Step-by-Step Tutorial

Stop Buying Leads.
Scrape Your Own.

Learn how to use Firecrawl to find real business leads for your niche — no coding experience needed. Works for marine detailers, landscapers, contractors, and any local service business.

Built on scrapeandpitch.com — no SaaS, no fluff, just extraction.

Get Started with Firecrawl →

Free plan available · No credit card required


What Is This?

Firecrawl: Your Personal Lead-Finding Machine

Firecrawl is a tool that reads websites and pulls out the information you care about — business names, phone numbers, emails, addresses — and organizes it into a clean list you can actually use.

Think of it like hiring someone to manually visit hundreds of web pages and copy out the contact info for you. Except it does it in seconds.

🚤 Real Example: Marine Detailing Business

You want to reach out to marina owners, boat storage facilities, and yacht clubs in your area. Instead of Googling one by one and copy-pasting for hours, Firecrawl visits those directory pages and hands you a ready-to-use list with names, addresses, and contact info.

You don't need to know how to code. You just need to know what you're looking for and where to look — and this tutorial will walk you through both.


The Output

What Kind of Leads Can You Get?

Here's the kind of data Firecrawl can extract from business directories, Google Maps listings, Yelp pages, and industry websites:

🏢

Business Name

The exact name of the company or owner

📞

Phone Number

Direct line to call or text

📧

Email Address

For follow-up campaigns

📍

Location / City

Filter by area or zip code

🌐

Website URL

For deeper research

Reviews / Ratings

Qualify leads by reputation


5 Steps to Scrape Your First Lead List

Follow these steps in order. You'll have a working lead list by the end.

1

Create Your Free Firecrawl Account

Head over to Firecrawl and sign up for a free account. The free plan gives you enough credits to scrape hundreds of leads and test your workflow before committing.

Create Free Account →
💡 Tip: Once you're in, take a quick look at the dashboard. You'll see your API key — that's the "password" Firecrawl uses to know it's you. Keep it handy.
2

Find the Right Page to Scrape

Before scraping, you need a good source page. The best lead sources are business directories that list many companies on one page. Here are great options depending on your niche:

🎯 Best Source Pages for Local Business Leads:

Yelp.com — Search your niche + city. Example: yelp.com/search?find_desc=marina&find_loc=Miami+FL
Google Maps — Use the "Share" link on a search results page
YellowPages.com — Great for contractors and service businesses
Angieslist / Angi.com — Home services and contractors
Industry-specific directories — e.g., marinersociety.org, boatus.com/marina

Copy the URL of the page that lists the businesses you want to target. That URL is what you'll feed into Firecrawl.

🚤 Marine Detailing Example: Go to Yelp, search "marina" in your target city, and copy the URL from the results page. That single URL can contain 20–40 business listings.
3

Run Your First Scrape

Log in to your Firecrawl dashboard and click Extract in the left sidebar. Paste your URL into the field at the top, then type what you want in the prompt box below it. Here's a prompt you can copy and use directly:

Paste this into Firecrawl's prompt field
Extract all businesses listed on this page.
For each business, get:
- Business name
- Phone number
- Address or city
- Website URL (if available)
- Email address (if available)

Only include listings that have at least a phone number.
Return the results as a clean table.

Hit Extract and Firecrawl will do the rest. In a few seconds you'll see a table of leads appear below.

💡 What to expect: Your first result might not be perfect — some entries may be missing a phone number, or have slight formatting differences. That's normal. The next step shows you how to clean it up in seconds using AI.
⚙️ Advanced Want to scrape multiple pages automatically? See the API option

If you want to scrape dozens of pages at once without clicking through each one, Firecrawl has an API. You can run the script below inside Google Colab — free, no installation needed, runs in your browser.

Python Script — Scrape a Yelp Directory Page
# Step 1: Install Firecrawl (run this line once)
# !pip install firecrawl-py

from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp
import json

# Step 2: Paste your API key from Firecrawl dashboard → API Keys
app = FirecrawlApp(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY_HERE")

# Step 3: Paste the URL you want to scrape
url = "https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=marina&find_loc=Miami%2C+FL"

# Step 4: Run the extraction
result = app.extract(
    [url],
    {
        "prompt": "Extract all business listings. Get business name, phone number, address, and website URL for each.",
        "formats": ["extract"]
    }
)

# Step 5: Print your leads
print(json.dumps(result, indent=2))
4

Use AI to Clean & Prepare Your List

Firecrawl gives you the raw data. Now let an AI like ChatGPT or Claude do the cleanup work for you — in seconds, no spreadsheet skills needed.

Copy your results from Firecrawl, then open ChatGPT or Claude and paste this prompt:

AI Cleanup Prompt — paste this into ChatGPT or Claude
Here is a raw list of business leads I scraped from a directory.
Please do the following:
1. Remove any duplicate entries
2. Remove any rows that are missing both a phone number and email
3. Format everything into a clean table with these columns:
   Business Name | Phone | Email | City | Website
4. If a website URL is missing "https://", add it

Here is the data:
[PASTE YOUR FIRECRAWL OUTPUT HERE]

The AI will hand back a clean, formatted table. Copy it into Google Sheets or Excel and you have a proper lead list.

🤖 Want to go further? Ask the AI to also write a short personalized cold email for each business. Just add: "And write a 3-sentence cold outreach email for each business, addressing them by name." — that's your entire pitch, ready to send.

That's the full workflow: Firecrawl finds the leads → AI cleans the data and writes your pitch → You send it. The whole thing takes under 20 minutes.

5

Export & Start Your Outreach

Once your list is clean, export it as a CSV from Google Sheets (File → Download → CSV) and load it into whichever outreach channel fits your style:

📬
Cold Email
Import your CSV into Gmail, Instantly, or Mailshake. Use the AI-written emails from Step 4 as your template.
📞
Cold Calling
Filter your sheet by city, sort by businesses with phone numbers, and start dialing down the list.
📱
DM Outreach
Use the website URLs to find Instagram or Facebook pages and send a quick direct message.
🏆 Pro Move: Load your list into a free CRM like HubSpot so you can track who you've contacted, who replied, and who converted — without losing anyone in a spreadsheet.

More Tools

Need More Prompts or a Head Start?

Two free resources to take the workflow further — no signup needed.

📋
Prompt Library
Every scrape, clean, and pitch prompt in one place. Copy any of them in one click.
Browse prompts →
Prompt Generator
Pick your niche and city. Get a custom Firecrawl prompt built for you instantly.
Build my prompt →

Common Questions

Quick Answers Before You Start

Do I need to know how to code?

No. Firecrawl's dashboard lets you scrape pages just by pasting a URL and typing what you want — no coding involved. There's an optional advanced section for those who want to automate scraping many pages at once, but the entire tutorial works without touching a single line of code.

Is it legal to scrape this data?

Generally, scraping publicly available business information (names, phone numbers, addresses that are visible on the web) is considered legal for personal outreach. Always check a website's Terms of Service before scraping, and never scrape private or sensitive data. When in doubt, consult a legal professional.

How many leads can I get for free?

Firecrawl's free plan gives you credits to scrape hundreds of pages. For most small businesses doing local outreach, the free plan is plenty to start. Paid plans unlock higher volumes if you need to scale up.

What if a website blocks scraping?

Some sites have anti-scraping protection. Firecrawl handles many of these automatically. If a specific page won't scrape, try a different directory site that lists similar businesses — there's almost always an alternative source.

Ready to Build Your
Own Lead Machine?

Sign up for Firecrawl for free and run your first scrape in under 10 minutes. No credit card. No coding required.

Start Scraping for Free →

Free plan available · Upgrade only when you need to scale