How to Use Reddit Ads to Generate Sales

Are you searching for a new digital advertising opportunity that can help you reach new audiences and widen your overall reach?

If you answered yes to that question, you should consider Reddit ads. Reddit has a very specific user base and culture, though, so you need to thoroughly understand the platform before you start advertising on it.

Why Should You Advertise on Reddit?

For starters, Reddit can drastically increase your audience exposure. Given the site’s emphasis on niche communities, you are also able to directly target small subsets (or subreddits) of your intended audience, offering them your services or products directly.

Ultimately, this connection with individualized subsets allows you to increase overall sales, particularly if the product you’re advertising aligns with that dedicated subset’s interests.

What Are the Different Types of Reddit Ads?

Reddit offers marketers two different ad types: promoted posts and display posts.

Promoted Posts

These ads are available as link ads or text ads. Regardless of which format you choose, they look very similar to general content on Reddit, featuring the same light blue background as non-sponsored posts. To differentiate between paid and non-paid content, these posts also contain a “Sponsored” tag.

• Link ads: Easy to create and build, these Reddit ads feature a link to your website or to a specific product page. Link ads need only a headline and can be created through Reddit’s self-serve advertising platform.
• Text ads: These ads link to another Reddit page that can essentially serve as a landing page for what you’re offering. These ads can drive to a forum about your product, a Reddit page with more information about your product, or any other internal Reddit page you want to create.

These ads, like the ones above from Denny’s, are perfect for driving interaction and interest with a new product or offering within a very specific community of users.

Display Posts

Much like other traditional display or banner ads, these Reddit ads are banners or rich media ads. If you’re interested in going all-in on a display post, be warned that these run at a base of $30,000.

These ads are ideal for large companies with large budgets. A few notable campaigns include household names like Absolut and Duracell.

5 Strategies to Use Reddit Ads to Increase Your Sales

While Reddit does offer marketers and advertisers access to a massive audience, it is notoriously challenging to find success advertising on the platform.

However, that doesn’t mean achieving your marketing goals on Reddit is impossible. Be sure to adhere to these five strategies to ensure your Reddit ads are set up for success.

1. Find a Niche Topic Related to Your Brand

We’ve mentioned the term subset a lot in this post. What we mean is an extremely niche topic that not only is adjacent to your brand or product but also engenders conversation among followers of that topic.

By identifying these subsets, you can better align with audience members who are likely to be interested in what your Reddit ad is promoting, thus driving sales among these users.

2. Interact With Your Targeted Community

It’s no secret that Redditors are disdainful of marketing attempts on the platform. To ensure that your campaign doesn’t become an ignored eyesore, join and interact with your targeted community long before sending targeted Reddit ads to that particular group.

If you build up feelings of goodwill and general amicability, it will be that much easier to drive product sales as you have already established trust within your micro-community.

3. Offer Immediate Value

We’ve talked about Reddit users’ pervasive mistrust of marketing activity. To offset these sentiments, be sure to identify what value your ad offers to your particular community.

This is also beneficial as it further solidifies why you—and your product or brand—belong in that particular community. When you share the value of a specific ad in the text, you signal to viewers that you’re aware that their time is a commodity and that you’re worthy of them spending it on you.

By establishing expertise and proving value, you cement a connection with the community, assuring them that you’re not there only to market, but also to solve their pain points. And what impact do solved pain points have on your margins? Increased sales.

4. Allow Comments on Your Ad and Engage With Viewers

Reddit is all about community, and as we discussed above, if you enter an existing community with clear motives that don’t align with that community’s ideals, your Reddit ads aren’t going to go far.

To combat being perceived as a marketer out to make a buck, be sure to engage with the community you’ve opted to advertise toward. You can do this by allowing comments on your ads and engaging in genuine conversations with your audience to promote transparency and increase brand trust.

5. Use Reddit as a Customer Research Tool

Not sure which community you should be marketing toward? By using some functions that go beyond the search bar, you can identify which subreddits are right for you:

• r/findareddit: This subreddit is dedicated to helping you find your people. In this group, you can ask questions about communities and get expert responses.
• You can also use third-party tools like Redditlist that allow you to search for keywords within communities.

Reddit Ads for Increased Sales Best Practices

Reddit breaks its suggested best practices into three distinct categories: targeting, creative, and management.

According to the aggregation site, here are the best practices in each category:

Targeting

When building a Reddit ad, you can target your campaign through a variety of channels: by interest, community, targeting expansion, device, or location. By defining your audience through a combination of these lenses, you can get even more granular, ideally reaching your specific niche audience.

