Unlocking Reddit’s Marketing Secrets: How Sprout Social’s Team Cracked the Code

Ever wondered why Reddit, with its quirky corners and vast communities, has suddenly become the holy grail for brands looking to connect? With a whopping 116 million daily active users—and a tidal wave of social folks itching to dive deeper into community-driven platforms—the question isn’t “if” your brand should be on Reddit, but “how” you’ll win there. Unlike the polished, corporate echo chambers elsewhere, Reddit thrives on raw, peer-to-peer chatter where users call out brands that miss the mark—no fluff allowed. Cracking the Reddit code demands more than just showing up; it’s about immersing yourself with a smart, research-fueled strategy that respects the pulse of each subreddit. Ready to uncover a step-by-step playbook, peppered with battle-tested tips from our own Reddit escapades? Let’s get down to it and turn that lurking into loyal fans. LEARN MORE.

With over 116 million daily active users, Reddit is a network brands can’t afford to ignore. More than half of global social media users plan to spend more time on community-driven platforms like Reddit in the near term, according to Sprout Social’s Q2 2025 Pulse Survey.

But compared to other channels where brand accounts and corporate content has become the norm, Reddit remains a haven for peer connection. Here, the voice of users reign—and they aren’t afraid to be vocal when other users (brands or not) violate community guidelines.

Success on the platform requires ongoing research and a thoughtful approach to content creation. Keep reading for a step-by-step guide to building your Reddit marketing strategy, with tips our social team has learned from our foray into the network.

Why brands need a Reddit marketing strategy

We frequently advise social teams against jumping onto a new network just for the sake of it, especially when resources are stretched thin. That said, recent audience shifts and the ongoing evolution of search point to a future where Reddit will play a vital role in brands’ marketing efforts.

People are opting-in to community-driven spaces

One of the top things global social users want brands to prioritize in 2026 is interacting with audiences in smaller spaces, according to the Q4 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey. Users no longer settle for just being posted at—they want brands to interact meaningfully on social, and create spaces where they can connect with other individuals around shared interests.

Subreddits and AMAs naturally scratch this itch, giving audiences a place where no topic is too niche for rich conversation.

Audiences are already talking about your product there

Reddit has quickly become a top social network for product discovery. The company estimates that roughly 40% of all posts and comments on the platform are product-related.

The two top ways audiences want brands showing up on Reddit is by providing customer service and sharing educational product information, according to Sprout research. This makes Reddit a wealth of insights to better understand how your brand and products are perceived, and a forum for connecting directly with active buyers.

Reddit plays a key role in social search and AEO

Social search is growing fast and Reddit is a huge factor: More than 40% of Gen Z turn to social media when searching for information, their #1 source over traditional search engines and chat-based AI tools. The platform is in the top 10 for websites visited worldwide, and #3 in the US alone.

Reddit’s API partnership with Google has resulted in an explosion of organic search traffic to the network, not to mention it is becoming a top citation source for AI engines like ChatGPT. Large language models tend to favor recency and length when it comes to the content they cite. The long-form nature of many Reddit posts make them even more valuable answering users’ queries.

Reddit continues to roll out new brand-facing features that prove the network’s commitment to social search. For example:

• Reddit Pro Trends launched in 2025 to help marketers stay on top of trends and conduct keyword research across subreddits.
• The recently expanded “Smart keywords” tool makes it easier to detect brand mentions accurately. Our team noticed a 40% increase in Sprout Social mentions since this rolled out, helping flag subreddits we need to pay attention to.
• Reddit Ads (including the newer AMA ad format) show up directly in discussions people are already having, naturally weaving your brand into the conversation.

Ensuring your brand is discoverable on Reddit ultimately has implications for your reach beyond the network.

4 steps to building a Reddit marketing strategy

Here are four actionable steps brands (regardless of industry or audience) can use to create a strong Reddit marketing strategy, informed by our social team’s experience building our presence there.

Step 1: Outline a “crawl, walk, run” approach

It bears repeating: Reddit is incredibly community-driven, and each niche within the platform has its own norms and expectations for brand involvement. You can’t expect to go from zero to engaged Redditor or subreddit moderator overnight.

We recommend developing a “crawl, walk, run” approach, with distinct goals and plenty of time in each phase to test and iterate before progressing. This might look like:

• Phase I: Set up your account. Decide if it makes sense to create a branded user or an individual “persona” to build your presence around. The bulk of this phase should be spent researching and listening. Find the subreddits where your target audience or existing customers are active, and get familiar with the community guidelines, moderators and active voices in each. Monitor conversations already happening about your business or industry, and start compiling relevant insights to share back with other teams internally. You should start commenting or answering questions to build Karma (Reddit’s proprietary user reputation score), so long as you’re not doing so to plug your product or service.
• Phase II: With plenty of research under your belt, you can start becoming a more active Reddit contributor. This is where the experimentation truly begins. Start posting original threads (e.g., comment on trending topics relevant to your audience, share proprietary survey data or insights). There are a variety of formats to begin testing here, including AMA-style prompts, resource breakdowns or case study stories. Begin tracking engagement metrics like upvotes, comments, shares and saves to identify what’s working best.
• Phase III: This phase is all about running with what you’ve learned and scaling up. Now is the time to tackle larger content opportunities (e.g., hosting your own AMA with a company leader or brand ambassador) and formalize your internal Reddit workflows. You might also consider paid Reddit Ad opportunities.

Step 2: Conduct keyword research to find your niche

To break through on any platform, you have to start with research. Make this step more manageable by identifying a short-list of the subreddits most relevant to your brand, rather than only investigating specific keywords. Within this list, there may be some subreddits where you primarily listen and others where you’ll want to actively participate.

