Why Your Best Customers Never Clicked on Your Ads

They never clicked. They never added anything to their cart. And yet... they’re your best customers.

On Instagram (and across social platforms), many of the most engaged users never enter the traditional conversion funnel. And that’s exactly why they buy.

The Classic Funnel Is Dead (Or at Least on Life Support)

Profile visit > ad click > product page > cart > purchase.

This model, taught in every marketing textbook, no longer matches how people actually behave on social media. Modern Instagram buyers don’t follow a linear path:

• They discover your brand through shared content,

• They react to your stories,

• They comment, they send a DM,

• They observe from a distance, multiple times,

• And one day, they buy.

📊 Key Insight: According to Meta, only 9% of users click on an Instagram ad before buying. The rest engage via indirect, organic, or community-driven interactions.

📊 Additional Stats : Think with Google reports that 63% of online purchases are influenced by social interactions (reviews, likes, shares, stories) before the user ever clicks a product link.

Pre-Purchase Behavior: A Stronger Signal Than Clicks

These users don’t need ads—they need recognition.

• A follower who reacts to every story is ready to buy,

• A follower who comments regularly is a latent customer,

• A user who DMs a question is in the hot zone.

📊 Stat: Sprout Social reports that 78% of consumers expect brands to respond to comments and messages — and 41% say a good interaction makes them more likely to buy.

If you don’t identify these users, your competitors will.

Organic Interactions as Activation Levers

At BackRoom, we’ve turned this insight into a methodology:

• We analyze all interactions (story, comment, DM),

• We segment based on engagement levels,

• We automate personalized messages triggered by user actions,

• And we convert these hot profiles before they even think about buying.

📊 Real-World Case: A festival client saw a 3.5x higher conversion rate from users activated via post-comment DM compared to its standard ad campaign.

📊 Comparable Case: According to a Later x Fohr report, brands that engage their communities via comments and stories see 2x higher purchase rates than those focused solely on pushing ads.

Conclusion: You're Looking in the Wrong Place

Your best customers are already here. They’re active. They speak up. They react. They reach out to you every single day.

But they’ll never click on your ad.

So why keep ignoring them?

Sources

• Meta for Business, 2023

• Think with Google – Path to Purchase, 2023

• Sprout Social Index, 2023

• Later x Fohr Report, 2023

• BackRoom Internal Data, Q1 2025