Solved: Struggling with Reels in Paris? (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your Instagram Reels strategy. It sounds like a common frustration, and honestly, most of the advice out there on "going viral" is complete nonsense. The problem usually isn't the format (Reels) or the location (Paris), it's almost always a deeper issue with the strategy—or lack of one. From my experience running paid campaigns, the principles that make an ad convert are the exact same principles that make organic content genuinely connect with the right people. It all comes down to knowing who you're talking to, what their biggest problem is, and having an offer that actually solves it.

So, lets forget about trends and hashtags for a minute and look at the stuff that actually matters.

We'll need to look at your customer, not your city...

Right, first thing's first. You mentioned struggling to reach your target audience in Paris. I'm going to be blunt here: "people in Paris" is not a target audience. It's a geographic area containing millions of people with completely different lives, jobs, and problems. This is probably the single biggest mistake I see people make, both in organic content and in paid ads. They burn cash trying to talk to everyone in a city and end up connecting with no one.

You need to forget the sterile, demographic-based profile. "Women aged 25-40 in Paris who like luxury goods" tells you almost nothing of value. It leads to generic content that gets lost in the noise. To stop wasting your time and effort, you must define your customer by their pain.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare. What keeps them awake at night? What's the one thing in their business or life that, if solved, would change everything? What are they secretly terrified of?

Let's make this practical. Let's say you're a consultant selling financial strategy to small business owners. Your ICP isn't "small business owners in Paris." It's "the founder who just had to dip into their personal savings to make payroll and is terrified they'll have to do it again next month." See the difference? One is a bland demographic. The other is a raw, emotional nightmare. You can create powerful content for the second one. The first one? You'll just be making noise.

For a legal tech SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing document management'; it's 'a senior partner missing a critical filing deadline and exposing the firm to a million-euro malpractice suit.' For a B2C service that helps people move apartments, the nightmare isn't 'finding a moving company'; it's 'the anxiety of trusting strangers with your family heirlooms and the fear of hidden fees draining your deposit.' You have to dig that deep.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, everything else becomes clearer. You can start figuring out where these people *actually* hang out online. What specific podcasts do they listen to? Which niche newsletters do they actually open? What software tools do they already pay for? This intelligence is the blueprint for you're entire strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business creating another Reel.

I'd say you're offer is the real problem...

Now we get to the bit that trips almost everyone up. You can have the most perfectly defined ICP in the world, but if what you're offering them is weak, irrelevant, or confusing, your content will always fail. I've seen so many campaigns with clever ads and slick videos fall flat because the offer itself was rubbish. The number one reason campaigns fail is a bad offer. There's either not enough value in it, or a complete lack of demand from the audience for that value.

An offer isn't just your product or service. It's the entire package. It's the promise you're making. It's how you solve their nightmare. A great offer does three things:

1. It focuses on a specific outcome for that specific ICP. It's not "marketing services," it's "we get 10 qualified sales calls on your calendar every month."
2. It removes risk for the buyer. This could be a free trial, a money-back guarantee, or a productised service with a clear, fixed price and timeline.
3. It provides undeniable value upfront. This is the most important one.

This brings me to my next point: you need to delete the "Request a Demo" or "Book a Call" mindset from your brain. These are perhaps the most arrogant Calls to Action ever conceived. They presume your prospect, a busy person whose nightmare you claim to understand, has nothing better to do than book a meeting to be sold to. It's high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as just another vendor begging for their time.

Your offer's only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. For a SaaS founder, this is a free trial with no credit card required. Let them use the actual product and feel the transformation. For a service business, you have to bottle your expertise into a tool or an asset. A marketing agency could offer a free, automated website audit that uncovers their top 3 keyword opportunities. A corporate training company could offer a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations'. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve their entire nightmare.

Think about what you sell. How can you package a piece of it into something that gives someone an immediate win? That's your new offer. And that's what your Reels should be driving people towards.

You probably should stop making 'content' and start solving problems...

Okay, so you've defined your ICP's nightmare and you've crafted an irresistible, value-first offer. Now, and only now, can we talk about what to actually put in your Reels. Your content needs to speak directly to the problems of your ideal customers. Every single Reel should feel like you're reading their mind.

Stop trying to be clever or funny or follow the latest dance trend (unless you sell dance classes). Your job is to demonstrate empathy and expertise. The best way to do this is with proven copywriting frameworks. These aren't just for written ads; they are storytelling structures that work brilliantly for short-form video.

The most powerful one for a service business is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). You don't sell "fractional CFO services"; you sell a good night's sleep. A Reel using PAS would look like this:

• Problem (3 seconds): Quick shot of a founder looking stressed, buried in spreadsheets. Text overlay: "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?"
• Agitate (5 seconds): Show a calendar flipping through months, with a bank balance dropping worryingly low. Text overlay: "Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round?" You're twisting the knife on their nightmare.
• Solve (7 seconds): A clean, clear dashboard appears on a phone screen, showing predictable growth. The founder now looks relieved. Text overlay: "Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. Click the link in bio for our free cash flow projection template." Notice the offer is a free, valuable tool, not a sales call.

For a product, especially SaaS, the Before-After-Bridge framework is killer. You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of relief.

