Reddit is the one big place where people describe their problem in their own words, in public, before they spend money. The leads are not hidden — they are typed, thousands of times a day, as questions. Finding them is a listening problem, not an advertising problem.
The shapes of a buying question
Intent has grammar. The posts worth your hour look like these:
- “Can anyone recommend a …” — the purest form. The person has decided to buy and is choosing who.
- “How much does it cost to …” — price questions are buying questions wearing a number.
- “My … stopped working / broke / is leaking” — a problem described in plain words, on a clock.
- “What do you use for …” — asked of people who already solved it; the answers move the asker.
- “Is it worth paying for … or should I …” — a person standing at the exact fork where your business is one of the roads.
Phrases: yours must sound like theirs
The mistake almost everyone makes is listening for their own words — trade terms, product names, “services”. People do not type those. They type the situation: how much to replace a water heater, not water heater replacement services. Build your phrase list from the questions themselves: the situation, the object, the town, the number. A phrase that reads like something a worried person would type at midnight will catch buyers; a phrase that reads like your website will catch your competitors' marketing.
Posts are the door; comments are the room
Half the value on Reddit is below the post: the follow-up question, the “I used X and they were great”, the asker replying with the detail that decides the job. A tool that reads posts only is reading headlines. Whatever you use — your eyes or a tool — make sure it hears comments too.
Replying without sounding like an ad
Reddit can smell a sales reply in one line, and communities punish them. The order that works: answer the question first, fully, with what you actually know. Do not name your business in the first reply — if your answer is good, people ask what you use and who you are, and then the name is an answer instead of an advertisement. Never paste the same reply twice; a reply written from the person's own details reads like a neighbour, because it is aimed like one.
Doing it by hand vs by tool
By hand means Reddit's own search, a few subreddits, and your evenings — workable at five phrases, hopeless at fifty, and blind while you sleep. A server-side tool listens to your whole phrase list around the clock and keeps every catch. That is the service AskCatch sells: the listening, for $19 a month — every catch kept, judged honestly, and waiting for you in the morning. The reply is yours to write, which is exactly why it will sound like you.