How To Advertise On Reddit When Dropshipping in 2020

What social media platforms do you use to promote your dropshipping store? Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter? Yep, everyone does use them! But what’s about Reddit? Do you advertise on Reddit your online store?

If not, you should give it a try. And from this article, you’re going to find out how you can pull it off.

Birds of a feather flock together.

These are the best words to describe this popular site and how Reddit looks like. Its huge community exceeds 300 million people. Reddit users get together in different groups, called subreddits, depending on their interests. There, they share news, post different pieces of content, and discuss various related topics.

When you’ve signed in, you initially subscribe to some relevant subreddits such as Technology, News, Science, etc. Then, you can easily narrow down your focus and find passionate communities on almost any topic.

At first glance, it may seem to be a perfect ad platform for your dropshipping store. Indeed, you don’t need to dig deep looking for people interested in your niche, i.e. your target audience. The users do this job for you by creating subreddits.

However, it’s trickier than you think.

The one thing its users have in common is their suspicion of marketers. Even such celebrities as Morgan Freeman and Woody Harrelson fell victim of it. Their movies’ promotional campaigns on Reddit went down in flames.

On the other hand, some entrepreneurs successfully use this social platform to display advertising and get advantages for their business. A shining example of such good experience is Elon Musk and his AMA (Ask Me Anything).

The point is, to advertise on Reddit, especially when talking about a dropshipping store, you need to choose the right approach. And to figure it out, the first thing we need is to understand how this social network works, and evaluate its advertising options.

How does Reddit work?

How does it work?

Or

What is going on?

These are the first questions crossing your mind when you see your Reddit front page for the first time. You stumble on a bit unfriendly interface and can’t make heads or tails of what people actually do there. These may put you off in the beginning.

But, if you spend some time on Reddit, you’re going to find your feet and see the point. Reddit is a huge and dedicated community with its own culture and rules.

Different content which goes viral on the Internet has its first appearance there. That’s why sometimes Reddit is called the front page of the Internet.

The website is based on anonymity. Its users usually don’t reveal their real names and any private data. At the same time, the community doesn’t let them misuse this. On the platform, you’re in plain view.

Every Reddit user is considered from the level of value they’ve brought in the community.

To measure this level, each Redditor has so-called karma so that everyone can see how trustworthy and useful they are.

There are two types of karma displayed on your Reddit profile. Link karma and comment karma. The first one is for the blog posts you’ve submitted, the second – for the comments you’ve left.

How do you get it?

Every time you post or comment on something, Redditors decide if it’s relevant or valuable by voting it to go “up” or “down”. There are special arrows for this on the left of each post or comment.

So, the more upvotes you get, the higher your contribution in the community (and therefore, karma) is.

The similar story is with the posts you submit. The bigger is the submission’s score (“ups” minus “downs”), the higher position on the user’s front page it has.

However, it won’t last long.

Reddit wouldn’t be itself if the same content stayed on the top for a long time. It has its own special ranking algorithm.

12-hours old post should have a ten times bigger score than a new one to get a higher position on a user’s front page. So, each post stays there for about 24 hours on average.

Now, you have a clue on how the website works by and large. So, it’s time to move on. How can you advertise on Reddit, if speaking about your dropshipping store?

What you need to advertise on Reddit

As you can see, the things that work on Facebook or Instagram won’t do the trick on Reddit. Any straight promotion could freak Redditors out and you’ll end up being banned.

Well, what should you do to turn this platform into a source of traffic to your online store?

• Build trust

You should put the community before everything else.

That’s the main rule of Reddit.

Show that you value the community and it’s going to respond in kind. You’ll become a part of it.

For this, you need to gain decent credibility. Which, in turn, is going to reflect on your karma. Redditors will be able to look into your profile history and make sure you’re worth their trust.

Before this, trying to choose some advertising options to promote your online store doesn’t make any sense. As we’ve mentioned, Reddit users can’t stand any explicit promotion as marketing agencies do.

The remedy to build the necessary trust on Reddit is pretty simple. Start participating in community discussions.

Yes, it takes some time. But, you need to learn about some specific things making Reddit different from other social networks.

For instance, the community uses its own language. There are many words and abbreviations you need to get used to.

When you start speaking with Redditors in their language, you can weigh in with your contribution to the discussions.

Join subreddits and bring your piece of value there. Give detailed information on the issues, upvote other users, share some interesting stories, etc.

Keep it in mind: your comments and posts should be relevant and useful. Otherwise, you’ll get plenty of downvotes, and your karma will go down.

• Find suitable subreddits

When you’ve earned enough karma to be taken seriously by Reddit users, you can start working out your promotion.