• Before (3 seconds): Someone gets a notification on their phone. Their face drops. It's their monthly cloud bill. Text overlay: "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and you have no idea why."
• After (5 seconds): The same person is now smiling, looking at their laptop. We see a clear, simple graph showing exactly where every dollar is going. Text overlay: "Imagine opening your cloud bill and actually smiling."
• Bridge (7 seconds): Show the software's UI in action, automatically flagging areas of waste. Text overlay: "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

This isn't about fancy production. You can film this with your phone. The power is in the structure. It grabs attention by naming the problem, builds emotional connection by agitating the pain, and then presents your offer as the clear, logical solution. Every Reel you make should follow a structure like this. No more random content. Every piece has a purpose: to find people with the nightmare and lead them to your value-first offer.

You'll need a system, not just random ideas...

So, we have the who (ICP), the what (Offer), and the how (Content Frameworks). Now we need a system to put it all together so you're not just waking up every day wondering what to post. This is where we can borrow another concept directly from paid advertising: the marketing funnel. You've probably heard of Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu). Most people think of this purely for ad audiences, but it's a brilliant way to structure your organic content strategy.

Your content needs to guide a complete stranger from being unaware of their problem to becoming a paying customer. Each stage of the funnel requires a different type of Reel.

• Top of Funnel (ToFu): Awareness. The goal here is to attract your ICP who might not even realise the full extent of their problem yet. Your Reels at this stage should focus entirely on the 'Problem' and 'Agitation' from the PAS framework. They are designed to get your ICP to nod their head and say, "That's me!" These Reels are broad, highly relatable, and shouldn't even mention your product or service. You're just building an audience of people who have the exact nightmare you can solve. For the financial consultant, this could be a Reel titled "3 Signs Your Business Has a Cash Flow Problem."


• Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Consideration. This audience now knows they have a problem and are starting to look for solutions. Your Reels here should educate them on *how* to solve their problem, establishing you as an expert. This is where you introduce the 'Solve' part of the framework, but in a generic way. You're teaching them the "what" and "why," not necessarily the "who" (your company). A MoFu Reel could be "How to Build a Simple Cash Flow Forecast in Google Sheets." You are providing real value and building trust. You're showing them the path, which naturally leads to your solution.


• Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Conversion. These are people who are ready to buy. They know their problem, they know the type of solution they need, and now they're deciding who to buy it from. Your Reels here are direct and specific. This is where you show off your product, share case studies, and present your irresistible offer. A BoFu Reel would be a client testimonial, a screen recording of your software in action, or a direct explanation of your "1-Day Filming Process." The Call to Action is clear: "Start Your Free Trial" or "Get Your Free Audit."

You should be creating content for all three stages simultaneously. A good rule of thumb is 70% ToFu, 20% MoFu, and 10% BoFu. This way, you're constantly attracting a new audience (ToFu) while nurturing your existing followers towards a sale (MoFu & BoFu). This systematic approach is alot more effective than just posting random Reels and hoping for the best. It's a proper strategy that builds assets over time.

And when it works, you pay to show it to more people...

Here is where it all comes together. You've been creating these strategic Reels, and one of them—a ToFu Reel that perfectly nails your ICP's nightmare—starts getting unusual levels of engagement. The comments are full of people saying, "This is exactly how I feel!" or "How did you know?"

This is not a vanity metric. This is a signal from the market that you have struck gold. You have found a message that resonates deeply with your ideal customer.

What do most people do? They celebrate the organic win and try to replicate it. What should you do? You should immediately put money behind it and turn that Reel into a paid ad. This is the smartest way to use paid advertising on platforms like Instagram.

But there's a catch. Here is an uncomfortable truth about most advertising on Meta. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very flawed, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm does exactly that. It seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

Instead, you take your proven Reel and you run it as an ad with a conversion objective. You tell Meta, "Don't just find me people who will watch this. Find me people who will watch this AND then go to my website and sign up for my free audit/template/trial." You're optimising for action, not eyeballs. Awareness becomes a byproduct of having a great offer and a message that solves a real problem, not the other way around.

We've scaled countless accounts for clients, from software to eCommerce, not by inventing ads in a vacuum, but by identifying the best-performing organic content and amplifying it with a robust paid strategy. For example, we worked with a client selling online courses and built a highly effective conversion campaign on Meta Ads. That campaign generated over $115,000 in revenue in just a month and a half by focusing relentlessly on driving sales, not just views. The principle remains the same: once you find a message that works, you use a paid strategy to scale it predictably.

This is the ultimate goal: create a content engine that systematically identifies winning messages, then use paid advertising as a predictable way to scale those messages and drive real business results.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this all up, here is a table summarizing the strategic shift you need to make. This isn't just about making better Reels; it's about building a better business by truly understanding your customer.

As you can see, creating a "successful Instagram Reels strategy" has very little to do with Instagram itself. It's about getting the fundamentals of marketing right first. It's hard work, and it requires a level of brutal honesty about your business, your customer, and your offer that most people aren't willing to do. That's why they fail.

This is just scratching the surface, of course. Implementing this properly involves detailed research, testing, and optimisation. The difference between a good strategy and a great one often comes down to experience—knowing which levers to pull and when.

If you're serious about getting this right and would like to go over how these principles could apply specifically to your business, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can take a look at what you're doing now and give you some actionable advice on the spot. It's the best way for you to see if expert help might be what you need to break through.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh