To find leads on Reddit as a local service business, search your city and trade subreddits for people asking for a recommendation, then answer the question from your own account while saying who you are. That is the whole method. It works because the person on the other end has already decided they need someone. They typed the request themselves.
The rest of this piece is the practical version: where to look, what to type into the search box, which posts deserve a reply, and how to keep it from reading like an ad. A heating and air company is the running example, but a plumber, a roofer, a mover or a house cleaner would do the same things with different words.
Why Reddit has buyers in it
Most people think of Reddit as memes and arguments. It also has a steady trickle of posts like "AC quit on a 95 degree day, anyone know a reliable company?" or "Got three quotes for a roof and they are $6,000 apart. What am I missing?" Those are not browsers. Somebody has a broken thing and a deadline.
The volume is small compared with Google, and you should expect that. A mid-sized city subreddit might see a handful of real service requests a week, spread across every trade. What you get in exchange is a thread where several neighbors may weigh in, and where a plain, honest answer from a business owner stands out because so many replies are one-line guesses.
Find your city and trade subreddits
Start with two kinds of community. The first is your city or metro subreddit (usually named after the city, and sometimes a nearby county or region as well). The second is a trade or homeowner subreddit where people ask how-to and "should I worry about this" questions. For a heating and air company that means the city sub plus the HVAC and homeowner communities.
Search Reddit for your city name and look at the communities that come back. Open each one and check three things: how recently people have posted, whether the sidebar or "About" section has rules about business posts, and whether service requests show up at all. Some city subs push recommendation requests into a weekly thread. Some ban business accounts from replying outright. Each subreddit sets its own rules, so what is fine in one will get a removal in another. You want to know that before you write a word.
Keep the list short. Three to six communities you actually read beats fifteen you skim. If you need help picking, how to find the right subreddits for your business goes through it in more detail.
Search for the questions people ask
Reddit's search box works better than people expect if you search inside one community and sort by new. Try phrases a worried homeowner would type:
- "recommend" plus your trade, like "recommend HVAC"
- "anyone know a good" plus the trade
- "looking for" plus the trade
- "quote" or "estimate" plus the job, like "furnace replacement quote"
- "worth it" or "ripped off" if you want the fearful buyers
Run each one in each community once and read what comes back. After a few days you will see the pattern of how your own customers describe the problem, which is useful even if you never reply. There is a longer list of phrases in how to use Reddit search to find people ready to buy.
Tell a buyer from a browser
Not every post that mentions your trade is a lead. Before you reply, check four things.
Is it recent? Reddit closes old threads to new comments after about six months, and a post from three days ago is a different opportunity from one that already has forty replies and a happy ending. Is the person local? A post from someone in your service area is worth ten from across the country. Is there a real job? "How does a heat pump work" is curiosity. "My heat pump is making a grinding noise and I'm in Elm Park" is a job. And is the thread still open, or has the poster already written "went with the second company, thanks everyone"?
If you hit three yeses, reply. If you hit one, move on. You will skip more threads than you answer, and that is correct.
Write a reply that helps first
Say Gabe owns Brightwater Heating & Air. A homeowner posts that the AC is blowing warm air and asks whether to repair or replace a 14-year-old system. A reply that gets a job does something like this:
Warm air on a system that age is usually one of three things: a failed capacitor (cheap, often under $300 installed), low refrigerant from a leak (the leak is the real problem), or a compressor on its way out (this is where replace-versus-repair gets real). Ask whoever comes out to measure the temperature drop across the coil and to tell you which of the three it is before quoting anything. If they say "replace" without checking, get a second opinion. I own a small HVAC company here in town (Brightwater), so take my bias into account, but happy to look at the model number if you post it.
The answer comes first. It names specifics a homeowner can use even if they never call. The business appears once, with a plain disclosure. There is no link, no phone number, and no "DM me for a free quote". If the poster wants more, they will ask. The longer version of this is in how to write a Reddit reply that does not read like an ad.
Post it from your own account, as yourself. Never use a second account to "recommend" your own company, and never ask friends to upvote the thread. Reddit's site-wide rules prohibit spam and vote manipulation, and communities are good at noticing both.
Take it to a message only if they ask
If the poster replies with "can you look at it?" or sends you a message first, you have permission. Answer in the thread if you can. If they want to share an address or a photo, offer a message, and keep it short: what you need to know, and when you could be there.
Do not open with a private message to someone who has not asked. People who post in a public thread asked a public audience for help. A cold DM from a business reads as exactly what it is, and the post may get reported. If a message is the right next step, the post on how to DM someone on Reddit without being spammy has a template.
Keep a list of threads you replied to
A spreadsheet is fine. One row per thread: link, date, subreddit, what they needed, what you said, whether they wrote back, whether it became a job. Check it twice a week. People often come back to a thread a day or two later with a follow-up question, and a reply from you at that point is worth more than the first one.
The same list answers the question every owner eventually asks, which is whether the time is worth it. If you've replied in thirty threads over two months and none turned into so much as a phone call, adjust the communities or the type of thread. Don't just push harder. And whichever jobs do come in, remember that someone who finds you on Reddit often also calls. The lead you never followed up is what that costs when the call goes to voicemail.
How Conversations in Rocketship finds the threads for you
The slowest part of all this is the searching. Running ten queries across five communities every morning is twenty minutes you do not have between jobs.
Conversations, inside Rocketship, does that step. You tell it what you sell and where. It looks for Reddit threads where people are asking for it, drops the old and closed ones, and drafts a helpful reply and a short message in your voice for each. You read the draft, change anything that does not sound like you, and post it yourself from your own Reddit account. Rocketship does not post, message or vote on Reddit for you, and it does not use fake accounts. The judgment about whether a thread is worth answering stays with you, which it should.
For a local service business, that is half the picture. The other half is what happens with leads that arrive any other way. If you want the broader approach, how to find your ideal customers covers it, and Rocketship for home services shows how the rest fits together.
Reddit threads are one source of people who already want what you sell, and the slow part is finding them. Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required. Answering your existing number is included; a dedicated line is $5 a month. You can see what the AI workers handle on the AI workers page.