Turning Facebook Groups into a lead channel Meta Ads can't target.
How Devi and the ChatGPT API automated lead discovery and comment replies across dozens of Facebook Groups, at 106% average monthly ROI.
The client runs a marketplace connecting people looking to rent a room with people who have one to offer. The gap the client’s own team had already spotted: their target audience, Erasmus students and expats, lives in a specific set of Facebook Groups that paid Meta ads simply can’t target directly.
The constraint
Monitoring, commenting and staying present across dozens of active Facebook Groups is slow, repetitive, and effectively needs someone on call around the clock given the time zones involved, more than the founders could take on themselves alongside running the business.
What we built
- Deployed Devi to speed up spotting and replying to relevant comments and posts from interested people.
- After a few iterations, tuned the automated replies (backed by the ChatGPT API) to read as general and natural enough to open a real conversation.
- Configured Devi to surface every hot lead found across roughly 44 Facebook Groups, directly in one dashboard.
- As a side effect of the research: joined a competitor’s referral programme, which handed over its own list of relevant Groups.
The result
- 200-400 leads flagged weekly by Devi. The equivalent volume through Facebook Lead Ads would run around 15,000 PLN/month, and these leads are already keyword-matched to intent.
- Up to 62 hours a month saved on manual group monitoring, roughly 2-3 hours a day back.
- Tracing UTM sources in Google Analytics, this channel converted a double-digit number of customers a month at an average ROI of 106%.
Takeaway
Every comment posted in a Group is free brand exposure that reads as expertise, not advertising, which is exactly why it converts leads that a targeted ad never had a chance to reach in the first place.
The client’s name has been withheld under an NDA.