How to write Reddit ads that redditors actually like
The biggest difference between a Reddit ad that works and one that flops is rarely the budget. It is the writing. Redditors can recognise marketing language from a great distance, and they scroll past it without slowing down. Write like a person and they stop.
The one rule
Write the ad the way a helpful member of that community would write a post. Everything else in this article is a detail of that rule.
What good Reddit copy sounds like
Specific. "Cuts our build time from 14 minutes to 3" beats "Dramatically faster builds".
Plain. Short words. Short sentences. No "leverage", no "solutions", no "revolutionary".
Honest about limits. Saying who the product is not for makes everything else you say more believable.
Aware of the room. Use the terms the community uses. If they say "homelab", do not say "personal server infrastructure".
Lightly human. A little dry humour is welcome. Forced memes are not.
Before and after
Before: "Revolutionise your team's productivity with our AI-powered, best-in-class project management platform."
After: "We built a project tracker for teams under 20 people who hate project trackers. No setup call, free for 3 users."
Before: "Enterprise-grade endpoint security trusted by industry leaders. Request a demo today!"
After: "Endpoint agent that uses under 1% CPU. Here is the benchmark, and here is where it still loses to the big names."
The "after" versions tell the reader what it is, who it is for and why they might care, in language no committee would approve. That is why they earn a higher click-through rate.
Writing the headline
The headline is the ad. Most people read nothing else. A few patterns that work:
- Name the reader: "For Shopify stores doing under $50k a month".
- Name the problem: "Tired of chasing invoices?"
- State a concrete fact: "We tested 9 backup tools. Here are the results."
- Make a fair offer: "Free security audit for sites under 10k visitors".
Avoid capital letters for emphasis, strings of exclamation marks and anything that sounds like a subject line from a mass email.
Writing the longer post
Text-led ad formats give you room to explain. Use it like a good post:
- Open with the point, in one sentence.
- Explain the problem the way your buyers describe it.
- Say what you built and what makes it different, concretely.
- Admit a limitation or say who should not bother.
- End with one clear next step.
Different communities, different ads
An ad for developers should not sound like an ad for founders, even for the same product. The developer wants to know how it works. The founder wants to know what it saves. This is why we write separate copy for each group of communities when planning targeting.
Images follow the same rule
Pick visuals that look like they belong in the feed: a real screenshot, a simple chart, an honest product photo. Polished stock images signal "advertisement" before a single word is read.
Be ready to be answered
If your ad allows comments, people will reply, and some replies will be sharp. Copy that makes inflated claims gets taken apart in public. Copy that is honest tends to get defended by the community itself. Either way, decide in advance how you will handle it. We cover that choice in our article on comments on or off.
Why we write this way
Everyone who writes ads at Team of Monkeys is a longtime redditor. We do not translate marketing copy into Reddit language. We start there. It is the main reason the campaigns we run achieve click-through and conversion rates that lead the industry, across many industries.
Good writing cannot rescue a product the community will not accept. If that is what we see, we will tell you before you spend any money. We want you to come back for a second campaign, and that only happens when the first one makes you happy.
Common questions
How long should a Reddit ad headline be?
Long enough to be specific, short enough to read at a glance. One clear sentence is usually right. Reddit allows quite long headlines, but the first few words do most of the work.
Should Reddit ads use emojis or memes?
Sparingly, and only if it is natural for that community. When in doubt, leave them out. Trying too hard is worse than being plain.
Want to know if Reddit will work for your product?
Team of Monkeys is a Reddit advertising agency that plans, writes, launches and manages campaigns with click-through and conversion rates that lead the industry, across many industries. If we do not think your product will succeed on Reddit, we will tell you before you spend any money. Our goal is repeat business, and we only earn that when you are consistently happy with the results. See our simple pricing or book a 30 minute call.