The first step is to define targeted subreddits where your advertisement could look relevant.

The main rule of Reddit is being useful for the community. So, you should choose subreddits where your store and products could bring some value.

When you’ve found such subreddits, spend some time pinning down what their subscribers approve of and what they can’t stand.

• Look for the best content marketing strategy

You’re not the only one person who wants to turn Redditors into their clients, and reach high conversion rate.

Many entrepreneurs consider Reddit as a source of traffic for their online business. And some of them have achieved great results. They’ve managed to create interesting content that works.

You should put into practice tried-and-tested ways to get along with Redditors. It doesn’t mean that you need to copy and paste the other users’ posts. But, you should build your content around the successful experience of the others – improve and refine it.

• Post relevant content (but don’t make you Reddit advertisements too obvious)

When you know where all the bodies are buried, it’s time to act. Time to launch an ad campaign on Reddit.

You’ve got two options to public your content there. The first one is to submit an external link leading to a website. The second is to create a text post.

Apart from avoiding explicit promotion, you should serve ad of some value for Redditors. The things that they are always happy to see are:

• Humor
• Political issues
• Interesting facts providing knowledge

Make your imagination work and you’ll get the most passionate and engaged customers.

How to advertise on Reddit with paid promotions

Of course, you also have an opportunity to advertise dropshipping on Reddit for money, as anywhere else.

It allows you to create a promoted post that is going to be pinned at the top of a subreddit’s front page. Thus, every subscriber can see it.

Just click on the “Advertise” line in the light column on the page (you’ll need to scroll down a bit).

And start setting up your promotional campaign. Give it a name and choose the location you want to target – for example, the United States.

Then, pick the specific subreddits you want your ads on Reddit to come up.

Don’t forget to specify the devices your promoted Reddit post should be visible on. It could be desktops, or mobile phones and tablets, or both of them. Usually people don’t go to links when using tablets or phones. So, it may be reasonable to choose only desktops.

When you’ve done with this, it’s time to set your budget. It’s important to mention that if you use Reddit paid advertisement you do not pay for clicks – you pay for impressions (for each 1000 impressions). It means that when Redditors have seen your ad 1000 times, you have to pay your bid. It doesn’t matter how many times they’ve clicked on your link to the landing page.

Considering this, giving money for your commercial doesn’t ensure its success. Even in this case, it’s extremely crucial to be a part of Reddit community and follow the rules we’ve listed while creating your ad. Only this way, you can make Redditors pay attention to you. Otherwise, you’ll just spend your money in vain.

How to advertise on Reddit: recap

At first sight it may seem that it’s not a good idea to advertise on Reddit. In fact, the interface of the website is not as attractive as it may be.

The algorithm of news feed sorting is complex. Explicit promotion is not well-accepted by Redditors. Due to this reasons many entrepreneurs are highly likely to give up the idea to use Reddit as an ad platform.

However, we have already found out that, actually, there is nothing challenging about advertising on Reddit. At the same time, the potential of this social networks is enormous. That’s why it gets clear that advertising on Reddit can become a vital tool when running a dropshipping business.

So, let’s remember what you need to do if you want to advertise on Reddit.

• Build trust

You should keep it in mind that this social networks differs a lot from others. First of all, according to the main rule of Reddit, you should deserve the attention to your account. So, you need to start participating in different discussions.

Here comes two tips for you. Don’t forget that other Reddit users are able to see the history of discussions you have joined. What is more, Reddit uses its own language. There are many words and abbreviations you need to get used when communicating with the other Redditors.

So, if you use particular abbreviations and so on, it will indicate that your contribution to the discussion is very high.

• Find suitable subreddits

Then, you may start promoting your products. But please don’t forget that you content should be of some value for your target audience. That’s why this aspect requires special attention.

• Look for the best content marketing strategy

Since you’re not the only person who has chosen Reddit as the main source of traffic to your website, you should choose the right marketing strategy. Try to look at other Redditors, which strategies they use. Then choose the most effective and think of how to make them proficient.

• Post your content

When posting your content, you need to remember that it should be useful for other Reddit users. To make a post you have two options: submit a new link and submit a new text post.

• Use paid promotion

You also have an opportunity to place paid ads on Reddit. So you can create a post that will be pinned at the top of a subreddit’s front page. When launching a paid ad campaign, you can choose a location, subreddit, etc.

Advertising on Reddit is not as straightforward and fast process as promotions on Facebook, Instagram, etc. But, if you want to have the most dedicated clients for your online business, it’s definitely worth trying. If you have more questions about Reddit promotion, please left them in the section below. We’re happy to answer.