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10 Creative Reddit Marketing Ideas for Cannabis and CBD Companies… yes, Reddit.

As the fourth most visited website in the U.S. with over 138,000 active communities, business owners and marketers are persistent on trying to reach Reddit users. But this platform has a reputation for being a tough site to market on… and what about cannabis and CBD related stuff? Let’s find out.

  1. Feed the Community with Useful Articles

Reddit is amazing platform; it has so many communities under which there are always conversations going on and that develop over time. This includes and encompasses marketing. As a marketer, I do check the different communities to see what’s going on, and then think of ideas for a cannabis article that can entertain, educate and evolve the community as a whole. The goal is that members open the article so that my growth tactic activates, showing the “Be Curious” floating tab at the bottom of the article that takes the user directly to additional information.

  1. Understand Reddit Users Before Jumping In

Reddit is a tricky platform to use—and not a move marketers should take lightly. The reason: Redditors are notoriously suspicious of any type of promotion on the platform, particularly promotion that tries to mask itself as organic content. But, hey, the good news is that the problem here isn’t cannabis. Rather, it’s self-promotion. I always tell marketers they should spend time on Reddit first as users. Find the subreddits that match your interests (and intersect with your company’s interests), and spend time listening before you wade in. Using Reddit for research into your audience and their interests is a fantastic way for newcomers to use the site.

  1. Build Your Credibility Before Starting Any Promotion

Make sure you’re building credibility on Reddit before you dive into promotion. Each subreddit has strict rules, and all of them condemn explicit self-promotion. Think of each subreddit as its own community in which you need to build trust before you become a spokesperson for the issues they’re concerned about. You need to spend at least a couple of weeks commenting, replying, and upvoting the community you want to post to, kind of like the cannabis and CBD communities on Linked In. This is crucial because when the time comes for you to post something related to your company, you’ve already got an audience at your disposal that trusts and values your opinion.

  1. Avoid Aggressive Promotion

Can’t say this enough: first thing to take note of if you are marketing a business inside Reddit is never spam around your website or a link to it. Maybe you’re an old school SEO person, and think that as soon as you submit your link on Reddit, people will discover it or think that Google just indexed it, and that it will become one of your backlink sources that one day will generate traffic. This, however, is one false and incorrect strategy.

  1. Use Data-Backed Headlines

According to several studies, data-backed headlines are powerful in attracting engagement. They provide immediate value, which is especially important on Reddit. A Reddit submission only has a few minutes to make an impact before getting buried by newer submissions. With a data-backed headline, your submission has a higher chance of surviving and reaching the top of the subreddit—or of the whole of Reddit. And when your submission becomes popular enough, it will attract not only clicks and visitors, but also media attention. That’s the bonus!

  1. Join Subreddits Related to Your Business

In my opinion, the best and only way to market your business on Reddit is to be an active member and voice leader in the subreddit that relates to your business. For example, if you run a digital marketing company, you should be in r/marketing, contributing to the community with comments, suggestions, posts, and answering questions. Over time, you will build up a rapport with the community and they will know you to be knowledgeable and trustworthy in your field, opening up that subreddit to hear you out if you do ever have a service you want to offer. Now, it’s up to you to find your relevant cannabis and CBD communities.

  1. Start Your Own “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) Discussion

One of the most effective “marketing” methods I have used is to do an “AMA” (“Ask Me Anything”) about home inspections. I’ve done two of these so far, and still regularly get messages from people who find them via Reddit searches, even though my last AMA was about a year ago. Being seen as a source for good information on Reddit increases your reputation.

  1. Know the 3 Basic Marketing Approaches on Reddit

There are three basic approaches to marketing on Reddit in my opinion—paid, direct, and indirect. Paid marketing involves creating the ads that you probably notice while you’re scrolling by them on mobile. Direct marketing offers different subreddit’s promotions, coupons, or offers for products—pretty much a standard definition. Indirect marketing is where imagination separates the successful campaigns from those needing to have a thread deleted afterward. The noblest approach is to simply have your business’ contact information listed on your profile and become a contributing member of subreddits related to your business’ market. Less noble approaches would be to use throwaway accounts to post links to your business website and purchase upvotes to drive traffic to your business website.

  1. Ask Your Own Questions

I can tell you that there are two ways that I use marketing on Reddit. The first is to ask general questions about a cannabis or CBD niche relative to my business; in responding to the answers that my questions garner, I explain my business. The other effective way to market on Reddit is to respond professionally to others on topics that your business knows better than others on the thread. When marketing a cannabis or CBD business, the best thing you can do is to first make people aware that your business even exists, and second to try to turn those people into paying customers or clients.

  1. Don’t Limit Yourself to Business-Related Posts

On Reddit, I employ a strategy from my personal account: a) being a normal Redditor and posting comments and content like I would from a personal account; and b) creating specific content that I think is valuable and viral in and of itself, even if unrelated to the cannabis or CBD industry.

Integrate Reddit with Your SEO Strategy

It’s important that cannabis and CBD products are consistently able to rank in searches, so you need to make sure that your Reddit account also helps you in your SEO efforts. If you haven’t included this platform in your SEO strategies yet, you’re missing out. Success in Reddit marketing won’t come overnight, but with a little patience and a lot of creativity, your efforts will certainly be rewarded. Use these tips to help you get started on your cannabis or CBD  Reddit success story.

 

Celeste Miranda

Celeste Miranda

Dedicated to what she does and successful in her savvy business-minded ventures, Celeste Miranda is an entrepreneur, author, founder and CEO of Miranda Marketing Labs and The Cannabis Marketing Lab. Undertaking the critical challenges of marketing an emerging industry, Miranda opened a specialized division focused on providing businesses with innovative and affordable marketing strategies. Since then, The Cannabis Marketing Lab has become a highly regarded organization in Cannabis related ventures. Comprised of a 16 person team, Celeste’s staff has years of experience and expertise in a myriad of areas such as Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, Graphic & Web Design, Creative Content Production, Advertising, PR and much more. Celeste can be reached at [email protected].

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