Breaking down an obscure marketing channel: Reddit

How Reddit marketing works and a guide to make the most of it.

If someone asked you to describe Reddit as a person, how would you? For me: Reddit would be a snobbish know-it-all who wouldn’t interact with everyone & is always surrounded by a group of close friends. Everyone will find him intriguing but won’t know him well enough, thus avoiding him. Still, people who manage to know him at a deeper level will appreciate the intricacies of his personality and what he has to offer. Reddit would not be the life of the party, and if you try to break into his group, you will definitely be greeted by an insult. Still, Reddit has done pretty well for itself after having such a weird persona. 

• 430 million active users - Largest community on the internet

• 2nd the most popular website per pageview after Google 

• 60% of the audience is coming through their mobile app.

A true anti-hero among the social media giants.

But why do marketers shy away from Reddit?

Most product marketers & founders have negative notions about Reddit. Unlike other social media channels, Reddit makes it difficult for marketers to achieve consistency, predictability and ROI. Channels apart from Reddit have a better output-to-effort ratio. Social media channels like Linkedin or Twitter guarantee excellent distribution if you build a good following. But that’s not the case with Reddit. It works in a very mysterious way, thus making lives difficult for Marketers.  

Product marketers also have a lot of preconceived notions about Reddit. For example, Redditors are not helpful, and you get a lot of hate if you try to market your products. Also, you get shadow banned for sharing URLs, and old users have a very cultish culture. While some of these notions are true, most can be bypassed and used as an advantage. 

Here are some other reasons why marketers shy away from Reddit

• Anonymity: Most users don’t use their real names. Anonymity leads to users talking about sensitive & controversial topics. That’s the reason bigger brands stay away. But this is good for young and edgy startups. Especially indie hackers and bootstrappers.

• Redditors hate blatant marketing: Most users are the know it all kind and react negatively to marketing.    

• Sarcasm: Many users dunk on your product as a way to farm Karma (aka currency of reddit). This also comes naturally as everyone tries to be funny to get attention.  

• Cultish behaviour against marketers & new users. 

• Needs a different strategy & content from conventional social media management. Hence copy-pasting effort doesn’t work. In comparison, most marketers create a single calendar and use multiple social media for distribution. It isn’t possible with Reddit & most marketers don’t feel the ROI is enough to make a different calendar. 

• User-generated content. Most of the content on Reddit is UGC.This makes it hard for marketers to control the narrative around their products. But having said that, most users trust other users’ reviews which can be advantageous for teams with a great product.

While some of these notions are true, most aren’t. So read along to break down some of these notions and use them to our advantage.

Having proper guidance and consistency can work for you, like it has worked for many marketers. But it works best for an Indie hacker or a smaller product, as Redditors are open to trying new things. Here is proof of the same. But even big brands have capitalised on using Reddit.

Here are some examples of Reddit working. 

• Notion - Notion has a subreddit with 262k subscribers and uses it for community management. They have moderators from their team who constantly monitor feedback and interact with the users. This community has given Notion a cult-like following and an edge over the competition.

• Sony: Sony used Reddit to host an AMA session with the lead designer of the PlayStation 4, which generated a significant amount of buzz and engagement from the Reddit community.

• Spotify: Spotify used Reddit to launch a new feature, allowing users to share their playlists. The Reddit community popularised the feature and helped to drive awareness and adoption of the product.

• EA Sports: EA Sports used Reddit to host an AMA session with the development team behind the popular FIFA video game franchise,which built great awareness around what’s coming next. 

• Tesla: Tesla used Reddit to launch its Model Y electric crossover, which drove the pre-orders for the vehicle.

What makes Reddit work?

Being different helps you in many ways. The type of content you find on Reddit is unparallel. You experience a range of emotions while scrolling through your Reddit feed. But here are some reasons why being different has helped Reddit in more than one way. 

• Anonymity: Anonymity gives users the power to be true without fearing judgement. Hence sugarcoating something is out of the question. This works well in favour of early product teams looking to improve their product. Traditional social media is driven by the herd mentality, making it difficult to get honest feedback and innovative ideas. Redditors are individualistic and wouldn’t miss a chance to make fun of your product. If you are a team that is craving such brutal criticism, you should definitely try posting about your product on r/roastmystartup 

• The audience is Tech savvy: Navigating and understanding intricate features of Reddit is difficult. You won’t find your parents using Reddit anytime soon. Hence most people surviving Reddit are tech-savvy. This makes it easier to pitch tech products to this crowd. 

• Concentrated niches: Reddit is divided into micro-communities called subreddits. I have never found a topic which doesn’t have a dedicated subreddit. From r/saas to r/productivity, you will find a subreddit about almost anything. This helps you find your tribe and connect with them instantly. 

