Using Reddit Ads to Promote Your Managed IT Company

As advertisers and marketers are using increasingly contextual tactics, it is important for MSPs to keep up with the trend. If your ads are highly relevant to your audience, your CTR (click-through rate) will be higher than average. Bidding on a CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) or CPV (cost per view) basis will then reward you with low click costs. It is even possible to achieve click costs at scale that are lower than the platform cost-per-click minimum.

For Managed IT Providers this means that every ad you create should be either vertical-specific or title-specific, depending on the method and medium you use. There are several large platforms that allow targeting by this criteria, one of the most under-utilized ones being the content discovery and discussion platform, Reddit.

Targeting Industry Sub-Reddit Communities

For targeting with vertical-specific ads, there is no better place to find an engaged industry-specific micro-community than on Reddit. “Sub-Reddits” as they are known on the platform, are Reddit forums dedicated to a specific topic. Almost every IT vertical has a Sub-Reddit where Business Owners or Decision Makers go to swap ideas, get feedback or even help each other when needed.

Members of these communities are often very active, so even if a vertical you want to target does not have a ton of members, you are still likely to get a larger impression share than you may expect. Here are a few examples of IT vertical Sub-Reddits that may be worth targeting.

Creating Contextual Video Ads

Reddit allows you to post ads in various formats, however we found that use of video ads has the highest engagement. Creating a 30 second video ad introducing your linked content is a great way to get started. This is the perfect opportunity to introduce an industry-specific case study. If you do not have one, it will be well worth it to create one for this purpose.

For example, you may have a customer that is in Construction. Since their employees are always offsite, you designed the perfect cloud storage and mobility solution for them to work seamlessly from job sites. It increased their efficiency significantly and now they are one of your happiest customers.

Creating a video describing the solution and presenting a testimonial from your customer is going to have a very high engagement on the r/Construction Sub-Reddit. You can also create a simple “Construction” landing page on your site that details the services further and includes an opt-in form for leads.

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Creating Reddit Ads Campaigns

Once you have created your video and landing page, you can now create a Reddit Ads account. After a quick set-up and account validation you will be prompted with the ability to create a campaign. If you are using video, you want to select “Video Views” as your objective. You may ultimately want to drive traffic to your website and be tempted to select “Traffic” instead, but the minimum bid for traffic is significantly higher than what your average click will cost with using a “Video Views” campaign (assuming your ad is contextually relevant).

Select “Video Views” to bid on a CPV basis

Defining Audience, Budget, & Bids

After your campaign is created you will be prompted to create an “Ad Group.” This is where you will build the target audience that you want to view a specific group of ads.

First you will need to select your locations. If your Vertical is small, you may need to expand beyond your traditional service area in order to get your ads to run.

Select your service area in “Locations.”

Reddit will next ask you if you would like to segment by interest. You can leave this blank this there is no need for this type of targeting.

It will next show a drop down for “Target Specific Communities.” This is where you will select the Sub-Reddit relevant to your IT Vertical.

Select the community that you would like to target.

If you see the option to “Allow Reddit to expand your targeting to maximize results” you want to make sure this box remains unchecked. The platform will attempt to show your ad to other communities that are not relevant. This will lower your click through rate and increase your average click costs.

Do not allow Reddit to expand your targeting for best results.

Now you will be able set your budget and bid. It is recommend that you start at the minimum bid of $0.01 per video view. Running this for a few days you will get a feel for how much traffic you are able to get. If you find that the click cost is reasonable, you can increase your bid. Keep in mind though, that the increase from $0.01 to $0.02 is actually doubling your bid, so you can expect your click cost to almost double as a result.

Start with a minimum bid and increase to get more traffic.

Uploading Your Video Ad

After your campaign and ad groups are set up you can now create your video ad. From here it is a simple upload field with the option to create a headline and destination URL (your landing page for clicks). I would recommend creating several ads (from the same video) all with different headlines and seeing which one has the best click through. You can then optimize the ads to favor the ones with the best results.

You will have the option to allow for comments on the post. I generally leave this unchecked, as people are more likely to comment if they disagree with something than if they find it interesting. If you do happen to get a few positive comments, it might increase your click through rate but I believe that the risk is higher than the reward in this situation.

From here you should be up and running with your new Reddit lead generation campaign. As you see results in one vertical, you can scale the campaign into different verticals by creating new content and campaigns. You may also be able to expand your location targeting within one vertical if your solutions do not require onsite resources.