How to Leverage Reddit PPC Ads to Reach Niche B2B Audiences

Reddit is an underutilised platform for targeting those in the B2B SaaS space. But according to recent statistics, its ad revenue is growing suggesting more and more businesses are starting to realise the value of using the platform.

With unique ad types that allow for direct engagement with B2B professionals, investing in Reddit ads can put a business ahead of its competitors and increase overall visibility and brand trust.

Reddit’s user base is predominantly in the 18-39-year-old category and 65% of B2B buyers are now under 40, making Reddit a prime platform to start conversations, build brand authority, increase trust, and drive conversions.

Why Reddit is an Untapped Resource for B2B Marketers

Reddit is a PPC platform B2B marketers often ignore, but it offers unique opportunities for driving new traffic to your site.

Instead of general user demographics, Reddit works based on communities (Subreddits) that bring like-minded people together to discuss certain topics. A Subreddit’s focus can be based on interest, industry or profession, offering B2B marketers new ways to target specific audience segments.

Usually, the people discussing high-level B2B topics on Reddit are extremely knowledgeable, passionate, and often high up in their respective companies. This makes Reddit an ideal place to engage in meaningful conversations and target users for B2B lead generation.

As Reddit is community-driven, the environments where these discussions occur feel authentic and foster trust. Brands that use Reddit PPC ads strategically in these Subreddits convey a feeling of authority and trust. They can offer highly relevant solutions to a potentially untapped niche audience other platforms have missed.

How Does Reddit’s PPC Ad Platform Work? Key Features for B2B Success

Reddit ads, much like Google Ads, offer an auction-based system for “winning” B2B advertising space with costs determined by factors like relevance and competition.

But that’s where the similarities end.

Reddit has a unique set of targeting and bidding options, not seen on other PPC platforms. Within the platform, they offer two ad types: promoted posts and high-impact offerings.

Reddit Promoted Posts

• Image ads
• Video ads
• Carousels
• Free-form ads: Reddit’s new free-form ads let you combine text, images, videos and other content into one long ad for storytelling or feature promotions.
• Conversation Ads: Blend into ongoing conversation threads for better contact with high-intent leads.
• AMA’s (Ask me Anything): Host an AMA in a top B2B Subreddit and let industry professionals come to you with questions about your business and the industry as a whole to showcase expertise and build an authentic relationship with potential leads.
• Dynamic Product ads (in BETA): Shopping ad solution primarily aimed at B2C businesses, but could be used to highlight particular software add-ons.

Reddit High-Impact Offerings

• Reddit Takeover: Get the top spot on Reddit’s homepage and most popular pages for 24 hours. This is usually reserved for high-level companies looking to reach broad audiences.
• Front-page Takeover: This works similarly to a whole Reddit takeover with promotions on home and popular pages.
• Category Takeover: Useful for high-level targeting of up to 15 verticals at once with additional ad-type options like banners and promoted posts.
• First-view Ads: Be the first thing users see on Reddit’s most visited pages.

Within those types, there are several ways to target your B2B audience via audience segmentation and different pricing approaches depending on the objective.

Targeting Niche B2B Audiences on Reddit: Finding Subreddits & Audience Segmentation

One of the most unique ways to target B2B audiences on Reddit is by taking advantage of its interest and community targeting options.

Community and Interest Targeting Using Reddit PPC Ads:
Interest targeting displays your ad to Redditors based on the topics they usually engage in. This is particularly useful in the B2B SaaS market where you can target highly relevant niche discussions that would only take place on specific company levels.

Community targeting is based on the Subreddits your potential leads engage with.

For example, a B2B SaaS company that wants to target those looking at different workflow tools and growth opportunities would target Subreddits like r/GrowthHacking, r/SaaS, or r/SaaSSales, etc.

Finding the Right Subreddits for B2B Ads

One of the easiest ways to find Subreddits for community targeting is to type keywords, queries, and pain points in search engines, add ‘Reddit’ to the end, and see what Subreddits and posts pop up. From there, check how often they’re updated and engagement levels to assess whether they’re worth targeting.

Some sites and platforms like RedditList also offer complete Subreddit search lists which you can filter by keywords (B2B, SaaS etc.) to find relevant and appropriate Subreddits. There are also many Subreddit lists on Reddit itself to explore.

Segmenting Your Audience for Reddit PPC

Using other audience segments across your ad groups is important as it complements community and interest targeting. These two target types can be used alongside other strategies that include the more recognisable targeting options Reddit shares with Google and social media PPC ads:

• Keyword targeting
• Custom audiences
• Device and location targeting
• Demographics

Budgeting and Bidding Strategies for Reddit PPC Ads

Reddit Ads offer a minimum buy-in of $5 a day. But when choosing an objective for a Reddit ad, the budget and bidding strategy change according to the metrics tracked.
These include:

• Engagement
• Reach
• Page visits
• Content views
• Conversion metrics: Sign-ups, leads, purchases and revenue.

