Reddit is the most-cited domain on the internet for AI search results. When you ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini for product recommendations, buying advice, or authentic opinions, they pull heavily from Reddit discussions.
Reddit is heralded as the place where real people share honest, unfiltered opinions about products and services. The platform's community-driven spam prevention means the content that survives tends to be genuinely valuable.
This makes it hard to master as a marketing channel because overt self-promotion gets penalized quickly and permanently. Attempting to shill your product will get you downvoted, banned from subreddits, shadow banned site-wide, and potentially have your brand blacklisted.
Getting banned from Reddit is “brand visibility jail”. All brand mentions become associated with spam and manipulation, your domain gets flagged, and you lose access to one of the most valuable citation sources available.
Effectively marketing on Reddit requires some understanding of Reddit's mechanics. Make sure you know this before you dedicate resources to Reddit as a marketing channel.
Reddit operates on community-driven content curation. Each subreddit has its own rules, moderators, and cultural norms. What's acceptable in r/Entrepreneur differs completely from r/malefashionadvice or r/webdev.
Users are highly trained at detecting marketing. Years of dealing with spammers, astroturfers, and sock puppet accounts have made Redditors exceptionally skeptical of promotional content.
However—and this is crucial—communities don't hate all brand participation. They hate dishonesty and low-effort promotion. A founder being transparent about their affiliation and genuinely helping people is often celebrated. A mysterious "definitely not affiliated" account posting thinly veiled promotions gets destroyed.
A brand new account posting promotional content triggers immediate suspicion and often automatic bans. An account with 5,000 karma and two years of genuine participation history carries credibility.
You need to build account reputation before mentioning your brand. This takes time but is non-negotiable.
Every comment should be 95% adding value and 5% mentioning your brand. You can even start with 98/2.
Your goal is to become a helpful expert in your space. Brand mentions should be natural, rare, and contextual.
Here’s what we suggest for effective Reddit marketing.