Reddit marketing strategy (the non-spammy way)
The three-pillar framework to build your Reddit presence without spamming the heck out of people
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A few months ago, I posted something on LinkedIn about Reddit marketing.
Or, to be more accurate, about Reddit spamâŚ
The most common response, in various forms, was the same question: âHow do you actually do this without getting banned?â
Fair question.
And one I have been thinking about for a while.
So, hereâs my two cents on how to approach Reddit the non-spammy way.
Reddit is everywhere
Let me start with the data, because the scale of what happened to Reddit in search over the past two years is hard to overstate.
According to Ahrefs, Reddit ranks for 88.2 million organic keywords and receives 1.2 billion monthly organic visits.
This makes Reddit one of the most visited (and visible) websites on the web!
But, of course, Google is only part of the story.
According to a Peec AI study back in March 2026, every major AI search engine cites Reddit more than any other source: Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini.
In practice, that means many (if not most) searches on Google or AI search engines return an answer or a search results page that lists Reddit as one of the ranked or cited websites.
This applies to digital-first businesses and brick-and-mortar alike.
Someone researching CRM software and someone hunting for a dentist in Austin are both landing on Reddit threads before they reach your website.
Reddit has become one of the de facto review layers sitting between your brand and your buyer.
The law of shitty click-throughs
Andrew Chen wrote about this concept years ago:
Every marketing channel declines over time as more marketers pile in. Banner ads launched with a 78% click-through rate in 1994. By 2011, that number had dropped by a factor of 1,500.
In my view, the same thing is happening to Reddit right now.
As Redditâs visibility in search and AI has grown, marketers have noticed. And they have started gaming it!
Here is a real example from the r/ProductMarketing community on Reddit.
An (innocent) post titled âTop 5 AI Search Tracker Tools Every Marketer Should Knowâ collected 30 upvotes and 56 comments.
Reads like a genuine community recommendation, right?
It is notâŚ
Posts like these are planted by companies or agencies looking to seed product mentions into high-ranking Reddit threads.
The calculus is simple: if Reddit threads rank on Google and get cited by AI engines, then getting your product mentioned in those threads is cheap distribution.
And, sure enough, the thread also ranks on Google for one of the key terms.
Trap Plan, a marketing agency, published a case study bragging about planting roughly 100 fake âorganicâ posts across major gaming subreddits for a game called War Robots: Frontiers.
Kotaku and PC Gamer covered it after the r/Games community caught them. The company deleted everything.
This is the playbook that most âReddit marketing agenciesâ sell: seed fake posts and game the upvotes. And it works until it doesnât.
Reddit communities are hostile to promotional content. Moderators hunt for it, and users call out suspicious accounts.
Somehow, though, a lot of that spam is still active on the platform, gaming search results, and forming AI search answers.
I honestly canât understand how Reddit tolerates that kind of abuse (of its platform).
But, for the time being, that seems to be the name of the game.
Or is it?
Why you still need a Reddit marketing strategy
So Reddit is being gamed. That does not mean you should ignore it.
Reddit is where your buyers do research. Google and AI engines both pull recommendations from Reddit threads.
Ignoring Reddit means ceding that ground to competitors who either game it (and eventually get caught) or build a real presence there.
The question is how to be there without destroying your credibility and brand equity.
The three-pillar approach
At Minuttia, we use a framework with three components:
Each pillar addresses a different dimension of Reddit presence.
Letâs take a look at them.
1. Owned subreddit
Create a subreddit dedicated to your category.
Not your brand. Your category.
Nick Lafferty at Profound does this well. (đ Nick, I know youâll get a notification from this mention.)
Instead of creating r/Profound (which not many people would join in a B2B context), build a subreddit around the problem your product solves.
For Profound, that means AI search optimization (thus /aeo); for a CRM company, it might be r/SalesOps.
The subreddit becomes a neutral ground where practitioners share knowledge and ask questions.
Your team participates as members who happen to work on the problem.
You moderate with a light touch and let genuine conversations develop.
Over time, the subreddit builds organic search equity. Google indexes those threads, and AI engines cite those discussions.
Your brand sits at the center of the category conversation without ever having to pitch.
2. Branded handles
This is about showing up as a real person with a real company affiliation.
No anonymous accounts. No fake personas.
Casey Hill did this at Bonjoro with their branded Reddit handle, Bonjoro Bear.
He showed up in subreddits like r/SaaS, answered questions about video messaging and customer onboarding, and hit 100k monthly views through organic engagement alone.
Caseyâs âReddit Testâ is simple: if your content would get removed from Reddit for being too promotional, it is too promotional everywhere.
The key word is genuine.
Real answers to real questions that happen to demonstrate expertise in your productâs domain.
(Leave the âHave you tried [our product]?â pitch somewhere else.)
This builds something that planted posts never will: a post history.
When a potential buyer clicks your profile and sees months of helpful, non-promotional contributions, that is more persuasive than any landing page.
Authorâs Note: As of writing this and as far as Iâm concerned, the Bonjoro Bear profile isnât used as part of this strategy anymore.
Letâs move on to the last one.
3. Signal-based engagement
This pillar is operational infrastructure.
Set up keyword monitoring that tracks Reddit for mentions of your brand, your competitors, your category terms and buying-intent phrases.
When someone posts âlooking for a tool that does Xâ in a relevant subreddit, that alert should hit your Slack channel within minutes.
Your team can then respond in real time, from branded accounts, with helpful answers.
The response does not have to mention your product. Sometimes the best play is answering the question and letting your post history speak for itself.
Final Thoughts
Reddit marketing is one of those cases where doing it right is really, really difficult.
And, getting it wrong is really, really easyâŚ
The spammy approach requires fake accounts, planted posts, upvote manipulation, and constant risk of getting caught.
This framework requires patience, category expertise, consistency, and a willingness to contribute without immediate ROI.
Reddit threads feed Google results, which feed AI training data and fan-out searches, which send more users back to Reddit. That flywheel is accelerating.
Marketers who treat Reddit like a distribution hack will keep getting banned, while those who treat it like a channel with long-term potential will keep compounding.
Thank you for reading todayâs note, and see you again next week.
Research Disclaimers and Limitations
GrowthWaves and its author are not sponsored by or compensated by any company mentioned in this note. This is independent editorial analysis and does not constitute investment, financial, or legal advice. The author may have relationships with, work with, or hold equity in companies referenced; however, no content in this piece was influenced, commissioned, or incentivized by any such relationship. AI tools were used as a research assistant in the preparation of this piece. All claims are sourced and linked throughout.
Sources
Andrew Chen, âThe Law of Shitty Clickthroughsâ
Casey Hill, âWe hit our first 100k/m views on Redditâ
Kotaku, âGame Marketing Agency Admits To Using Fake Reddit Accountsâ
PC Gamer, âGame marketing company takes down blog post bragging about astroturfing Redditâ