The Ad Campaign that got 978 web visitors for only $62
I actually didn't believe it when I logged in the next day to look at the results. We'd had over one hundred new website visitors and had only spent about $12 so far.
I was incredulous.
I event went as far as to go into Google Analytics to verify what the ad's campaign results were telling me.
This was weird, but lets start by giving a little background.
The Campaign
This campaign was for San Francisco technology startup, Revzy Inc. The target customer is a technical and software based, B2B, client and only a very small sub-set of the overall technology sector. We're talking micro-niche here.
So we started doing test ads in all of the usual places, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, paid outreach, Instagram, FB, etc. Most of the time, these ads brought back less than 10 website visitors per week, and then, the cost per visitor was between $12-20!
Our organic and email marketing was working well so we doubled down on that but the CEO mentioned that in the past, the company had some success on Reddit.
"Wait, what now?"
"Reddit you say?"
I serously have not spent any time in my life on Reddit so my perspective was that it was a place of flaming trolls who wanted to pour out their anger on the world. Or it was the place where people put questions online that they really did not want an aswer to - they just wanted to see what craziness lurked n the shadows that would crawl out and answer.
I was so bloody wrong!
After agreeing with the CEO to try, I gave Reddit a spin and sure, I encountered my fair share of trollishness - but most of it was kind of, well - justified. In the threads that I chose to explore (I searched for places where my target customers might ask for advice) I found a bunch of really good intentioned, if not a little blunt, answers.
I found that Reddit was simply another community.
It has its own nuances, rules, etiquette and cultures - but ultimately its just another social network.
Author's Note: Reddit is an amazing place for memes!
Giving it a Try
So I dove in and looked at the historical ads that had been run by Revzy. The copy and creative was pretty noisy and it was also quite 'salesy' so I could see that it was not ideal for the low-key nature of the Reddit community.
I set about creating a campaign with 6 different variants. Two short videos (using Canva stock videos and our well researched key problem/resolution/CTA) that we knew worked elsewhere. Two short image Gif videos showing simple, eye-catching emotion and two static pics - one of our product an done of our team winning an award.
Due to the nature of Reddit I made the headline on all of the ads a question. I did this as I felt that visitors to the forums here are already primed to either ask or answer so I may has well fit into the mindset of the community.
I saved the ads and then walked away.
For context - here is a Canva screenshot of one of the Ads that lead with a video chat conversation and then highligted the commonality of the problem followed by the solution. (this is only part of the ad)
The Next Day
So, coffee in hand I hit my usual morning routine of checking in on analytics and making a plan for changes on the various channels where we were working on. I jumped into Reddit's Ad Manager and did a double-take. Did we really just get 165 clicks to our website?
A wave of fear swept over me, thinking that I'd massively overspent on the budget - my eyes swept over to the cost column and a lonely $10.17 has showing.
"Wait, what now?"
"The cost per click is 6 cents??!!"
Ok, so I had learned something new that day. Not only was Reddit a valid social channel, but after some more research I found that others were enjoying similar results due to Reddit having nowhere near the amount of competition as Meta, YouTube and Google.
After a week the results had continued and I found that the out of my six ad variants, two of them were out performing the others. Using my famous Hunger Games Marketing Method (blog article on its way about this one), I killed off four of the variants and focussed the entire budget on these two ads.
We should also note that a couple of the ads did receive a couple of troll comments but these are easily blocked and removed so no harm done.
A screen shot of the Revzy campain below from our initial testing week in August.
The Conclusion
Some people love being right, but I love being wrong in this case.
Revyz are still running Reddit Ads with about a $0.06 CTR as its a great way to get visitors onto the website and then retarget them with pixels and lead magnets.
Me? I'm planning on using Reddit Ads as part of my impending book launch so I will definitely be writing more articles about my experience.