People ask Reddit what to buy. Be in the thread.
Lidar watches the communities where your category gets discussed and shows you the threads where somebody is asking what to get.
Returns are eating us alive, roughly 22% on apparel and the manual process is taking one person two days a week. Is there an app that handles this properly without charging per return?
Why it matched. A number, a cost in headcount, an explicit app request and a pricing constraint. Everything you would want to know before replying is already in the post.
Why the usual channels do not fit.
Ad costs keep climbing
Acquisition costs rise every year while margins do not. Every brand is bidding for the same attention on the same platforms, and the auction only goes one way.
Reddit outranks your product page
People append the word reddit to their searches specifically to escape marketing, and those threads rank. A recommendation in one is worth more than the ad above it and lasts considerably longer.
By the time you find the thread it is over
A comparison thread gets its answers within hours. Finding it a week later means arriving after the decision, in a conversation nobody is reading any more.
Where ecommerce brands find people worth talking to.
A starting set. The full comparison for this market is in the subreddit guide, and every community has its own page with the rules and the intent we see.
Questions
Is replying in these threads allowed?
In most, yes, with disclosure and only when you genuinely answer the question. Ecommerce communities are the most spam-weary on Reddit, so the rules matter more here than anywhere else. Each community page on this site lists its policy.
Does this work for consumer products?
It works wherever people ask each other what to buy, which is most categories. It works less well for impulse purchases nobody researches.
What about people complaining about my brand?
You will see those too, and they are worth answering first. For brand mentions specifically, F5Bot is free and does that one job well, and it is a reasonable thing to run alongside.
When should I start?
If your product touches anything a store owner would be nervous to change in December, start in August. The buying window in this vertical is earlier than people expect.
Start with ecommerce brands in mind.
Paste your website. We read it, suggest the subreddits, and you edit them before anything starts. Every project opens with a 7 day trial.