# How to find clients for your SMMA on Instagram

The businesses that hire a social media or ads agency are the ones that already sell and want to sell more. Instagram shows you who they are — if you know what to look for.

**The short answer.** Choose one niche, find businesses in it that already sell — a shop or booking link, prices in posts, recent activity — and are in a size band you can move. Check Meta's Ad Library to see whether they run ads. Then pitch with three specific observations about their account and one quick win, by email if they list one.

## Start with who can pay

New agencies often pitch the businesses that look worst on Instagram: three posts, a handful of followers, last update two years ago. They rarely buy. A business pays an agency when marketing already makes it money and the owner has run out of time — not when it has never tried.

So the shortlist is businesses that:

- **already sell** — a shop link in bio, prices in posts, a booking page, “DM to order”;
- **are in a size band you can move** — for many agencies, a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of followers: big enough to have revenue, small enough to have no in-house team;
- **are in a niche you can speak to** — skincare, candles, coffee, med spas, gyms, restaurants, real estate;
- **have a gap you can name** — irregular posting, no Reels, no clear offer in the bio, a broken link.

> **One niche for the first fifty pitches** Your examples, case studies and opening lines all get sharper when every lead sells the same kind of thing.

## Step 1: Find businesses in your niche

1. **Keyword search.** Type the niche and a place — “med spa Houston”, “candle shop UK”, “coffee roaster Portland” — and open **Accounts**. Business profiles often show a category under the name, such as “Health/beauty” or “Shopping & retail”, so you can tell a business from a fan page at a glance.
2. **Places.** For local services, search the city or a neighbourhood under Places. Salons, gyms and restaurants tag their own work.
3. **Hashtags.** Brands use niche hashtags — #smallbatchskincare, #shopsmall, #medspa. Hashtag pages lean towards popular posts, so treat them as a source of seed accounts.
4. **Around the leaders.** Open an established brand in the niche and check who it follows and who's tagged in its posts: suppliers, stockists and smaller brands in the same space.
5. **Suggested accounts.** Follow a business that fits and Instagram suggests similar ones under its profile. Ten good seeds become a hundred names.

Local services and online brands need different lists. A med spa wins customers within a short drive, so search it by place; a candle brand ships nationwide, so search it by product and hashtag, and don't let the city narrow the list.

## Step 2: Check that they already sell

Open each profile and look for proof of revenue, in this order:

1. **Link in bio** — does it lead to their own store, a booking page or a menu? A link page full of links is fine; open it and follow the shop link.
2. **Posts and captions** — prices, restocks, “new drop”, “book now”, delivery areas.
3. **Recent activity** — the date of the latest post. A business that stopped posting six months ago may have stopped trading.
4. **Contact** — an Email button or an email in the bio; for local services, a call button or a phone number.

Then write down the gap — the concrete, visible thing your pitch will be about.

- **Unanswered questions in comments** — “price?”, “do you ship to…?” — mean the business is losing sales in public.
- **Missing or stale highlights**: no reviews, menu, FAQ or how-to-order highlight.
- **A bio that doesn't say** what they sell, where, or what to do next.
- **No Reels**, or Reels abandoned months ago, while competitors post them weekly.
- **Bursts and silences** — five posts in a week, then nothing for a month.
- **Product posts with no way to buy**: no product tags, no shop link, no price.

Pick the two or three gaps that are most visible and easiest to fix. Ten reads as criticism; three reads as help.

## Step 3: See whether they already run ads

If you sell paid ads, this matters, and the Instagram profile won't show it. Meta's **Ad Library** will. It's public and free: search the business's Facebook page name and you see the ads it runs on Facebook and Instagram right now, with start dates.

- **Running ads for months** — there's a budget; your pitch is better results: creative, testing, the landing page.
- **Ran ads, then stopped** — maybe it didn't work for them. Ask what happened before promising more.
- **Never ran ads** — your pitch is a small, low-risk test.

> **Ads are visible, results aren't** The Ad Library shows ads, not numbers. Never tell a prospect their ads “aren't working” — you can't see their sales.

## Step 4 (optional): Let InstaVision build the list

Steps 1 and 2 are where agencies lose evenings: open a profile, scroll, check the link, copy the email, repeat a hundred times. InstaVision does that. Describe the businesses in one sentence — niche, place, size, how they sell, how you want to reach them — and it searches Instagram, reads each candidate's public profile, link in bio and recent posts, and returns the ones that fit every condition, each with the line that proves it.

It checks what a business sells, whether its link leads to its own store, its size, where it's based, how recently it posted, and a public email or phone. It can't see whether a business runs ads — the Ad Library in step 3 can — or how much it earns. More briefs: [SMMA clients](https://instavision.co/use-cases/smma-clients).

A brief for this: “Skincare and candle brands in the UK with 5k–50k followers that sell through their own online store and list a public email.” — https://instavision.co/use-cases/smma-clients

### Real search · 2026-10-15

Brief: “Independent coffee roasters in Portland, Oregon that sell beans online” (our test account; handles and emails hidden).

- Profiles read: 74
- Checked in depth: 60
- Verified (goal 2): 2
- Possible, free: 1
- Time: 3 min 55 s

**@•••••••• (hidden)** · Portland, OR · 68,825 followers

- Independent coffee roaster (bio): “Freshly roasted single origin specialty coffee.”
- Based in Portland (bio): “Visit our Portland cafes”
- In the United States (About this account): “Account based in: United States”
- Sells beans online (bio): “…get exceptional coffee & rad goods shipped right to your door.”

**@•••••••• (hidden)** · Portland, OR · 10,292 followers · public email listed (hidden)

- Independent coffee roaster (bio): “Roasting coffee since a couple of days ago.”
- Based in Portland (profile): City field: Portland, Oregon.
- In the United States (About this account): “Account based in: United States”
- Sells beans online (posts): “Available in Portland, Seattle, and online.”

A third roaster came back as a possible match: in Portland and in the US, but “sells beans online” wasn't proven to the bar, so it cost nothing.

The brief asked nothing about email, so one verified match has none listed. Add “with a public email” when you plan to write — accounts without one are then skipped.

## Step 5: Pitch with a free audit, not a deck

Owners get agency DMs every day. The ones that get read show that someone looked at this business, not at a list.

1. Open with **three observations** about their account, each one fixable.
2. Give **one quick win** they can do without you. It proves you know what you're talking about, and it costs you nothing.
3. Make the ask small: a 15-minute call, or “want me to send a one-page plan?”
4. Use **email** when they list one. A DM is fine when the profile invites DMs — “DM us to order” means someone reads them.
5. Follow up once with something useful: a competitor's post that worked, or a two-minute screen recording of their profile with notes.

**A message to adapt**

```text
Hi {name} — I came across {brand} while looking at {niche} brands in {place}. Three things stood out: {observation 1}, {observation 2}, {observation 3}.

The quickest win is {quick win} — you can do that today without anyone's help. We work with {kind of businesses} on {what you do}. If it's useful, I can send a one-page plan for the next 30 days. No call needed.

{your name} · {agency}
```

## Measure your own pipeline

Track each lead's stage in one sheet: found, qualified, pitched, replied, call, client. Your own numbers tell you what to fix. If few people reply, change the opening or the list. If people reply but don't book, change the offer. If calls don't close, change the price or the proof you bring.

And avoid the moves that make agencies look like spam:

- pitching businesses that don't sell anything yet;
- claiming their ads don't work without seeing a number;
- mass following and unfollowing to get noticed — Instagram limits accounts that do it;
- buying scraped lead lists: wrong niche, stale contacts, and a sender reputation you'll regret.