Creative

Follow these tips to develop a creative and successful ad:

• Convey a clear value proposition.
• Update your profile picture.
• Experiment with longer headlines.
• Use cultural touchpoints and humor.
• Ensure headline and graphic tell a complete narrative.

Management

Reddit offers advertisers a dashboard that allows them to track the success or failure of their campaigns. These feature pretty standard marketing metrics, as well as some that are more Reddit-specific. Some helpful metrics to keep in mind include:

• Impressions: the number of views your ad received
• Clicks: the number of clicks your ad received that drove to your intended destination
• Amount spent: the total spend you’ve used on your campaign or ad group
• eCPM: the effective cost per thousand impressions
• CTR: the percentage of times people viewed your ad and clicked
• CPC: the average cost for each click

Examples of Great Reddit Ads

Looking for inspiration to launch your own Reddit ads campaign? While large companies like Duracell have seen equally large success on Reddit, so have smaller groups.

Below, we break down three of our all-time favorite Reddit ads.

Tushy

Cult-favorite bidet maker Tushy tapped into Reddit’s unique language to appeal to would-be consumers.

By appealing to the humor, Tushy was able to successfully launch a campaign that not only earned laughs, but upvotes. Here, we learn the true power of understanding the community you’re trying to market toward.

Ally Bank

This bank used creative ad copy to appeal to a niche Reddit audience: financially savvy gamers.

By speaking directly to these two interests, Ally Bank managed to successfully market its brand, engaging an audience receptive to the topic and imagery.

Simple Health

Simple Health harnessed the power of Reddit to increase conversions and drive sales.

Through a comprehensive testing strategy, the company successfully identified their audience and delivered them content they couldn’t ignore.

How to Create Reddit Ads

After you’ve done the basic legwork of creating a Reddit account and signing into Reddit’s campaign management tool, building your first Reddit ad is relatively simple. Follow the four steps below:

1. Name Your Campaign

   This is only visible to you, not actual Reddit users.

2. Define Your Audience

   In this step, you can identify your audience through six parameters:
   -interests
   -locations
   -subreddits
   -platforms (desktop and mobile web)
   -mobile devices (Android or iOS)
   -advanced time of day targeting

3. Set Your Budget

   With Reddit ads, you can set either a daily maximum budget or a total campaign budget. Reddit ads are priced by cost per thousand impressions (CPM), meaning you pay a predetermined fee amount for an average of 1,000 impressions.

4. Select Your Creative

   You’re a final step away from sending your ad for approval. In this step, you must do these four things to create your ad:
   1. Select the ad type.
   2. Include your headline.
   3. Upload images.
   4. Submit for approval.
   
   That’s it! After completing those four steps, you’ve also completed your first Reddit ad.

Frequently Asked Questions About Reddit Ads

How much do ads cost on Reddit?

The cost of Reddit Ads depends upon the type of Reddit ad. If you elect to go the traditional route of banner posts, you better have a big budget as those ads start at $30,000. If you opt to go the route of promoted posts, your budget can go much further. Pricing for these ads clocks in at $0.75 CPM for self-serve advertising.

What size are Reddit ads?

If you’ve decided to employ promoted posts to make your campaign goals a reality, you’ll need to submit two images along with accompanying copy.
-thumbnail image (140×140 maximum)
-mobile card view image (1200×628)

Are Reddit Ads Targeted?

Yes, Reddit ads are targeted. As an advertiser, you can define your audience through a number of details, including location, age, and interests.

What Do Reddit Ads Look Like?

Reddit ads can look like the traditional banner ads that are ubiquitous to most digital advertising—you’ve seen these on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Promoted ads, however, look just like any other Reddit post, save for the blue box that delineates them from organic posts from users.

Reddit Ads Conclusion

If you’re looking to increase your sales, Reddit is undeniably a great place to start.

However, as we discussed in this post, it is of the utmost importance that you have a deep understanding of your Reddit community; you cannot simply wade into a subreddit and start targeting members with ads. If this is your strategy, you’re likely to fail.

Instead, immerse yourself in the community. Learn the language of the group and the patterns of behavior and conversations. Engage with users to demonstrate your dedication and authenticity.

If you successfully ingratiate yourself with the community, you can then begin your Reddit marketing strategy. With this foundational understanding and shared respect, you have an increased likelihood of being one of the many success stories of increased sales through Reddit advertising.

What’s the most effective Reddit advertising technique you’ve encountered?

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