135: The Instagram Sales Funnel I Used to Build Two Six-Figure Businesses Without Paid Ads (Part 2)

Written By Elizabeth Marberry
The Instagram Sales Funnel I Used to Build Two Six-Figure Businesses Without Paid Ads (Part 2)

Last week I kicked off this two-part series on the key to making money on Instagram by walking you through why most business owners are missing a clear path from their content to their offer. Today I am pulling back the curtain on the exact Instagram sales funnel I have used to build two six-figure businesses without spending a single dollar on paid ads. I am going to show you what this funnel looks like in practice, how to build it for your specific business, and what to do if you already have great content but it is still not converting.

Listen on your favorite podcast app!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • 03:14 The exact five-step Instagram sales funnel I have used to build two six-figure businesses without paid ads

  • 09:28 How to choose the right lead magnet for your business and why most people pick the wrong one

  • 15:42 How ManyChat connects your content to your funnel automatically and why it is the most important tool in this system

  • 21:07 What to do in the first 48 hours after someone joins your email list and why this window matters more than any other

  • 27:33 The three places on Instagram where your offer should live and why most people only use one of them

  • 33:19 How to audit your current Instagram marketing in 20 minutes to find exactly where people are falling out of your funnel

  • 38:45 The mindset shift that ties the whole system together: you are not posting content, you are running a marketing system

    THE 5-STEP INSTAGRAM SALES FUNNEL

    Step 1: Attract
    A reel, carousel, or story reaches a cold or warm audience and stops the scroll. The hook speaks directly to a specific pain point or desire. The content delivers enough value to earn a follow, a save, or a comment.

    Step 2: Capture
    A call to action in the caption, in the reel, or in stories invites the viewer to comment a keyword or DM a word. ManyChat delivers a lead magnet automatically. The person is now on your email list.

    Step 3: Nurture
    An email welcome sequence builds trust over several days. It tells your story, demonstrates your expertise, surfaces your most valuable content, and warms the subscriber toward your offer. This runs automatically every time someone joins your list.

    Step 4: Invite
    An email, a story, a DM, or a post invites the warm subscriber to take the next step. Book a call. Join a waitlist. Enroll in a program. Buy a product. The invitation is specific, low friction, and connected to the pain or desire your content already named.

    Step 5: Convert
    A sales conversation, a checkout page, or a DM exchange closes the sale. The person becomes a paying client or customer. The trust built across steps one through four means the sale rarely feels like a sale at all.

A Truth You Need to Hear:

"You are not just a content creator. You are a business owner who uses content as a vehicle to attract, nurture, and convert your ideal clients. That shift in identity changes everything about how you show up." - Elizabeth Marberry

LINKS MENTIONED

S3 Ep135 Transcript - The Instagram Sales Funnel I Used to Build Two Six-Figure Businesses Without Paid Ads (Part 2)

00:00

You do not need a complicated 20 step funnel to make money on Instagram. Today I'm pulling back the curtain on the simple customer journeys I use to turn Instagram content into email leads, sales conversations, and paying clients across both of my businesses with zero paid ads. I hope you're pumped. Let's go.

00:28

Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole lead work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place.

00:57

Let's dive in.

01:07

Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for sharing your precious time and energy with me today. You are officially in the middle of a three-part mini-series about how to make more money on Instagram as a small business owner. And if you missed part one, I recommend going back to last week and listening to it because these episodes, of course, build upon each other. And last week we talked about the fact

01:36

that the best way to make money on Instagram is of course not to depend on Meta, the parent company of Facebook or Instagram paying you for your views or even necessarily securing brand deals or paid partnerships. But really it's to use your organic social media content to sell your products and services that you own.

