Case Studies: How Founders & Brands Use Reddit for Customer Research
Why Brands Use Reddit for Research in the First Place
If you’re building a product, you already know customer research is unskippable. But while everyone tells you to “talk to your audience,” they’ll rarely tell you where to find the best, unfiltered insights.
If they won’t, I will. That place is Reddit.
Reddit is where people go to discuss their interests on a deep level. Along with those discussions come honest opinions and impromptu product reviews. Plus, it’s ridiculously niche-friendly – here’s a subreddit for everything. If you think your industry is too obscure, I promise you, Reddit has a community for it.
That’s why so many successful founders now use Reddit as THE customer research destination. They approach it in a different way than they do other social media for best results. Here’s how they do it.
How Founders Successfully Used Reddit for Customer Research
Pronounce AI Surpassed 300,000 Users by Mirroring Customer Language
Pronounce AI, an AI-powered tool that helps non-native English speakers improve their pronunciation and fluency, has grown to over 300,000 users worldwide. That’s what happens when you truly listen to your audience and apply what you’ve learned.
How They Did It
Instead of guessing what language learners struggle with, the Pronounce AI team hung out in subreddits like r/LanguageLearning and r/JudgeMyAccent, where people were venting about their fears and frustrations. Their pronunciation worries prevented them from speaking. Post after post mentioned the same fears:
- “I freeze up when speaking English at work.”
- “I’m self-conscious about my accent.”
People didn’t just want pronunciation help, but they wanted a judgment-free way to practice. This shaped both the product (a private AI-driven speech analysis tool) and the marketing.
Plus, instead of a generic copy like “Improve your English pronunciation,” they had an inventory of “sticky” phrases from their audience. This resulted in persuasive messaging like “Don’t freeze up in your next meeting.”
This approach made their ads and landing pages feel instantly relatable. Rather than talking to their audience, they were reflecting their experiences right back at them.
From the Founder
“Don’t stop at just the upvotes. Even if you’re doing it manually, conduct a quick sentiment analysis of how people talk about their struggles. Look for emotional words: frustrated, embarrassed, anxious.”
– Xenia Busheva, Co-founder & CMO at Pronounce AI
Cafely Boosted Engagement by Prioritizing Genuine Conversations
Cafely, a brand deeply involved in the coffee, wellness, and mindfulness communities, took the long route on Reddit. They engaged with people first, listened to their thoughts, and built trust before ever mentioning their products.
How They Did It
Instead of coming in hot with product promotions, they did something brands often forget, which is talking like real people. They:
- Joined discussions naturally, without pushing an agenda.
- Asked questions to encourage organic engagement.
- Took note of common frustrations, like concerns over artificial flavors.
- Spotted trends like rising interest in low-carb, sugar-free coffee.
This genuine approach to research gave them access to unfiltered insights, like what people wanted in a coffee product, not just what coffee brands assumed they did. That feedback directly shaped their marketing and product messaging, leading them to highlight their zero artificial ingredients and rethink how they positioned their nootropic energy drinks.
From the Founder
“Don’t jump right in. Lurk first. Observe. Before posting or commenting, spend time reading discussions so you’ll have an idea of the general tone and culture. Also, instead of selling or promoting, it’s best to pose questions that will spark engagement and comments. (…)
Last but not least, engage genuinely. After all, you want to get the most genuine feedback and comments to ensure accuracy in your research.
– Mimi Nguyen, Founder at Cafely
Fetch & Funnel Boosted Customer Engagement by 15% in Two Months by Inviting Redditors to Beta Test
Fetch & Funnel, a digital marketing agency, actively involved Redditors in shaping products by inviting them to beta tests. Rather than just scraping feedback from discussions, they turned Reddit users into real contributors, using their insights to shape e-commerce strategies for better customer engagement.
How They Did It
Samir ElKamouny, Founder & CEO of Fetch & Funnel, took a hands-on approach to Reddit research with a focus on wellness-focused communities. Instead of using polls or comment analysis, he:
- Identified user concerns (like sustainability in e-commerce packaging) through subreddit discussions.
- Engaged Redditors in constructive conversations rather than just absorbing feedback.
- Used beta testing invites as a way to bridge the gap between customer input and product iteration.
- Build transparency into their approach, making their community feel heard.
From the Founder
“One significant challenge is the anonymity of Reddit, which sometimes results in unfiltered criticism. I approach this by encouraging constructive dialogue and inviting users to take part in beta tests, which not only resolves issues but builds a deeper connection with the community. Always be transparent, which resonates well with the Reddit audience.”
Samir ElKamouny, Founder & CEO, Fetch & Funnel
Over at Reddit, You’re Not a Founder. You’re a Student of Your Audience.
The founders’ takeaways are clear: If you listen more than you talk and make genuine, curiosity-based conversation, you’ll be well received – and learn a ton about your audience in the process.
But here’s one thing people often forget about Reddit…
- People won’t always engage with your posts, especially if you don’t have enough Karma (Reddit’s user score). And if they don’t engage, you’ll have no first-party data to pull from there.
- People won’t always reply to your comments or messages, even if they’ve happily agreed to chat in the DMs. Some people use temporary “throwaway” accounts and don’t intend to use them after a short period.
- Depending on the number of subreddits you’re following and their activity level, you could spend weeks digging through discussions and still miss important insights.
Now for the good news: You can build successful products only on existing conversations with the amount of Reddit data available. Even if you don’t have enough first-hand interactions, zeroing in on the right audience and the right discussions will give you plenty of material – while slashing your research time in half.
