4 Best Reddit Marketing Strategies for Brands

Updated on: Sep 1, 2021
4 best Reddit Marketing Strategies for brands in 2021 | IIDE

  Hey there!

My name is Aditya Shastri and I have written this case study with the help of my students from IIDE's online digital marketing courses in India.

Practical assignments, case studies & simulations from Harvard Business Review helped the students from this course present this analysis.

Building on this practical approach, we are now introducing a new dimension for our online digital marketing course learners - the Campus Immersion Experience.

If you find this case study helpful, consider leaving a comment below.

Reddit- “The Front Page of the Internet” is a growing family of millions of people sharing the things they care about. Every day millions of people all over the world post, vote, and comment in the community which is organized around their interests. Thus, In this blog, we have assembled the 4 Best Reddit Marketing Strategies for Brands that can be used in 2021.

We all know that the audience also exists on the website, so one question that surely comes to our mind is “Should we use Reddit?” To be honest, any social media website’s basic rule is to possess an outsized amount of engagement together with your audience. The platform not only helps the brand to be successful but also allows it to build an engaging online presence very efficiently. 

So, this blog focuses on types of content to post, marketing strategies to be used by the brand, and many more on Reddit. So let’s start by understanding more about Reddit in the coming section.

 

Digital Marketing Academic Challenge 2024 - DMAC

About Reddit

 

Reddit Logo | best Reddit Marketing Strategies for brands

 

Reddit is one of the active social media websites on the Internet where users can submit their links, posts, images, and videos. It was founded by two roommates- Steve Huffman & Alexis Ohanian on 23rd June 2005. Headquartered in San Francisco, California U.S.

Since February 2021, it has had around 430 million active users. The website generates more desktop traffic than Facebook, Yelp, and Twitter. When compared with Twitter, it has a count of 296 million users worldwide. One positive mention on the webpage is – it can drive thousands of traffic to your website.

As of Feb 2021, it ranks as the 18th most visited website in the world and according to Alexa Internet, it is ranked 7th most visited website in the US. 

Now let’s have a closer look at the marketing strategy of brands on Reddit. 

 

Reddit Marketing Strategy

 

Marketing on Reddit | IIDE

 

A marketing strategy refers to a brand’s overall game plan for reaching eventual consumers and turning them into customers of its products or services. However, brands on Reddit use several marketing strategies to make their online presence more effective. Let us have a look at them.

 

1. Marketing strategies used by brands on Reddit Organically

Organic marketing means generating traffic to your business without spending money directly whether it is a blog post, a case study, a guest post, or any unpaid tweets, etc. In other words, it refers to growing your business naturally over a while. There are various ways where businesses and brands on Reddit can have an edge over other social media platforms when it comes to organic marketing. 

Below includes some of the effective organic marketing strategies on Reddit-

  • Use Reddit as a market research tool to discover new trends: This type of strategy works for all the marketers out there irrespective of being a Redditor or not, and it even works if you have less time to commit.

    The biggest advantage of this tip is that it takes only a few minutes to gain a ton of information for your marketing. 

    Search for suitable Subreddits for your brand.

    There are these different ways to search for a subreddit like you can straight up go to Reddit and search for the topics you have a keen interest in. Then the search results will display a helpful list of communities that best matches the term

    Another way to find Subreddits is on Subreddit itself. The Reddit Subreddit ”The Signpost of Reddit!”, a platform to inquire queries to which the community responds with fantastic Subreddit recommendations.

    Also, there are some third-party options that users can search for on Subreddit. Luckily most of the people who use Reddit use Redditlist. The list allows you to look out for the most popular subreddits. The best part about this is it also allows you to search for keywords. Additional information like how many subscribers, rank, growth, etc. can also be viewed right on our screen. After that, you can figure out which one will help you to engage with your audience.

