John Jantsch (00:00.981)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jim Squires. He's a Reddit's EVP of business marketing and growth. He oversees the strategy and expansion behind Reddit's marketing efforts as they relate to our growing advertiser base. So their growing advertiser base is probably what I should have said. Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim Squires (00:23.662)

Hi John, it's great to be here.

John Jantsch (00:25.437)

So I told you off air that I had Alexis on the show about five or six years ago. He's no longer involved at all, In Reddit, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, I think Reddit has started to get lumped into social platforms. I'm not sure that's where they started. It certainly has its own.

Jim Squires (00:35.975)

Correct. Yep. Steve Hoffman is our CEO and founder actually from the very beginning.

John Jantsch (00:53.579)

personality, I guess, if you will. So talk a little bit about how the unique culture at Reddit on the platform kind of differ, is different from say LinkedIn and Facebook and some other social platforms.

Jim Squires (00:59.97)

Yep.

Jim Squires (01:05.176)

Yeah, yeah, it is unique. It's a very different platform. It is, I describe it as a community of communities. And so you've got a hundred thousand plus active communities, everything from gaming to gardening, tech to travel, investing to interior design, really anything that you can think of is on there. And so people organize around their interests and their passions.

And it's very different from other platforms in the sense that even the dynamics, there's not likes on the platform. There's up votes and down votes, which means that only the really universally valuable, interesting things float up and get distribution. The stuff that's really divisive or controversial gets a lot of up votes and down votes and then never gets anywhere. So it feels very different. It's anonymous. So people use pseudonyms on the platforms. And so there's a lot of different dimensions, but the biggest thing

John Jantsch (01:38.923)

Yeah, right.

Jim Squires (02:02.318)

to think about is those communities and the passion and how people organize around that.

John Jantsch (02:05.525)

Yes.

Yeah, and really niche, right? mean, like subreddit, subreddit, subreddit of, you know, a very small community, right? But the people that are in that community are not just casual passerbys. I mean, they are like totally into it,

Jim Squires (02:21.838)

Yeah, yeah. I you have massive communities. There's communities like be amazed or which car should I buy that have millions of people in them. And then to your point, you can go super niche and super deep into specific categories as well. So it really runs across the board.

John Jantsch (02:33.953)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:41.825)

So in terms of communication, engagement, participation, how would you say, you know, there in the early days, particularly, there was kind of this vibe of like behave here and be a good citizen or, know, you'll get kicked out kind of thing, as opposed to say, I don't know, all comers on Twitter or something, you know, might've been. So I'm sure as Reddit has grown, you know, some of that's probably gone away, but would you say that that, that sort of DNA still exists? Yeah.

Jim Squires (03:10.218)

It definitely does. It is a, part of what I was describing before with this up vote, down vote dynamic that keeps bad behavior from bubbling over because it just, you're just not rewarded for doing anything in that, in that area. You've got moderators for each of the communities that have their, their own rules and they govern how that community is going to, to engage. so,

John Jantsch (03:24.107)

Yeah, yeah.

Jim Squires (03:35.822)

between the rules of engagement and knowing that if you're going to step out of line or behave poorly, one, no one's gonna probably see it, and two, the moderator might ban you or take you out of that community. So it really keeps things positive and helpful for people.

John Jantsch (03:47.445)

Yeah, and-

John Jantsch (03:52.85)

And, poorly is not just calling people names. mean, it's self-promotion too, right?

Jim Squires (03:57.294)

That's exactly right. People, and this is great advice for small businesses as well, is people don't, which is not unlike anywhere, even in our personal lives, they don't like to be marketed to. They want to be spoken to. They know there's humans behind these businesses and the more you can show that humanity of the business and engage with people in a way that doesn't feel like you're just being salesy or too overly polished, that resonates really well, especially on Reddit.

John Jantsch (04:07.809)

That's right.

John Jantsch (04:25.451)

Yeah. So one of the things that it's probably been going on longer, but certainly has been very noticeable maybe for the last three years is that, you know, Reddit used, it feels like Reddit used to exist in its own universe. And now you can't do a Google search that doesn't usually turn up some Reddit conversations. So how has that changed the dynamic of the platform?

Jim Squires (04:45.772)

Great. Yeah.

