For marketers, and the unassuming user, Reddit can be a scary place. All those opinions and strong words and complex memes. Yet - all that community, word of mouth recommendation, and oh the audience self-segmentation!
Reddit is a goldmine for cybersecurity marketing, but most cyber companies haven’t unlocked its secrets.
Well, we’ve had enough. Using Sparktoro, we’ve analyzed audiences visiting seven major cybersecurity websites and audiences using “CISO” or “CIO” in their bio to find the subreddits your audience is hanging out in.
Discover the subreddits below and then keep reading for a real-world application of cybersecurity marketing on Reddit. (We’re actually kind of giddy about this one.)
*Affinity score: a score from 0-100 that estimates an audience’s likelihood of visiting a certain subreddit. The average affinity score is an average for audiences visiting seven different cybersecurity solution websites.
| Subreddit | Description | Members | Average Affinity Score | Affinity Score for audiences with “CISO” in their bio | Affinity Score for audiences with “CIO” in their bio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
/r/sysadmin | A reddit dedicated to the profession of Computer System Administration. | 878K | 21.4 | 17 | 22 |
/r/cybersecurity | This subreddit is for technical professionals to discuss cybersecurity news, research, threats, etc. | 744K | 14.5 | 36 | 10 |
/r/netsec | /r/netsec is a community-curated aggregator of technical information security content. Our mission is to extract signal from the noise — to provide value to security practitioners, students, researchers, and hackers everywhere. | 495K | 8.1 | 11 | - |
/r/hacking | A subreddit dedicated to hacking and hackers. Constructive collaboration and learning about exploits, industry standards, grey and white hat hacking, new hardware and software hacking technology, sharing ideas and suggestions for small business and personal security. | 2.7M | 7.9 | 13 | - |
/r/homelab | Welcome to your friendly /r/homelab, where techies and sysadmin from everywhere are welcome to share their labs, projects, builds, etc. | 656K | 7.6 | - | - |
/r/devops | Everything DevOps | 318K | 7.5 | - | 12 |
/r/webdev | A community dedicated to all things web development: both front-end and back-end. | 2.2M | 6.6 | - | - |
Being able to find your audience online is one thing. Being able to speak to them in their language is another beast. Fortunately, 97th Floor has gotten pretty good at this.
Chronosphere + 97th Floor
About Chronosphere
Chronosphere is a SaaS-based, cloud-native monitoring solution for enterprise businesses. Chronosphere’s platform gives companies the ability to remediate issues faster with real-time insight while getting data growth under control.
Problem
When Chronosphere approached 97th Floor, their primary focus was on target accounts and increasing brand awareness. They were experiencing high website traffic but were not generating enough leads. Their goal was to drive more traffic to their site, increase the number of demo requests, and reduce the cost per demo.
Strategy
We knew from Choronosphere’s personas that we could reach their target audience of engineers on Reddit and Quora. Combining Chronosphere’s existing personas with 97th Floor’s additional insights helped us nail down the right tone and unconventional messaging that would resonate with our ad-skeptic audience.
After launching the Reddit ads, we continually tested messaging, tracked conversions, and made adjustments or new tests to improve results.
Results
Our strategic approach and meticulous testing paid off significantly, with our Chronosphere ads achieving a remarkable 50% higher click-through rate (CTR) than Reddit's advertising benchmarks. In pursuit of even greater engagement, our teams embarked on an innovative strategy of amplifying organic posts within a "megathread" comment. This effort propelled the campaign's CTR to an unprecedented 0.6%, marking a staggering 200% improvement over Reddit's ad benchmarks.
We know your audience. We know their interests and aversions, and we know how to talk to them so that they convert - on Reddit and everywhere else they hang out. Let us take the lead here. We’ve got you. Book a strategy call with us today.
