Is Reddit good for marketing a SaaS app?

Gideon Oni-Becsen
27 replies
Has anyone used Reddit for non-paid ads before? Is Reddit a good channel for marketing, particularly for a SaaS solution?

Replies

Michal Mazurek
I help a lot of people market their SaaS on Reddit. Here is an example: https://syften.com/blog/post/one...
Gideon Oni-Becsen
Thank you as you give feedback. Kindly help with a tip or two also. Thank you.
Ryan Tando - Dezbor.com
I'd say yes, but now it's tricky. Some subreddits are very strict, so make sure to read the subreddit rules before promoting your SaaS. What I usually do is ask for feedback (if it's ok) instead of promoting it directly and don't forget to involve in other threads by commenting, you'll get more exposure and karma
Raja Simon
I'm not expert in this but when I was doing the user research few weeks back I contacted over 100 people on Reddit and 60 people are so responded to my DM. So I say it's pretty cool...
Nikola Velkovski
@rajasimon Hey Raja, what did you use for sending Reddit DMs?
Jareer Samad
Reddit can be a potentially great tool for SaaS marketing but most Reddit forum have strict rules for the type of content that can be posted. Anything remotely spammy can get blocked. That's why inspite of huge upside in reaching targeted customer segment, Reddit isn't that widely used for growth marketing.
Fabian Maume
Reddit has quite a lot of potential for SaaS but it is really tricky to use. This is an interesting source of information on the topic: https://mythos.one/brianswichkow... Howitzer for Reddit is also an interesting tool to check out. QApop will soon support Reddit, so I'm in the process of building a knowledge-based about Reddit marketing. I can let you know when it will be ready if you are interested.
Brian Swichkow
@fabian_maume thanks for linking me! Here's some additional info @gideon_bcxa 👉 https://inc.one/reddit
Fed
If your target customers have communities on Reddit, they yes as long as you do it right. Submissions are much more moderated than comments. It's possible to make self-promotional posts, but the rules of how to do so will vary by subreddit. A much more reliable way of promoting a SaaS app on Reddit is to participate in conversations where folks are asking for help that this SaaS can help. You can monitor for keywords around pain points, solutions requests, competitor names, and help people find your product in a respectful manner. For a full guide on how to do this, I've written it up in a blog post here: https://gummysearch.com/how-to/f...
Tony Yan
By my experience, reddit is good but need to follow the rules for the subreddit.
Adriel Yong
I think it can be depending on the vertical that you are looking at. For instance if you are building something for fashion brands/stores, a sub-reddit like malefashion advice and femalefashionadvice would be helpful for reaching them. Similar to Product Hunt, Reddit really helps those who are already active in the community and helping others! So try to do that first
Gideon Oni-Becsen
@adrielyongcj Thank you a whole lot for this feedback! It's a really useful one?
Harish Kumar
@adrielyongcj thanks for this comment...I was actually reading another comment from CEO of Product Hunt...Ashley Higgins...she joined PH from Reddit...the biggest difference here on PH and Reddit...here everyone is focused on giving overly positive feedback but less of direct and actionable feedbacks....whereas on the reddit, feedbacks are critical and direct and also more actionable....both are great media but Reddit has much more depth and substance.
Preeti Shah
My own experience is that Reddit is good for getting feedback and getting a discussion going. In the past I have also gotten good results with getting product community going on reddit. I am not sure how good reddit has been for lead-gen but I'd love to hear what others think.
Nikola Velkovski
Hey Gideon! Yep, Reddit is a fantastic marketing channel, if utilized the right way. I cannot advise a lot about Reddit Ads, as we haven't had success with those, but I can advise you regarding organic marketing and direct outreach. Organically promoting your product seems like a good idea, but often it's really hard to not get classified as self-promotor and get banned from that subreddit (especially if it's a subreddit like r/startups or the other more active subreddits), and IMO - it's really time-consuming to build that profile that "displays the message" (i.e. high karma account that provides a lot of value in that or similar community, without self-promoting). Feel free to reach out to @brianswichkow as he has been operating in both - the organic and paid, Reddit marketing channels. The third way - direct outreach, is enabled by our product Howitzer for Reddit (shameless plug here), and it allows you to do it at scale, without the need for a Reddit account. By direct outreach - I mean finding potentially interested Redditors (by keywords and subreddits), and reaching out to them through DM automation. This way, you can automate the whole process and put it on autopilot, until you start getting some interested prospects in your inbox. We encourage having a genuine, human conversation with your leads and warming them up before you try to sell them anything (make sure that they would be open to checking out or trying your product - permission-based marketing). Let me know if you need any help regarding this! :)
Gideon Oni-Becsen
@brianswichkow @nikola_v Thank you for your reply Nikola! Love this detailed tips of yours. Could we please chat via email then? Mine is gbecsen@aisely.com I'd be glad to know more. Thank you
Vidas Vasiliauskas
Depends how you are going to approach it. If you go for paid ads - you need to benchmark it against let's say Google Ads and see what performs better for your audience. If you want to use communities to promote, as already mentioned here - be aware of community rules and do not spam.
Harish Kumar
Reddit is based on micro-niches...in order to get traction on reddit, you need to really drill down to niche>>Sub niche and micro niche...so for example when you talked about marketing a SaaS app...its too broad for reddit community. You know that reddit is divided in to several sub-reddits and each of them are like micro-communities. So if you want to target redditors, you need to join several micro niches related to SaaS app...lets say you have an SaaS that helps to create ticket system for customer service on ecommerce platforms...you need to join subreddits focused on customers engagements on shopify...the point is you need to go micro niche on reddit. You need to perform ultra focused audience research. That is where I think you need to be super specific whom is your target audience. Last week we launched a product CrawlQ on Product Hunt and now we are also coming up soon with CrawlQ reddit add-on...using this you can research the micro-niches on reddit and create more resonating content ideas.... check out how CrawlQ can help for your SaaS app marketing on reddit.
Andrew E
Only if you're doing content marketing that is not an overt pump of your product -- they tend to rip those to shreds publicly. I'd also be careful have metrics on users who do subscribe, as there are many on Reddit who will demand refunds 10s after signing up because they really couldn't afford it in the first place but curiosity got the better of them. It can make churn rates look poor so be sure you have origins assigned to them so you can make sense of churn numbers later.
Daniel Engels
Reddit is one of the most dangerous means of communication for marketers. The community can be really harsh on commercial messages.