How My Business Got It's First 1,000 Followers on Instagram Pre-Launch

Launch Results:
Followers: 1,071
Average Likes on Photos: 124 likes
Email Sign Ups: 461 people
Orders: 23 (1 month after launch)

Background:

Before launching any business this is what I have done during my pre-launch phase. I have done this with my last three businesses and have seen great success.

Understand, my intention is not to get more followers, my purpose is to create an audience of future customers. If I simply wanted to get followers there are a number of different ways to do that can do this way faster, but to me those tactics do not add value to my business.

The Goal:

In under 30 days take our business Instagram account from 0 followers to 1,000 followers without having to pay anything out of our pocket, before launch day.

(Of course with our overarching goal to get sales!)

Outline:

Reach -> Profile Visits -> Followers -> Website Traffic -> Email Sign Ups -> Orders -> Raving Fans

Tactics:

1) Account Set Up:

We set up our Instagram page and made it a business page. Had our username line up with our business name and website address. We then added a descriptive bio that includes the link to a landing page for our future online store in it.

We like to set up our Instagram bio in this format:
[EMOJI] Insert Company Slogan
[EMOJI] Insert a Benefit of your company
[EMOJI] Insert another Benefit of your company
[EMOJI] Purchase Online
< insert Link to Website >

By setting up our bio in this format anyone who visits our page can quickly see what our page is all about and make a intention decision to follow the account or not.

2) Professional Design:

Then we posted 15 professional photos of what we offer and added detailed descriptions for each post. This way when someone visits our page it doesn’t look like we are brand new.

Now that this is set up it is important to post once a day and have a story on your page running at all times.

3) Bring Users to Our Profile:

After setting up our page it was time to start spreading the word and bringing people to view our profile. We did this by following target customers.

What we do is find Instagram accounts that have a similar target audiences and follow their new followers. We would follow around 55 users a day. Like around 50 photos a day. Comment on 10 target audience's posts a day.

4) Retention & Loyalty:

For each follower we received we would personally DM them and start a conversation about our brand. With no intentions on trying to sell them on anything, simply to try and build a relationship with them. We would do this for every new follow.

5) Growth:

From this point we started reaching out to businesses that have similar audiences as the audience that we were trying to build. We would message around 15 accounts every day during these 30 days to create group giveaways.

Now this is always the hard part, whenever we are starting from ground zero it can be hard to get replies from other businesses and to convince them to join in on a giveaway.

After struggling through this we found a great way of getting replies and committing other accounts to join in on a group giveaway.

Here is how we did it over and over again for our last three accounts:
- Search for accounts that have 200 - 3,000 followers
- Accounts that have a similar target audience as yours
- And then message them

Seems pretty easy right? It is if you know effective ways to message these brands. If we simply reached out to these accounts and asked, "Hey, do you want to join in on a giveaway?" we probably would have never gotten any replies and this post would never have existed.

For this to work you have to know what to say and how to say it.