Experimenting with Paid Ads on X and Reddit: Here's What Happened

B

bluesky68

New member
Hey everyone!

I'm on the challenging journey of promoting my new platform, WiseWriter , to reach my target audience. I've experimented with various strategies:
  • Social Media (primarily X and Reddit)
  • Online Directories (Great for traffic and sign-ups while featured on the homepage)
  • Cold DMs on X (yielded some results but low response rate)
  • SEO (Thanks to my SaaS being a content generator, I've auto-published hundreds of blog posts, though it's too early to see substantial results)
  • Forums (Managed to attract some SEO forum users, but it's hard to reach many without significant investment)
After exploring these options and enhancing my platform (especially the landing page and onboarding process) based on user feedback, I decided to try paid advertising. I believed the best approach was to target X and Reddit, given their large SEO communities. I crafted a storytelling-style ad with engaging visuals and launched my campaigns.

Here's a breakdown of the results:

X

X results
  • 96,252 impressions
  • 530 clicks
  • 0.55% CTR (Click-Through Rate)
  • €31 spent
Reddit

Reddit results
  • 9,579 impressions
  • 44 clicks
  • 0.49% CTR
  • €8.64 spent
These experiments ran for a few days and (less time for reddit), at first glance, the results aren't bad – 574 visits to a landing page is good news for a platform as young as mine, still struggling to generate daily organic traffic.

However, I've noticed a few things:
  • The number of clicks doesn't match the visit metrics on my platform (I use Plausible for tracking). I understand some users might have ad blockers, but the discrepancy (especially on Reddit) is significant.
  • The duration of most 'visits' from these clicks is extremely short, typically 0-1 seconds. This makes me question the quality of traffic from these ads. Not everyone has to spend a minute reading the copy, but 1 second with a high bounce rate seems odd.
For comparison, the day my tool was featured on a directory homepage, I received around 200 visits and 30 sign-ups, with much higher average view times. With both ad campaigns combined, I only got 5 sign-ups, from users who haven't even tried the platform yet.

I'd love to hear from those who have successfully run ads on Reddit and X. Any insights on these results and how I might improve them?

The campaigns were well-targeted on both platforms, aiming for an SEO-interested audience.

Looking forward to your advice and comments!
 
@bluesky68 I haven't had much luck with Reddit. I initially saw high bounce rates, but saw that drop by making adjustments to the ad copy. The ads blend fairly well so I feel most clicks are accidental if it isn't 100% clear it's an ad. Subreddit targeting played a bigger role than I anticipated and was the only targeting option that produced any leads.

After about $100 in spend, we got leads for fairly cheap, but at a higher CPA than other platforms. We saw lower conversion rates, higher unsubscribe rates, higher invalid emails, and $0 in sales. Good traffic, but tough audience. I'm sure if I spent more time on it, those numbers could improve, but it wasn't worth the effort seeing better results on other platforms from day 1.

I could never crack Twitter, but gave it another shot after the Elon acquisition. I don't know if he made any changes, but the traffic quality was surprisingly good. Got leads for dirt cheap, but had tracking issues, so I'm not too sure about sales. It's typically top of the funnel traffic, so keep that in mind and mix in retargeting on other platforms with Twitter traffic.

I'd start your test with targeting SEO service/tool pages. Direct competitors if possible. Business pages performed significantly better for me than influencer/resource pages.

Facebook was the best by a long-shot so I cut these tests short and spent my time optimizing there since we had a limited budget anyway.

Outside of that, I'd also consider creating a more sales focused landing page. Your homepage looks solid, but a landing page with a more sales heavy copy/angle might help with conversions.
 
@wisprof Thank you very much for your comment, a lot of valuable information to assimilate!

I'm taking note of possible changes to the landing page to make it more sales-oriented, conduct tests on Facebook ads, SEO service pages, and maybe try some adjustments to the Twitter and Reddit ads, but not invest too much effort into them.
 
@huckfinn151 Nothing fancy. I'm not the best with FB since I only running campaigns a few times every year. The algorithm seems to always change so it's not really predictable. I typically catch up on strategy changes through FB groups and reddit and just start testing until something sticks.
 
@bluesky68 Your headlines need work.
“Most advanced ai”? How? Tell us in your headline why this is so advanced.

Love those quick step animated graphics.
How did you make those?
 
@fanofgod1992 Thank you for the feedback! That's a good idea, yes, I'll take a look at that copy.

The 'animated graphics' are small videos created with screen.studio (a highly recommended tool) showcasing the internal functioning of the tool.
 
@bluesky68 “Optimize and Enrich Your Web Content in Minutes”

I also feel like this doesn’t speak to the core reason why I should want to use you tool.

Why do I even want to optimize and enrich content?
The answer is what your Headline should speak about
 
@fanofgod1992 Explore some jtbd ( jobs-to-be-done) articles.. Look on medium alan Klement

And tweak your headlines..

Optimize and Enrich Your Web Content in Minutes

Doesn't talk to the 'customers struggling moment' and job they are hiring ( buying) your product for.

Help me save time
Make money
And look good to my ( customer tribe)

Rank quicker, will kliller keywords within minutes.

Standing out in a crowd has never been easier!

Something like this
 
@bluesky68 I personally have never clicked a Reddit ad on purpose. I will hit them accidentally then close them as soon as possible, that is probably where all those 1 second hits came through.

Also the product price is way too high imo. You can get GPT-4 for $20 a month. This is the danger Sam spoke to, creating GPT wrappers will never be profitable.

I don’t mean to be negative, I just mean to be honest. Best of luck to you!
 
@anton22 That's a completely valid opinion! The reality (and maybe I should emphasize the landing page more for clarity) is that the entire structure created for generating content automatically on a massive scale, connecting with your CMS and its data, and above all, the final quality of the articles, is something that chatGPT doesn't currently provide, hence the value of the platform.

On the other hand, regarding clicks on the ads, that might indeed be the issue. The problem is that Reddit is quite expensive per click. Twitter, on the other hand, at least has a lower cost...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

R
How to upgrade from free to paid?
Replies
1
Views
2
613jono
6
A
SaaS owner we are here to help you get paid customers
Replies
1
Views
6
govouv
G
S
Should I Run Paid Ads for My App? — Help
Replies
4
Views
5
leaizme123
L
T
paid a 1000$ for this design - roast our landing page
2
Replies
27
Views
44
light88
L
W
From 10 to 225 Paid Customers in last 30 days
2
Replies
28
Views
29
welaney1949
W
Back
Top