How A Reddit Ad Went Viral And Built A 16k Person Community

How A Reddit Ad Went Viral And Built A 16k Person Community

To marketers, Reddit is still an outlier. Compared to its social media peers, it occupies a tiny portion of the media budget, if any. Most marketers I’ve talked to said they’ve tried but had mediocre results — not enough to have a permanent space for Reddit on their media plans.

I have spent more time on Reddit than any other platform and have seen plenty of ads on the platform, so imagine my surprise (and excitement) when I spotted a fitness app ad from Caliber Fitness that now has 15k* upvotes, 5k comments, and more rewards than most Reddit posts. Redditors also flooded the comment section. They raved about this being the best ad they’ve ever seen, saying they’ve shown their support by downloading the fitness app or joining the brand’s Reddit community.

What did Caliber do to achieve this rarely-seen success with one Reddit ad?

Spoiler alert, the playbook is different from other platforms’.

*To put this into perspective, 90% of Reddit posts have less than 1k upvotes.

1. Don’t Make it Look Like An Ad

The first step to a successful ad campaign is to get users to stop and read your ad content.

And as cliche, as it now sounds - the best ads, guess what? Don’t look like ads.

So, creative and ad formats that blend in well on Instagram or TikTok look intrusive on Reddit.

Redditors scroll through or downvote these ads because they interrupt their experience.

Look at Caliber’s ad, other than the light gray ‘Promoted’ text, it looks like a regular plain-text post in the feed, in contrast to HBO Max’s.

Caliber also allowed comments. Many advise against turning on Reddit ad comments in fear of negative comments and ‘hurting the brand image’. However, not only do comments make your ad look more like a regular post, but interacting with users and addressing their concerns (there will always be some) in the comments also shows your transparency and authenticity as a brand — you have nothing to hide — crucial to a successful ad on Reddit.

2. Don’t Write Like An Ad — Be Honest, Transparent, And Raw

There’s a difference between ads and content. Redditors dislike ads because they think Reddit should be for content. Do that!

For this ad, Caliber’s founder Justin wrote a candid piece like any other Reddit post:

End with asks from readers (more on this later)

Justin wrote everything in plain English without marketing jargon. He communicated like a person, not a business, which is not tolerated on Reddit.

Candor is very disarming. By admitting they are not perfect and are seeking feedback, they won readers' attention and support. Many tried and even came back to give feedback to help him out.

3. Adapt Your Conversion Goal

Instead of pushing readers to download the app right away from the ad, Caliber first asked readers to join their subreddit, a more common next step for Redditors after seeing a post, so less friction for them to do so.

Their strategy paid off. The community now has 16k members (top 5% community by size) — giving Caliber plenty of benefits in the long run.

It’s a focus group where they can collect feedback and product suggestions.

It is an unbiased review site for future customers. The size of the community would also give people confidence in the brand.

It’s a group of people they can continue to engage with and turn into brand evangelists.

What about app downloads?

Interested users can still go through the link in the ad or through their pinned ‘get started’ post in the community.

Reddit has long been viewed as a tricky platform to crack. Caliber’s success shows that if you want to make a successful ad post, this is the way to do it.

To quote a comment from Caliber’s ad post:

Honesty is the best policy and it shined through with this ad.