Reddit Ads for SaaS Business: A Complete Guide
November 28, 2023
When you’re looking at ways to advertise your SaaS, you may not immediately think of Reddit. However, Reddit doesn’t just serve reaction memes and cute animal photos – it also has a high-quality advertising platform you can use to promote your platform. This can make Reddit Ads a fantastic option if you’re looking for an advertising platform that appeals to your target customers.
In previous articles, we’ve looked at advertising on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, but how do you promote your SaaS business using Reddit Ads? Let’s take a look.
What are Reddit Ads?
Reddit Ads are ads that are served on the Reddit platform.
Reddit is a discussion platform where users (known as “Redditors”) can post stories, questions, images, and videos in specific threads (known as “subreddits” or “communities”).
These posts are then voted up or down by other community members, meaning the most popular posts appear at the top of each subreddit. The highest-rated posts may even appear on the Reddit home page!
Reddit originally started showing text ads on the platform in 2009 and introduced display advertising in 2013. These ads appear on the Reddit home page, subreddit feeds, and within specific posts.
One of the most unusual things about Reddit Ads is that the objective of your ad changes the way you pay for it. Depending on your goal, you can pay by cost per click, cost per view, or cost per thousand impressions (sometimes called cost per mille).
The objectives you can choose from include:
- Brand awareness ads – cost per thousand impressions
- Traffic ads – cost per click
- Conversion ads – cost per click. To take advantage of conversion ads, you must install the Reddit pixel on your website to track conversions. You can easily add this to Google Tag Manager or your Shopify pages
- Video ads – cost per view
- App install ads – cost per click
- Catalog sales ads – cost per click
The benefit of this approach is that you can align your spending with your specific goals, meaning you only pay for the results you’re interested in.
How to Get Started With Reddit Advertising
To get started with Reddit Ads, you need to sign up. You can do this with either your Google Account or a Reddit account.
If you opt to use a Reddit Account, we recommend creating a professional account for your business rather than using your own personal account.
Fill in your company details, including your name, website, industry, and location.
You’ll then be able to set up a campaign. Reddit Ads will give you the option to set up a “simple” or “advanced” campaign.
While the simple option is quick and ideal for beginners, advanced gives you more flexibility. This includes the ability to choose an objective, target specific keywords, and whether you want to include or exclude particular audiences.
Once Reddit Ads approves your ad, you can check out the dashboard to see how your adverts are doing and how much you’re spending.
The Benefits of Reddit Advertising
The key advantage of Reddit Ads is that you can target your ads with laser precision. As well as reaching Redditors across all communities, you can make your money go further by targeting specific interests and subreddits.
According to Reddit, there are over 100,000 active communities to advertise to!
For example, if your SaaS platform is aimed at accountants, you can advertise on subreddits like r/Accounting or r/FinanceNews. Reddit Ads tells you how many users each subreddit has and even suggests alternative communities to promote your adverts on.
If you use the advanced options, you can even specify which communities you don’t want to serve your ads to.
(Here’s a top tip: If you want to focus on subreddits with a high amount of subscribers or user activity, Redditlist will show you the most popular communities.)
Secondly, Reddit users are highly engaged. Fifty million people visit Reddit every day, and the average user spends over eight minutes on the site. This means that even if Redditors don’t click on your ad or view your video, you’ll quickly build solid brand awareness over time.
What can I Advertise on Reddit?
Reddit is quite flexible in what you can advertise; however there are some limitations in the ads policy.
For example, if you’re using Reddit Ads to hire someone for your SaaS company, you won’t be able to target by age or gender.
If you’re using Reddit Ads for lead generation purposes, you need to show that you are not gathering sensitive data or collecting user data through deceptive means. You also need to work directly with a Reddit Sales Representative.
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Get In TouchHow Much Does it Cost to Advertise on Reddit?
Like other PPC platforms, including Google Ads and Facebook Ads, Reddit Ads is auction-based. This means you determine how much you want to spend per action, and Reddit Ads selects the advertiser that bids the most money.
This means that the amount you pay depends on who else you’re bidding against.
However, according to Ad Spyder, the average cost per click for Reddit Ads is $0.44, much less than platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
Why the low cost? Reddit has less competition than other paid media platforms. Not only this, but the varied ad formats and ability to target narrow audiences make it easier to get ads in front of the right people, driving down the cost per click.
Important note: Reddit does have a minimum ad spend per day – $5. However, this is low compared to other platforms like LinkedIn, which you need to spend $10 a day on to run ads.
Top Tips for Creating a Reddit Ad Your Customers Will Love
If you’re used to creating ads on platforms like Google Ads and Meta Business Manager, you should find it easy to get to grips with creating ads on Reddit.
However, there are a few things to remember if you want to create ads that get prospective customers clicking. Here are our top Reddit advertising tips.
Get to Grips With the Platform First
If you’ve never used Reddit before, we recommend signing up for a personal account and joining the subreddits that you might be interested in advertising in. This will help you understand not just how Reddit works but how Redditors behave. This guide will even help you learn the language!
A lot of companies have come under fire in the past for using Reddit in an overly promotional way, and Redditors are not afraid to call them out on it!
Reddit is all about community, and the best ads are ones that engage prospective customers rather than being all about the hard sell. Redditors can comment on and upvote/downvote your ads, so deliver value, reply to any comments, and be your authentic self!
Look at The Competition
One of the easiest ways to create a great Reddit Ad is to look at the ads your competitors use. This lets you identify the imagery that prospective customers like, as well as the subreddits they serve ads to.
Adlibro has a free Reddit library so you can see examples of previous Reddit Ads – all you need to do is to create an account.
Consider Retargeting
If you install the Reddit conversion pixel on your website, you can use it to serve retargeting ads to customers who have previously visited a specific page on your website, for example, your pricing page. This can be a cost-effective way to drive conversions.
While we don’t have specific stats for Reddit Ads for SaaS, retargeted users are eight times cheaper to reach, with retargeted ads having a 292% higher conversion rate.
You can also upload your own audiences to Reddit Ads as custom audiences. So, for example, if you have a list of email addresses of customers signed up for your free pricing tier, you can target them with an ad encouraging them to upgrade.
Target Your Ads with Precision
Reddit gives you the opportunity to target specific interest groups and subreddits. You can use this to your advantage when promoting your SaaS platform. Rather than serve the same ad to different subreddits, create unique imagery and copy targeting specific pain points.
For example, let’s say you’re selling a CRM system. You can:
- Highlight how easy it is to keep up to date in r/sales
- Promote how it can help you create the perfect campaigns in r/marketing
- Talk about how it can make reporting quicker and easier in r/finance
Think about who you want to target, what subreddits they frequent, and how you can sell the features of your service to them.
Takeaways
Aimers.io: Your Reddit Advertising Experts
If traditional paid search ads aren’t delivering the right results, Reddit Ads is a fantastic way to find new customers for your SaaS business and foster a sense of community.
Our experienced team of Reddit Ads specialists will create, manage, and optimize Reddit Ads that drive clicks and conversions, making you stand out from the crowd.
And as a Top Reddit Advertising Company as awarded by Clutch, we’re the agency that customers trust!
Get started on your Reddit journey today – get in touch for a free consultation and take the first step towards success for your SaaS business.
Denis shares strategic expertise and forward-thinking approaches on driving brand growth and optimizing marketing efforts, leveraging his extensive experience.