Anyone who sells niche consumer products should be paying attention to reddit and the subreddits related to their industry. In this article we show how Onnit, a health and fitness company, can engage redditors to increase awareness of their brand and products.
Finding Onnit’s Target Audience on reddit:
The first step in engaging reddit is to identify subreddits that are relevant to your company and its products. We want to zero-in on the specific communities that contain Onnit’s target audience. We searched reddit for terms related to Onnit and found a solid list of subreddit communities that Onnit should be monitoring:
- r/Supplements (~20k subscribers)
- r/Nootropics (~54k subscribers)
- r/Fitness (~3.5m subscribers)
- r/kettlebell (~9k subscribers)
- r/MMA (~112k subscribers)
- r/nutrition (~51k subscribers)
- r/advancedfitness (~32k subscribers)
- r/bodybuilding (~102k subscribers)
- r/loseit (~282k subscribers)
- r/xxfitness (~76k subscribers)
This group of subreddits has over 4 million total subscribers. All of these communities contain discussions and content that is highly relevant to Onnit and their products. This list features general fitness subreddits (like Fitness and BodyBuilding) as well as highly targeted communities (i.e. Nootropics, Supplements, Kettlebell, and MMA).
Othere Subreddits: /r/Onnit and /r/JoeRogan
There is an Onnit subreddit located at /r/Onnit. However, the subreddit is essentially inactive. So there isn’t much to do here unless Onnit wants to start the discussion. We will discuss this more in the recommendations below.
There are actually two Joe Rogan related subreddits (/r/JoeRogan and /r/JoeRogan2). Joe Rogan is a famous comedian, podcaster, and investor in Onnit. He promotes the company a lot and his fans are a big part of their consumer base. However, these subreddit communities are generally negative and skeptical of Onnit’s products. We recommend that Onnit monitor these subreddits but hold off on engaging them until a more sophisticated reddit marketing plan is developed. (Note: The /r/JoeRogan2 community is particularly negative towards Joe Rogan and anything/anyone related. We highly suggest avoiding this subreddit all together.)
Mentions of Onnit on reddit
Onnit is being discussed by redditors on a regular basis. We did a quick search of ‘onnit’ over the last month on reddit and it turned up a nice list of relevant discussions. These discussions should be monitored by an Onnit employee to analyze and potentially respond to. Some of these conversations contain negative comments about Onnit, so it is especially important for the Onnit team to track them.
Here are three examples of reddit posts that Onnit should be monitoring:
TIP: An Onnit employee could officially share some evidence from the studies and research their company has conducted.
TIP: One of Onnit’s Pro Team members could join the discussion and share their experience with this product.
TIP: Onnit could jump into this conversation and explain why their product is a good buy.
5 Reddit Marketing Recommendations for Onnit
We recommend Onnit take the following actions to explore marketing opportunities on reddit:
1. Monitor reddit for mentions of Onnit and related keywords. Utilize TrackReddit.com to track keywords related to the Onnit brand. Tracking keywords will help Onnit identify opportunities to engage redditors and contribute value to the community. There are also a handful of negative conversations about Onnit happening on reddit. Monitoring reddit will alert the Onnit marketing team when a negative conversation is happening. These converstaions will give Onnit an opportunity to learn about how their product and company are being rejected.
2. Partner with Onnit Pro Team Members to engage subreddits with AMAs. All Onnit Pro Team Members are experts in their respective disciplines and redditors would love to talk to them. Onnit could coordinate with Team Members to engage reddit by conducting AMAs (Ask Me Anything). These AMAs could be done to support and promote Onnit and their products. Read our Free Guide to Reddit AMAs to learn how to plan and execute a successful reddit AMA.
3. Develop the Onnit Subreddit. Onnit could certainly benefit from an online discussion community and a subreddit could be a good place to start. The current Onnit subreddit is inactive so it will take some effort on Onnit’s behalf to grow a community from scratch. Onnit could initiate discussions in the subreddit by posting blog content or conducting an AMA and sharing it with their social media audience. The subreddit could end up becoming the official Onnit forum or it could simply serve as a test to determine whether or not Onnit customers would find a community valuable.
4. Share Onnit Academy content in relevant subreddits. Onnit creates lots of quality blog content that could be shared on reddit. Ideally, the author of the article will directly share the content as a text post in a highly relevant subreddit. The author must be available to answer questions and respond to comments. Anyone sharing their own content should also be active memebers of the reddit community (i.e. don’t post and run!).
5. Run a promotional ad campaign. Advertising on reddit can be a great way to share content or run a promotional campaign. This is where Onnit can advertise special sales or introduce new products. A special contest could be promoted with reddit ads. Ads can also be used to drive traffic to the official Onnit subreddit.
TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
Reddit offers an opportunity for Onnit to engage highly targeted audiences of current and potential customers. We would love to see Onnit bring their Pro Team Members to reddit to engage communities in the comments section or in targeted AMAs. An official Onnit subreddit could also be a great platform for Onnit fans to share and discuss their experiences with Onnit products. At the very least, Onnit should be monitoring reddit for mentions of their brand and products to stay in touch with what consumers are saying.