It has, mean, it's interesting because Reddit's been around for 20 years doing its thing. And there actually is just this rich repository of all these conversations that have happened over 20 years. But it really has become even more important and it's having a cultural moment right now because, and my view on this is because there's so much AI-generated content and search, AI-generated search results pages and

John Jantsch (05:09.013)

Yeah.

Jim Squires (05:18.616)

People have grown tired of paid influencers. They see through that and they're much more savvy on being sold to. And so there really is this desire to have a more authentic connection, really hear from people, hear their real opinions about things. And so many people, to your point, they come in through a search. they're looking for, they're going camping and they're getting into camping. Gear is a really big part of any hobby and passion that you have.

John Jantsch (05:46.849)

Yeah, yeah.

Jim Squires (05:48.268)

looking for something in particular, Reddit pops up in the search results and then they find themselves now in these conversations. So a lot of people discover Reddit through search and then they stay for the community because they realize, wow, there's so much more here beyond just that camping gear I was just looking for.

John Jantsch (06:04.651)

Yeah. So, however, commerce is happening, right? on Reddit. So, so let's talk a little bit about, if I'm in a small business and I thought, I'm playing on all these other platforms. How can I get into Reddit? Or if I'm an agency and I'm thinking, you know, how do I bring my clients, and get value out of Reddit? You know, I'm sure it depends on the business and the niche and what your goals are.

Jim Squires (06:10.188)

Right, it is, definitely.

John Jantsch (06:29.877)

But in general, is there kind of a best practice approach to get yourself up and going on Reddit?

Jim Squires (06:37.004)

Yep. I we keep it really simple and it's relevant for really whatever category you're in or whatever business that you're running. There is a really easy to use ads interface. is the easiest way to, you small businesses don't typically have a lot of time. They want to get to results and find new customers quickly. And so we make it easy to through ads, just quickly get distribution. And so you can take, you know, if you're running advertising on another platform,

make it really easy to import that campaign over. You can use the AI tools to automate things and just get it going really quickly. And really, just with a few hundred dollars, you can start seeing progress and seeing and getting new customers. In fact, we should throw it in the notes, but we have for duct tape marketing listeners, we've got a promo code, duct tape 500 that they can use to get started on ads if they want to. But I recommend that's just the easiest way to dip your toe in is just get

ads going and I can talk more about tactically how that works. And then the other thing I want to call out is we have a free set of tools to also get going. And so we call it Reddit Pro. And through Reddit Pro, you can get your official presence on Reddit, so your official profile, and you can start actually seeing trends. So what are people saying about your business, your competitors? What are people talking about in your category? What's trending? What's interesting?

John Jantsch (07:36.683)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:58.497)

Hmm.

Jim Squires (08:02.67)

and then actually shows you which of those communities you can go into and learn more. And you can even start engaging as the official business. People love to hear from businesses when they're authentic and they're talking as humans and getting some inside tracks. That's the other thing you can do.

John Jantsch (08:13.974)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Serving and solving problems, right? So, so let's, I want to get back to organic in a minute, but let's touch on the advertising again. You said it's duct tape 500. that's D U C T T A P E 500. And if you spend 500, you're going to get 500. So that's kind of the way that deal works. How does advertising, I know some platforms that were traditionally very organic and then figured out, we got to make money.

Jim Squires (08:19.812)

I like that, yes, well said.

Jim Squires (08:34.562)

That's right. That's right.

John Jantsch (08:45.069)

we're going to sell ads. The ads, they struggle with how do we get those in? How are people going to view those? And obviously an ad is a call to action quite often, by now kind of thing. So how does that fit in culturally?

Jim Squires (08:57.742)

Mm-hmm.

Jim Squires (09:03.406)

Well, it's interesting. We took the reverse approach. So we started with ads before the organic. And so people got used to it pretty quickly as far as how it fits in. mean, a big part of it is kind of thinking about what communities are going to be most relevant to you. And we made that really easy as well. So for example, health and well-being, there's lots of communities in that realm. So everything from

John Jantsch (09:09.387)

Okay.

