Solved: Instagram Not Working for Software Business

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I had a look at your situation and your Instagram page. It’s a common story, and honestly, the fact you're questioning your approach instead of just throwing more money at it puts you ahead of most. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance. The problem isn't your design skills or your portfolio; the problem is you're trying to fish for sharks in a goldfish pond.

We'll need to look at why Instagram is the wrong tool for you...

Right, let's get straight to it. Your assumption that "many of my clients are not using Instagram" is bang on, but it's more nuanced than that. The business owner you want to reach might scroll Instagram to look at pictures of their niece's holiday or a meme about spreadsheets, but they are absolutely not there to procure software development services. It's a context problem.

Think about it. When you run an ad on Instagram, you are an interruption. You're a commercial break in their leisure time. They are in a passive, entertainment-seeking mindset. Asking them to stop, switch their brain to "business procurement mode," evaluate a complex service, and then take action is a massive ask. It's like trying to sell enterprise resource planning software at a music festival. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong mindset.

There's also a deeper, more technical reason this fails, especially for new accounts. When you run a campaign on Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and you tell it to get you "engagement" or "reach"—which is often what people do with small budgets—you're giving the algorithm a very specific, and very unhelpful, instruction. You're telling it: "Find me the cheapest eyeballs possible."

And the algorithm is brilliant at doing exactly what you ask. It goes out and finds all the users in your target audience who are serial likers, people who are least likely to click a link, least likely to leave the platform, and absolutely, positively, least likely to ever become a paying client. Why? Because their attention is cheap. Nobody else is bidding for it. You've actively paid the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your business. We've seen this time and again. Awareness is a byproduct of making sales and solving problems, not the other way around. You need to optimise for conversions, not for vanity metrics like likes and follows from your mates.

So, the first and most important piece of advice is to stop. Stop spending time designing Figma posts for Instagram. Stop spending money on Instagram ads. It's not a broken-down car that needs a new part; it's a boat you're trying to drive down the motorway. It's just the wrong vehicle for the destination.

I'd say you need to define your customer by their nightmare, not their business type...

Okay, so we're ditching Instagram for serious client hunting. Where do we go? Before we can answer that, we have to tackle an even bigger issue: who are you actually selling to?

"Small businesses" is not a target audience. It's a demographic. It tells you nothing valuable and leads to generic marketing that speaks to no one. You need to get ridiculously specific, and the way you do that is by defining your customer by their pain. By their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. Let's get practical. Instead of "a small business," your ICP might be:

• The Overwhelmed Restaurant Owner: Her nightmare isn't "needing a website." Her nightmare is her phone ringing off the hook for bookings during a busy dinner service while her staff are run ragged, leading to missed calls and lost revenue. Her nightmare is getting a 1-star review because her online booking system from 2010 crashed on a Friday night. She doesn't want a "website," she wants a seamless, automated booking system that lets her focus on the food and stops her losing money.
• The Frustrated Local Retailer: His nightmare isn't "needing an app." His nightmare is watching foot traffic decline year after year while online giants steal his customers. His nightmare is being trapped by massive commissions from platforms like Amazon or Etsy. He doesn't want an "app," he wants a simple local delivery and loyalty app that brings his customers back and frees him from the clutches of the big tech marketplaces.
• The Stressed Service Provider (e.g., a plumber or electrician): Their nightmare isn't "needing a small app." Their nightmare is spending two hours every evening manually scheduling jobs, creating invoices, and chasing payments instead of being with their family. They don't want an "app," they want to get their evenings back.

See the difference? We're not talking about features. We're talking about feelings. Frustration. Fear. Wasted time. Lost money. When you understand the nightmare, you can craft a message that they simply can't ignore. This work comes first. Before you spend a single pound on a Google or LinkedIn ad, you need to become the world's leading expert on that one specific nightmare.

You probably should rethink your offer entirely...

Once you know who you're targeting and what their nightmare is, the next failure point is the offer. "Gigs for small businesses" is not an offer. It's an invitation to be compared on price with every other developer on Upwork and Fiver. It's a commodity. And when you're a commodity, the only way to compete is to be cheap.

You need to stop selling your time and start selling a solution. This means productising your service. Instead of "I build websites," it becomes "The 5-Day Restaurant Booking System Implementation." It has a name, a fixed price, a clear timeline, and specific deliverables. This does two things: it makes what you do tangible and easy to understand, and it immediately positions you as an expert who has a defined process for solving a specific problem, not just a hired hand.

But even that is a big ask for a first interaction from a cold ad. The most common mistake in B2B advertising is the call to action. "Contact Us," "Get a Quote," or the truly arrogant "Request a Demo." These are all high-friction, low-value propositions. You are asking a busy business owner to commit their time to be sold to. Why would they?

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment. A moment of undeniable value that makes the prospect sell themselves on your full solution. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the big one.

What could this look like for you?

• For the Restaurant Owner: A "Free Booking System Audit" where you analyse their current setup and show them exactly how much revenue they're likely losing each month from missed calls and abandoned online bookings.
• For the Local Retailer: A "Free Local eCommerce Health Check" that scans their website and gives them an instant report on the top 3 things slowing it down and costing them sales.
• For the Service Provider: An interactive "Admin Time-Waster Calculator" on your landing page that shows them how many hours and how much money they're losing on manual admin per year.

