Has anyone here had success with reddit advertising? Please share!

[Greg R]

Hey TMFL Marketers,

For those who've had successful experiences advertising on reddit, I would be more than appreciative if you could share:

• If you used a link or text?
• How you wrote your copy?
• What type of products/ or services did well?
• Did you split test your ads?
• What was the main goal of your ad?

I feel like people get mixed up with treating reddit like a social media platform rather than a forum platform and that is why most marketers crash and burn.

 

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[Mineralogic]

its funny I see everyone asking about online advertising with facebook, etc...got to tell you, several people I know are done with facebook, twitter, etc. Complete time suckers and just the other day Facebook mentioned original posting on there is crashing. Basically, little value left there. So what I'm saying is maybe you will have more luck with reddits and focused posting sites where people actually do want to interact, including sites like this. Facebore I think is really over at this point. For those still loving facebook for advertising, how's it feel to know your core customers are not logging in as much nor using the site as originally intended? Perhaps Facebook mission was never about connecting people at all
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/8/11393402/facebook-music-slideshows-posting-box-redesign-changes

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

I tried Reddit. Ads did terribly.

There's little reason to do paid ads vs pretending you're one of the crowd, and having your post upvoted. Upvoted posts are more profitable than ads.

 

[Jake]

I tried. They wouldn't run the ad and said I was breaking some rule. What rule?..I haven't the slightest idea.

I may try again.

An alternative approach, but you need to be careful to not "promote" is simply uploading images to imgur. A lot of free impressions to be had

 

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[Fox]

Using this at the moment. Reddit says I got over 300 clicks today on my ad. My platform shows only around 10. Not sure what is going on.

 

[Guest34764]

Make strategic posts using Imgur.com

Ad posts on their either do amazing or terrible and it's up for the commenters to tell you that.

 

[mtn_baldy]

I've had nothing but terrible experiences on Reddit (business wise). I went the route of making a post on my city's page talking about my business and was promptly told by mods that its not allowed. It's kind of tricky, and I think if you were able to get a front page post you could do fine.

 

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[Fox]

Looks like my when my ad was edited it was selected to be on the front page instead of a selection of niche reddits. There goes $46 in a few minutes.

 

[Fox]

This is what reddit is telling me. On the other side my product page is showing 20 views total for the day. Its a direct link so I am not sure why the massive difference. Still investigating. Results so far from reddit advertising have been ZERO.

 

[350z]

The most important thing about using Reddit, actually, this applies to every form of social media, is to KNOW YOUR MEDIUM.

The problem with most marketers is that they do not have a damn clue on how to optimize their social media presence based on the medium that is selected.

If you think the process is as simple as, creating an ad, paying for ad-space (promoted tweet, sidebar advert on a subreddit, etc.), and just sitting back and watching revenue flow in, then you should honestly try checking your doorknob or walking to your nearest telephone post next time you want to order a pizza or find a landscaping service.

The thing about Reddit is that there is a culture. There is a specific way on how the users will react to certain posts. This is not something that can be taught, you have to immerse yourself within the medium to actually understand what I'm talking about.

For example, if you think that you could go incognito and try to act like a user as some sort of guerrilla marketing tactic, guess what, you better prey they don't sniff you out because there's a subreddit dedicated to find users that do this.

With Reddit, it's important to understand that the users are humans, and just like in real life, people don't act too kindly knowing that they have been deceived, cheated, or lied to.

However, that's not to say that reddit advertising doesn't work, it actually does.

Here is probably one of the more clever ads I've seen that works.

Why did this one work? Because it fits the bill.

Just my $0.02

 

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[JAJT]

Reddit was a failure for me as well. The cost was EXTREMELY low but the push-back from the community was insane. My ad got a lot of comments - all negative. I was a profiteering slimeball in their eyes.

The community there is EXTREMELY hostile to business. Think liberal university kids - that's kind of the demo there.

They love extremely frugal options (they are poor) and a good sob story (bleeding hearts). They can get behind a rags to riches story but seemingly ONLY if reddit was the reason for the riches (there was some hot sauce company recently that was struggling, so reddit loved it, and then reddit turned the guy into a success so they loved him more for it).