Jim Squires (09:32.142)

The communities are always structured r slash. So r slash get motivated, r slash weight loss, r slash fitness. These are all in that health and wellness category. But as a small business, you don't have time to go through and try to figure out which of these communities is going to be relevant to you. So you can just tag health as a interest category that you think is relevant for your products. And then the ad system will go out and pull all the relevant

communities that might be of interest and the people that are in those communities, it's anonymous, so that you can then get your ad in front of them either in those communities or when they're in their feed or they're in some other community on the site. So it's a really easy way to get into those interests and then your product is gonna be very relevant for those individuals because they've expressed interest in that area.

John Jantsch (10:26.155)

So let's say I want to do a combination. I want to actually build an organic presence as well as doing some advertising. What's a, you know, it's probably not an overnight solution, but what is, what's a kind of best practices approach for getting some organic reach on?

Jim Squires (10:43.82)

Yeah, yeah. Well, you would want to set up your official profile. So you get that. This is now my business on Reddit. So people know that you're the official voice of that business. And you really want to start. We just released a new product called Trends that's free as part of Reddit Pro. And I always suggest just quickly jumping in. can actually specify.

John Jantsch (10:48.289)

Right,

Jim Squires (11:09.966)

keywords that you think are interesting or related to your business. And you can start seeing through your category what might be trending, what are people talking about? Are people talking about my business? Are they talking about my competitors' businesses? What are they saying? And that gives you an entree into, okay, do I want to engage yet? Or I just want to kind of check things out and see what the tone is and see what's happening there. Now the businesses that really...

elevate and do really well are actually they start engaging and they start interacting with the community and people really appreciate. We talked earlier about showing the humanity of the business. They appreciate transparency. So having the good and the bad, it's being, it's, you know, talking about things that maybe not aren't perfect, gets you a lot of credibility in a community and across Reddit. There is a

a business that's on Reddit that sells diaper bags, like travel diaper bags. It's called the No Reception Club. And they jumped on there and they're running ads. They also have an organic presence. And people were commenting that the bags were too expensive. They had really high price point. And so instead of just kind of withering away or not addressing that,

John Jantsch (12:11.233)

Yeah.

Jim Squires (12:31.256)

they hit a head on and started talking about why it's a high price point because of all these features, the quality, they've got a lifetime warranty and that built so much credibility with people in those communities and went over a lot of people that were saying, I see, they actually engage in me and explained what is going on and that just gives you a lot of points.

John Jantsch (12:52.479)

Yeah, sure. So what are some of the challenges you've seen or maybe we could even say mistakes you've seen small businesses make, you know, really trying to engage on Reddit.

Jim Squires (13:03.778)

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, kind of the mistakes that get made relate to what we were just talking about. So you cut you come in and you can imagine like, like as humans, we don't walk into a meeting or walk into a party and just start shouting about ourself. You you you ease your way in. You start talking. You get you get a feel for the vibe and what's happening. And then you can talk about yourself and what you're doing. And so the brands that that would show up or businesses that show up and and we coach on this so it doesn't happen.

very often, but if you show up and you are just just shouting with salesy messaging and and not being authentic and engaging that way, it's a you're not going to get shouted away. I you can show up with ads. People are used to ads and they're not going to, know, you can turn off comments and not really worry about it that much. But again, as we were saying before, if you really want to elevate, you really want to have success in the platform. Being aware of that, even turning comments on.

because you want to hear from people and you want to understand your customers, that's kind where you elevate to the next level.

John Jantsch (14:08.289)

Ken, is there a type of content that performs questions, behind the scenes insights, educational posts, AMAs? mean, is there a certain type that you think performs better?

Jim Squires (14:17.486)

Yeah, that's a great question.

I love that. It's not one specific type, but I like where you're going. The angle on this is, within the different formats, what type of content might resonate. And I would say that, in general, that transparency and being willing to engage always does well. So the AMA is a perfect example of that. There was actually Oatly, the oat milk brand. I love they did an AMA and they invited

Big dairy, know, big dairy businesses to come co-host with them and talk about climate footprint labeling. No one from Big Dairy showed up on that and took them up on it. Well, that small dairy showed up and there was a Scottish dairy farmer that showed up and actually engaged and talked through and they had a really good dialogue. So that type of content does well. Behind the scenes content is really, really good. I mean, you can imagine a microbrewery

John Jantsch (14:53.131)

Yeah, yeah.

