Illustrative scenario: an email product for small SaaS teams. The questions below are invented to show the decision process, not real customer results.
| Question | Decision | Why / next step |
|---|---|---|
| “We send 40k transactional emails a month. What fits a small team?” | Keep for review | A task, scale and audience are explicit. Verify product fit and current community rules before drafting. |
| “Which email provider should I use?” | Clarify | The use case, budget and scale are missing. Ask a useful question before recommending anything. |
| “I need email tools for a school assignment.” | Skip as a sales lead | It may deserve a helpful answer, but it is not evidence of a purchase decision. |
Blank template: thread URL, date, customer fit, evidence, rules, decision, reviewer and outcome. No account required.
Find discussions about a problem your product can solve. Use search phrases to build a reading list, then check the audience, need, decision stage and community rules. Keep a record of the evidence before deciding whether a reply would help.
These patterns help you find questions to review. They are search cues; the original context determines whether someone is considering a purchase.
“best tool for ___”, “what do you use for ___”
“alternatives to ___”, “is ___ worth it”
“struggling with ___”, “how do I ___”
“moving off ___”, “___ is too expensive”
“recommendations for ___?”, “anyone use ___?”
Five phrases per pattern. Swap ___ for your category, then paste them into whatever you already use for alerts. This is the whole list, not a sample.
best tool for ___? · what do you use for ___? · what’s everyone using for ___? · is there a tool that does ___? · which ___ would you recommend?
alternatives to ___? · is ___ worth it? · ___ or ___, which one? · anything cheaper than ___? · has anyone switched off ___?
struggling with ___? · how do I ___? · why does ___ keep breaking? · spending too long on ___? · is there a better way to do ___?
moving off ___, what next? · ___ is too expensive, what else? · our ___ contract is up, options? · outgrowing ___, where do people go? · ___ raised prices, staying?
anyone use ___? · recommendations for ___? · how are you handling ___? · what would you pick today? · did ___ work for you?
Start with communities where your intended customers describe their work. Review recent questions, recurring discussion threads and the current participation rules. Keep a community only when you can explain the audience fit. A popular thread or a high member count alone does not make it a useful source of leads.
Chart the communities around your product — not just the obvious one.
Track the buying-intent language above, not just your brand name.
Check customer fit, a stated problem and whether your experience can help. A how-to question alone does not establish purchase intent.
Answer useful-first, with your product as context — never as the pitch.
Move each lead through a simple pipeline so nothing goes cold.
Illustrative reply: “At that volume, compare delivery logs, retry handling, support and the monthly minimum. What framework are you using, and do you need marketing email too?” Offer a relevant comparison once the missing details are clear. If you mention your own product, disclose the relationship and follow the community rules. Record the response separately from any later enquiry or sale.
Intent scoring gets it wrong sometimes. A “best tool for ___” thread can turn out to be a student doing homework. Those drafts get skipped. And in a quiet niche there may be only two or three real buyer threads a week. No loop can manufacture demand that isn’t there. Reading and approving drafts still takes a few minutes of your week.
Pick five subreddits. Track the phrases, not your brand name. Sort shopping from venting. Answer the real question. Then put your product in as one line, never as the headline.
¹ Semrush, "The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study" · as reported by Search Engine Land.
Watch buyer-intent phrases in the right subreddits, qualify by intent, and reply useful-first where you honestly fit.
Skip it as a sales lead when the person is outside your audience, the need does not fit your product, or participation would violate the rules. You can still offer useful, non-promotional help where permitted.
“Alternatives to” or “best tool for” can identify a discussion worth reading. Check the task, constraints and decision stage before treating it as buying intent; “how do I” may simply be a support question.
Start with a set small enough to review consistently. Expand when your records show relevant discussions you can help with, and remove communities that repeatedly produce irrelevant matches. There is no universal best number.
Reddit lead generation for B2B SaaS: Bavior finds the threads where buyers already ask, scores intent, and shows the quote behind every pick. You approve.
Reddit competitor monitoring for B2B SaaS: catch every alternatives-to-X thread as it opens, and show up with a helpful, rule-safe answer you approved.
Reddit marketing strategy for 2026: five moves that work — find the threads that buy, earn karma, post story-first, get cited by AI, and stay rule-safe.
Find communities where people already talk about the problem your product solves. How do I shortlist communities for my product?