The short answer
Views rarely turn into clients on their own. The usual reasons are that the Reel reaches people who will never buy, it ends without asking for anything, the next step is buried in a link in bio, nobody follows up with the people who do respond, or the offer is not clear. Fix the path from viewer to conversation before you try to get more views.
01You are not imagining it
This is one of the most common frustrations among coaches and course creators on Instagram:
My conversion rate is so low even after getting millions of views on 5 of my reels.
views to arrivals was a much bigger gap than i expected
In coaching communities the idea that content alone brings clients gets called out directly: one thread describes it as “one of the biggest lies in the coaching” industry (r/lifecoaching). Views are attention. Clients come from conversations, and a Reel has to start one.
02The five usual reasons
1. The Reel reaches people who will never buy
Broad, entertaining Reels travel furthest, and they travel to people who enjoyed the video but have no reason to hire you. A Reel about a general life lesson can reach a million people; a Reel about the exact problem your client pays to solve reaches fewer, but the right ones.
Change: for every broad Reel, post one that names your buyer and their problem in the first sentence: “If you sell a coaching program and your DMs are full but your calendar is empty…”
2. It ends without asking for anything
A Reel that ends on the last tip leaves the viewer with nothing to do. Most will scroll on, even if they liked it.
Change: end with one specific, low-effort ask. Commenting a keyword to get something useful is the easiest step there is, which is why it works (how to set it up).
3. The next step is “link in bio”
“Link in bio” asks someone to stop watching, open your profile, find the link and choose from five buttons. Every step loses people. A keyword comment that sends the link straight to their DMs removes most of those steps.
4. Nobody follows up with the people who do respond
This is the one that costs the most, because these people already raised their hand.
how do we follow up with someone on Instagram when they don’t reply to your DM but they have commented
Inside Instagram you get one private reply per comment, and can only continue once they answer (Meta for Developers). So collect an email in that first conversation, and follow up there. Speed matters: research on 1.25 million web leads found that contacting someone within an hour made a real conversation nearly seven times more likely than waiting even one hour longer (Harvard Business Review).
5. The offer is not clear
If someone who likes your content could not say in one sentence what you sell, who it is for and how to start, they will not book a call to find out. Put that sentence in your bio, in your first DM and on your booking page.
03What to fix first
Work backwards from the booking, not forwards from the views:
- 1Write your one-sentence offer. Who it is for, what changes for them, how to start.
- 2Set up one keyword and one resource that solves a small part of that problem.
- 3Make the first DM ask a question and ask for an email in the same conversation.
- 4Write three short follow-up emails that end with the same booking link.
- 5Then make more Reels, half of them aimed squarely at your buyer.
If your Reels also stall at a few hundred views, look at the opening before the topic: what your skip rate is telling you.
04A note on cold DMs
cold IG DMs are mostly dead unless there is already some context
A comment is that context. Someone who commented your keyword asked to hear from you, which is a very different conversation from a message out of nowhere, and it is also the only kind Meta’s private replies are for.
We make Mentorship Boss, which connects these steps (the Reel, the comment-to-DM, the email, the follow-up and the booking) in one system. The steps work just as well done by hand while you are small; the point is that none of them is missing. The full walkthrough is in From comment to booked call.
Web Dev George
Builds Mentorship Boss, and has spent seven years building websites and marketing systems for coaches. Where this post mentions Mentorship Boss, it is our own product. Quotes from public forums are reproduced as posted and linked to their source.