The world of business is diverse and competitive. In order to thrive, a business requires several key characteristics, among which include resilience, determination, and tenacious nature. A successful business is one that sets goals for itself. This is in order for it to stay focused, and in order for it to stay motivated.
Then, of course, is exposure. For a business to stay afloat in the congested, emulous sea of companies, corporations, and brands, it must reach a wide audience. A business requires a well-thought-out strategy in order to effectively draw in a sustainable volume of customers. A business that places its efforts in an elaborate, tactical marketing plan may find itself gaining more and more success. This contrasts a business that makes considerably few attempts to attract consumers of their products or services. Such a business may find itself struggling to achieve a positive outcome for itself.
One viable method of marketing that a business may consider utilizing is digital platforms and building their brand up via one of the most effective digital tools, Reddit marketing.
What is Reddit?
To those who are not familiar with Reddit, it is a website based in the United States where users aggregate media content. Each type of content posted on the platform falls under a specific topic category. A subreddit is a page that concerns a particular topic. Most of its content is social news, allowing members to share and discuss opinions on different topics, and events.
For many, this may not be the first option for consideration when it comes to digital marketing. Reddit, however, has proven to be quite reliable as a platform for digital marketing. As such, a growing number of businesses are employing its use. If you’re not convinced about Reddit’s ability to aid in digital marketing, here are a few pointers that may change your mind.
Why should businesses consider using Reddit marketing?
1. It garners a large audience
Reddit is the 7th most visited website, globally. This is quite an accomplishment when you consider the numerous websites that can be accessed throughout the Internet. Some of the names include Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia. In terms of the United States alone, it is the 5th most visited website on the Internet (Alexa). It lays claim to a whopping quarter of a billion users. Perhaps the most impressive figure of all is the 8 billion views Reddit pages collectively gain per month.
The 50 thousand zestful communities present on the website are constantly sharing links, posting new content, and expanding pages. New information is dispensed across the platform, while ideas are animatedly being spread.
The sheer magnitude of the Reddit community is the reason why the website is an ideal candidate for marketing.
2. The formatting of the website helps the promotion
The content published on Reddit operates under a unique formatting system. Depending on the likability of the content posted, Redditors will either “up-vote” or “down-vote” it. Out of all the content posted on the same subreddit page, the content with a relatively large number of up-votes will be featured at the very top. This system is favorable for content with the most number of up-votes, as it increases the potential views it can bring in. The content that holds a considerably high number of up-votes can find itself featured on the first page of the website.
This system of up-votes and down-votes can serve as a tremendous help in a business digital marketing campaign. Posting content that is appealing to Reddit users can help a business get exposed to a larger audience.
As Lauren Orsini herself, said in a piece published on ReadWrite, “Reddit’s huge community is the perfect hype machine for promoting a new movie, a product release, or a lagging political campaign.”, making Reddit marketing key in any marketing strategy.
3. The Slashdot Affect
For those who are not aware of the Slashdot effect, it’s a term used to describe the phenomenon where a large website features the link to a smaller website, and by doing so, helps increase the traffic on the smaller website. The Slashdot effect is a common occurrence in the case of Reddit marketing. The members of Reddit colloquially refer to this event as the “Reddit Hug of Death”.
Businesses can employ the use of the Slashdot effect in order to generate large traffic for their own websites. As a result, businesses greet a larger influx of customers and experience a growth in sales for their products or services.
Understanding the Demographics of Reddit
Perhaps the points above have now convinced you that Reddit marketing is indeed a suitable digital marketing strategy. However, the chance remains that Reddit is not appropriate for your business in particular. The reason for this may lie with demographics.
Depending on the product or service being provided by a business, the business will advertise to a certain target audience. The target audience for a particular business may vary depending on age, gender, or geographical position. For example, a business that deals with alcoholic beverages would target an adult audience.
So, depending on the product/service your own business is providing, Reddit may or may not be the appropriate platform for marketing.
The majority of Redditors are of the male gender – approximately 65%. Thus, a business that sells female items may not consider it to be practical for their advertisements. In terms of age, most Redditors are young adults, falling into the age bracket of 18 to 24.
Interestingly, Reddit holds quite an educated audience. An estimated 50% or more Redditors are the recipients of college education, while an additional 30% possess a bachelor’s degree or some other form of higher education. In terms of classes based on financial status, about three-quarters of Redditors earn anywhere between 0 to 50 thousand dollars per year.
For a business promoting its content on Reddit, it is important to keep these statistics in mind. They will most certainly affect the success rate of your digital marketing plan (bluefountainmedia).
