When we think of social media platforms, our minds tend to shift towards apps like Facebook and Instagram, but there are a number of rival social media sites that offer businesses a wealth of opportunity. One of these sites is Reddit, and with over 52 million daily users, the discussion platform offers communities that share common interests the chance to come together in a way that’s never been seen before. As a business owner, this gives you the opportunity to tap into the unlimited potential of Reddit advertising and take your brand to new heights. In this article, we’ll be outlining a step-by-step guide to using Reddit advertising, suitable for those who’ve never had a Reddit account right up to the platform’s biggest fanatics.
Sign Up to Reddit
Before you commit to Reddit advertising, it’s useful to take a look around the platform to get a feel for how people use the site, and the type of content that can be found there. As it’s primarily a discussion platform, try to get a feel for the conversations that are sparked within the communities that your business targets, so that you can engage with users in an authentic way.
Signing up to Reddit is a straightforward process, and all you need to do is submit your details and email address. After this, you can look into the best approaches for growing your business on the platform through a range of different advertising methods.
Decide on an Ad Type
Once you’ve set up your account, you can start advertising, but before this, you’ll need to decide which ads you’d like to run on the platform. There are two advert types to choose from:
Promoted Post Ads
If you’ve used Reddit before, you might be familiar with Promoted Post ads. These ads can be accessed through Reddit’s dedicated self-serve ad platform, so they’re more accessible than the Display Ads designed for larger organizations. When a user sees a promoted post, it will look similar to the organic content that people add to the platform, and simply contain a ‘promoted’ tag. These ads can be varied in how they connect with your audience and can include links that direct to either internal or external sites – perfect if you’re trying to send potential customers to a product site.
With Promoted Post ads, it’s important to remember that ads that keep your audience within Reddit will always perform higher, so where possible you should consider creating content on the platform that you can link to.
Display Ads
If you’re a large company looking to make a splash through Reddit advertising, then Display Ads might be for you. These ads are available only through the managed advertiser program that Reddit runs, so individuals interested in promoting their products or services this way need to reach out to the Reddit sales team for information.
These ads require businesses to invest a minimum of $30,000 into the campaign, but the outcome makes the process a highly worthwhile investment. With a dedicated account manager who will analyze the success of your account and provide detailed analytics reports, you can more accurately establish how successful your advertising campaign is and where your attention needs to focus.
While Promoted Post and Display ads come with their own benefits and disadvantages, there’s no right answer when it comes to which one you should select. What works best for your business will depend on your budget, your target audience and the type of brand image you wish to convey.
Pricing Your Campaign
For most social media campaigns, budgets can be easily determined based either on previous performance or estimates from within the industry. Reddit advertising, however, can be a challenging task when it comes to pricing your campaign. With the platform, your campaign will be priced via CPM (essentially, the cost-per-thousand impressions that your ad receives) and you’ll need to take part in an auction model to win advertising space.
This auction can be complex to understand at first, but in short, each interested party will bid for campaign space, and the winner will be whoever bid the highest. Unlike traditional auctions, however, they will only pay the cost of the second highest bid plus $0.01, so that pricing and expectations can remain fair.
When you set your budget, you can either choose to implement a daily budget or one that will cover the entirety of your campaign, and this is done through the desired CPM that you establish before bidding on advertising space. Once you’ve got a solid understanding of the CPM rates that you might be charged, you can come back to the space and decide whether Reddit is the most suitable platform on which you can advertise.
Top Tips When Advertising with Reddit
Once you’ve decided that you want to advertise on Reddit, you’ll be unlocking a host of opportunity for your business to tap into a market designed for sub-communities and niche interests to come together. There are three top tips that you can consider immediately when you turn to Reddit for advertising:
Establish Your Audience
On Reddit, there are a huge number of communities that center around a variety of different interests and topics. Because of this, you need to work out where your product or service fits into the market on the platform. By establishing your audience early on, you’ll ensure that whatever ad type you choose, you’ll be able to engage with the people you want to reach.
Stick to Your Budget
While it’s tempting to go all out on Reddit ads, it’s vital that if you’re using the service for the first time, you stick to your budget. Even if this is just a temporary measure, running a Reddit ad where you stay within your allocated funding will give you the clearest picture of success.
Monitor Your Ads
Finally, it’s important that you consistently monitor the performance of your ad cycle. Whether you’re a small business running a Promoted Post ad, or you’re going all out with a Display ad, monitoring your analytics is the best way to see whether the community you’re advertising to is interested in your product, and whether this interest translates to sales.
Reddit is a platform full of opportunity for business owners. By understanding the nuances of Reddit ads and following the top tips in this guide, you can be sure that the site will bring in a new, engaged audience.