8 Best Reddit Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Brand

Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, ChatGPT, and X/Twitter: these are the only websites in the world that have more traffic than Reddit, one of the ultimate platforms for digital marketers and online businesses.

Securing a place for your link on high-performance Reddit threads is gold, but it's easier said than done. With so many competitors aiming for that top spot, how can your promotional content stand out?

In this article, we will share the 8 best Reddit marketing strategies to grow your brand, focusing on actionable, tested-and-tried tips.

1. Follow the 90/10 Rule

The Reddit community is one of the most loyal, fierce, and astute online communities. When Redditors encounter promotional content, they are savvy enough to recognize it; moderators have an even sharper eye for detecting promotional posts and comments and often delete them, frustrating the efforts of Reddit marketers.

However, Reddit moderators don't remove all promotional posts. They only do so if the post adds no value to the conversation. Take the words of the moderator of the /letsplay subreddit, when explaining why promotional content was being removed from threads:

"While sometimes you do get quality posts which self promote 99% of the self promo posts I pull from this sub are people literally link dumping, or asking for non-specific "feedback". And this is the issue. In the overwhelming majority of instances, it's low quality content."

The lesson here? Promotional content isn't removed from Reddit because it's promotional, but because it adds no value! This is why the 90/10 rule is such a key Reddit marketing strategy. The rule is simple:

• 90% of your posts and comments should deliver value;
• 10% or less should be your CTA (reference to a product, link to a landing page, etc.).

If you prioritize value when marketing on Reddit and use 10% or less of your message for "subtle self-promotion", you drastically increase your chances of creating content that stays on Reddit.

2. Gain Trust With Insightful Content

As we've seen, creating value on Reddit is essential for successful self-promotion. And what's one of the best ways to do so? Producing or sharing insightful content with authentic data. This applies to original scientific studies, unique statistics, industry reports, and so forth: basically, information Redditors can't find elsewhere online.

The Reddit community loves in-depth discussions, authentic data, and content such as graphs and charts. The subreddit r/dataisbeautiful, for example, has over one million weekly visitors and 10.000 weekly contributions.

3. Use High-Karma Accounts

Using high-karma accounts is one of the most challenging, but key, aspects of a successful Reddit marketing strategy. According to the platform's self-promotion guide, sharing valuable content is not enough to ensure Reddit doesn't flag you as a spammer:

"We're not making a judgement on your quality, just your behavior on reddit. Your stuff's probably amazing and someone would be really interested in it but...

If you submit mostly your own links and your presence on reddit is mostly for your self-promotion of your brand, page, blog, app, or business, you are more likely to be a spammer than you think!"

This means that, even if you're regularly posting quality, high-value content on Reddit, your account can still be flagged as spammy if you behave like a spammer. Using high-karma Reddit accounts is the solution because, if only a portion of your posts are promotional, then they will probably not be removed.

Growing or accessing high-karma Reddit accounts isn't always easy, but here are some strategies that tend to be effective:

• Farm karma by posting on established subreddits (main recommendations include r/askreddit and r/nostupidquestions).
• Don't post links while your account is new (wait until you have some karma).
• You can publish on subreddits related to your niche, but try to diversify. Real Redditors don't just comment on "e-commerce" or "SaaS" threads; they use the platform for everything from ranting about movies to checking cute cat memes.
• If necessary, buy third-party high-karma accounts and use them for your promotional posts and comments.

4. Talk Like a Redditor

Like most online communities, Redditors communicate using specific jargon and expressions. Learning how to talk like them is a great strategy for fine-tuning content that's not as easily identified as promotional. Think about it this way:

• If you visit a foreign country and don't know how to speak the language, people will know right away you're a foreigner;
• If you know the language, maybe people will believe you're one of their own;
• So, if you go on Reddit and speak like a Redditor, nobody will think you're just using the platform for self-promotion.

To really talk like a Redditor, you should get involved with the Reddit community and use the platform for fun, not just for self-promotion. It's hard work, we know, but, fortunately, some helpful notions can make your job easier:

• Memorize the most popular Reddit terms, including acronyms such as OP (Original Poster), DAE (Does Anyone Else), or TIL (Today I Learned).
• Use headlines and expressions that do well on Reddit. According to research, "If You Have" and "What is the" are among the most popular phrases in niche subreddits.
• Format content using bolds and italics to show that you have a handle on how Reddit works.

Most importantly, though, talking like a Redditor requires acting like a Redditor!

The Reddit community is incredibly diverse, but the standard Redditor tends to:

• Use a casual tone (talk to friends, not customers);
• Favor a dry, ironic style of humor;
• Share short, straight-to-the-point messages (research shows the ideal Reddit post should be under 120 characters).

5. Be the First to Hit Promising Threads

Everybody wants to have a link in the Reddit pages ranking number one for niche keywords - that includes you and all of your competitors! Because of this, it can be hard to be seen or even post content that sticks in established subreddits.

Hitting promising threads early on is a smart strategy for getting ahead, as you'll drastically increase your chances of having the most upvoted post/comment and securing a visible spot for your link from the get-go. As the thread becomes more popular on Google, so will your promotional content.

To find promising threads, search threads in your niche and filter the results by newest to oldest.

6. Ask For Help

If there's one thing Redditors love, that's helping a fellow Redditor. So, here's a nice hack: create content that asks for something instead of offering something.

Imagine that you want to promote your new landing page with a table comparing the best GEO agencies; you may feel tempted to create a post like this:

"Hey guys, I have been searching for the best GEO agency and found this helpful [link to your page]. You should check it out, they have all the answers there!"

Unless you're lucky, this post won't stick or, at minimum, generate a lot of responses; try something like this instead:

"Hey guys, I want to hire a GEO agency for my pet products company, but I'm completely lost. I found this [link to your page] online, and it has some pretty good info, but I'm still undecided. Any ideas?"

The second post is superior to the first because it makes you look more genuine and inspires Redditors to take action, recommending and sharing experiences about their favorite GEO agencies.

Extra tip: Be specific in your Reddit posts to establish trust and authenticity. Redditors will find you more believable if you mention a "pet products company" than if you just mention "a company" or no specific company at all. The more creative and random the example, the better!

7. Monitor Results

Tried-and-tested Reddit marketing strategies can help you find success on the platform, but you only know whether they're working or not if you monitor results.

These are the best methods for tracking your Reddit marketing efforts:

• Collect important Reddit metrics for each post: number of upvotes/downvotes, comments per post, saves, visibility period, etc.
• Add UTM parameters to your Reddit links to gather Reddit traffic data. To make sure Redditors don't notice, use link shortener tools such as TinyURL.
• Compare subreddits to identify which have driven the most engagement (this can help you know which subreddits are worth the effort).
• Use Google Analytics to monitor your Reddit referrals.

8. Get Professional Help

Our previous Reddit strategies are perfect for marketing teams, but how can you successfully promote on Reddit when you simply don't have the time or human resources to do so?

Because Reddit marketing is hard and time-consuming, getting professional help is sometimes the best solution. After all, why should you spend years learning how to master Reddit marketing when you can collaborate with professional marketing agencies that will deliver results?

Our Reddit marketing agency, Red-Engage, can help your business promote on high-ranking threads and build its reputation on the platform. We also offer professional GEO services for increasing AI search visibility.