How to Use Reddit in Your Marketing Strategy

Published in

Trapica

7 min readMar 11, 2019

Have you noticed how often Reddit has been showing up in the search results lately? Reddit’s slogan “the front page of the internet” seems to be getting more accurate every day. It seems that no matter what type of information I am searching for, Reddit is more often than not somewhere on the first page of the search results.

With so much love from the search engines flowing Reddit’s way, it seems that the “first page of the internet” is primed and ready to be the next big thing to add to your marketing strategy. It’s possible for marketers to reap the benefits of Reddit’s huge traffic potential, but the platform does require a delicate touch.

The Reddit community is devoted mainly to intelligent discussions on all manner of subjects. Going in unprepared with a blatantly obvious marketing push will only serve to inflame the community, and prompt them into downvoting your contribution into oblivion.

However, adapt your message to fit within the adopted “rediquette” framework, and you could be rewarded with a potentially lucrative stream of traffic. There are already a lot of brands successfully marketing on Reddit so here’s how your brand can achieve the same.

How to Reddit

Each topic on Reddit has its own section called a subreddit, with just about every subject under the sun being discussed on the platform. With so many subreddits, it’s vital that you choose a topic with the most relevance to your message because it won’t be as likely to get downvoted.

You can get started with just your email address, but you will get better results if you go ahead and verify the email. The currency of Reddit is Karma, which is a measure of where you stand in the community and is calculated from the number of posts and comments you submit.

You should spend some time when choosing a username, as there are no options to change it at a later date, and everything you do from now on will be stored under your username’s profile page.

The majority of content on Reddit is user-generated, and posts are upvoted or downvoted by Reddit members. A submission which proves popular with upvoters gets moved to the r/popular subreddit. In January of 2019, Reddit received more than 1.6 billion page hits. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to realize how much your website traffic would benefit if you managed to get your post on Reddit’s front page.

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Customizing Reddit

A random assortment of topics on the Reddit’s front page will no doubt create information overload, and you can waste a lot of time browsing topics which aren’t relevant to your needs.

Fortunately, you have options to customize which subreddits dominate your front page feed. You won’t completely cut out news on subjects you otherwise wouldn’t actively seek out, but you never know when a titbit of information will spark inspiration, so this is a good thing.

While browsing a subreddit, you can quickly make it a part of your front-page experience by clicking on the subscribe button displayed on the right of the page.

Getting Started with Marketing on Reddit

Reddit is a free site where all things are permitted, within reason of course. The majority of Reddit users are male (71%), aged 18–29 (59%), and have income levels sitting somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000 per year.

Redditors are highly educated. A lot of them have completed higher education to at least a bachelor’s degree. The most significant demographic of Reddit users come from the US, but Canada is not far behind.

If your target demographic fits in with any of those groups, then Reddit could be a source of serious traffic, followers, and conversions for your brand.

Get a Feel for Reddit’s Pulse

Reddit users are there to play. If your post looks like work, at best it will get ignored. If Redditors discover that marketing is your primary motivation for being there, then your post will likely get downvoted into the deepest darkest depths, never to be seen from again.

Spammers are quick to be reported, and Reddit is even faster to ban members who they believe are only there to spam the audience.

However, if you play your cards right, your post will get upvoted to the top of the pile. Get enough upvotes, and it will reach front page status. You will then be rewarded with a surge in traffic, new followers, and conversions.

Posts on Reddit take one of two forms: a text post hosted on Reddit, and a link that points to an external site. If you aim to boost traffic, then your posts will be the linking kind. If your goal is to get links, then you should create mostly text posts.

Keep Your Posts Relevant

Every post you make should be relevant to the subreddit on which you are posting. Keep an eye on the AskReddit subreddit, as you will often see topics which you can reply to and provide your professional advice or opinion.

The more you interact with Reddit, the more rewarding your experience will be, so make every post awesome, entertaining, inspiring, or helpful. Become a genuine Reddit member; ask for help and advice, but brace yourself for answers that may shock you. Reply to other Reddit posts with a comment, and upvote posts if they deserve it.

Tweak Your Post Titles

Reddit users are a curious bunch and are always seeking out new, exciting, or oddball information to consume. Tweak your post titles to take advantage of the average Reddit user’s natural curiosity, so your posts don’t experience a rapid slide into obscurity.

Using Reddit Ads

Marketers can also take advantage of Reddit ads, a paid advertising service provided by Reddit. Reddit Ads uses an auction based system when deciding which ads to display, with a minimum bid, but no capped amount.

You make bids based on the highest CPM (cost per thousand impressions) you are willing to pay for your ad to be shown to your target audience. You are also able to set an upper limit on your daily spend to ensure your campaign stays under budget, with the minimum spend being $5.00.

Because Reddit has such a wide-ranging, often contentious, and always opinionated user base that is quick to display its contempt for anything that smells like selling, many marketers shy away from using Reddit Ads. However, for the savvy marketer who takes the time to get into the vibe, Reddit provides an amazing, and cheap, advertising stream.

Don’t Get Banned

If you follow a few guiding principles you can easily prevent yourself from getting banned on Reddit:

Never ask for an upvote
Don’t post illegal content
Never share anyone’s private information
Don’t spam your content into multiple subreddits
Don’t appear promotional
Share links to other sites, not just to your website

Who Should Use Reddit?

There isn’t much that isn’t discussed in some form on Reddit, but there are topics which do better than others when approached from a marketing angle and some which should probably avoid Reddit altogether.

Blogs can do well on Reddit, as most blogs are not created purely as a marketing conduit, but other subjects may also be able to use Reddit for traffic and exposure.

If you can’t find a subreddit already created around your subject, then you could always start your own and send out invitations. Be careful how you approach this, though, as spammy marketers usually meet a grizzly fate.

Final Words

Just remember that Reddit users are looking for new and exciting content that piques their curiosity. If you’re website or product fits in well with that sort of crowd then there’s no reason it wouldn’t do well on the Reddit site.

Reddit ads is a paid advertising channel on Reddit which will ensure your posts get featured on the front page. You can find out more about it on Reddit’s FAQ page here.