• Great numbers: Subreddits are super active with an engaging crowd. Getting viral in one of the bigger subreddits can get you crazy traffic. Ex. a post on r/entrepreneur with 2 million subscribers can easily get you 100,000 visits. 

• SEO & backlink helps: The domain authority of Reddit is incredible. Getting a backlink to your new product domain can help you look better. Also, constant posting and redirecting people from reddit to your website can improve your domain authority and help improve your SEO. 

• Unbiased opinions: Most users consider Reddit a single source of truth as it is challenging for brands/marketers to bias opinions at scale. Hence people tend to follow advice on Reddit more diligently than any other social media. Hence, the ROI or the conversion you find on Reddit is much better than on other channels.

That said, many things need to be done before expecting results from Reddit. The foremost out of it is consistency. Like any other social media, you will need to spend time and effort towards Reddit marketing before it shows any results. But how does one get started? 

How to get started? 

• Identify your goal as a brand/product. Here are examples of things you can achieve on Reddit. 

  • Idea validation

  • Feedback

  • First 50 users

  • Find ideas or look out for trends

  • Gague demand for one of the ideas you are thinking about. 

  • Beta-test your product

• Identify subreddits that can work for you. Then, make a list of these subreddits and read their rules regarding engagement. 

• Understand how these subreddits work. Be a lurker before you post something. Check how strict the moderation is and what goes through. Spending time will help you understand what content & tonality will get you maximum impressions.
  Ex. After spending time in r/saas, I learned that promoting a tool will be tricky. But then I found out about their weekly feedback thread every Wednesday, where everyone was open to posting about their SaaS tools. That helps you know what people might think about your product and whether Reddit is the right place for you. 

• Build the profile. Redditors hate posts from profiles with 0 Karma. So spend 3 - 4 months getting respectable Karma by replying or commenting. The fastest way to do this is by being helpful to as many people as possible. The best part is being anonymous. No one will judge you for being wrong, so go wild. 

• Try to plug your product in as a way to help. Ex. If I had to plug Substack. I would find posts of people struggling with managing their newsletter and suggest them to use Substack. Helping + promoting your product framework works the best. 

• Try and talk to users & mods to build relationships.

• Avoid obvious marketing copies. Thumb rule: Whatever works on Linkedin & Twitter won’t work on Reddit.  

• Be consistent but not pushy. 

• Don’t use it for bottom-of-the-funnel stuff. Redditors hate reading about your offerings. So, instead, try top-of-funnel content, get users interested and then DM them the details of your offerings. 

Try to master one subreddit at a time. Every subreddit is a different micro world, so something that works in one subreddit might not work in another. Treat them as separate communities.

Some other usecases of Reddit  

• Community management: Build a subreddit for your brand. Use this space for people to provide feedback about your product. The best way to promote this subreddit is by sharing things your target audience might find helpful. Ex. A subreddit of Substack should share how to grow a newsletter. There are many ways to cross-promote with other subreddits as well. 

• Learn about your niche. Reach out to other products and use this to partner for comarketing opportunities or integrations. 

• Competition research: See what strategy your competition is using and the type of content they are posting. Follow them and try to hijack some of their posts. 

• Host AMAs. Did something crazy? Share it with Redditors and host AMAs. Ex. Here

• Identify Trends: Growing users in a subreddit is a sign of a growing trend. It is like keyword research. You will get to know about these trends before them exploding. You can cater to these trends by building products/features/courses/content around these trends. Redditors are the fastest to get into a new trend. Making it the best place to know about something new before it happens.

• Identify gaps and build your next startup by following subreddits like r/businessideas or r/Shutupandtakemymoney.

• Get content ideas from the questions that are frequently asked in the subreddits. Then use the content to attract potential users to your product. 

• Product launch on product hunt. Many subreddits, like r/producthunter, etc., can give you feedback and make your PH launch successful. Try to use Reddit for such occasions. 

• Share your journey to get traction. Here is a post of how one user shared his journey of running a $100Mn business. 

• Beta-test your product here r/beta 

• Keyword monitoring: Use tools to monitor Reddit around keywords related to your brand. Go and engage with users who are talking about things related to your product.

Resources

• Here is an Airtable with 280+ exciting subreddits and also 300+ places to post about your startup 

• Tools to use Reddit efficiently 

  • Gummysearch: An audience research tool for Reddit

  • Howitzer: Auto DM tool for Reddit.

  • Notifier.so: Tool that notifies you when a certain keyword is used on Reddit.

  • Subreddit Stats: Know in-depth about any subreddit.

  • Olwi: An audience research tool.