Jim Squires (15:19.778)

taking you behind the scenes on how they brew their IPAs and people really want to geek out on that. They want to see the technical aspects of it, understand what's behind the scenes. And what it does is it shows when you show, because we all, with each of our businesses, we have a passion for what we're doing. That's why we started that business. And so when you show that enthusiasm, that passion and that craft, these people in the communities, they have the same passion. And so it really resonates with them.

John Jantsch (15:28.715)

Yes.

Jim Squires (15:48.396)

and then they want to lean in and they want to learn more about

John Jantsch (15:52.363)

So imagine the CEO sitting around saying, okay, my agency says I need to be on Reddit. How do I know if I'm getting any return on being there? What type of reporting, what type of measurement is available for somebody to know? Am I having success?

Jim Squires (16:02.359)

Yeah.

Jim Squires (16:09.57)

Yep, yep. mean, that's, that is the key. What am I, what have I accomplished here? So Reddit is a, it is, it's multi objective. So it really, it really goes from, you know, top of the funnel reach all the way down to driving sales with what you're trying to do. And so it depends on where you're at in your life cycle and kind of what you're trying to achieve. But I think about on the, discovery side, so people are showing up and they're really open minded. They want to discover new products and services.

I do look at the overall reach that you're getting inside of these different communities and try to understand that. I think for most small businesses, they want to move faster and they want to just get new customers. And so then I suggest looking at the traffic that is coming off of your advertising and your organic presence. You can measure that directly and see what traffic you're getting. And then ultimately, I look at the conversions and the new customers.

that you've converted and the purchases that you can drive. So as part of the reporting, you have access to all of that to go to instrument it. And then based on your campaign, what you're trying to achieve, that's actually the key thing is a lot of times businesses show up and they haven't crystallized. What am I actually trying to do with this campaign and making sure the creative ties to that? But having that really clear and then looking at the appropriate stats for that is really what I recommend.

John Jantsch (17:22.879)

Yeah, yeah, Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:33.835)

So you mentioned the word creative. Is there a form of creative, you know, maybe that's a little more tongue in cheek, a little more, or a little more cynical or, you know, just rather than just the traditional, we're the best, bye from us.

Jim Squires (17:46.382)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's lots of memes on Reddit, definitely. You can play into that, and some brands really do that. My advice on the creative is not unlike advice you would give a friend is be yourself on this. And so if you are a really tongue in cheek, kind of clever brand, then that should come out in your creative. If you're not, and you're doing

John Jantsch (17:50.093)

Right.

John Jantsch (18:01.695)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim Squires (18:12.858)

You know, B2B is huge on the platform. And so if you're doing some, somebody's B2B, that's more serious and that you feel like that's actually not your thing. you don't want to show up on Reddit and then start doing that. Cause that stands out as well. So I always like to have the, what, what, what are you as a brand? What do you stand for? What are you trying to communicate? And then have that tie in versus trying to, change yourself, to try to fit in or, or feel like it's reddity or something that's, that's, that's going to fit in there.

John Jantsch (18:35.904)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's probably no, no faster way to fail than to try to be something you're not right. Right. So one of the things that we've seen over the last couple of years, you know, ties into AI ties into zero click, you know, searches, now is that, advice we're giving people is like it or not. You've probably got to be a few more places where people are choosing to get their information and hang out.

Jim Squires (18:44.866)

That's right. As people in life or on platforms. Yes, exactly.

John Jantsch (19:08.737)

And it's not always search engines. How have you seen that impact Reddit or have you? guess I should ask first. Yeah.

Jim Squires (19:09.005)

Yeah.

Jim Squires (19:13.186)

Yeah, mean, it's absolutely it's a great it's a great point. mean, there is a one one thing that is interesting about Reddit is that it has a lot of unduplicated reach. So people that are on Reddit that are on Facebook or Instagram or other other places. And so that is that's counterintuitive because these other platforms are so big. But there actually are a lot of people that are on those other platforms. So being able

John Jantsch (19:38.581)

Well, and I suspect trust has a lot to do with it.

Jim Squires (19:42.562)

Yes, what they look at, that's a great point. mean, people, it's anonymous as we talked about before, people are sharing their unvarnished real opinions. And so people trust that because they're enthusiastic. Yeah. So I think that ability to get to customers that you can't get to on other platforms is something really to consider and think about when you're looking at it.