Our team has primary and secondary subreddits. Our primary subreddits (6 total) are where we want to become known as valuable contributors. Our secondary subreddits (7 total) are solely for Karma building and monitoring industry conversations. This works for us, but 10-15 is the sweet spot because it gives you a wide enough net to learn, explore and test.

While this research can be done manually, there are a variety of tools available to expedite the process. For example, Reddit Pro’s Trends feature lets business users create and monitor both standard and Smart keywords. The latter (which are only currently available for certain brand names and categories) offer expanded insights such as conversation volume and related keywords.

Tools like Sprout Listening and NewsWhip by Sprout Social scale your research over the long term. NewsWhip by Sprout Social helps teams catch emerging conversations about your brand or products before they make their way to other networks (or the media). With Sprout Listening, you can monitor conversations and brand health trends over time.

Step 3: Master community guidelines and remember the 90/10 rule

Once you start actively posting on Reddit, be prepared to follow community norms. Users who don’t risk having comments removed or being banned altogether.

Follow the 90/10 rule: Aim for 90% of the content you share to be educational, and 10% promotional. Once you’ve done your research, it will be tempting to weigh in on every thread that mentions your priority keywords—resist that temptation. Sharing relevant content is more important than hitting a certain number of posts or upvotes.

The tone of your posts is equally important as the content itself. Messaging that you used to share a corporate update on LinkedIn likely won’t land with Redditors. Relying on AI-generated responses sends another red flag to users already skeptical of bot-driven posts on the network.

Astroturfing (posting content that appears to be organic but ultimately is self-promotional content) is also largely discouraged across Reddit. Some communities may be more accepting of brand interactions than others. If your research into a specific subreddit doesn’t turn up past posts or comments from brand accounts, you may not want to break that precedent.

Even if you do follow these guidelines, there’s a chance your comments might get removed or your account could get banned—it’s the name of the game when experimenting. But you can work with your Reddit Pro rep to appeal if you think your content was wrongfully flagged. They can also help navigate your overarching strategy and Reddit Pro functionality.

Step 4: Resource your strategy appropriately

You should consider how you’ll resource your Reddit research, content and engagement plans on top of other team priorities.

At Sprout, we established rotating Reddit shifts across our in-house team members. This gives everyone an opportunity to get comfortable with the platform’s community expectations and content nuances. As a small team of three, shifts help us not only manage the workload but also understand our audience better. This setup also enables us to maintain a strong relationship with the Product team, with our learnings informing the Reddit product roadmap at Sprout.

Brands whose Reddit marketing strategies we admire

Looking for inspiration? These are some of our favorite brands that have embraced the power of Reddit.

Grammarly (now a part of Superhuman)

With 13,000 weekly visitors to the r/Grammarly subreddit, it’s no surprise that the AI writing platform has a multi-pronged Reddit marketing strategy. This includes two corporate accounts: u/GrammarlyOfficial and u/Grammarly_Support.

Through u/GrammarlyOfficial, the company hosts AMAs with executive leaders including their CEO, Shishir Mehrotra, and Jenny Maxwell, Head of Grammarly for Education. The account has earned over 600 Karma in less than a year.

The u/Grammarly_Support is one of five moderators of r/Grammarly, where their team frequently responds to product questions and feedback. In just one year, the account has made over 1,200 contributions and racked up a 100 Karma score.

Dove

In April 2025, Dove rolled out a branded subreddit for a specific purpose: the Dove Hot Seats campaign. To drive awareness of their new Dove Whole Body Deo collection, the company launched a Reddit-based scavenger hunt. Audiences were directed to the subreddit to pick up on digital clues that would lead them to a chance to win tickets to Charli xcx concerts, Lollapalooza and more.

Beyond this particular campaign, the u/Dove account has since started experimenting with Reddit to source feedback about new products.

Litter-Robot

Pet tech company Whisker is on a mission to make life better for cats and their owners. Their Litter-Robot product was one of the first-ever self-cleaning litter boxes to hit the market.

Cat parents are fanatical about taking care of their felines, and Litter-Robot mirrors that support for their customers on Reddit. The company maintains a corporate account that serves as co-moderator of r/litterrobot, which sees 66,000 weekly visitors and nearly 2,000 weekly contributions. The content ranges from troubleshooting questions and cat pics to folks swapping litter brand recommendations.

Taking it a step further, Whisker CEO Jacob Zuppke gets in on the conversation as u/CatPoopMan. Zuppke has gone so far as to offer his own email address to help get customer issues taken care of and share company updates (like Litter-Robot becoming HSA/FSA eligible).

Toronto Public Library

Libraries continue to write a new playbook for how traditionally offline organizations can engage audiences online—and the Toronto Public Library’s Reddit account is no exception.

The library is an active contributor to a variety of local Toronto subreddits, including r/Toronto and r/Torontoevents, where they regularly share upcoming free activities across their various locations. They also tap into their vast physical and digital archives to spark conversations around timely moments, like when they showcased this 1977 Blue Jays ticket during the 2025 World Series:

They also use the platform to respond to local patrons’ questions and shed light on internal processes (like ebook and audiobook purchasing), proving that a branded subreddit is not mandatory to delivering thoughtful customer service.

Get closer to your audience with a Reddit marketing strategy

If peer connection and smaller community spaces are the future of social, Reddit is where brands will need to be. No topic is too niche for the platform, and the depth and breadth of available subreddits means no brand is off-limits for user conversation.

But remember: This is not a place marketers can rush into. Instead, take the time to learn Reddit’s nuances and audience expectations. Then you can start building a long-term Reddit marketing strategy that brings your brand closer to customers, and to insights that can impact your entire business.

Ready to get started? Take a deeper dive into these strategies for Reddit social listening.