Marketing your e-commerce website on Reddit is a good idea and in this Article, we will tell you why!
So, we tried out a test where we marketed a brand new website on Reddit and the numbers don’t lie.
We had over 3000 plus page views coming from Reddit alone to our website in less than 28 days.
All free traffic mainly from the United States.
We made over $300 in profit from traffic that was generated on Reddit.
The best part this was totally free, the audience was organic and all in all, we’ll say the marketing was effective!
This is the beauty of marketing on Reddit!
We tried organic marketing on many other platforms like Facebook groups, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest!
Yet, Reddit gave us the highest returns in the shortest amount of time!
It was like a gold mine when we figured out Reddit marketing, however we no longer concentrate too much on Reddit marketing and we will also tell why we made a concentration shift, in this Article.
If you are interested in getting insights from our own Reddit marketing experience, keep reading!
Why is Reddit marketing great ?
Here are the pros of marketing on Reddit;
- You don’t have to be popular to make viral posts;
this is one of the biggest pros of using Reddit marketing compared to other networks.
On Reddit, you don’t have to be popular to make a viral post or comment.
You just write something that is meaningful, helpful and does not appear promotional.
Redditors hate spam and self promotion.
By Redditors, we mean other Reddit users like yourself!
If your post or comment appears promotional, they will likely downvote you.
If you should make a meaningful post or comment and only include a link to your website, where it feels natural to do so!
You could get a lot of upvotes, lots of traffic to your website and even sales by making helpful Posts and Comment that do not appear promotional! - You get traffic from mainly the United states;
visitors that came to our site from Reddit, when analyzed, we saw that they mainly came from the United states.
This is good because traffic from this region on the internet space, is considered tier 1 traffic and often have the tendency to make more purchases online. - You get targeted traffic;
this is another big pro of using Reddit marketing!
You get targeted traffic, would you rather sell a soccer Jersey to Soccer fans or to people who are more interested in politics?
On Reddit, there are subreddit for example r/relationship which is a channel where people discuss exclusively about relationships!
If you had a gift bundle to market for couples, then you’d rather be marketing that on r/relationship and not r/politics!
How you market your website on Reddit matter because if your Posts or Comments look like you are trying to sell them something instead of contributing helpfully to the conversation then you’ll get your hand burnt, you could get down voted or even banned on that sub Reddit. - Your posts are engaged with by humans and not bots;
Reddit has a strong spam filtering system.
That is the flavor of Reddit. Just be so natural with your posts and comments so you don’t get causers in the spam filter yourself.
Here is why the Reddit spam filter is actually a good thing for your Reddit marketing effort; your Posts and Comments will be seen and engaged with by real humans and not bots.
Unlike Facebook groups, where we find lots of bot users and making a post is like shooting in thin air because most other users are bots who are programmed to sell you something.
On Reddit, it’s hard to actually set up a bot to market anything successfully. Chances are the bot won’t act like a real human, Redditors will notice this, down vote it and that bot will get banned on Reddit pretty quickly.
To market on Reddit you have to market with human wisdom (not AI program) and it’s great to know that you are communicating with other humans and not bots! - You can drive a lot of traffic in a short time;
You can drive so much traffic in a very short time!
You make a very helpful Post or Comment on Reddit and it can get lots of upvotes and lots of traffic in a single day!
The magic is to make a Post or Comment that Redditors find helpful!
The cons of Reddit marketing
- Not Scalable;
This has to be the biggest downside to Reddit marketing and the reason why we made a shift to not to focus so much on Reddit marketing anymore after being successful marketing on Reddit!
Organic marketing on Reddit is rarely scalable. At least we haven’t found a way to make it to work! If you do, please share with us!
By not scalable we mean that you have to market each day on Reddit to see any results for that day.
On Reddit, it’s difficult to build lasting momentum, the moment you don’t post or comment anything, it will only take a few days before you don’t get any visits from Reddit!
So, one day you posted on Reddit and got 3000 visitors. Your posts and links are still there on Reddit but after 2 or 3 days, you will be getting much less visits or no visits at all from that post.
This is how this differs from other marketing platforms; on Instagram, you build a following and you don’t post for like one week, whenever you post anything, a good percentage of your followers will see your post!
