Local Lead Gen — Automated Business Prospecting & Outreach

Find local businesses with bad websites, score them, and auto-email personalized pitches.

Pipeline Overview

1. Scan — Search businesses by niche + city via Brave Search API
2. Score — Check each site: SSL, mobile-friendly, speed, design age, broken elements (0-100)
3. Filter — Flag sites scoring <40 as outreach candidates
4. Enrich — Extract emails from contact pages using DeepCrawl or direct scraping
5. Email — Send personalized cold emails via Resend (or any SMTP provider)
6. Track — Log all leads to Google Sheets or CSV with status tracking

Requirements

• Brave Search API key — for business discovery (free tier available)
• Resend API key (or SMTP credentials) — for sending cold emails
• DeepCrawl API key (optional) — for better contact page parsing
• Google Sheets OAuth (optional) — for lead tracking

Quick Start

# Set environment variables
export BRAVE_API_KEY=your_key
export RESEND_API_KEY=your_key

# Run the scanner
node scripts/bad-website-hunter.js --niche "restaurants" --city "Austin TX" --limit 20

Configuration

Edit scripts/config.json to customize:

• Target niches and cities
• Score thresholds for outreach
• Email templates and sender info
• Suppression list (unsubscribed emails)

Scripts

• scripts/bad-website-hunter.js — Main pipeline: scan → score → enrich → email
• scripts/config.json — Pipeline configuration

Email Templates

The default cold email template pitches web design/development services. Customize in config.json:

Subject: Quick question about {business_name}'s website

Hi {first_name},

I was looking at {business_name}'s website and noticed a few things 
that might be costing you customers: {issues_found}.

I help local businesses in {city} modernize their online presence. 
Would you be open to a quick chat about what an upgrade could look like?

Best,
{sender_name}

Scaling

• Small towns (pop 5-30K) yield the highest percentage of bad sites
• Best niches: restaurants, auto repair, salons, contractors, law offices
• Send 10-25 emails per day per domain to avoid spam flags
• Rotate sending domains if scaling past 50/day
• Add drip sequences (follow-up emails at day 3 and day 7)

References

• See references/scoring-criteria.md for website scoring methodology
• See references/email-best-practices.md for cold email deliverability tips