 

  • Make use of Reddit to write catchy headlines: You can get the most out of Reddit if you pay attention to your headlines. All the Redditors out there make excellent use of this space to show off what their post is all about. Brand managers can observe the copywriting on the website to see what kind of styles are liked by people and getting upvoted.

    To do this you can go to your homepage or the Subreddit “all” and check out the most popular posts across all of Reddit. This will help you to get some writing insights and then you can implement them into your blog post headlines and subject lines on email.

  • Build Connections among people on Reddit: Building Connections on Reddit is a great way to upscale your marketing strategy for your brand. You can do this with a manual search and watch on brand mentions that happen around the community. There are also social support tools that can have this built-in functionality.

    There is always a fear amongst brands and marketers on the webpage that the backlash for bad marketing can drive you into serious trouble but if your conversations approach effectively then you have a chance of going ahead of your competitors.

  • Get more Traffic on Reddit: To get authentic traffic from the website, the first and foremost thing to do is be a valuable contributor to its communities. You cannot just show up and promote pieces of stuff in this community without relating to the context. If you genuinely take part in it then there is a thing called “Karma Points” on Reddit. The Karma Points help your brand to eventually get success on this platform.

 

2. Paid Marketing Strategy used on Reddit

Paid Marketing Strategy is one of the fastest ways to help your prospective customers observe your brand and offerings. 

Now the very first question that comes to our minds is “Do Reddit have paid advertisements like Google Adwords, Facebook Ads?” Well, the paid ads so far are still in their early stages. However, it doesn’t mean that you cannot get good results. The advertising is reasonable, low-funnel traffic with a highly engaged audience and wildly specific targeting. Below are the types of Reddit ads:

  • Promoted Post: These types of ads generally include images which include things that are normally in Reddit posts along with a CTA(Call-to-Action) button. 
  • Promoted Video: It is similar to a promoted post instead of the photo; here it allows you to embed a video. Even here there is a Call-to-Action button. You can expect a huge engagement on Reddit as videos are the most engaging form of content on the website.

 

Types of Reddit Content to Post

 

Reddit Image | Types of Content on Reddit | IIDE

 

Original content beats everything else in general. Here are the types of content for marketers that tend to get more engagement on Reddit:

  • Text: Many secondary comments can almost only flourish in text-based posts and discussions. This may sound counterintuitive in the mobile age, but many Redditors like in-depth content and thought-provoking discussions, making the text a preferred format.
  • GIFs: GIF is a bite-sized video. Reddit likes GIFs, including sports, events, movie scenes, animations, cute animals, and pop culture scenes with Reddit’s inherent jokes.
  • News: Reddit is a powerful hub. Sharing news on the platform can make you a hit. The news could be related to anything like politics, movies, etc. News can be the first article on what could become a major issue for the community.
  • Ask me anything: Ask me anything or AMA helps the Redditors to ask any question to any person they want. Brands with high reputations gain success with AMA’s. AMA’s take place in subreddits, but frequently AMA’s are hosted by interest focused subreddits.
  • Images: The images are mobile-friendly. The images that you post should be interesting and should convey the message clearly.
  • Blogs: Not many people prefer blogs. If you want to share blog posts then you need to be incredibly active. You should make sure that blog content is spectacular. If you really feel that blog is worth sharing, then post it in the form of a text post instead of linking that with your site.

    Let us now look at some amazing campaigns which eventually made a realization to the world that Reddit can have a bright future when it comes to marketing.

 

Successful Marketing Campaigns on Reddit

Marketing campaigns are systematic efforts to advertise a company’s objective like raising awareness of a brand’s new product or taking valuable customer feedback. Unlike other social media like Facebook and Instagram, Reddit also has some amazing marketing campaigns from big brands.

Without any further ado, let’s look at some mind-blowing marketing campaigns on Reddit.

