Reddit Marketing Strategy (The Do’s & Don’ts)

According to Semrush, Reddit is one of the top 5 most visited websites in the world. 

But while many companies divert a lot of their promotional focus and resources to sites like Facebook, X (Formerly Twitter), Instagram and TikTok, many businesses have yet to tap into the potential that Reddit provides as a marketing channel.

In our opinion, Reddit can be a very powerful source of generating high-quality and qualified leads for your business, especially if you are selling a high-value product or service.

We also believe that from a marketing perspective, it is a very unsaturated platform, although to really tap into it, you will need a robust Reddit Marketing Strategy.

While Reddit can be a valuable extra activity that you can use to acquire new customers, it is important to understand that marketing on this platform requires a completely different approach to what you might adopt on others.

Therefore, it is worth taking the time to fully understand if Reddit really is a viable marketing channel for your business, and if it is, how can you get it to work effectively for you.

This post will provide you with some practical tips to help you create an organic Reddit marketing strategy that can be very fruitful for your business.

If you are not familiar with the platform, Reddit is a vast network of communities where people can ask questions, give advice, share content, and engage in discussions about their hobbies, interests, or passions. 

The site’s name is a play on the phrase ‘I read it,’ and it is free to participate in. However, you will have to set up an account if you want to do this.

Reddit comprises thousands of smaller communities, called subreddits, based around a specific topic. These topics include everything from SEO and US politics to personal finance or the game League of Legends—in short, there is a subreddit for pretty much every subject people are interested in.

We believe it is exactly for this reason that Reddit can be a very good platform to generate leads. However, it does depend on what type of business you run.

What we have found through over 12 months of constant testing is that you are less like to find as much success in as quick a timeframe if you are a D2C brand that sells e-commerce products.

That doesn’t mean Reddit can’t still be useful here from a community management perspective, as you’ll see with companies like Huel who have over 34k members in their subreddit.

However, if you are selling a B2B service or high-value product and don’t necessarily require a large volume of transactions, Reddit can work extremely well for you in providing an evergreen stream of leads for your business.

Due to the platform’s community nature, there are definitely buyers out there. You just need to know how to interact with them, and there are some definite dos and don’ts you should follow.

Before you devise a Reddit marketing strategy to generate leads for your business, you need to understand how the platform works.

As mentioned, there are thousands of subreddits communities based around specific topics. Each community is moderated by administrators who keep order within it through a very specific set of rules (which might vary between subreddits). These rules might include no swearing or abusive language, no advertising, and no spammy links.

Often, these subreddit communities have tens of thousands or even millions of subscribers. Currently, the highest number is r/funny, which has 56.6 million subscribers, while r/AskReddit has 45 million registered members. You can see a list of the top 20 subreddits per membership here.

In any subreddit, questions are asked, which people can comment on and share any links or materials they think might be useful. Comments are then given upvotes or downvotes based on the popularity of their response, with the reply that has received the most upvotes bumped up to the top of the subreddit and possibly even on the front page of the website.

Okay, so now that you know how Reddit works, you are probably wondering how it can benefit your business.

Well, here is a good Reddit marketing strategy to adopt:

The first thing you will need to do is find out which subreddits your ideal customers are participating in. Often, this can be as simple as typing in a keyword related to your business, such as WordPress SEO or PPC advertising.

Once you have found them, try to garner some qualitative insights into them. For instance, look at their profile, which sometimes tells you where they work, or read questions they have asked about the subject. Doing this will give you a feel of whether they are the right kind of people to market to.

When doing your research, it is also worth getting a handle on what type of answers the communities are resonating with. For instance, some of the comments with the highest number of upvotes might be rich in humor or provide very detailed and relevant advice.

This information will provide you with insights about the best way to interact with them when you start engaging on the platform to get yourself noticed.

When you find the people you want to target, the next stage is to start interacting with them. However, you must be very careful how you do this.

It is a good idea to start replying to people’s posts first, as this will give you a good opportunity to increase your exposure and portray yourself as an expert in your field. 

You can post the odd question, but initially, it is better to focus on developing a reputation as someone who provides tangible and practical advice to those who ask specific questions. This will get you quickly noticed by other community members, particularly if you do it in an authoritative but impartial way.

What Not to Do on Reddit

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which can become saturated with spammy links, or LinkedIn, where many people’s digital marketing strategies on the platform could be much better, Reddit encourages high-quality content through a ‘karma’ system in its community.

For this reason, under no circumstances should you mention your business, engage in pushy sales talk, or post links referencing your company data (unless asked to). This is likely to get you a substantial amount of downvotes or even risk being banned.

Reddit is full of savvy and sophisticated advertisers and marketers who are sick to the backteeth of reading broad, generic information from so-called marketing gurus that have no intrinsic value.

Instead, what they want to see is tangible and very specific advice on issues or problems they are facing.

If you don’t provide them with this, you are going to get roasted.

How To Actually Generate Leads From Reddit

Now that you know what you should not do on Reddit, you may be wondering what you should do.

Well, as mentioned, the more upvotes you get on your posts, the more noticed you’ll get by the community. So, you should focus on providing people with qualitative answers to the questions they raised.

If you do that, people will start to look at your profile, see the company you work for, and possibly even direct message you on the platform or get in touch with you using the work contact details you have on your bio.

A good way to expedite this process is to tap into a person’s curiosity by saying something like, ‘I run a marketing company, and this is what we found’, or ‘I tested this at my work, and the results were as follows’. Just don’t mention specifics, although you could say you would happily forward them further information via a private message.

Ultimately, if people feel like they are being sold to on Reddit, they are less likely to approach you or your business than if you provide them with specific and tangible information that they believe they can benefit from.

So… Should You Be Using Reddit For Your Business?

The answer is of course…it depends…however, if you have a high-value product or service and you can find communities on Reddit containing you’re target audience, you are potentially missing out on a large goldmine of clients.

While the approach we recommend you take to attract new customers is probably very different from the one you’d use in other social media platforms, we believe that the qualitative Reddit marketing strategy we have suggested could provide significant returns for many B2B businesses – especially those that offer high-value services.

Here are some answers to questions people frequently ask about how to formulate a Reddit Marketing Strategy.

How can Reddit be used for marketing?

On Reddit, some of the most effective types of content for marketing are informative guides, viral trends, ‘Ask Me Anything’ and text posts (particularly of inspirational stories.

By sharing this type of content, you can garner plenty of free advertising in a way that is not deemed too promotional.

Should you use paid advertising instead of organic on Reddit?

Don’t think about one instead of the other, think about how you can incorporate both organic and paid marketing strategies. It’s also worth saying that by starting to first get a good understanding of how to use Reddit organically, and what you’re fellow Redditors like/dislike, you’ll be much more effective at advertising on the platform.

Remember, Redditors typically hate spammy marketing but when done right, Reddit Ads can work incredibly well for certain businesses

Is Reddit better for B2B or B2C?

It depends what you’re trying to achieve. Generating leads on Reddit can take time, so you have to ask whether a new customer is worth the time you may have to put into getting to that stage as mentioned above.

However, Reddit can also be great as a community management platform, as most brands with any level of scale with find entire thread and subreddits dedicated to their product/service and this will often contain your most passionate (for good or bad) customers.