I spent $50/Day on Reddit Ads for a finance app: 10-Day results and lessons
I'm building My Financé, which is a tool that allows you to understand your finances, and plan for the future.
I launched on PH in September, got some users and have been iterating.
I have so far observed that:
I am very good at churning users
Relatedly, I am very bad at converting users to paying customers
I have done a bad job at finding a narrow scope to be excellent at
From this, I considered if there is a way I could re-position the tool.
My thinking was:
personal finance -> no dopamine, dread, either already in a great place, or don't want to know.
quitting your job -> many people want to do this, very appealing, dreamy, something to work towards.
So I built some forecasting tools. One thing you can do with them is understand if you could reasonably quit your job, how long you could do it for, etc.
(source: https://demo.myfinancereport.com/plan-generic )
I was wondering if this messaging would resonate with users, so I figured I would try to run paid ads.
I also really didn't understand how ads worked and what to expect, so it seemed like a fun experiment.
I started running ads on Reddit and immediately got my ad rejected for it's crude nature:
I sat through various calls with their sales team trying to understand what I needed to do to get my ad to be approved.
Here is where we ended up:
and this is running on Reddit at around $50 per day.
so far after about 10 days:
very meh results. @GoatCounter reports about 313 page views from Reddit, with 2 people creating accounts and nobody fully converting.
I assume this is probably a combination of factors (in order of descending importance)
i don't think i'm really solving a problem people care about
i think my landing pages are probably weak in terms of social proof / legitimacy
i'm probably logistically doing things wrong with the ad campaign itself.
I'm not sure what I'll do next. I have more or less all the features in the tool that I personally want, so I may just occasionally write some posts about it (like this one) and let it simmer out there in the ether.
Replies
Based on the image provided with no background of your project, i have one question: As reddit user, why should i click on your image (ad), i do not see your USP. 😊
My Financé
@ghostzero good point! i think the unique selling point is automatic syncing of accounts + planning tools.
i.e we track the current state of your accounts / transactions / etc and can use that to accurately simulate plans with minimal setup.
minimalist phone: creating folders
Have you tried to outline the "wished result" in your visuals? We tested ads and found that those outlining the positive effects of the service performed better.
My Financé
@busmark_w_nika this is great advice! i hadn't really thought about the visuals like that, but will reconsider.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@catt_marroll Just notice more of the ads on social media that have huge engagement and try to analyse them.
$50/day is a real test of patience. Curious what subreddits and creatives you’re experimenting with.
My Financé
@sandy_leventh i've been mostly trying to target travel, climbing and van life subreddits. seemed like people that would be interested in leaving their jobs. (based on being a traveling climber who lives in a van and talks to a lot of people in that world)
Reddit ads have been a mixed bag for me. Spent a bunch on them in the summer only to be told by a Reddit rep that they weren't working well because Reddit has an annual "summer slump".
Thank you for sharing your story with real dollars.
I looked at the product. There are several thoughts I have gathered after landing the first page.
1. If I pay for it, what does the product promise me? What pain points does it address for me? The charts, tracking, transactions, etc. seem to be standard layout that one can find in almost any financial apps.
2. How can I convince myself that connecting my accounts would be secure?
3. The Reddit Ad content is eye-catching (btw I do not find it crude), but it seems to have a low correlation with the product. You have successfully said what many people have thought. But then how does the product help?
Your website mostly describe what your product does but not the problem you solve. I would focus on that before paying for ads. It doesn’t attract me to subscribe for some dashboards. As mentioned in other comments, focus more on problem solving. Same with the add, I would change the text in question.. if users are interested in the answer they click. “Your job stinks, Are You Financially Free Enough to Walk Away?..
My Financé
@roanschuurman thanks for posting. i think this is pretty helpful. im going to reframe the landing page a bit based on your feedback.
My Financé
@roanschuurman https://myfinancereport.com
I reworked the landing page to accentuate the problem and try to make it clear how we are solving it. Thanks again for your feedback!
I spent $1,000 on Reddit ads and got mainly robots. Have you tried verifying the quality of this traffic using tools like Clarity?
My Financé
@david_sitbon2 sounds plausible yeah. is clarity your tool? what does it do?
@catt_marroll Microsoft Clarity allows you to record user sessions, enabling you to replay users’ browsing on your website or app, which is highly useful.
My Financé
oh interesting, similar to datadog. probably the first time ive ever seen someone recommend an MS product in the wild!
@catt_marroll yes. The only MS product I’m using 😅. But it’s good and free.
@biswakesh7 ?
@dsitbon i wanted to know about it more ,like what was your ad content(vid or pic) ,was it a platform issue or ad optimization issue?
@biswakesh7 it's a quality of the traffic issue :) You get clicks, but they are not legit. Just robots or people clicking on your ad and leaving your website.
Have you tried promoting organically on Reddit?
Answering relevant existing questions
Astroturfing wherever its safe
Creating content with the keywords and questions that Google and LLMs may want to pick up
My Financé
@rohanrecommends im not a reddit user, so i have always been pretty intimidated by just randomly trying to post what feels like obvious promotion. maybe it is more socially acceptable than i realize?
@catt_marroll yes, some subreddits are easier and some are stricter. Key is to find how active and strict the mods are. :)
Thank you for sharing. Reddit feels like a unique place for ads. Possibility to target engaged niches who are generally skeptical of ads :D Good luck with your product!