Paid Advertising
How We Test Ad Messages on Reddit Before Paying Google and LinkedIn Prices
Reddit clicks cost a fraction of Google and LinkedIn. Here's how we use that gap to test messages, landing pages and offers before scaling paid ads.
Why We Test Before We Scale
Most small and mid-sized companies test their marketing messages in the most expensive place available. They write one version of an ad, point it at Google or LinkedIn, and wait. By the time the data comes back, a meaningful piece of the budget is gone.
We took a different route with our own advertising this year. Before putting serious money behind Google or LinkedIn, we used Reddit as a proving ground for our messages, our landing pages and our offers. Here’s how it worked and why I’d recommend it to most B2B teams.
The Cost Gap Is the Whole Point
Across our own campaigns this summer, this is what a click cost us:
| Channel | Cost per click | Clicks per $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $1.31 | about 76 | |
| Google Search | $16.79 | about 6 |
| LinkedIn (cold audience) | $45.03 | about 2 |
Reddit also earned a click-through rate of about 0.79%, more than three times the 0.22% we saw on LinkedIn. Impressions cost roughly a tenth as much.
Testing is a numbers game. To know whether one message beats another, enough people have to see and react to each version. Getting 300 clicks on LinkedIn would have cost us more than $13,000. On Reddit it cost under $400.
Testing the Message
We didn’t guess at angles. Before writing any ads, we read through a year of Reddit threads where business owners talked about getting marketing help. Three themes kept coming up:
- Owners doing the marketing themselves and losing evenings and weekends to it.
- Fear of committing to another salary before knowing the hire would work.
- Frustration with AI tools that promised more than they delivered.
We wrote a separate ad for each theme and ran them side by side. They targeted communities like r/Entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness and r/startups, plus keyword targeting on phrases like “hire a marketer” and “marketing help.” Because clicks were cheap, every version got enough traffic to compare.
The research paid off in smaller ways too. Owners in those threads rarely asked for a marketing strategy. They asked for a system. That word went straight into our copy.
Testing Landing Pages and Offers
The ad is only half the test, so we also used Reddit traffic to compare what happens after the click.
Our ads pointed to two different landing pages with two different offers. One was a free outside-in read of a company’s marketing. The other was a quick check of whether AI assistants recommend your business.
Midway through, we refreshed both the creative and the landing page copy. Changes like that are easy to make when they don’t put thousands of dollars at risk.
Our next round is a straight offer test. Three offers get their own ad groups and equal budgets, all built on the same core message about how buyers now find vendors through AI:
- an AI visibility check
- an instant AI readiness scorecard
- booking an experienced marketer by the week
Whichever offer pulls best becomes the foundation for round two, where we test messages against it. That winner is also what we eventually carry to Google and LinkedIn.
Reddit Was Easier to Work With Than I Expected
A dedicated account rep reached out early with suggestions, and that made a real difference for a small team.
Targeting communities and keywords together in a single ad group let us reach people by what they talk about, not just by job title.
We also connected Reddit’s ads API. Performance data now flows straight into our reporting instead of being copied out of a dashboard by hand.
Where It Falls Short
Reddit’s audience skews toward smaller businesses and solo founders, so it isn’t a perfect match for every buyer. Some of the communities we targeted are full of one-person shops, well below the size of the companies we work with.
We wrote copy that speaks to owners with a team, and we treat what Reddit tells us as a strong signal, not a final verdict. Anything that wins there still gets confirmed on the channel where we’ll ultimately spend.
How to Run Your Own Test
- Start with your audience’s own words. Read the threads before you write the ads.
- Write one ad per angle, and change only the angle between versions.
- Give each version equal budget and set a click target before you judge. We use roughly 150 clicks per offer.
- Test messages, landing pages and offers in separate rounds, so you know which change made the difference.
- Take the winner to Google or LinkedIn and confirm it there before you scale.
Learn Cheaply, Then Spend
In 30 years of marketing, I’ve watched plenty of companies spend a whole ad budget learning that a message didn’t work. Reddit lets you learn that for a small fraction of the cost. You get to the message that does work before the expensive channels come into play.
If you’d like help setting up a test like this, or want an experienced operator to run your paid program by the week, get in touch.