u/EntertainmentNew9556

I launched MagnetEngine.xyz a few weeks ago, but honestly, it’s been a 2-year journey.
The first year, it was literally just an Excel sheet. I kept working on it, improving it, and eventually turned it into an actual functioning software.
Magnet Engine is basically an automated Instagram outreach tool, mainly for agencies, coaches, consultants, and anyone selling something through Instagram.
The idea is pretty simple:
It can find leads from things like:
• Followers / following

•	Post likers and commenters

•	Hashtags

•	Locations

•	Other Instagram data

Then it analyzes their profile/content and generates a personalized DM for each lead, instead of sending the exact same message to everyone.
After that, it can automatically send the DMs from the user's Instagram account, filter leads, and handle follow-ups.
So the goal is basically:
Find leads → filter them → personalize the outreach → send → follow up.
The whole point is to make Instagram outreach as hands-off and automated as possible.
The problem?
I haven't converted a single paying customer yet.
I recently added a 3-day free trial because I thought removing the friction might help.
For marketing, I'm currently trying pretty much everything:
• Posting on Instagram almost every day

•	Posting on Twitter/X

•	Planning to start posting on Facebook

•	Trying different types of content

•	Experimenting with different angles

My Instagram has around 80 followers and Twitter around 30, but some of my Instagram posts have reached 50,000+ views.
And yet...
Almost nobody follows, signs up, or buys.
That made me realize that getting views probably isn't the same thing as having a marketing strategy.
I actually showed Magnet Engine to a successful SaaS founder on Instagram. He looked at it and told me:
"It looks very professional. What are you doing for marketing?"
I explained what I was doing.
His answer was basically:
"That's your problem. You're not good at marketing."
And honestly... he's probably right 😂
So I'm trying to figure this out instead of just continuing to post blindly.
If you were in my position, how would you market this SaaS?
Would you focus on:
• Cold outreach?

•	Content?

•	Reddit?

•	Twitter/X?

•	Instagram?

•	Paid ads?

•	Partnerships?

•	Free trials?

•	Something completely different?

And more importantly, what would you do if you had a SaaS that seemed useful, people watched your content, but nobody was actually converting?
I'm not looking for "just post more content" advice. I'm genuinely trying to understand what I'm missing.
What would you do if you were in my shoes?

Hello, i am a guy from casa but living in paris, i alwyas come here to tangier and would love to hang out with funny outgoing people from same backgrounds, any 20-24 males looking to hangout/ get coffee by sea or rooftop ?

I ran cold email for over a year. Open rates, subject line testing, deliverability headaches, domain warm-ups — I know the drill.

And it works. I'm not here to trash it.

But at some point my reply rates hit a floor I couldn't break through. Inboxes are saturated, spam filters are getting smarter, and everyone's seen the same 5 cold email frameworks recycled to death.

So I ran an experiment. Switched my own prospecting to Instagram DMs for two weeks and tracked everything.

Here's what the process looked like:

Prospecting. Scraped Instagram profiles by keyword — terms my ideal clients actually put in their bios. Filtered by follower count and account type to cut out noise.

Messaging. Instead of a template, AI read each person's actual bio and wrote a unique opener for every profile. Not a [FIRST NAME] swap. Actual specific references to what they do and who they are.

Sending. Nothing went out automatically. Every message sat in an approval queue, I reviewed it, then it sent with randomised 15–45 min delays between each one.

Over 14 days: 700 DMs sent, 94 replies, 11 booked discovery calls.

13% reply rate. For context I was sitting at 4–6% on cold email at my best.

The personalisation is the main reason I think it worked. Cold email has trained people to ignore anything that looks like a sequence. A genuinely specific DM on Instagram still feels like a human reached out.

I'm still running both channels now — email for certain audiences, Instagram for others. But the gap in reply rates has me thinking seriously about where I put my energy going forward.