John Jantsch (19:43.553)

Or lack thereof. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:08.651)

Yes.

Jim Squires (20:08.812)

And so, yeah, so I think it does, that's one of the things on why you would want to branch out. The other reason is that you have on all the different platforms, people are in different mindsets and they're doing different things, which really affects what they may want to be purchasing or the decisions they may want to be making. So for example, on most platforms, targeting based on demo is really the standard.

John Jantsch (20:38.079)

Yeah.

Jim Squires (20:38.274)

If you were targeting me on another platform, you're going to know that I live in San Francisco. I'm in my forties. you may know, you may know where I work. You know, there's like certain things that you know about, about me. Well, you wouldn't know that, know, on Reddit is that I'm really into mountain biking and that I'm in the market right now to get a, a, a heavy duty, bike rack for my car that can hold four bikes. Cause I want to have my kids and my wife be able to go with, with me.

John Jantsch (20:50.315)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:55.477)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:06.241)

Mmm... Yeah.

Jim Squires (21:08.002)

and that it can go long distances up into the mountains. You wouldn't know that on another platform. And so that's the different dimension. And so as a business, you wanna be where your customers are and you wanna be where they are making purchase decisions. We always say that conversations drive decisions. And so people are making those decisions through the process. That's what I encourage.

John Jantsch (21:21.835)

Yes.

John Jantsch (21:27.553)

Yeah. And I certainly notice a lot of, anybody got advice on, know, kind of post, which is pretty high buyer intent, right? Um, yeah. So by the way, the Thule hitch rack, I swear by it. That's the way I would go. That's the way I have gone. and, and, and so now, now we need to talk about your, your, your setup on your bike. Uh, I'm a, I'm a Santa Cruz guy myself. Okay. Awesome.

Jim Squires (21:34.318)

That's right.

Jim Squires (21:39.162)

Is that the way to go? Okay. Okay, that's enough. I'm down to three right now.

Jim Squires (21:50.401)

I'm a Santa Cruz guy also, so I'll get to 50-10, yes.

John Jantsch (21:54.461)

Awesome. There's probably a Santa Cruz subreddit or at least a mountain bike subreddit.

Jim Squires (21:57.806)

They're 100 % there. I was going to ask you, do you spend time on Reddit? How much do you spend phone?

John Jantsch (22:02.825)

Yeah, we have the, have, we do a lot of training of fractional CMOs and marketing consultants and agencies. So we participate in a few of those conversations for sure. Yeah.

Jim Squires (22:13.966)

Okay, there's a lot of great small business communities, small business marketers. And so you can kind of as business use it in multiple ways. You're using it to get to your customers and potential customers. And then you're also using it for your own benefit for advice and understanding how to run your business along with other small business owners.

John Jantsch (22:35.391)

Yeah. And I mentioned that's actually a pretty, pretty good way to start getting engaged is go in there and just start asking questions, right? mean, of stuff you truly want to know, that probably is going to create some engagement all on its own. Cause people love to give answers. Yeah.

Jim Squires (22:41.806)

Yep, definitely.

Jim Squires (22:48.774)

That's exactly right. There's nothing when you, and I also encourage people to say, people to when they start using it, when you do that first post and people start up voting it and you get literally karma points, that's what we call it. So it shows you feel like, wow, I just added something of value to the universe. I'm getting these karma points. It feels really good. It's like you're contributing to this community. It's a nice feeling.

John Jantsch (23:06.261)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Jim, I want to thank you for something by the duct tape marketing podcast. is there someplace you invite people to connect with you? Obviously we've been talking about Reddit, reddit.com. we got a special for you listeners, a duct tape 500 to get some ad spend. Is there anywhere else you'd want people to connect with you?

Jim Squires (23:30.382)

We have a young on on Reddit, of course, I'm Jim at reddit.com. I'm happy to connect with people and and yeah, just it's great great being here I'm a fan of the the podcast and love what what you do with small businesses. So thank you for having me

John Jantsch (23:47.381)

Thanks so much again. Hopefully we'll run into you. I've got a daughter that lives out in the Bay area, so maybe we'll run into you one of these days out on the road. Awesome. Take care. Thanks.

Jim Squires (23:53.666)

I would love that. I would love that. Thanks, John. Take care. Bye-bye.