02:02

If you're listening to this podcast, I assume that that is you. You're a small business owner, creative entrepreneur who has a solid business or one that you are kicking off and you know that you wanna sell more of your products and services on Instagram. Last week, we also talked about the business foundations underneath your Instagram strategy that are so important because before you can expect Instagram to produce meaningful revenue,

02:31

You need to understand clearly what you're selling, who it's for, what problem it solves, why people want it, why they would choose your company or your product or service over another option available to them. And all of those foundational pieces of a marketing and business strategy, those things are so imperative. Because as I said last week, you cannot expect your Instagram strategy to fix a business strategy that has not been developed.

03:01

So today we are building on that conversation and I'm so excited to pull back the curtain on a couple of my own sales funnels so you can understand how Instagram connects to the broader picture of your business. I have used organic content to help build not one but two six figure businesses without spending a dime on paid ads.

03:27

But Instagram is not my entire sales strategy. It is one part of a larger customer journey. And that is what we're gonna talk about today. How does somebody go from watching one of your reels to eventually becoming a paying client or customer? So first, let's simplify the language because words like sales funnel and customer journey,

03:53

can make this sound so much more complicated than it needs to be. And if you don't know me, please know that I am allergic to complicated strategies. Like complicated strategies are a major turnoff for me. If you show me a funnel with 20 different steps and 14 pieces of software and eight email sequences and a bunch of arrows pointing in all these different directions, I am going to run the other direction.

04:24

I am here to build a business that is in alignment with me, with my heart, my soul, my energetics, my capacity. I have two businesses, I have two young kids. I have so much going on, I'm sure like you. And I need it to feel simple and I need it to feel totally aligned for myself, both from a strategy standpoint, but also like energetic alignment, which I know sounds a little bit woo, but it is so.

04:53

so important and that is the work that I do with my clients, my group and private coaching programs. And so I don't want you or myself to build a business that we hate operating, right? I don't want you to build a business that you resent. And what I find is that sometimes when we overcomplicate these things in marketing, sales, social media, we start to burn out and we're like, why am I even doing this? And I don't want you to get to that place.

05:23

So yes, we want a strategy that works. We wanna make money and grow our businesses, but we also want to enjoy what we are doing. We want our marketing to feel sustainable and manageable. And we want our business to support our lives instead of creating another exhausting job for ourselves that we cannot escape. So everything I teach is built around making this as simple, clear, and effective as possible.

05:51

And hopefully that's your jam too. And that's one of the reasons you are here listening to the show. At its most basic level, a sales funnel is simply the path someone takes from first discovering your business to eventually buying something from you. Your content gets the right person's attention, meaning your ideal target audience, your ideal...

06:19

as I call them dreamboat clients or customers. So your content gets the attention of that person. Your call to action gives that ideal person a clear next step. You move them into a place where you can deepen the relationship, build trust, and when the time is right, you invite them to buy. That is it, right? That is a funnel.

06:47

Content gets their attention. A clear call to action moves them forward. Your emails, podcasts, maybe a long form content on YouTube or a blog or wherever you deepen your conversations, that builds trust and then you make a clear offer. Now, this journey is not always linear, right? Human beings are not robots. So someone might watch one reel.

07:16

or listen to five of your podcasts videos or binge five of your long form YouTube videos and disappear for three months. And then open one of your emails, come back to your Instagram stories, and then finally apply to work with you or take that next step with your company, right? Another person might discover you today, binge your content for a week and be ready to hire you immediately.

07:42

Somebody else might quietly follow you for a year without liking or commenting on anything you post and then suddenly send you a DM on Instagram or an email and say, okay, I'm ready. How can I work with you? That happens all the time. And we cannot control every step another person takes, but we can create clear pathways.

08:08

that make it easy for the right people to move deeper into our world. The other piece I want you to understand is that, of course, you do not own Instagram. I do not own Instagram. Gosh, I wish I did. I'd be so wealthy if I owned Instagram, but I don't own it. I love Instagram. I built so much of my business and so many incredible relationships through the platform. But at the end of the day,

08:36

We are building on borrowed land. We do not control the algorithm. We do not control the platform's decisions or updates. And although I sincerely hope this never happens to you or myself, you could lose access to your account or wake up one morning and discover that Instagram is down. It's happened many times, right? We saw that fear that occurred when a potential TikTok ban was looming, right?

