Is Reddit B2B marketing’s best kept secret?

How many channels make up your marketing strategy?

While we were putting together our The B2B Content Marketer’s Handbook this year, we spoke with one expert about the most popular channels for content promotion. Unsurprisingly, their opinion was that LinkedIn and Meta make great bookends of a B2B strategy. And they’re entirely correct. This is primarily because one is where people go for work stuff and the other is where people spend their free time. It all makes perfect sense – but is there a neglected opportunity if you only pursue these channels?

We were recently exploring the archives of the Radix blog and found a post from 2016 about using Reddit as a marketing channel. If you’re raising a quizzical eyebrow right now, you’re not alone – it was news to me too. But it turns out, that post may be more relevant now than it was when it was written.

The community forum site has recently overtaken Facebook as the second most visited website in the US, and there has been increasing talk on LinkedIn about its value as part of a B2B strategy. But when we asked our team, a collection of B2B writers with an average of nine years’ experience, not one of us could recall Reddit ever being mentioned as part of a client’s strategy.

So, is Reddit B2B’s best kept secret? Are people actually using it? Or is this an example of where what makes sense in theory doesn’t quite work out in practice?

To figure this out, let’s first look at the benefits Reddit might offer for B2B marketers.

New to Reddit?

You may know Reddit as a vast online community forum, with more than 138,000 ‘Sub Reddits’ devoted to various interests, from information technology to random musings.

What you might not know, however, is its potential for marketing. Here are some quick stats:

• 51% of all online purchasing discussions take place on Reddit²
• 90% of users trust Reddit to learn about products and brands³
• 5x higher ROAS when customers come from Reddit⁴

¹ Brandwatch, Global, Oct 2023 – Mar 2024² YPulse, US, 2021³ Brandwatch, Global, Oct 2023 – Mar 2024⁴ Luth Research, 2021, US

The power of Reddit as a platform is that its users go there for information from like-minded peers. It’s essentially a vast network of little online hangouts where people hide from their emails. Which means if you find an appropriate sub, you have access to a virtual room full of your target audience.

For instance, r/artificial, a sub dedicated to AI and machine learning, attracts 263,000 weekly visitors. The people in subs like this might not always be the people making buying decisions, but if they’re not, they’re probably people who your product is designed for, and therefore the ones who can influence those decisions.

Theoretically, this makes Reddit a great place to put ads to reach your audience. And with so many buying journeys beginning or passing through there, it’s also a great place to openly (and transparently) share product information. But there is another use case that may prove just as valuable.

The importance of being a good listener

Reddit is where people go for expert advice on various subjects. (Or at least advice, you can’t always guarantee its quality because…well, it’s the internet.)

This can be anything from cloud technology to specific software solutions, with many products having their own dedicated subs. This makes it the ideal environment for learning about your customers’ or prospects’ challenges and needs.

By monitoring these conversations, you open up a world of possibilities. Some of those stretch beyond marketing and are related to things like enhancing the customer experience. For instance, by having employees in Reddit subs, you can respond to queries or even inform product updates based on frequently asked questions or requests.

You can also learn something about how competitor solutions are performing. What’s missing from the latest iteration of their product? Is there an element of yours that solves this issue that you can promote in your marketing?

As a listening platform, Reddit offers many advantages. But pursuing those advantages does require a certain amount of dedication. There are no shortcuts. You can’t just post and run; you need to spend time listening, establishing yourself as a credible voice, answering community questions, starting discussions, and providing valuable tips.

And this might be one of the reasons many B2B marketers aren’t using it. It’s something that takes time – and we could all use a little more of that.

But there is another reason…

Authenticity is key

The USP of Reddit is the authenticity of its communities. And that’s great, but also problematic. Problematic because it means people don’t want necessarily want to be marketed to there. At least not beyond the ads we’ve all become accustomed to on websites. Instead, people want genuine answers, and there’s nothing less trustworthy than a sales pitch disguised as an answer.

That poses an interesting challenge for marketers. Because although the value of having communities full of your prospects is fairly clear, as is the ROI of any ads you place there, it’s very difficult to demonstrate the value of the hours you spend listening and engaging in conversation.

Welcome to the world of GEO

Perhaps one of the reasons we’ve heard so much about Reddit as a B2B channel in recent months is because of the rise of generative engine optimisation (GEO).

If you’re not familiar with GEO yet, it’s essentially SEO for the AI age. At this nascent stage of the AI boom, most of us are still trying to figure out what the inner workings of GEO mean for our content and how to get the best out of it. Much like SEO, it’s very likely that the rules around writing for GEO will continue to change, making keeping pace a Sisyphean endeavour.

What we can say for sure, however, is that Reddit has been very good at elevating GEO results, largely due to paid partnerships to feed  AI overviews and ChatGPT responses. These overviews are designed to summarize helpful, conversational, and community-generated content. And that’s Reddit in a nutshell. However, this isn’t without its problems.

The result of Reddit’s influence on AI has been ‘GEO stuffing’; people spamming Reddit subs with mentions of their product to rank higher in results. That, and the rather huge problem that information on Reddit often can’t be verified, has caused ChatGPT to draw from the site less and less in recent months.

What this means for the future as algorithms evolve is anyone’s guess. But finding a way to get the most out of the platform may still yield significant benefits when it comes to helping people find and engage with your brand.

Are you using Reddit?

It seems there are some clear benefits to Reddit as a B2B platform. But also some drawbacks in terms of the amount of time that must be invested for anything beyond just placing ads, and the difficulty proving the return on that time investment.

For most B2B brands, it’s hard to look past the mainstays of LinkedIn and Meta for marketing activities. After all, budgets aren’t infinite and change can be scary. However, there may be some value in experimenting on a small scale with something new.

What do you think? Are you using Reddit for your B2B marketing? If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts.