How to find customers in Facebook groups and posts

Find the right groups

• Groups for your town, neighbourhood or region, for local services.
• Groups for a hobby, a product type or a life stage your customers share.
• Groups for small business owners, if you sell to businesses.
• Check each group's rules before you post. Many forbid promotion, and breaking that gets you removed.

Search inside the group

Use the search box inside each group and try your service name plus words like "recommend", "looking for" and "anyone know". Sort by recent. A request from the last day or two is open, and being among the first helpful replies matters.

Reply so people trust you

1. Answer the actual question with a specific, useful detail.
2. Say what you do and where, in one sentence, only if the group allows it.
3. Leave one clear way to reach you, such as a booking link, and stop there.

What Facebook allows

You can collect people who commented on posts you can see. Avocado Leads can follow people and send friend requests where Facebook offers them, but Facebook messages are not sent by Avocado Leads: you send those yourself. That is deliberate. Facebook restricts accounts that message strangers in bulk, and a message you write by hand is both safer and warmer.

Keep to a small number of friend requests a day, and never over the limits Facebook applies to your account. If Facebook shows a security check, stop for a few days.

Mistakes that get people removed from groups

• Posting the same ad in many groups.
• Sending a private message to everyone who commented on a post.
• Replying only to sell, never to help.

A reply you can adapt

Under "can anyone recommend a good electrician in the east end?": "I cover the east end and can usually come within a day or two. For a flickering light or a tripping fuse the first thing to check is the consumer unit, so ask whoever you choose whether they inspect that first. I am happy to take a look if you message me." It answers, names the area, and gives one useful fact before any offer.

Keep the offer to one sentence. People in groups read dozens of replies, and the short, specific ones are the ones they remember.

Where Avocado Leads fits

Avocado Leads does the collecting, ranking and pacing part of this work. You paste a post, a profile or a search, and it saves the people who commented, reacted, followed or match, then scores each person from 0 to 100 on buying language, how recently they were active, how well they fit your business and how reachable they are.

It then runs a paced follow or connect campaign from your own signed-in browser, with a message after where the platform allows one. It never asks for your social passwords, and it keeps to hourly, daily, weekly and monthly caps for each network. The limits that come with each platform are on the platforms page, and the safety page explains what it will not do.

Questions people ask