09:04

when there were creators whose entire businesses existed on TikTok and their audiences' content income were completely tied to a platform they did not own, and many of them had no other way to reach their hottest prospects. You do not want to be in that position, my friend, right? And this doesn't mean that you need to panic or stop using social media. It just means

09:31

You want to be intentional about moving your most interested people into an ecosystem that you have more ownership and control over. And for me, that primarily means my email list. It can also mean moving someone into an application or onto my calendar for an actual conversation, right? Your Instagram audience is incredibly valuable, but your email list is a business asset.

09:59

you have a direct way to continue communicating with those people outside of Instagram. So as you create content, I want you to think beyond the post itself. If the right person, your person discovers this piece of content and loves it, what do I want them to do next? So I'm gonna give you a little snapshot of my funnels in the hopes that it will help you to really connect the dots for yourself. So.

10:27

In my coaching business, my Instagram content primarily leads people down one of three pathways. The first pathway is a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free resource that solves a specific problem for your ideal client or customer. Someone gives you their name and email address in exchange for that resource that you create, which really gives you permission to continue the conversation with them through email.

10:54

Now, one of my biggest pieces of advice is you do not need to constantly create freebies and new lead magnets. So in the last couple of years, I have primarily leveraged two lead magnets in my coaching business because they work and they address real problems that my audience has and they attract the type of people that I want inside my world. So once you find a strong

11:23

lead magnet, you can continue talking about it. You can create different reels, stories, carousels, podcasts, episodes, however you're marketing your business and your content. They really lead people back to that same resource. And there is no prize for creating 15 free guides that sit untouched inside your Google Drive. Okay. So I want you to focus on one strong lead magnet connected to a clear customer journey.

11:49

That can be far more valuable than constantly creating something new and pivoting. I understand that you have to experiment and test, but I find that a lot of people, especially in the coaching consulting space, tend to get way too distracted with constantly creating new freebies. And I don't want you to do that. So in my online business, my Instagram coaching and consulting business, I have two lead magnets. I have a free Instagram visibility jumpstart kit. If you are listening and you want to grab it, you should because

12:19

In this guide, I walk you through how to optimize your Instagram profile for maximum followers and conversions. I give you kind of an overarching view of content strategy that really will make you more money. And I give you a free tool to drive leads and sales in your sleep through DM automation. If you want that freebie, you can DM me the keyword kit on Instagram and my robot assistant will send it to you. By the way, if we're not connected on Instagram, let's do that. Give me a follow over there.

12:47

at Elizabeth Marberry, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y. Send me the DM with the keyword kit, K-I-T, and you will see how this all works in real time. And you'll get that free guide, which is my most popular downloaded freebie that I've ever created because it has so much value. And that's the whole thing about a freebie, right? Is it's not bait and switch, like, oh, give me your name and email and I'm gonna give you this thing that really doesn't do anything for your business. Obviously that wouldn't drive.

13:15

trust with the potential customers. You don't want to do that. And the goal, of course, with lead magnets is not simply to collect as many email addresses as possible. The goal is to attract the right people, the worm to hot prospects who are actually experiencing the problem that your product or service solves. And then that way you can begin a relationship with them. Right. So once someone joins my email list, I can continue to share valuable content, stories.

13:43

Of course, this podcast I drop every Monday. I email my list every Monday to share that with them. Client results, invitations to work with me. And I'm not expecting that one free resource will immediately produce a sale every single time, but I'm creating an opportunity to deepen the relationship with me over time. Because of course, people buy from people they know, like, and trust. So that is a great way of doing it. My second pathway or customer journey from my Instagram content into

14:12

my world is this podcast. Instagram is really incredible for discovery and shorter form connection, but a reel can only give me 30, 60, 90 seconds with someone. Here on this podcast, on the show, if you're a listener you know, you may spend 20 or 30 minutes hanging out with me every week. You hear how I think, you hear how I teach, my philosophies, my stories, my business approach.

