A marketer’s guide to Reddit

Thanks to its recent IPO, social media platform Reddit is a hot topic in many circles, including marketing. That’s quite the accomplishment for a company that’s been around for 20 years, which in internet terms is the equivalent of having lived when dinosaurs roamed. 

To help you understand the platform and determine if it’s a good channel for you to use, here is our marketer’s guide to Reddit.

What is Reddit?

Reddit is a social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website where users post content — links, text posts, images and videos —  which can be voted up or down by other members. Content is organized into user-created boards called “subreddits,” which focus on particular topics. It is known for its engaged community and is the 11th most-visited website in the world and 6th in the U.S.

It has more than 100,000 subreddits. These are moderated by volunteer users, so the quality of posts can vary. Many, like r/askscience (25 million subscribers) and r/askhistorians (2 million subscribers), are widely respected forums where experts respond to questions. That said, there are plenty that are as bad as the internet can get. Fortunately, because subreddits are topic specific it is easy for brands to avoid those.

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Its most popular features are the Ask Me Anything (AMA) events which have featured such luminaries as President Obama and Bill Gates, as well as actors, musicians, astronauts and more. While those are the top draws in terms of numbers, AMAs with topic experts can draw very well within a particular subreddit.

In December 2023, Reddit hosted more than 1 billion posts and more than 16 billion comments.

Demographics

• 63.6% of Reddit users are male.
• 44% of U.S. users are in the 18 to 29 age bracket.
• 31% are 30 to 49.
• 50% of Reddit users are from the U.S.
• 64% have a household annual income of $75,000+.

Dig deeper: Reddit testing new tools to help brands boost engagement

Usage

• Average 73 million daily active users (DAUs) in Q4 2023.
  • Meta had 3.19 billion DAU across all apps in January 2024.
  • Pinterest 498 million DAU in January 2024.
• Average 1.2 billion monthly active users (MAU) in February 2024, up from 430 million in 2019.
  • Facebook 3 billion MAU in January.
  • Instagram 2 billion MAU in January.
  • TikTok 1.6 billion MAU (est.) in January.
• 22% of the U.S. population has used Reddit (Facebook 68%, YouTube 83%).
• A significant number of Reddit users do not use other social media: More than 50% don’t engage with platforms like Pinterest, Snapchat, and X.
• Reddit’s 2023 average revenue per user (ARPU) was about $0.80 (Facebook $9.62)

Reddit marketing tactics

The keyword for marketing on Reddit is engagement — the more you do, the more response you will get. Many businesses run image and video ads and leave it at that, but here’s what the moderator of the company-run r/Redditmarketing says is the best practice.

Reddit is a quirky site and each community has its own do’s and don’ts (helpfully posted at the top of each subreddit). For example, no advertising is allowed on r/advertising. 

Laura Schiele, head of paid acquisition at Jordan Digital Marketing, says overall you need to have a humanistic brand voice and sound willing to poke fun at yourself. The more you know your audience, the better you will do — a real plus for B2B marketers.

“We have some companies where the audience is specifically engineers and we’ve had success with that,” she told MarTech. “If you have a community you want to get in front of, you can get them on Reddit.”

She also emphasizes that quality, tailored creative is important on Reddit. It’s good to use or refer to the site’s jargon or activities, but it has to be done in a low-key way.

The user base appreciates expertise and informed comment — two of B2B marketing’s strengths. Doing an AMA with the appropriate community and responding to other people’s posts and questions in a subreddit will go a long way toward building credibility. 

That’s especially important because many people go to Reddit to get product recommendations from other users. These can sometimes be early indicators of good or bad news. For example, the subreddit  r/buyitforlife is about the most durable, highest-quality consumer goods. Over the years I’ve seen early signs of brands’ rising as they get discovered and falling as their quality has declined.

More to know

When it comes to the specifics of advertising it’s important to know that 75% of the global Reddit audience accesses the site via mobile, so be sure to optimize for phones and tablets.

Because Reddit is all about finding the right audience it’s good to know there are several third-party analysis apps available. Additionally, the platform has updated Reddit Ads Manager with tools that help generate ad copy, edit assets, optimize campaign results, manage budgets and more.