For all of these, and based on the campaign, the three main types of bidding strategy are:

• CPC (cost-per-click): For B2B brands focussing on lead generation, this method ensures you only pay for direct engagement.
• CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions): Ideal for B2B brands looking to increase overall brand awareness and authority by positioning the ad to a wider audience.
• CPV (cost-per-view): For video ads. This B2B PPC tactic is particularly useful when trying to showcase specific products, and features, or explain complex solutions (thereby increasing brand authority).

Creating Effective Reddit Ads for B2B Campaigns

As a no-nonsense platform that values honesty and open discussion, Reddit ads need a different approach from those on other PPC platforms.

1. Prioritise Authenticity and Pain Points

Focus on addressing specific pain points relevant to your niche audience. Using language that reflects common frustrations in a Subreddit’s discussions positions your company as one that listens and provides solutions, rather than blindly markets to them.

Reddit’s culture rejects promotional language and direct selling tactics have the potential to backfire. Instead, prioritise informative, value-driven content and focus on blending into the community with insights, tips or educational content.

2. Incorporate Storytelling and Thought Leadership

Try using your Reddit PPC ads to share relatable experiences, case studies or success stories that highlight why your B2B business is different. Storytelling feels more personal, which is something Reddit audiences engage with at higher rates.

If you can then use those skills to highlight your B2B business success with original insights and solutions, Reddit audiences will react more positively to your content.

3. Take Advantage of Reddit’s Unique Ad Options

There are tactics you can use on Reddit that don’t work on other PPC platforms. AMAs and conversation ads offer you a unique way to communicate directly with your audience. This builds important relationships with high-level industry professionals, allowing you to engage on a broader scale than hosting your webinar (for example).

Direct engagement on this level shows B2B professionals your business is approachable and informative and values its community highly, leading to higher levels of engagement and conversion.

Monitoring and Optimising Your Reddit PPC Campaigns for Better ROI

Depending on the campaign, Reddit ads track different PPC metrics for success.

Engagement Metrics

• Upvotes/downvotes
• Comments
• Shares
• Clickthrough rate (CTR)

Awareness Metrics

• Impressions
• Reach
• Frequency

Conversion Metrics

• Conversion rate
• Cost-per-acquisition (CPA)
• Return-on-ad-spend (ROAS)

While you could track all of these, the top five most important are:

• CTR: This shows the overall effectiveness of your engagement. Calculate your CTR by dividing clicks by impressions and multiplying by 100.
• Conversion rate: How many users make it from clickthrough to meaningfully engaging by becoming a lead/converting. Divide the number of conversions by clicks and multiply by 100.
• CPA: How much does acquiring each lead or conversion cost? Divide your total ad spend by the number of conversions to compare the price to the potential revenue you could receive off a lead.
• ROAS: Was your campaign financially successful/worth it? You can judge this by dividing total revenue by total ad spend for an overall picture of campaign success.
• Engagement: The higher the engagement levels the more it suggests your Reddit ad invoked a user reaction. Divide the total number of reactions by impressions to understand your ad’s content quality.

Monitoring these metrics is essential to gaining a clear, big-picture view of your campaign’s success and how your audience feels about your brand.

Don’t forget to set check-in times continually across your campaign to assess the overall campaign rates and adjust your strategy promptly to changes in engagement. Establish benchmarks and KPIs to identify trends and shifts in industry patterns and react accordingly to changes in the market.

A/B testing is useful here to trial different pieces of copy, image and CTA to see which appeals most to your audience.

Tracking Reddit PPC Ads

Like any PPC platform, you can track the success of your B2B Reddit Ads within the platform’s business portal. Be sure to set up the Reddit pixel on your website so you can get a complete overview of the user journey and their behaviour after leaving the site.

Reddit also allows you to use UTM parameters to compare and cross-reference traffic in Google Analytics and importantly can integrate with other third-party tools. That allows you to add its information to your unique business dashboards for standardisation and comparisons.

How Common Ground Can Help You Leverage Reddit PPC Ads for B2B Success

Common Ground have a long history of success in B2B PPC advertising. We believe in transparency and most importantly not over-promising and under-delivering.

Every step of the way we keep our clients informed, with clear goals and benchmarks and give access to all PPC analytics for complete visibility. Across multiple clients, we’ve seen incredible success in boosting performance, and achieving exponential success rates such as a 4-time increase in leads from PPC campaigns, and increased paid traffic conversion rates of 162%.

We get results or we work for free, so you’re never paying for anything less than success. If you want to branch out into the unchartered world of Reddit PPC ads, you need a partner who knows exactly what they’re doing and precisely how to achieve success.

B2B PPC needs a different approach. So does Reddit. Common Ground can help with both, get in touch with us today for a free chat about what we can do to get you started with Reddit Ads.