These offers are valuable in their own right. They provide immediate insight, they're low-commitment, and they perfectly frame you as the expert who can solve the bigger problem. This is how you get your foot in the door.

Thinking this way also forces you to consider what a customer is actually worth to you. If you land one restaurant owner and they pay you £3,000 for a project, and then a £100/month retainer for support, what's their value over, say, two years? This is their Lifetime Value (LTV). Knowing this number is what separates amateur ad spenders from professional marketers. It tells you how much you can *afford* to spend to acquire a customer (your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC).

Tbh a healthy business model aims for an LTV to CAC ratio of at least 3:1. So if a customer is worth £5,400 to you over two years, you can afford to spend up to £1,800 to acquire them. Suddenly, paying £50 or even £150 for a highly qualified lead from an ad doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like an investment. Use the calculator below to get a rough idea of your own numbers.

You'll need to pick the right battleground: Google vs. LinkedIn...

Right. You know who you're targeting, you know their nightmare, and you've got a killer, low-friction offer. Now, and only now, can we talk about ad platforms. For getting B2B clients for software services, your two main battlegrounds are Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads.

They serve two very different purposes:

1. Google Ads (for capturing active demand):
This is for when your ideal customer is already aware they have a problem and are actively searching for a solution. This is what we call "pull" marketing. They are literally typing their pain into the search bar. Your job is to be the first and best answer they find.

For your business, this means bidding on keywords that signal high intent. You want to avoid broad, informational keywords like "what is a website" and focus on transactional or problem-based keywords:

• "restaurant booking system developer"
• "emergency fix for woocommerce checkout"
• "local app developer for tradesmen"
• "shopify speed optimisation service"
• "custom software for plumbing company uk"

The beauty of search ads is that the audience is already pre-qualified by their search term. You know they have the problem. Your ad and landing page just need to convince them you have the best solution. The traffic is more expensive per click, but the leads are often much higher quality.

2. LinkedIn Ads (for creating demand):
This is for when your ideal customer isn't actively searching for a solution, maybe because they don't know a solution like yours exists, or because the pain isn't quite at boiling point yet. This is "push" marketing. You're putting your solution in front of them.

LinkedIn's power is its targeting data. You can target with incredible precision based on:

• Job Title: Owner, Founder, CEO, Operations Manager
• Industry: Restaurants, Retail, Construction, Hospitality
• Company Size: 1-10 employees, 11-50 employees
• Member Skills: People who list "Restaurant Management" or "Retail Operations" on their profile

This is how you get your message in front of that specific restaurant owner. The ads here need to work harder. They need to first make them aware of the problem (agitate the pain) before presenting the solution. For instance, one campaign we worked on for a B2B software client targeting decision-makers on LinkedIn achieved a Cost Per Lead of just $22. This is an incredibly efficient cost if your LTV supports it. Leads might be less "ready to buy" than from Google, but you can reach people who would never have found you otherwise.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

So you've got the right person on the right platform with the right offer. The final piece is the ad copy itself—the message. Generic, feature-led copy will get ignored. Your ad needs to enter the conversation already happening in your prospect's head.

A framework we use constantly is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). It’s brutally effective.

1. Problem: State the nightmare you identified, using their language.
2. Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. What are the negative consequences of this problem? What does it feel like?
3. Solve: Introduce your offer as the clear, simple way out.

Let's write a couple of examples based on our ICPs:

Example for a Google Search Ad (targeting "restaurant booking software"):

Headline: Stop Losing Dinner Bookings. Get Our Automated System.
Description: Phone ringing off the hook? Staff stressed? Stop losing customers to your answer machine. Our system fills your tables, so you can fill the plates. Get a free audit today.

(Notice it's direct and solution-focused because they are already searching for an answer.)

Example for a LinkedIn Ad (targeting Restaurant Owners):

Ad Text: Is your front-of-house team spending more time on the phone than with your guests?

Every missed call during a busy service is a table that goes to your competitor down the street. It's revenue walking out the door because your booking process is stuck in the past.

We help independent restaurants automate their entire booking process in 5 days, so you can focus on creating amazing food, not playing receptionist.

Get a free, no-obligation audit of your current system and see exactly how much you could be saving.

(Notice it starts by identifying the pain, agitates it by mentioning competitors and lost revenue, then presents the solution and the low-friction offer.)

This is a world away from "We build custom software." It's specific, empathetic, and it sells a result, not a process. This is what gets clicks from people who actually have the problem you solve.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a fundamental shift from what you've been doing. The key is to stop thinking like a developer who sells services, and start thinking like a problem-solver who markets solutions. You need a systematic approach, not just random acts of marketing on a platform that isn't built for you. I've summarised the main action steps below.

Following this process transforms your advertising from a gamble into a system. You're no longer just "trying ads"; you're running a calculated experiment to find a predictable way to generate clients. It takes more upfront strategic work, but it's the only way to build a sustainable lead generation engine that doesn't rely on luck or friends and family.

Getting this right can be a bit of a minefield, especially the first time. You have to nail the ICP research, write compelling copy, build a landing page that converts, and correctly configure the ad campaigns, all while avoiding the common pitfalls that burn through cash. This is often where working with a specialist can make a huge difference, helping you get to the profitable stage much faster and with less wasted spend.

If you'd like to go over this in more detail and have us take a look at how we could apply this exact framework to your business, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy consultation. We can map out a specific plan for you and answer any questions you have.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh