Most tools for finding customers online were made for companies that people already talk about. They watch for your brand name, count how often it comes up and tell you if people like you or not. That works well for a big brand, but if you run a small shop or a local service, most people haven’t heard of you yet, so there’s almost nothing for those tools to find.

What does happen every day is people asking for the thing you sell. Someone on Reddit asks for a lunch box their kids can’t break, someone in a Facebook group asks who can bake a birthday cake by Saturday, and someone on a fishing forum asks which lures don’t get stuck. None of them say your name, but every one of them is a chance for you to help, and that’s the kind of post BuyerFinder looks for.

Your name doesn’t have to be famous

A post that mentions a brand usually comes after the person has already bought. A post that asks for help comes before, while the person is still deciding, and any shop can reply to it, even one that opened last month.

Two example posts side by side. Left, a mention of a brand: 'Just got the new lunch box from BigBrand. Love the colour!', which needs people to know your name and comes after the person bought. Right, someone asking for it: 'My kids crack a lunch box every few months. Is there a steel one that actually lasts?', which needs no brand name and comes before the person buys.
Most tools listen for the first kind of post. A small business needs the second.

So we built BuyerFinder around the second kind. You don’t need people to know your name for it to work, you only need people to be asking.

You don’t have time to read every post

The cheap way to find these posts is a keyword alert. You pick a word like “lunch box” and get every post that has it, but most of them are recipes, photos of someone’s lunch or people selling their old one. You end up reading fifty posts to find one person who wants to buy, and when you run the business alone, that hour is gone.

BuyerFinder reads each post for you and checks if the person is asking for something your product does. When a post fits, we show you why, in one line, so you can decide in a few seconds if it’s worth a reply.

An example match card for a shop that sells steel lunch boxes for kids. It shows a Reddit post from r/Parenting two hours ago asking for a lunch box that survives a 7 year old, a 'Strong lead' label, and a 'Why it matches' line: they want a kids' lunch box that doesn't crack, and you sell steel lunch boxes made for kids.
An example match. The post and the shop are made up to show what you see.

You don’t need to know where to look

Most small business owners don’t know which subreddits, groups or forums their buyers use, and they shouldn’t have to. You give us your website, upload a file or write a few words about what you sell, and we set up the keywords and the places to check. If you know a group we missed, you can add it, and you can change the keywords any time.

Three steps: 1, you tell us what you sell with your website, a file or a few words. 2, we search Reddit, Facebook groups and niche forums every hour. 3, you reply as yourself when we email you a post you can help with.
You tell us what you sell once, and we do the searching.

You can see how this works before you sign up. The free search shows you real posts for your business once a day, with no account and no card.

We look where small-business buyers ask

We search three places: Reddit, Facebook groups and niche forums, which covers hundreds of hobby and trade forums. These are the places where people ask other people for help, so they’re where a small shop finds buyers. We don’t search news sites, podcasts or video apps, because people there mostly watch and comment, they don’t ask “where can I buy this?” We wrote more about this choice in why small businesses don’t need a $299 plan.

Hourly, so you can reply early

When someone asks a question in a group, the first few helpful replies get read and the later ones mostly don’t. So every paid plan searches every hour, and when we find someone, we email you. You choose how often the emails come, and if there’s nobody new, we don’t send one. Some hours nobody is asking, and that’s normal.

A price a small business can pay

  • Starter, $20 a month. One business, searched every hour on the one platform you choose: Reddit, Facebook groups or forums.
  • Plus, $40 a month. One business, searched every hour on all three.
  • Agency, $140 a month. Up to four businesses or products in one account, which fits a freelancer helping clients or an owner with more than one shop.

You can cancel any time.

You reply as yourself

We don’t post for you. A lot of groups ban ads and remove anything that looks like one, and people can tell when a reply was written by a bot. When we find a post, you open it and reply as the owner, the way you’d answer a customer in your shop. Answer their question first, and mention your product only if it really helps them.

When BuyerFinder isn’t the right tool

If you need to know every time a news site, a podcast or a video mentions your company, a brand monitoring tool will serve you better. And if your buyers don’t ask for help in public, for example a business that sells only through big contracts, there may not be many posts for us to find.

But if you sell something people ask about in groups, subreddits or forums, run the free search with your website and see who’s asking right now.