14:39

and how I coach people. And you get a much deeper understanding of who I am as a full human, right? Like mama of two, ADHD, all the highs and lows that I share with you throughout the year. You know, I never pretend to be this like perfect, all put together human. You either vibe with me or you don't and that's okay, right? But you discover through this podcast whether my approach resonates with you.

15:04

and you're spending time with me while you walk your dog or drive your car or exercise or clean your house or work inside your business. And so that creates a very different level of connection. And I've had many people discover me on Instagram and then binge this podcast for a week and then join Hot Reels, my 12 month Instagram content lab, my group coaching program. Or they binge this podcast for a week and they purchase a 75 minute Instagram audit with me.

15:31

from there, they move into private mentorship with me, for example. So that has absolutely happened where the funnel is funneling, right? I've also had people listen for months. Like literally, I had someone join Hot Reels a couple of weeks ago and she said, I've been watching you and attending all your free trainings and doing essentially learning from you for two years before she decided to join one of my programs. So every buyer is different, right? Like buyer psychology, some people are just

16:00

quick at making a decision. Some people need a little bit more time. Neither path is wrong, right? People have different decision-making timelines, particularly, of course, when they're considering a higher level investment. And so my job is never to force someone to buy before they're ready. Of course, my job is to consistently demonstrate the depth of my work and help you make progress and really make it clear how I can.

16:26

support you in receiving more personalized guidance and strategic support when it comes to Instagram, social media marketing, and growing your business when you are ready for that support, right? Like it would be a disservice to you, the listener, if I didn't ever tell you how I could help you, right? Like when I think about sales, I think of sales are being of service to your ideal person who is struggling with a thing that you can help them fix, right? That's why I don't think it's ever cringy to say, hey, here's how I can help you.

16:56

Of course, there's ways of doing it that are cringy. Like I'm not a fan of like cold DMing people or just all these other ways where you're like this outbound, where you're like going after people. I don't love that. I would rather create super magnetic pieces of content, whether that's on Instagram, my podcast, my email list, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the places I show up. I'd rather be putting it out there and then have it work like a magnet to attract.

17:24

my people to me and that's what I teach my clients to do and it works. So when it comes to sales, you'll often see calls to action in my Instagram content that lead to a podcast episode. The content captures attention around, you know, a specific problem or idea, like I'm hooking them in that reel and then I guide them to the podcast and the podcast gives me more time to teach and build trust.

17:48

And the third pathway I use in my coaching business is a direct invitation to apply for private mentorship with me. And this is for the person who already understands the problem. And they're ready to receive that personalized support. Because it's one thing to hear all of the tips and strategies I share on the podcast. It's another to actually bake it into your specific business, right? Your specific struggles and needs.

18:18

and nuance of your business and your life and all the things you're juggling, right? And so if someone wants to work with me privately, my funnel is essentially they complete a short application and that really just helps me to learn about their business, their goals, their current challenges and what support they're seeking. And from there, if it appears that I can help them, we schedule a complimentary Instagram breakthrough session and

18:45

I learn about their business and I help them figure out, here's your next strategic step. And of course we explore whether one of my coaching programs is the right fit. And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my gosh, that's me, I need support. You know, I've been throwing spaghetti at the ball. I've been spinning my wheels and I'm ready to actually make a shift and change and receive support from someone who's just a little bit ahead of me so I can shortcut your learning curve.

19:13

I do have two spots open currently at the time of this recording for private mentorship. It's a 12 month program. It's an investment. So you can always head on over to my website to check it out. But if you're curious about working together privately, you can go to elizabethmarberry.com slash application. That's Elizabeth Marberry, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y.com slash application.

