How to find buyer-intent posts on Reddit for lead-gen

Reddit is a gold mine for finding leads. It is still overlooked by traditional marketers.

In this article, I’ll show you how I use Reddit to find real buyer-intent posts and how I run that workflow in Mentionkit, our social monitoring tool.

What Reddit lead generation actually means

Reddit lead generation is not blasting DMs or dropping links in random threads.

It means:

1. Finding posts where someone is actively describing a problem.
2. Identifying posts where the user is evaluating tools or asking for alternatives.
3. Replying with useful help first, then offering your product when it actually fits.

That’s why Reddit works so well for founder-led growth. People explain context in detail. They share what they tried, what failed, and what they need next. That gives you better lead signal than most cold lists.

Setup Mentionkit for buyer-intent discovery

For this guide, I’m using Mentionkit with Reddit-only tracking.

Start with one project and a focused keyword list. Track your own brand(obvs), track your most popular competitors and some industry keywords.

Don’t worry if this sounds overwhelming, Mentionkit will give you a list of suggested keywords when you sign up.

Example if you sell an SEO tool:

1. ahrefs alternative
2. semrush alternative
3. technical seo audit
4. keyword research workflow

Example if you sell a DTC cereal brand:

1. competitor names like kashi, magicspoon and catalina crunch
2. pain terms like gluten free contamination, ingredient issue, digestive issues

Then I’d do this every day:

1. Check relevance score first.
2. Prioritize negative competitor mentions and “what should I use” posts.
3. Ignore ai slop, generic news and meme threads.

You can enforce this by setting filters inside Mentionkit and then saving the view. That way, you have a preset inbox with your applied filters.

(^My custom view for my morning marketing routine)

How to reply without sounding salesy

Most founders lose Reddit leads because they pitch too early.

Use this structure:

1. Acknowledge the exact problem in one line.
2. Share your product and say how it solves the problem
3. Keep tone plain and honest.

Simple founder-style reply:

“We built Mentionkit for this exact keyword tracking workflow, but even with another tool, start with tracking your own brand, top competitors and industry specific keywords.”

I’d also recommend to write a comment on the post so it gets indexed by Google eventually.

A lot of people overthink this but I’ve found being founder-led helps build trust. There’s so much AI muck on Reddit that when you’re authentic and declare that you’re the founder, people are more willing to try your product out.

Mentionkit-based examples that convert

Example 1: Competitor frustration post

I track competitor terms and look for negative threads. If someone says their current tool is too expensive or too slow, I reply publicly with a better workflow and then offer an alternative.

This is high intent because the user is already dissatisfied and evaluating options.

Example 2: Recommendation thread

When someone asks, “What tool should I use for X?”, I post a clear comparison-style answer with tradeoffs. I do not claim my tool is best for everyone.

That honesty builds trust and drives profile visits plus DMs from qualified users.

Example 3: Use-case question

If someone asks how to solve a specific workflow, I share a step-by-step answer and include where Mentionkit fits in the process.

Use-case threads often convert better than brand threads because the buyer is focused on outcomes, not logos.

Avoiding AI Spam/slop on Reddit

Ever since Google got into a agreement with Reddit over data sharing, hundreds of products, usually vibe-coded, have sprung up to automate posting on Reddit.

These products will spam comments on posts/comments based on the keywords they are tracking internally.

This is part of a ongoing larger problem around AI slop on Reddit.

In Mentionkit, we try out best to detect AI slop and if we detect, we give it a score of 1.

However, AI slop/spam is getting harder to track so you still need to do your own homework.

Couple of things in regard to lead-gen:

• Don’t engage in posts where the post itself is obvious AI slop.
• Don’t reply to AI bots spamming garbage.
• People are smart, once they see that you’re using AI to post spam comments, they won’t engage further and will always have a negative view of your brand. Ergo, don’t spam comments using AI.

How does this affect your lead-gen?

Conclusion

Reddit lead generation works when you treat it as an intent workflow, not a volume game.

Run this consistently for a few months and you will build a repeatable inbound-assisted outbound motion from Reddit.

Written by MelSocial media and customer support at Mentionkit