There are some exception but it generally requires either a KILLER story, extremely novel idea, or if you are already an entrenched community member who comes out as some product developer.

Reddit has a gigantic community and they CAN move mountains for a person or business but the narrative has to be extremely well done and well timed and organic (IE: not ads). If it smells even slightly self-serving or "business like" they'll rip you apart.

 

[JAJT]

For example, if you think that you could go incognito and try to act like a user as some sort of guerrilla marketing tactic, guess what, you better prey they don't sniff you out because there's a subreddit dedicated to find users that do this.

This is really important to understand as well - reddit users are highly technical and extremely good sleuths. Out of sheer boredom they'll do reverse image searches, ip checks, domain whois, phone number lookups, facebook searches, and a million other things I'm sure I have no idea about. I once saw someone identify the location of a photo because half a couch and part of a pillow and carpet were visible in the scene which matched up perfectly with some other completely unrelated video some user saw which they were able to figure out the shooting location for and got a street address and owner of the building. This is like a weird sport for these people.

 

[Fox]

Reddit was a failure for me as well. The cost was EXTREMELY low but the push-back from the community was insane. My ad got a lot of comments - all negative. I was a profiteering slimeball in their eyes.

The community there is EXTREMELY hostile to business. Think liberal university kids - that's kind of the demo there.

They love extremely frugal options (they are poor) and a good sob story (bleeding hearts). They can get behind a rags to riches story but seemingly ONLY if reddit was the reason for the riches (there was some hot sauce company recently that was struggling, so reddit loved it, and then reddit turned the guy into a success so they loved him more for it).

There are some exception but it generally requires either a KILLER story, extremely novel idea, or if you are already an entrenched community member who comes out as some product developer.

Reddit has a gigantic community and they CAN move mountains for a person or business but the narrative has to be extremely well done and well timed and organic (IE: not ads). If it smells even slightly self-serving or "business like" they'll rip you apart.

The first comment on my ad was "Go F*cking kill yourself". I private messaged the guy and asked why he would say something like that. I got back a feeble response about people get tricked out of their money by other people so I am a bad person and so on. For the record my product is solid and my ad copy is straight forwards "Interested in X, try Y product."

Its like these guys don't know they wouldn't have that platform if someone wasn't paying money in some way to maintain it. Seems like a Sidewalk roundabout over there.

 

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[Fox]

The thing about Reddit is that there is a culture. There is a specific way on how the users will react to certain posts. This is not something that can be taught, you have to immerse yourself within the medium to actually understand what I'm talking about.

Thanks for this post. I used it to x4 my engagement. Rep sent

 

[CaptainAmerica]

reddit IS a sidewalk roundabout, most of the time (what a fantastic description!). But when you find the right sub, it can be pretty good. Check out the story line of Rohan Gilkes on reddit. When I first saw his grand idea on the forum, I thought, 'oh, that poor guy, they're going to bury him'. But he worked with people on reddit, and was completely transparent about it, and started a sub just so people could follow along. That's the way to work a forum.

I find that because redditors are so critical, it actually helps. I want them to find the issues before I bring my products out to a bigger audience. It's free pen testing!

 

[ApparentHorizon]

Not sure what you can possibly sell to that place to make real money, but the easiest way is to be sarcastic/funny with a bit of smartass sprinkled on top.
http://www.slideshare.net/reddit/presentations

The real secret comes from bot farms. There are few measures to stop people just registering accounts en masse. Hell, you could go and make 5 accounts right now just by using 1(at)yourdomain, 2(at)yourdomain, etc. Go in, post your product/service as a cool futuristic "thing." Or maybe some sob story your struggles, and brigade it with bots to upvote your post to the front page.

Like @350z mentioned, do guerrilla marketing. Headline: "Hey guys, I saw this col thing up the street from my house!" Misspell one word, preferably to give the sentence another meaning so it comes out funny. Then the top comment is someone asking what it is. The reply is someone linking to the original product. Upvote them and get some traffic. It's good for SEO, but below average for direct conversions.

That being said, that place is the antithesis of TFL. I used to visit it on a daily basis, for 5 years until I added a plugin to block websites. That was first on the list.

 

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