19:36

fill that out and then once I receive that, we will send over my calendar link and you and I can connect on Zoom. It's so fun. I love connecting with my listeners. They are always turned into my favorite clients by the way. And yeah, so let me know if you wanna do that. And if we're already connected on Instagram, you can DM me the keyword apply, A-P-P-L-Y. And my gorgeous robot assistant darling will send you the link to apply. So obviously that pathway that I just described,

20:06

of the funnel of my application is pretty simple, right? Someone discovers my content. They recognize that I understand their specific problem. They visit, you know, my Instagram profile or they, you know, comment my keyword on a post using DM automation, which we're going to talk about that strategy next week. And, you know, they complete the application. They schedule a conversation. Now, not everyone who discovers me is ready to apply, which is why I have multiple pathways, right? One person may need

20:35

a free resource, another may want to listen to the podcast for a while to get to know me. Another person is already thinking like, I need Elizabeth's eyes on my business yesterday and when can we book a call? So the goal is not to shove every follower into the same funnel. The goal is to give the right person the next logical step, right? Based on what they need and how ready they are. That is for my online coaching business, which is one business model.

21:03

As you may or may not know, I also own a brick and mortar dance studio. So it's a local service based business in the wedding industry, completely different business model. I have a team, I'm in the CEO seat. I am not the face of that brand. At Wedding Dance Coach, we help engage couples feel confident and prepared for their first dance. So we do private dance lessons. So last week I shared the example of our wedding dance music guide as our lead magnet and how that...

21:30

content helped us to generate hundreds of email leads and later an email campaign that helped us sell more than $15,000 in dance lessons during one December. And it was a really short email campaign. I want to say it was like five or six emails. So that was awesome ROI on that investment. And I won't retell that entire story because you can go back last week and hear part one, but that is one pathway, right? Again, Instagram content leads to a free resource. The resource or lead magnet grows your email list.

22:00

the email marketing continues the relationship and then invites our couples to purchase lessons with us or your ideal client or customer to purchase your product or service. We also have a more direct pathway of a sales funnel where we'll create a reel with a call to action inviting our Colorado couples to comment the word Denver, which is our keyword. When they do that, we will DM them.

22:24

information about private wedding dance packages and working with us. And then of course I have a whole strategy around how we do that. I have closed four figure wedding dance packages directly through the Instagram DMs. We're getting into conversation and sending payment links and it works. It's really, really cool. And like I said, there's a strategy behind how those sales conversations happen and how we answer questions and how we recommend.

22:48

the right offer without making the conversation feel pushy and all of that. That is a different lesson for a different day. And again, the depths of sales strategy, all of that is the work I do with private clients. But the point today is that a sales funnel does not always have to include 27 emails and an elaborate launch, right? Sometimes the funnel is this simple, content, keyword, personal conversation, sale. Or sometimes a funnel could be content.

23:18

lead magnet, email, nurture, sequence, invite them into your offer. There are so many different customer journeys and they reflect different businesses. Obviously, it's dependent on your offer, your product or service, your price point and the levels of buyer readiness. I just explained essentially three funnels for my coaching business and two funnels for my brick and mortar business. That's not a lot, right? It's very clear and simple.

23:48

And both myself and my team can stand behind that and we can rinse and repeat those funnels over and over. Now I want you to pause. I know that was a lot, but I want you to think about your own business. You do not need to copy my exact funnels because your pathway needs to make sense for you, right? And what you sell. But I want you to answer a few questions to help you get to a clearer place around your customer journey.

24:16

First, what kind of content attracts your ideal target audience, your dreamboat client? Not simply what gets views, but what helps your people recognize, oh my gosh, this business, this person understands me. This is relevant to my life. So being really clear on who you're talking to. Second, what is the most logical next step for that person?

