Reddit has more than 430 million active monthly users. Over the past seven years, Reddit’s user base only keeps growing. The platform has users from around the globe and attracts people from many demographics. While it may not be as widely used as Facebook or Twitter, Reddit remains one of the most popular social platforms on the internet.
Reddit allows brands to advertise on the platform through promoted posts. It’s also possible to engage in organic marketing efforts on the channel. The challenge is creating an advertising strategy that fits the platform and gets the results you want.
What Are the Benefits of Advertising on Reddit?
One of the most unique and valuable features of Reddit is the division of the platform into subreddits. Anybody can create a subreddit based on subject matter, location, interest, profession, brand, or anything else.
For example, there are subreddits for various cities, hobbies ranging from animation to woodworking, news, and politics. This proliferation of specificity allows for precision ad targeting that is unmatched on other platforms.
Steps to Advertise on Reddit
It isn’t difficult to start advertising on Reddit. Just follow these steps to begin engaging your target customers:
Create a Company Profile
It’s important that you publish all advertising content and other posts using a dedicated company profile. When someone clicks a user profile on Reddit, they can see every post and comment associated with that account.
By using a company profile instead of your personal user profile, you can ensure that your business presence on Reddit aligns with your branding and marketing goals.
It’s also a matter of professionalism and transparency. Other Reddit users may not react well to a brand’s content being shared from behind a regular user account. The one exception to that concern might be if your user account is your real name and you are very publicly associated with your brand.
Establish an Advertising Account
If you want to post ads on Reddit, you must sign up for an advertising account. You’ll fill out some basic information, create your account, and be taken to an ad dashboard. This dashboard is where you will complete your billing information, set up authorized users, and assign permissions.
Find the Right Subreddits and Start Engaging
You won’t get a very good return on your investment if you simply advertise on Reddit’s main page. There are too many posts and too wide of an audience to really target the right people.
Instead, you’ll want to find subreddits that your target audience is using. Look for subreddits that are relevant to your products or services — or that match the interests of your customers.
Make sure to check the stats for the subs you choose. There are subreddits with millions of users and others with fewer than 100. Remember that numbers aren’t everything. You may get better returns on a very active subreddit with 500 engaged users than one with 500,000 users but a low engagement rate.
When you have chosen your target subreddits, subscribe to them. Then, don’t start advertising right away. Instead, read posts, and participate in conversations. Share your knowledge and expertise. This approach will increase trust and recognition, which will help your paid ads get a better response.
Develop Your Campaign
Now, you can go back to your dashboard to start creating your advertising campaign.
You’ll name your campaign, choose a funding source, and select a campaign objective. From there, you’ll select targeting information. That information includes interests, communities, and device types. You will also establish your budget and when you want your ads to be displayed.
Reddit allows you to connect third-party analytics software to your campaign so you can track your results.
Now is also the point at which you will create a sponsored post or upload existing ad content. You can use text, images, video, or a combination of these mediums. Check these Reddit ad specs for key information on getting the best results from your ad creatives.
Analyze and Optimize
You’ll need to make adjustments to your Reddit campaigns, especially after running your initial ads. Use analytics data to measure performance, and tweak your campaigns to get the improvements you need.
In addition to reviewing analytics data, don’t forget Reddit’s most important source of ad feedback: user comments. Read these comments, and engage with your audience members. The feedback you receive via comments will provide valuable insights into both your campaigns and the general perception of your brand.
Are you interested in engaging with a smart, tech-savvy audience that skews younger than Facebook? If so, Reddit could be the ideal platform for your marketing campaigns.