Although you can build a following on Reddit, we don’t think a good percentage of your Reddit followers get to see and like your posts, the way it works on Instagram!
Instead your post is mainly viewed by the Redditors of the Subreddit where you are posting and if they don’t like it, they can downvote it!
If you are a constant commenter some Redditors may like you but most times, your comments and posts are at the whims of Redditors upvoting or downvoting each time you post!
You are not judged by your pass history of sensible comments as much as you are judged by the sensibility of your present post or comment in which Redditors have to upvote or downvote!
It’s your present comment that determines by itself whether it will be upvoted or downvoted and that’s why you don’t have to be popular to make a viral Post or Comment on Reddit.
It is difficult to build or scale a business this way as the traffic flow is rarely consistent!
If you rely so much on Reddit, you will be like a salesman that has to go out on Reddit and make a good pitch to see any Results for the day!
So, when you are build a Business and a Reddit Salesman Career, you want a system that can carry it self even while you are on vacation!
You want a system that work even while you are asleep! You want a system with momentum that you can manage with minimal daily effort over time.
2. Reddit can shadow ban your account;
this happens with most other social media platform but with Reddit it is more rampant since you can get down voted with every post.
When Reddit shadow ban you, you are basically muted on Reddit.
You can Post and Comment but only you will see your Post and Comment and no one else!
To know if you’ve been shadow banned, you can check on the r/shadowban sub Reddit.
3. Reddit can permanently ban your account;
If your Posts and Comments on Reddit get downvoted too many times, Reddit can permanently ban your account throughout Reddit!
In this case, you won’t be able to make any post or comments on Reddit
4. You can get caught up in Reddit spam filter;
this can be fustrating because most times you don’t even know that your Posts or Comments have been caught in Reddit spam filter, you just realize that you are getting no likes or comments on your new Posts or Comments.
This can happen when you have a new Reddit account and you try to add a link to your Post or Comment.
The way Reddit works, if someone upvotes your post, you gain a point reward known as “Karma”. If someone downvotes your post, you loose your “Karma”.
If you are getting caught in the spam filter, you should try to make Posts and Comments without any links and build up your Karna first before including links in your Posts or Comments.
5. You can easily piss off Redditors;
Pissing off Redditors is the beginning of your Reddit marketing efforts going downhill but be bold to leave helpful Comments and Posts!
If you get some downvotes, it’s part of the Reddit experience. just don’t let the downvotes exceed the upvotes. Eventually you will learn what works.
6. You can get banned on a subreddit;
If you have too many downvotes in a subreddit, the moderators of that subreddit can ban you from it or if you do not follow the rules of a subreddit.
It’s important to read the rules of a subreddit before posting there to ensure you are following their rules!
The rules of a Subreddit can be easily found when you visit the subreddit page.
7. You may not have met the subreddit requirement;
Most subreddit impose a requirement such as a certain number of Karma to be able to Posts or Comments on that subreddit or a minimum Reddit account age.
If you have not met the Karma requirement to post or comment on the subreddit where you want to market your website, then go to a subreddit with low or no Karma requirement, make meaningful post there build you Karma before participating in your Subreddit of interest.
If it’s an Account age requirement that you haven’t met then be patient until your Reddit Account reaches the number of days or weeks required.
How to use Reddit marketing (our Recommendation)
We recommend using Reddit marketing if you want to do a short term marketing effort.
For example; if you want to drive traffic quickly to your store and text a product.
If you want a scalable marketing, then we do not recommend Reddit.
For the Long term marketing, Reddit is better used as what it is, a discussion Forum!
That is you find Reddit entertaining and you’d like to use like your preferred social media platform then use Reddit like every other Redditor, not a salesman.
You’d have to contribute in a helpful way to conversations without trying to fix a link there, that way, you’d get more Karma for being just helpful.
You can put a link to your website on your Reddit profile.
If someone comes accross your Post or Comment and finds it very helpful, they may want to check out your profile, they could see a link to your website, visit it and even become a fan.
It’s all a matter of probability and if you’re enjoying Reddit as a social media platform then you won’t have to be anxious if someone finds your link on your profile or not!
The chance of anyone visiting your site will just be one of the perks of engaging on a platform you already love to engage on!
We hope you found this Article helpful!
Happy marketing.