24:42

Right? So if I'm on Instagram now, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to grab something, download it, receive a link to your calendar, listen to something? What is your next step to begin a conversation? Because customers come from conversations. Third, where will you deepen the relationship? So Instagram content, I would argue, can absolutely deepen the relationship, right? If your content is strategically positioned,

25:10

You can nurture and drive conversions simply on Instagram. And I want you to also be deepening that relationship off of the platform in an ecosystem that you own. And the final question I want you to ask yourself is, how will you invite them to buy? So do not assume that people will magically understand what you sell or know when your products or services available. You need to make clear invitations and you also need to stay top of mind.

25:37

You know, I'm thinking about real estate agents right now. I'm not buying a house every week. I'm not buying a house every year. Maybe you buy a house every seven years, 12 years. I don't know what the average is, but it certainly isn't every week or every year, right? But a real estate agent that is showing up on Instagram day after day, week after week, and I like them, I like their vibe, I think their content's entertaining or educational or whatever it is that makes me want to watch it. When I go to want to sell my house, I'm going to think of that person. And so

26:07

Remember, part of this is also keeping your business top of mind for your ideal people. So when they actually have the problem that your product or service solves, they think of you. So what I just described to you, when you answer those questions, that is your simple funnel. You attract the right person, you give them a clear next step, you deepen the relationship and you make the offer. And remember, you don't need to build this all in one afternoon. You can begin with one offer and one clear.

26:37

And as I've mentioned, if you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed or you understand, hey, I have a customer journey, but it needs refinement, or I bet there's a simpler way to do this that would feel so much more aligned for me, but I'm not sure what to do. This is the work I do with private clients that goes so much deeper than just chasing content ideas and hooks all day. Of course, we work on Instagram strategy. We refine hooks, reels, messaging.

27:07

Instagram stories, visibility, content strategy, but in private mentorship, we look at your business as a whole. That is definitely one of my differentiators as an Instagram coach is I'm also a business coach. I know there's a lot of incredible Instagram content coaches out there that their focus is really around optimizing your content. And that's kind of where it stops for a lot of them. It's not the backend business systems of how all of this content effort

27:36

connects into leads and sales. That is part of the personalized strategy that I provide my private clients. And of course, I wanna show up every week and continue to pour into my podcast community. So whether you hire me or not, I hope that this episode is helping you and serving you. But if you know that you need that higher level support, don't forget to apply, because I would love to hop on a complimentary Instagram breakthrough session with you.

28:04

and meet you. That'd be so fun. So remember, go to ElizabethMarberry.com slash application or DM me the keyword apply a PPL Y on Instagram and we can get cooking baby. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I wanted to give you a little teaser about next week in part three of the series. We're going to talk specifically about DM automation or direct message automation and how you can use it to turn Instagram engagement into actual leads without losing the human

28:34

connection that makes social media so powerful. And I'm gonna explain how automation really fits into the customer journey that we discussed today. What you can automate and what I believe needs to remain personal and how to avoid making your Instagram DMs feel like an interaction with a cold robot. Cause ew, nobody wants that, right? I'm also building a brand new beginner friendly on-demand training that will show you how to automate your Instagram sales funnel.

29:04

step by step, including how to use AI tools like chat, GPT or Claude to make the process faster and easier. I'm so pumped. This training of course will be included for my Hot Wheels clients if you're already in the program or my private clients get access to everything I create, but it will also become available to you, my beloved listener as a standalone course and offer. And I'm so excited to share more with you about that.

29:33

very, very soon. Make sure you are following the show or you've subscribed to the show so you do not miss when part three drops. I can't wait to talk about DM automation and show you how all of these pieces connect together so you can make that money, honey, on Instagram. Until next time, keep showing up, keep experimenting, and keep building a business that supports the life you want to live. I'm rooting for you, and I can't wait to strut it with you.

30:03

next week.

30:05

Thank you for listening to Strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free monetize your IG guide, where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies. That's elizabethmarberry.com.

30:31

If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.

Elizabeth Marberry
Next

134: The Key to Making Money on Instagram (Part 1)