GummySearch helps you with that.
GummySearch Makes Customer Research Effortless
No matter what stage you’re at – validating an idea, looking for product-market fit, or just trying to stay connected with your audience –helps you track, filter, and analyze audience conversations in minutes. Here’s how it does that.
It Helps You Create a Highly Targeted Audience (Even If You Don’t Have Customers Yet)
Let’s say I’m building a time management tool for people struggling to balance work and side projects but have no people “of my own” to research. My ideal audience will typically include entrepreneurs, freelancers, and productivity enthusiasts who are already talking about their struggles on Reddit.
With GummySearch, I can build a custom audience by selecting subreddits where my target users hang out. I can just hit “Make a New Audience” and add relevant subreddits like:
- r/entrepreneur
- r/productivity
- r/sideproject
- r/projectmanagement
- r/timemanagement
The platform then gives me filtered community data with insights like:
- Audience growth trends so I can tell if interest in a topic is rising or falling.
- Engagement levels, so I know how active a community is before diving in.
It Lets You Explore Hot Topics, Top Content, & AI-Powered Themes
Once I’ve built my audience, I get access to themes, topics, and product mentions, making it stupidly easy to pinpoint what my audience is buzzing about. I can filter my audience’s conversations through topics or subreddits and categorize my research by finding patterns in existing conversations.
Inside GummySearch, I have two theme options:
- Scoring-based themes, which are themes based on recency and engagement level.
These are Hot Discussions (the most upvoted, engaged, and talked-about threads) and Top Content (the best-performing posts over time, great for evergreen research).
This duo is great for time-sensitive research and makes for a well-rounded analysis with much less hands-on work.
- AI-based themes, which are sentiment-based and topically relevant.
They include:
- Advice Requests – Users actively seeking recommendations (perfect for positioning your product)
- Money Talk – Discussions around budgeting, spending, and purchasing decisions
- Solution Requests – People looking for fixes to specific problems
- Pain & Anger – The rants and frustrations that tell you what’s broken
- Opportunities – Moments where users express unmet needs (gold for product ideas)
- News – Real-time discussions about recent industry updates.
Every single theme comes with an AI-generated summary.
- If I want to spot patterns fast, AI detects recurring pain points and trends for me.
- If I need specific answers, I can ask AI a direct question. It’ll pull the most relevant insights, with source links so I can analyze the discussions for myself.
It Lets You Ask Reddit Anything
If I’m looking for specific keywords, I can search across my audience and instantly find relevant discussions. All I need to do is go to Advanced Search, select the audience I want to search, and type in a keyword, for example, “side hustle.”
Once GummySearch fetches the relevant results, I can sort them by most recent, the ones with the most upvotes, or the ones with the most comments. I can also apply filters to view only text posts and omit every post I’ve already seen. This keeps my data squeaky clean.
Beyond that, I can see the timeline for every keyword I search. That way, I can decide if it’s worth tracking or not. I’ll get to tracking in a second.
Most times, I need hyper-targeted results that don’t get triggered with a shorter keyword. With the Ask ✨ feature, I can type in a direct question – almost like I’m asking Reddit itself. AI will only pull the most relevant posts that answer it. If there are no matches, it’ll let me know.
In my case, I wondered what side hustles Redditors in my audience typically recommended for people who didn’t have enough time on their hands. So I just asked them.
GummySearch will retrieve the answers for me in the form of Reddit posts that match my question.
The best thing about this feature is that it tells me exactly how many minutes or hours I’ll save on research. For example, this one simple search saved me over an hour.
It Provides Competitive Intelligence Through Product Mentions
The Products tab compiles discussions around tools and services related to my audience, showing unfiltered product feedback straight from Reddit. There are way fewer biased reviews simply because those weren’t meant to be “official” reviews in the first place. They’re simply people sharing the products they use and why they work.
It Lets You Track Keywords & Automate Research
I don’t have to search Reddit every day manually, and, frankly, I don’t want to. So I have my tracked keywords do it for me.
The keywords I track will depend on the type of research, but I like tracking keywords that have to do with:
- What’s frustrating my audience right now (“frustrated with”, “I hate”)
- What people love about similar products (direct competitor names + “I love”)
- What people love about my brand (my brand name!)
Here’s how I set it up:
- I ran a keyword search. For example, “SaaS founders” if I’d like to say what this segment is talking about, time management.
I could refine my search by adding “time management” to the AI Match Criteria, but that’s optional.
- I click “Track” (after confirming the results are relevant)
- I sit back while GummySearch alerts me in the Conversations 💬 page when new discussions pop up.
Since I don’t like to get broad results, I use AI-based matching whenever I can to filter out irrelevant results and get hyper-precise results. I just need to click any tracked keyword, then the gear ⚙️icon beside it to decide:
- How often I get notified of new keywords (because sometimes there are too many)
- Where GummySearch should deliver the notifications
- What types of results should pop up? (To avoid getting overwhelmed with mentions, I apply AI-based matching to the keyword if I haven’t already. I also make sure to add the type of results I don’t want to see in the Exclude Criteria field).
I try not to go crazy with the filtering. After all, I still want Reddit to have some leeway in bringing me certain “unexpected” results. There’s so much to explore out there!
Reddit Marketing is Humanized Marketing
With Reddit, you can go both ways:
You can listen to your audience when they don’t know you’re listening…and even when they do!
Moving forward, get to know your audience. Really. Then, drop the polish. Join conversations without trying to control them, be vulnerable, and use what you learn to build something better.
