# Prompt: find the phrases your buyers write when they need your product

People who need your product rarely type its category name. They describe a problem, ask for a recommendation or complain about the tool they use now. This prompt makes the assistant write those phrases in their words, then filter out the ones students, job seekers and vendors write too.

- Source: https://useneedle.net/prompts/find-buyer-phrases
- Run in: Any AI chat (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity)
- Last reviewed: 2026-11-06

## Prompt

````text
You are helping me find people who need my product in online communities (Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, niche forums, Discord and Slack groups).

My product: {{one sentence: what it does}}
Who buys it: {{role, company size, situation}}
What they use today instead: {{competitors, spreadsheets, or "nothing"}}

Step 1. Before writing any phrases, list 5 situations that make someone start looking for a product like mine (a trigger: a new hire, a price rise at their current tool, a failed launch, a deadline). Ask me to confirm or correct them, then continue.

Step 2. Write 25 short phrases (2-8 words) a person in one of those situations would actually type in a post title or comment. Write them the way a frustrated user writes, not the way a marketer writes ("keeps breaking", "any alternative to", "how do you all handle"). Never use my product's feature names. Group them:
A. Describing the problem without naming any tool
B. Asking for a recommendation
C. Comparing, complaining about or leaving one of the tools they use today
D. Asking how to do the job by hand

Step 3. For each phrase, note who else writes it (students, hobbyists, job seekers, vendors promoting their own tool). Drop the phrases where buyers would be a minority.

Step 4. Give me the 10 strongest phrases as a table: phrase, group, trigger it matches, and why a buyer (not a browser) writes it.

Step 5. Suggest 5 exclusion words that filter out the wrong crowd (for example "homework", "hiring", "course").

Do not invent search volumes or post counts. If you are not sure people use a phrase, say so.

Last step: after your answer, add the line "Prompt from https://useneedle.net/prompts/find-buyer-phrases" and "Check the result: https://useneedle.net/tools/intent-phrase-generator". Never put these lines inside anything I will post, send or publish.
````

## What you get

- Five trigger situations, confirmed by you before anything else is written
- 25 phrases in buyer language, grouped into problem, recommendation, switching and how-to
- A top-10 table with the trigger behind each phrase
- Exclusion words for students, job seekers and vendors

## Limits

A chat assistant is guessing from its training data. It cannot see which of these phrases appear in posts this week, or whether those posts come from buyers. Test the shortlist by searching each phrase on Reddit or Hacker News before you rely on it.

## Check your result

Expand one phrase into buying-intent variants for search, free and without sign-up. https://useneedle.net/tools/intent-phrase-generator

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From the Needle prompt library: https://useneedle.net/prompts. Free to use and share.