number of times:-

/r/personalfinance popular two word phrase # of mentions

Right up at the top there, ‘savings account’ was a very popular phrase, and this would cost you in the region of £15GBP per click on Adwords. If you were an affiliate marketer with a substantially good offer on savings accounts, you would struggle to find a good reason not to whack a quick ad up on Reddit, knowing that in the last four hours there were 16 conversations relating to it.

What about these keyphrases trending on Google?

Google Trends: Gypsy Housing Keyphrase — United States — Past 12 Months

“Gypsy Housing” was a keyphrase I wouldn’t pick out in a lineup. For sublets, roommates, and particularly performing arts students requiring housing (not the other gypsy housing, as I thought). And yet, the uptick was steady and clear over 12 months. This would suggest that content could be built around it, and monetisation would be possible. The competition and SEO difficulty was almost non-existent.

Was this relevant data, though? Right back at the source, we were looking at four hour old data, with a flaw. I found this when I tried to pick holes in the theory.

The “Gone away” argument

If there were multiple conversations going on in the subreddit regarding a ‘roth ira’ (which is actually a form of retirement plan, and not a Klingon sword), then it stood to reason that people would read it and have something to add to the conversation. Or they would at least have an opinion, and engorge the comment thread with keyphrases. Whilst that discussion is going on, you could effectively put an ad up on Reddit that would be extremely related to the discussion. Perfect synergy, no?

But what about the “Gone away” argument? This assumes that the person who wrote the comment no longer participates on the subreddit when you get your ad running. This is because it takes up to 24 hours for Reddit to approve your ad.

Ahhh. Could this be the fly in the ointment…? Well, as it turns out, no.
In actual fact, the comment is given enough time to become popular, if you leave it 24 hours. Also, your data will have grown in 24 hours. Not just in that comment thread, but in others too. So what I needed to do was take a snapshot at 12pm Monday, for example, and then 12pm on Tuesday, take another snapshot that was 24 hours old.

Bingo.

This was the perfect recipe. By comparing the sets of data, I was able to ensure I was picking popular terms AND ones that would pick up some momentum over 24 hours, thus proving it viable.

That said, this theory also relied on posting your ad in the hope of the comment/phrase working out 24 hours later. Was this so bad, though? For instance, if the phrase was no longer viable, you could just cancel the ad campaign.
No harm, no foul.
This seemed to be the winning method to combat the “gone away” argument.

I continued testing various subreddits, and thinking like a marketer. Subreddits /r/fitness, /r/femalefashionadvice and /r/xxfitness all yielded incredible keywords. One of which was ‘Mom jeans’. By using a “similar subreddit” search tool and pooling my keywords**, I was able to find keywords I could potentially turn into an ad campaign for a product or service.

Mom jeans. Of all the things…

It turned out that Mom jeans were a very popular talking point among the fashionistas of Reddit. If one were so inclined, one could create a very quick listing on a Shopify website, and immediately sell Mom jeans at a discount. Aliexpress + Shopify creates a winning dropship combination, which, if done properly, can result in decent profit. There are also a lot of ways this can fail (such as poor market research), but I felt I had this covered. The theory and the research data were sound. Just like this guy who had a huge success with Shopify + Aliexpress. And this guy with the god damn T-shirt business. Before you think “Hmmm... looks profitable” — for the love of all that is good in the world, please don’t start a Reddit T-shirt business.

It’s also important to note that Aliexpress isn’t always the best option for this type of business model. For example, this Reddit post points out your options. There are others. You can find a starter for ten here.

**I collated all the keywords from the main subreddits, and then all similar/related subreddits. From there I built a spreadsheet to get a tally and sift through duplicates etc.

Getting my feet wet

Right now, my plan is to either start a new site and test the traffic with these methods… or find a suitable Shopify or similar store who could benefit from Reddit traffic. I will try Reddit paid ads, and test with a modest budget.

Here’s what will be happening next:

The budget is quite small in terms of what you’d normally have for a social media campaign. But this is no ordinary campaign. Reddit’s CPM platform enables you to set your budget and days/times to make the ad visible. This means I can pop over to RedditLater.com and time the campaign to perfection. Better still, I will be:-

a) Picking the right ad wording using the language of the chosen subreddit
b) Picking the right keyphrases, based on popularity and frequency
c) Promoting a product that is being actively discussed in a positive way
d) Offering a discount specifically for Reddit users
e) Using the best methods of converting the customer once they arrive on site such as the Window Shoppers App or “Proof” for Wordpress
f) Split testing between two ads, due to there being a few keyphrases that were pertinent

The budget: $25.00
The product: TBC
The results:- See part two!

So, for now at least, that’s all, folks! I have spoken to colleagues in my line of work, and they seem to think there is a good SaaS in this — but for now, it’s just lumps of Python and SQL on my hard drive. We will see what the future holds for what I am calling “Project Phoenix”. Following the test results, I will play it by ear (and keep you updated!).

If you have any questions or comments, do so below, or feel free to email me here.

)

M.A. Byrne

Written by

Ecommerce and internet marketing entrepreneur, with a side order of software developer and app project manager

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade