Co-Founder of Y Not You Media, helping businesses & brands grow on social media with content, strategy & targeted ads.
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Gone are the days of the effectiveness of the cold call. Most consumers do not want to be called by unknown numbers with hard pitches. However, where you can capture leads and sales in a much less saturated environment that gives you much more information on a prospect with a higher response and closing rate: is the cold DM on Instagram.
After successfully leveraging the cold DM on Instagram to grow my own business and network, I passed it along as a service offered to my clients. So far, some have seen massive success and millions in new business from it. The cold DM on Instagram can be an effective way to generate leads, sales, connections, employees, and other opportunities. But it has to be done the proper way in order to see a level of effectiveness. Below, I’ll share some insights on how to leverage Instagram DMs to bring in more leads and sales.
Narrow in on your target audience.
Instagram allows you to find your exact target demographic if you know where to look. Think, who would your target consumer follow? What types of pages would your target consumer follow and engage with? For example, if you’re trying to target women in your area, you might search for local salons and makeup artist accounts. You should only consider accounts that have a decent-sized following—at least a few thousand. You can also do a quick scroll through their followers to see if they pass the eyeball test of looking like your target audience.
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Once you find a couple of accounts that also align with your target consumer, go to each account and click on their three most recent posts. (You could also save these posts to easily go back to them.) Click to see who liked the post and you will find the most active followers that engage on this account. From this list, go to the accounts that are public and have a profile picture. In a lot of cases, you can determine if they fall into your target by quickly browsing each of their profiles.
Engage with them.
Now that you’re on a target follower’s page, it’s time to put in a little elbow grease to get their attention. First, I’d recommend “liking” five to seven photos. Then, leave two to three relevant comments out of their most recent nine posts—for example: “Great information!” “Congrats on the new car/house/baby/wedding/etc.” “This looks amazing!” Then, hit that account with a follow.
After liking, commenting and following, it’s time to send the DM. If you are reaching out to an individual person’s account, always address them by their name. Now, this is where you do not want to necessarily sell. You want to either get the person to respond or connect with you. If you’re selling a product, an effective DM would be offering a discount code. But if you’re selling a service, I find it’s best to try to find something on the person’s page that you can compliment them on or ask about. Just think: If you were that person, what type of DM would you answer? If you’re targeting business owners, entrepreneurs or business professionals, a great DM is to address them by their name and then ask how long they’ve been in business or how long they’ve been doing what they do.
Repeat.
The more you repeat this, the more chances you are to get responses, leads and sales. When I started my business, I would do this 250-400 times per day. The results became addicting. However, it is time-consuming, so I recommend starting with an amount you are comfortable staying consistent with weekly, whether it’s 50, 100, 250, etc. But the more you do, the more likely you are to achieve your desired result.
This is something that can start bringing in some business for no cost but your time. It’s great for those just starting out in business and who don’t have a large budget to spend on marketing. It can also be very effective for larger businesses with an in-house social media manager to perform on a weekly basis. In that case, I’d recommend anywhere from 250-1,000 DMs to individual accounts per week.
Instagram success comes from creating relationships that you eventually take offline or are able to leverage. There is an opportunity to find your target consumer and be able to connect with them at your fingertips. This has not only built and grown my business to where it is today but has also contributed to massive success for my clients.
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