  • Nissan: Nissan is a gleaming example of how a brand can win over Reddit. Here the Famous Automaker sold his first vehicle on Amazon in the year 2013. The Nissan Community Managers asked Reddit users to request their favourite items on Amazon in the thread ‘If you could have one thing from Amazon, what would it be?’ – which Nissan promptly began purchasing, and this received more than 1,500 comments and requests on the post.

  • Lenovo: In 2014 Lenovo teamed up with Onion Labs, the newspaper’s native ad team, to create a fantasy football web series named “Tough Season” to essentially make fun of themselves. So in that show, the lead character plays a game called ‘Computer Slap’, where he uses a Lenovo Yoga to destroy other computers.  The company promoted the show by giving challenges to Reddit users to create its 8-bit version of the game.
    This is an opportunity to interact in the community and dip our toe in the water,” Bob Cordell, Lenovo’s digital marketing manager, told Adweek. We wanted to do something more natural with that community than straight-up advertising or some fake ads.”

    When looking at the result it was a mind-blowing number of more than 1,07,000 clicks driven and 25 fully functional games submitted to Lenovo. Additionally, everyone who submitted a game received a prize from laptops to Reddit t-shirts and much more.

  • IKEA: Ikea Australia showed in 2013 that sometimes there is no need to launch a Reddit campaign to win over Redditors. Ikea- the furniture brand has pasted coupons that offered a free crib to its consumers who had a baby born nine months after the ad was published on 14th Feb 2013.

    While it wasn’t intentionally placed on Reddit, users found this clever and humorous ad on Valentine’s Day. It eventually resulted in more than 1,000 comments and 3,263 points with 97% upvotes. Sometimes you just have to let the internet research for you.

  • Maker’s Mark: Maker’s Mark is noted for its ingenious marketing, which it has done successfully since 1954. The bourbon distillery has recently embraced social media, establishing ads and being active on sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. In December 2013, the company tried out Reddit. 

    The campaign, titled “let_it_snoo” ” after the Reddit alien mascot, was well-received by the community. Reddit’s director of sales and brand strategy, Mike Cole, told Digiday that including Snoo was a key factor in the company’s success. During its first week, the campaign generated over 1,000 comments.

     

    Now that we went through some creative and successful marketing campaigns from this platform. So let us now analyze competitors of Reddit

 

Competitors of Reddit

Unlike every social media site, Reddit also has its competitors. It is facing tough competition from Quora, Stack Exchange, Gizmodo, 9GAG. Let us have a look at them. 

  • Quora: Quora is today one of the largest Q & A hubs for Marketers and content consumers. It was founded in 2009 in Mountain View, California. It generates around $80 Million less revenue than Reddit.
  • Stack Exchange: Stack Exchange is one of Reddit’s top competitors. Founded in 2010, New York. It operates in the Internet Software Industry. The employee count on this platform is fewer than on Reddit.
  • Gizmodo: It’s a news and opinion website about gadgets, technology, science, environmental news, entertainment, and culture. It was founded in 2001 in New York, US. There is no web mention of how much this website earns when compared with Reddit.
  • 9Gag: The website features user-generated videos under various categories. A leading website that is popular for media industry-related news which eventually is in video format. It was founded in 2008, in Mountain View in the US. It generates around 2.8 million in revenue when compared with Reddit.

    Here we are at the end of the case study, let us conclude in the coming section.

 

Digital Marketing Academic Challenge 2024 - DMAC

Conclusion

 

Reddit can drive huge traffic to our website if we use the correct marketing strategies mentioned above. There is no other platform in the social media space than Reddit when it comes to having a direct discussion amongst the community. If you have some amazing business ideas or are looking for people who are interested in your niche then Reddit will not disappoint you. 

Thank you so much for taking the time and reading this blog. Share your valuable thoughts in the comment section. For more such blogs visit IIDE’s website. Also, if you are interested in learning about digital marketing, then try IIDE’s free Digital Marketing Masterclasses to upskill yourself.  

Share post via

Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs......[Read full bio]

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Posts