Reddit lead generation: how to find people asking for what you sell

Why Reddit works for lead generation

Reddit threads are organised by interest, and people post questions in their own words: "what do you use for…", "any alternative to…". That is the strongest kind of buying signal, and it is public, so you can read the whole situation before you do anything.

How to search for it

• Search by topic plus a request word: "google maps leads recommend", not "recommend" alone.
• Sort by relevance over the past year when your topic is niche. Newest-first only reaches back a few days, and a specific phrase can have almost no posts in that window. In our own tests, sorting by best match over a year found people asking for exactly what we sell, where a newest-first search found none.
• Check that the posts really mention your topic. Reddit matches loosely, so a long phrase can return posts that share only one common word.
• Look at comments as well as posts. People often describe their situation under someone else's question.

Pick subreddits by how narrow your offer is

The narrower your specialty, the narrower your list should be. A tool for online stores belongs where store owners talk, not in a general marketing community. Spend a few minutes reading each community's rules, which are usually in the sidebar, before you reply to anyone.

Read first, reply second

1. Read the thread and the community rules.
2. Answer the question properly, as if you were a person with no product to sell.
3. Mention what you do only if it truly answers the question, and say that you are involved.
4. Do not send a private message to someone you have not helped in public first.

What Reddit does and does not show

Reddit does not list who upvoted a post, and it has no follower lists, so a list of people on Reddit comes from authors of posts and commenters on threads. Chat is open to many accounts, but not all.

The tools landscape, in one paragraph

Reddit tools do different jobs: keyword alerts that email you when a phrase appears, research tools that map a community's pain points, and lead tools that collect the people behind the posts. GummySearch, a popular research tool, was reported to be closing, and people who relied on it are choosing among these jobs again. Decide which job you need before you choose a tool.

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