The Marketer's Guide To Reddit + 3 Real World Success Stories

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Updated: October 8th, 2022

Why market your business on Reddit?

Reddit is a social media and news aggregation platform that ranks content based on a voting system. Popular Reddit content rises to the top, while downvoted content loses its audience.

A positive Reddit mention can mean thousands of visits to your website. According to statistics, Reddit has over 52 million daily users. Targeting even a quarter of that audience can be a significant boost to your brand marketing efforts.

To market on Reddit successfully, you have to be genuinely engaged and committed to the Reddit communities you are part of.

Reddit Marketing Key Takeaways

Reddit is one of the largest and most vibrant social media marketing platforms on the Internet
Startup owners use Reddit to conduct research and maintain a pulse on industry trends
Reddit focuses on community relationships rather than on advertising
AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions are a cornerstone of Reddit and a popular way to engage with fans.

Understanding How Reddit Works

Reddit is a huge website divided into thousands of smaller communities called subreddits. Generally, we can define a subreddit as a board devoted to a specific topic.

Reddit users submit content and then community members upvote or downvote the content. The content with the majority of votes rises to the top.

Ideally, upvoting is an indication that you think more people should see the post or comment, while downvoting shows you do not think the post is worthwhile for others to see, or the comment is off-topic.

Whenever your post or comment is upvoted, you earn Karma. Karma is a numerical score based on the gamification concept. The score appears on the profile page and is an indication of how much someone has contributed to Reddit.

Positive karma increases the number of points a post has. Likewise, negative karma decreases the points a post has.

Reddit uses karma as the basis for showing the best possible content to the users. The upvoted comments and posts with tons of points end up at the top of the Reddit page. Ultimately, more people end up seeing the post and upvoting it.

For brand marketers, more karma means your post gets more views. Therefore, organic website traffic will start to increase. In that regard, engaging the Reddit community in a meaningful manner is helpful to your website traffic.

Actionable Tips To Promote On Reddit Organically

Make sure your posts are relevant to the subreddit where you are posting
Avoid getting banned: Here’s what you should do to avoid getting banned:
- How to avoid getting banned on Reddit
- Never submit the same comment many times to different subreddits (especially rapidly)
- Don’t submit links only to your website
- Don’t ask for upvotes
- Steer clear of illegal content
- Don’t share anyone’s private information
- Don’t be overly promotional
Create a profile that feels real
Find the right subreddit for posting (Find a subreddit in your niche)
Use Reddit's ad platform to boost your posts
- Reddit Ads Guide
Set up a calendar to ensure you post often to Reddit

Examples of successful Reddit Use Cases

Here are some great examples for your inspiration.

1. How Nissan attained Product Awareness Through A Reddit Campaign

When Nissan was ready to launch the newest car, Versa Note, they settled on a Reddit campaign to build up hype for this momentous event.

The Japanese carmaker was aware that Reddit does not encourage open advertising on the platform. The carmaker settled on an old-fashioned approach to target their potential customers.

For this campaign, the Nissan community managers asked Reddit users for their favorite things on Amazon and then started buying those items.

Within a short time, they received over 1500 comments, with over 5000 conversations about the company. As a show of their appreciation, they ended up presenting the users with a wide range of items including Reddit Gold, and over 4000 ladybugs.

The promotion was the first one for them to promote a new car model, then Nissan Versa Note, which also became the first vehicle to be sold on Amazon.

While the approach contributed a lot to making the Nissan Versa Note famous, Reddit Director of communications confirmed the campaign's success saying it was one of the best campaigns ever.

2. How Spotify Conducted Successful Research On Reddit

One way bands use Reddit is to conduct research in order to gain insights on how to engage their users. That’s what Spotify aimed to do when it asked Reddit users questions relating to different emotions that songs sparked on them.

A few weeks after posting the question, they received more than 2,300 comments and close to 500 brand interactions along with over 10,000 submissions.

Spotify built several Reddit-Inspired playlists, and the campaign was named along some of the most successful Reddit campaigns.

That kind of approach blends with the Reddit community and it is the key to successful Reddit marketing.

3. How Starter Story got its start by going viral on Reddit

Pat Walls, founder of Starter Story used Reddit to promote his blog by recycling his articles into a Reddit format.

His strategies for success:

Only posting great content to Reddit
Using simple & catchy post titles with dollar amounts, like: "$10K/mo selling a bidet product."
Reddit-friendly formatting
Luck. There is so much luck that comes with going viral on Reddit

Read the full post here.

How To Create a Reddit Marketing Strategy

Use Reddit as a customer research tool to discover new market trends
Use top social media analytics tools to track karma, discover comments, mentions, and industry news
Approach Reddit conversations with authenticity
Ensure active audience engagement
Create subreddits around your product/industry
Earn karma points by giving value to the community
Stick to the golden rule: Redditors first

meet the author

Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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