Curious whether anyone else here has experimented with Instagram as an outreach channel alongside email, and what your experience was.

Bit of an embarrassing admission to start: I was doing lead gen for clients inside GHL (AI receptionists) while completely neglecting my own prospecting.

Classic cobbler's shoes situation.

When I finally sat down to fix it, I didn't want to go back to manually DMing people on Instagram. I'd done that before. It's slow, it's inconsistent, and you either sound robotic or you burn an hour a day writing personalised messages that mostly get ignored.

So I built a system around it instead.

Here's what the process looked like:

The prospecting layer. I scraped Instagram profiles by keyword searched terms my ideal clients actually use in their bios. Things like "SMMA", "marketing agency", "lead gen", "growth consultant." Filtered by follower count and account type so I wasn't wasting messages on personal accounts or huge brands.

The outreach layer. Instead of a template with [NAME] swapped in, I had AI read each person's actual bio and write a unique opener for every single profile. Not "Hey John, love your content" garbage. Actual specific references to what they do. The difference in reply rate was significant.

The safety layer. Nothing sent automatically. Every message sat in an approval queue and I reviewed it before it went. And when it did send, it went with randomised delays 15 to 45 minutes between messages so it behaved like a real human using the app.

Over 14 days: 700 DMs sent, 94 replies, 11 booked discovery calls.

Reply rate was around 13%. Booking rate from replies was just under 12%. For context, my old manual process was getting maybe 3-4 calls a month if I was disciplined about it.

The GHL side of things handled everything after the call was booked — follow-up sequences, pipeline tracking, the usual. But getting people into the pipeline was always the bottleneck. This fixed that part.

I'm still running it now. The dashboard tracks reply rate, positive reply rate, booking rate across campaigns so I can see what messaging is working and kill what isn't.

Honestly still tweaking the targeting and the AI prompt style I don't think I've hit the ceiling on results yet.

Curious if anyone else here has built out a serious Instagram outreach system alongside their GHL setup, or if most people are still leaning on cold email and paid ads for their own agency growth?

Bit of an embarrassing admission to start: I was doing lead gen for clients inside GHL while completely neglecting my own prospecting.

Classic cobbler's shoes situation.

When I finally sat down to fix it, I didn't want to go back to manually DMing people on Instagram. I'd done that before. It's slow, it's inconsistent, and you either sound robotic or you burn an hour a day writing personalised messages that mostly get ignored.

So I built a system around it instead.

Here's what the process looked like:

The prospecting layer. I scraped Instagram profiles by keyword searched terms my ideal clients actually use in their bios. Things like "SMMA", "marketing agency", "lead gen", "growth consultant." Filtered by follower count and account type so I wasn't wasting messages on personal accounts or huge brands.

The outreach layer. Instead of a template with [NAME] swapped in, I had AI read each person's actual bio and write a unique opener for every single profile. Not "Hey John, love your content" garbage. Actual specific references to what they do. The difference in reply rate was significant.

The safety layer. Nothing sent automatically. Every message sat in an approval queue and I reviewed it before it went. And when it did send, it went with randomised delays 15 to 45 minutes between messages so it behaved like a real human using the app.

Over 14 days: 700 DMs sent, 94 replies, 11 booked discovery calls.

Reply rate was around 13%. Booking rate from replies was just under 12%. For context, my old manual process was getting maybe 3-4 calls a month if I was disciplined about it.

The GHL side of things handled everything after the call was booked — follow-up sequences, pipeline tracking, the usual. But getting people into the pipeline was always the bottleneck. This fixed that part.

I'm still running it now. The dashboard tracks reply rate, positive reply rate, booking rate across campaigns so I can see what messaging is working and kill what isn't.

Honestly still tweaking the targeting and the AI prompt style I don't think I've hit the ceiling on results yet.

Curious if anyone else here has built out a serious Instagram outreach system alongside their GHL setup, or if most people are still leaning on cold email and paid ads for their own agency growth?