Discovering Tech Sales Leads on Reddit
I believe many of you are familiar with Zapier's success story, which describes how they gained early recognition and paying customers by leaving comments in community forums. As the largest and one of the highest quality communities, Reddit is an essential platform for expanding your business through commenting. I wrote this article to help people replicate Zapier's successful strategy on Reddit - Discovering Business Leads and Validating Ideas.
- ● A few key features of the Reddit community
- ● Identify the relevant posts (not by keywords)
- ● Join as many subreddits as possible
- ● Leave comments as early as possible
- ● Never use AI auto reply & DM
- ● Don't be afraid of downvotes
- ● Automate your Discovering Process
- ● Be patient
- ● Contribute to Reddit's growth
A few key features of the Reddit community
1. Reddit hosts numerous subreddits, each focused on a specific topic, which allows for more precise targeting of user groups.
2. Highly upvoted posts and comments on Reddit are easily indexed by Google. Consistent activity on Reddit can increase your visibility beyond what the top three daily posts on ProductHunt might achieve.
3. Reddit features a downvote option, which helps maintain a high quality of posts. As a result, although the quantity of posts may be lower, those that are published tend to be of high quality and generate significant engagement. For example, the subreddit r/technology (ranked 47) averages 60 posts a day.
4. Reddit has more than 140 thousand active subreddits. The top 3% of all subreddits have high user activity; A single post and its top comments can easily attract thousands of views. In the top 2% of subreddits, a post along with its top comments can receive tens of thousands of views.
5. The lifetime of a post is short; Views decrease significantly after 16 hours. Therefore, posting high-quality comments within the first 2 hours is crucial to maximize exposure for your business.
6. Reddit users are worldwide, but most come from developed countries (which have high purchasing power), and English is the primary language used in the community.
Identify the relevant posts (not by keywords)
Leaving comments under highly relevant posts can accurately target the right users. Before ChatGPT was developed, people relied on keyword searches to find relevant posts. If you use broad keywords like "AI," you might receive tons of posts that are barely relevant to your business. Conversely, if you use more specific keywords, you might miss many posts that are highly relevant but do not contain any of your keywords.
Here are two examples of how I tried to find relevant posts for our products, FeatBit and Idea Hunt.
The posts above do not contain the words "Leads" or "Sale". However, replying to this post with high-quality, non-advertising comments can effectively demonstrate how Idea-Hunt utilizes AI to enhance sales and expose our business to relevant users. I would rate the relevance of these posts as 7 out of 10 (with 10 being the most relevant).
The post above is 100% relevant to FeatBit's business — a feature flag management tool. Similar to the last example, there is no direct keyword match between the post and FeatBit. Current technologies without reasoning capabilities cannot identify the high relevance between the post and FeatBit. Nevertheless, it's an excellent opportunity for the FeatBit team to leave comments.
In conclusion, we need to find effective ways to identify as many relevant posts as possible to maximize our business leads. This will be discussed in the section "Automate your Discovering Process".
Join as many subreddits as possible
Browsing more subreddits can bring us more relevant posts for our business, allowing us to leave more comments and increase our business exposure, which then leads to more sales leads and enhances our business growth. We need to monitor as many subreddits as possible.
For example, Llamagen, an AI ACG creation tool, initially only monitored a few subreddits such as r/NFTART, r/Screenwriting, r/selfpublish, r/StableDiffusion, r/Storyboarding, and r/webcomics, and they gained some paid customers from these. When they expanded their search to other subreddits, they discovered many other subreddits that also had posts relevant to their users, such as r/SaaS, r/worldbuilding. Here's a skill to help you find more relevant subreddits initially:
- 1. List as many short keywords as possible that are relevant to your business.
- 2. Search for posts using these keywords on Reddit and collect the subreddits of these posts.
- 3. The top-ranking page on Reddit can also help you find relevant communities. (https://www.reddit.com/best/communities/1/#t5_2qstm/)
In conclusion, monitoring as many subreddits as possible can bring many more potential opportunities than you might initially imagine. However, monitoring those posts and finding relevant information can be very time-consuming. Both the issue and the solution will be discussed in the section "Automate Your Discovery Process".
Leave comments as early as possible
After the initial peak period, the visibility of a Reddit post typically declines. Most posts see a significant drop in interaction after the first 16 hours. This is partly due to the algorithm Reddit uses, which favors newer content to keep the feed fresh and engaging.
For comments, The first hour after a post is made can be critical. Posting a comment within the first hour is often beneficial as it allows your comment to be seen by other early viewers who are likely to engage. Being among the first can mean more visibility as the thread grows.
Never use AI auto reply & DM
Using AI to automatically reply to posts won't yield high-performance business leads. Only high-quality comments will be accepted by the community. High quality typically means:
- ● Understanding the norms and the context of the specific subreddit.
- ● Grasping the culture of the community so that comments resonate more with users.
- ● Providing unique insights into the problem and offering precise, detailed solutions.
- ● Knowing how to introduce the product (including links) without annoying users or causing the original poster (OP) to ban the comment.
The members of the subreddit will be happy to mention your insights and product in comments on other posts.
In conclusion, each subreddit has its own culture and expectations, and aligning your comments to fit these can improve their reception. Even if your comment doesn't rise to the top, you can still engage users who are genuinely interested in your solution, business, or product.
Don't be afraid of downvotes
Even if you provide a good solution, you might still receive downvotes. However, don't let this deter you. Instead, ask people why they downvoted your comment; they will often be willing to provide insightful feedback. This feedback can help you refine your sales approach. If you are confident in the correctness of your comment, don't worry about the downvotes. There will be individuals who find value in your comment and may even try your product. In such scenarios, it's crucial to post your comment as early as possible to maximize visibility.
Automate your Discovering Process
Idea-Hunt, driven entirely by ChatGPT and AI technologies, is designed to help users discover business leads and brainstorm ideas on Reddit. It uses AI technology to swiftly identify posts most relevant to your business and notifies you immediately. This timely alert enables you to contribute high-quality comments within the first two hours of a post's release, enhancing your visibility and ensuring you stay ahead of other responses, thereby maximizing exposure to potential customers. Replicate Zapier's path to success!
Be patient
The highly relevant post may not appear immediately after you start using Idea Hunt; you need to be patient and wait for the right one to come along. Your comment may not be good enough to receive more visibility initially; it also takes time to improve and better understand the culture of Reddit communities.
Your comment may attract users and encourage them to try your product, but it's not guaranteed that they will ultimately pay for it. What's important is to understand why they don't make a purchase.
In conclusion, be patient in discovering business leads and continually iterate your approach and product to enhance their effectiveness.
Contribute to Reddit's growth
Just expose your business or product solution and insights to the relevant Reddit users, this will help to make Reddit community more prosperous then contribute to the Reddit's growth.
Share your unique insights and useful solutions, not the advertisement!!!