Context Beats Demographics: Reddit's Ideal Community Persona (Reddit ICP)
A Reddit ICP, or Ideal Community Persona, defines your ideal customer by the communities they belong to instead of by age, gender or job title. On Reddit, context beats demographics: a single community like r/newborns can replace a whole stack of demographic settings. It's better to pay a bit more for an audience you know is relevant than less for an audience you're not sure about.
What is a Reddit ICP?
A classic ICP says who your customer is: gender, age, job title, location. A Reddit ICP says where they are and how they think: the communities they join, what they ask, what annoys them and what they already buy. Reddit lets you target the community directly, so the community is the persona.
Why does context beat demographics?
Reddit has no age or city targeting at the time of writing, so demographics can't do the heavy lifting.
A community tells you how relevant someone is. Someone in r/newborns is almost certainly a parent of a newborn.
In one of our tests, we doubled reach with more automated targeting and revenue dropped 40%. A smaller, more precise community won.
More on targeting in Reddit ads targeting.
How do you build your Reddit ICP?
List where your customers hang out: communities about what they own, do and research.
Group them into 5 to 10 themes.
For each theme, write a short persona: what they ask, what they complain about, and how they talk.
Write one message per persona, in that community's tone.
Test each persona in its own ad group, and keep the winners. See Reddit ads campaign structure.
What does a Reddit ICP look like?
This example is illustrative, for a travel charger:
Community theme | Persona | Message angle |
|---|---|---|
Minimalist travel | Wants one device that replaces three | One charger instead of a bag of cables |
Digital nomads | Works from anywhere, needs reliable power | Power you can trust in any country |
Frequent flyers | Cares about weight and airport outlets | Light enough to forget, strong enough to count on |
Why pay a bit more for relevance?
Cheaper reach feels like a win in the dashboard. But if you can't be sure the audience is right, you're paying to find out. We'd rather pay slightly more for a community we know is relevant. That's the idea behind Reddit ICP.
Reddit ICP: FAQ
What is a Reddit ICP?
An Ideal Community Persona: a description of your ideal customer based on the communities they belong to, what they ask and what they care about.
Why does context beat demographics on Reddit?
Because a community shows how relevant someone is, and Reddit has no age or city targeting at the time of writing.
How many communities should a persona have?
Group your communities into 5 to 10 themes, and write one persona per theme.
Is it worth paying more for a smaller community?
In our experience, yes. A precise community beat broader automated targeting in our test.
How do you test a Reddit ICP?
Run each persona in its own ad group, give it about 14 days, and compare results.
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This post comes from my free eBook, How Reddit Ads Actually Works. It also covers targeting, creative, comments and measurement. Get it free, by email.
About the author
Written by Dāvis Lejnieks, CEO of Undecided Agency and a Redditor for 15+ years. He plans and runs Reddit ad campaigns for DTC, gaming and app brands, and shares what the data shows here.
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