How To Market On Reddit
Let us now assume that you deem Reddit as a viable candidate for digital marketing. You are interested in the platform and believe that your business can use it to accumulate a favorable audience. Now the question remains as to which operable strategies can be carried out as a part of your Reddit marketing campaign.
1. Employ the use of paid advertisements
Paid advertisements are instrumental in Reddit marketing. They are a reliable way of exposing your product or services to an audience and attracting viewers to your own company website. It’s like writing a letter addressed to the people of the Internet.
The best thing about paid advertisements on Reddit is that they can be posted across the platform in mere minutes, and at a feasible cost of just 5 dollars per day (theinnovationenterprise).
2. Establish an AMA with your audience
On Reddit, Ask Me Anything subreddits can be established under your business’s name and can be utilized as a medium to engage with potential customers. Conversing back-and-forth with your target audience can lead to a rise in the number of consumers of your product/services. An AMA can be used to build a friendly image for your business, one that will encourage customers to return, and help in maintaining a sustainable flow of consumers (theinnovativeenterprise). Lauren Orsini of ReadWrite discussed the appeal an AMA carries towards the users of Reddit, as they “don’t want to advertise for you, they want to talk to you.”
Your business can collect valuable feedback from your customers that can be used to improve its products and services, just by engaging in an Ask Me Anything (theinnovationenterprise).
3. Avoid the appearance of being excessively promotional
To many, this may seem surprising, but the Reddit community can sometimes act quite hostile towards subreddits that are being used solely for advertisements. Redditors can easily detect pages that are being employed by a business as a part of their marketing strategy and make attempts to get such pages banned. The moderators, who strongly believe that the website belongs to the users, will often comply.
As such, businesses that have set up their own pages on Reddit carry out different approaches to avoid appearing too promotional. Perhaps the best way to carry out effective Reddit marketing is to avoid posting too much content pertaining to the business. Businesses on Reddit often employ a 1 to 10 ratio policy. For every 1 post a business makes concerning their products or services, 10 posts will be shared in regards to other topics of interest (dreamgrow).
4. Determine the appropriate time frame to post in
Simply sharing a post in regards to your business is not enough; you must ensure that people are actually viewing your content. Every website on the Internet has its own time frame for when a particular demographic becomes active.
By spending time on Reddit, and investigating the trends in user traffic, your business can determine at which time slot your target audience will be most active. You can experiment, by posting content at different times during the day, and see at which times the Reddit community responds.
5. Share content that is captivating
Earlier, we discussed the system of “up-votes” and “down-votes” on the website and determined that more up-votes are beneficial for any business leading a marketing campaign.
In order to garner a relatively large number of up-votes, your business must employ a Reddit marketing strategy to post content that intrigues the Reddit community. Publish content that is unique, interesting, and captivating. You may research into popular posts that already exist on Reddit, and determine which characteristics make them so favorable amongst the community. Try to derive inspiration from such posts in the hopes that your content will appeal to the Redditors (bluefountainmedia).
6. Make use of Redditads
A Redditad is a feature that sets a reminder for its users about a particular event. By employing the use of Redditads, your target audience may remain notified of events that concern your business. Redditads can be highly effective in attracting new customers and keeping old customers interested in your product or services. Examples of businesses that utilize Redditads are Red Bull, and Coca-Cola (dreamgrow).
7. r/Deals
Businesses that use the website for marketing can at times aggravate Reddit users. In order to avoid attracting the displeasure of Redditors, businesses regularly offer deals for their products and services on this particular subreddit, r/Deals. Redditors are constantly surveying the subreddit, in search of deals. Your business can take advantage of the traffic r/Deals receives and use it to draw in new customers (theinnovationenterprise).
8. Establish a multireddit for your business
Instead of distributing your business’s content across various subreddits, you can establish a network that compiles multiple subreddits under one banner. Utilize specific keywords that are relevant to your business, so that all your content under a particular keyword can be featured on a single feed.
This Reddit marketing strategy helps in keeping your brand campaign organized and makes it easier for your target audience to reach you (smartinsights).
9. Carefully title your content
An alluring, or intriguing, title is one that will draw in an audience. Reddit provides up to 300 characters for your title, a generous amount that you should fully utilize. You should feature long, coherent sentences that contain information in regards to your business within the title. This may sound odd to some, but this technique is especially popular amongst the Reddit community.
A crucial tip to keep in mind is to write a title that does not sound promotional. As we discussed earlier, promotional content does not appeal to Redditors. Write a title that is friendly, and authentic, as this is the type of title that will most likely attract viewers.
To Sum Up
Reddit is a substantial platform that harbors immense amounts of potential for the marketing industry. By taking these 9 tips into consideration, your business can fully utilize the website for your Reddit marketing campaign.
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