Launching a new product on Reddit is notoriously tricky. The community is often resistant to advertising. Many subreddits even have an explicit policy against self-promotion.
So, as an entrepreneur, how can you use the 5th largest website in the US to connect with potential customers and get your product off the ground?
I'll walk step-by-step through how Wings Flight Club earned over 500 users from Reddit across three launches. And more importantly, how we cultivated a positive reputation in a tight-knit community.
Step 1: Find relevant communities
At Wings Flight Club, we build a subscription product that connects members with international flight deals based on their travel preferences. Naturally, we started by finding all of the subreddits related to travel.
Reddit has a directory of subreddits that makes building your initial list easy. The largest relevant subreddit is r/travel, with over a million subscribers. It has as many subscribers as the rest of the travel subreddits combined!
But we had one big problem: r/travel has an explicit ban on self-promotional content. In fact, they've included "self-promotion will be removed" directly in their subreddit description. 😅
As we continued searching, we found a smaller subreddit called r/Shoestring that is exclusively focused on saving money when traveling. A match made in heaven! This community has about 175,000 subscribers, and only receives new posts a few times a day. Importantly, their community rules allow self-promotion.
We decided to take a chance on this group for our first marketing experiment on Reddit.
Key Take-aways:
- Do not violate the rules of a subreddit. Find subreddits that will be accepting of you, even if they are smaller.
- Prioritize subreddits that more closely aligned with the purpose of your product. In our case, thrifty travelers were more valuable than travelers in general.
Step 2: Craft a personalized message, provide value
We got lucky with this one. Our product is specifically geared towards travelers with a thrifty streak. That said, we still needed to craft a message that would fit in well with other posts on r/Shoestring.
We noticed that many posts in r/Shoestring were about tips and tricks for finding cheap flights. People often asked questions about how to put together cheap itineraries, discussed tricks like searching for flights using the foreign version of Expedia, and shared incredible flight deals that they'd found on their own.
So, how did we use that research to craft our message? Here's the post we created:
At the time, our marketing page leaned heavily on how our technology and human curation made the product unique. But when we pitched to this community, we avoided all of that. We emphasized saving money. 💰
We received 672 unique visitors from that post, and 267 signups, which nets out to a 39.7% conversion rate. Because our post had high engagement, and people don't post on r/Shoestring very often, we had a consistent stream of traffic for a couple of days.
We were psyched! But the work wasn't over after hitting the "Post" button...
Key Take-aways:
- Read through a few pages of recent posts to understand the types of content that a subreddit likes to engage with. Figure out how you can offer something that is consistent with their expectations and interests.
- When you pitch your product, focus on a value proposition that the community will appreciate. Even if your product solves multiple problems, focus on the one that is the most relevant to them.
Step 3: Participate in the conversation
In the introduction, I mentioned that we are proud of the reputation we've cultivated in the r/Shoestring community. This reputation comes from participating in the conversation: answering questions, asking for feedback, fielding objections, and engaging with feature requests.
Responding to comments is an easy way to communicate your genuine interest in the community's ideas. Not to mention, "talk to your customers" is classic advice, and the comment section is a perfect place to do it.
13 of the 44 comments on our launch post were by me and my co-founder. We made a point of responding as promptly as possible.
Think about building buzz, too. When a redditor sees a post with many comments in their feed, it can be intriguing. A high comment count indicates that there may be an interesting conversation going on.
Key Take-aways
- In order to build a long-term and positive reputation in a subreddit, it is important to engage with the community members. When you're having a genuine conversation, it doesn't feel like marketing, and you can gain valuable insights directly from customers.
Step 4: Say "thank you"
For a young product, 267 new users from one marketing initiative is a big deal! We were motivated to thank r/Shoestring somehow.
We brainstormed a few ideas, which ranged from a heart-felt follow-up post to offering free access to our nascent Premium product.
While a kind thank-you post seemed nice, it just didn't feel like enough. And free access to our Premium product felt like it was too "Wings-centric" -- it could come off like another product pitch instead of a genuine thank-you to the community.
After browsing r/Shoestring in a creative lull, we were inspired.💡
A community member had recently posted that, with an hour of his free time on a Sunday, he'd use some travel hacks he'd learned to help other redditors find cheap flights. His post was a hit!
We decided to write some custom code to provide the same offer using Wings Flight Club's technology. Just tell us two cities you want to travel between, and we'll share the best price we can find. Here's the post we created:
Its hard to see in that photo, but our post received 197 comments. This post set the record for most all-time comments on r/Shoestring!
People asked us to help them find cheap flights to upcoming weddings, trips to visit their families, and adventures they were hoping to take. We had a blast.
This post wasn't optimized to drive traffic to Wings Flight Club. It was a text post, and even though we included links to our website, the call to action was for readers to participate in our thank-you offer. That said, we received 268 unique visitors, and 80 signups, which nets out to a 29.8% conversion rate.
Given that our post led with a thank-you offer instead of a product pitch, it isn't surprising that traffic to this Reddit post was less likely to convert.
For us, the mission was accomplished. We'd created a thank-you offer that the community genuinely appreciated.
Key Take-aways:
- Find a way to say "thank you" to the subreddit for helping you launch your product and giving you feedback. You have the opportunity to create an event around it.
- In your thank-you post, link back to your original launch post. Let the community see what you've contributed in the past.
Step 5: Follow up with future releases
If your product resonates with a community, and you've made to sure to express your gratitude for their engagement, you can feel comfortable coming back with more announcements later. The story of your product is now intertwined with the story of that community.
Just last week, we launched a feature that allows members to personalize the flight deals they receive based on their travel schedule. As part of our launch marketing plan, we wanted to share the news with r/Shoestring.
We wanted our post to remind r/Shoestring of their contribution to our original launch, and emphasize that the feature was inspired by their feedback.
Here's the message we crafted:
We received 347 unique visitors and 167 signups, which nets out to a 48.1% conversion rate.
Compared to our original launch post, the conversion rate increased by 10% (23% in relative terms). We attribute this to two factors. First, our value proposition changed as a result of our new personalization features. Second, we were able to anchor our message in past participation in the community, and we communicated that clearly in both the post title and description.
Key Take-aways:
- Once you've established a reputation in the community and confirmed that there's interest in your product, you can incorporate the subreddit into your launch marketing plan for new features.
- Whenever you write a follow-up post, take advantage of the title and description to remind the community of your past participation (and their past engagement).
Wrapping up
Overall, we achieved over 1000 unique visitors and over 500 signups from our efforts thus far.
The reality of successful marketing on Reddit is that it isn't perfectly reproducible. It hinges on finding a community that is both aligned with your product's value, and accepting of promotional posts.
When you find a community with these qualities, understand the kinds of conversations they have so that you can craft a personalized message. Prioritize participation in the comment section and be sure to say "thank you." Ideally, in a genuine and creative way.
Lastly, once you've built an audience and a reputation, continue to share progress on your product. People will be excited to hear from you!
Feel free to leave a comment below with any questions or ideas - I'd love to hear from you. Happy marketing 🎉