The People Who Are Ready to Buy Aren't Always the People Liking Your Posts
There are people in your audience right now who are seeing what you post, paying attention to what you offer, and fully planning to buy from you at some point, but they may have never liked or commented on a single thing you've shared.
I know this for two reasons. First, I've had people invest in Seen & Paid and The Signature Site who I genuinely did not know existed before they showed up ready to work with me. They'll tell me things like, "I've known I wanted to work with you for a long time," and I'm sitting there thinking, WHO ME?!? I didn't even know you were here!
Second, I know this because I am that person. I can follow a business, pay attention to what they're saying, look through their offers, and decide I want to buy without giving them any clue that I'm doing it.
I think that's important for business owners to understand, especially when it's so easy to put a ton of pressure on the engagement of one Instagram post. We see likes and comments, so naturally those are the numbers we look at first. But the people engaging with your content and the people thinking about buying from you aren't always the same people.
Your Social Media Engagement Isn’t Telling You the Whole Story
It's really easy to post something on Instagram, check back a few hours later, and decide whether it was a good post based on how many people liked or commented on it. I've done it too, but we're putting way too much pressure on one marketing action when we do that.
The way people use social media has changed, and the data backs that up. Metricool's 2026 Social Media Study looked at nearly 40 million posts across 10 platforms and found that Instagram post interactions fell 39% year over year, while Reels interactions fell 44%. Socialinsider's 2026 benchmark study, which analyzed 70 million posts, found that Instagram's average engagement rate was just 0.48%. It also found that comments dropped 16% on Instagram and 24% on TikTok.
But here's what I find really interesting about those numbers. Lower public engagement doesn't necessarily mean people aren't consuming content anymore. They're still scrolling, reading, watching, saving, clicking, and sending things to their friends. In fact, while comments dropped in Socialinsider's data, shares increased 12% on Instagram and 45% on TikTok. People are still engaging with content, but more of that engagement is happening in ways that aren't as obvious to the person who posted it.
Think about your own behavior for a second. How many Instagram Stories do you watch every week without replying to them? How many posts do you read and keep scrolling without liking? How many businesses have you looked up, clicked over to their website, or thought about buying from without ever letting that business owner know you were there?
I do it all the time, which is why I think we have to be careful about letting social media engagement determine how we feel about our content marketing. There is so much happening between someone discovering your business and eventually buying from you that you will never be able to see from your Instagram notifications.
Not Everyone in Your Target Audience Buys the Same Way
The other reason I know there are people paying attention without engaging is because I am one of them. If you were going to categorize me by buyer type, I am 100% a Driver buyer. I make decisions quickly, I don't have a lot of time to beat around the bush, and once I know I want something, I've usually made the decision before I ever reach out.
I'm not going to spend three months commenting on someone's posts while I decide whether I want to work with them. I'm going to watch, figure out whether I think they can help me, look at the offer, and decide for myself. By the time I land in their inbox, there's a good chance I've already decided they're who I want to work with and I'm ready to go.
That's important to understand when you're marketing to Driver buyers too. They want to know what your offer can do for them, what result they can expect, and whether you know what you're doing. You don't have to spend forever warming them up or giving them every tiny detail.
Expressive buyers can also be part of this silent audience, but what gets them to buy is a little different. They're more interested in the big picture and what could be possible for them. They connect with stories, transformations, and seeing where someone else started compared to where they ended up. While a Driver buyer may be watching and thinking, "Can this person get me the result I want?" an Expressive buyer may be thinking, "Can I see myself having that result?"
That should change how you think about your content too. Some people in your target audience need you to get straight to the result, while others need you to paint the picture of what that result could look like for them. Both can be paying very close attention without giving you much public engagement along the way.
Of course, Amiable and Analytical buyers can be silent buyers too, but I think they're a little less likely to stay completely invisible through the entire buying process. Amiable buyers tend to care a lot about connection and relationships, so they may interact with you more before they're ready to commit. Analytical buyers usually want information, proof, and details, which means they're more likely to ask questions or look for clarification before they buy.
You don't need to become an expert on buyer types to market your business, but you do need to remember that people make buying decisions differently. You can't look at a person who hasn't liked your posts and assume they aren't interested when their entire decision-making process may be happening somewhere you can't see.
The Buying Cycle Is Getting Longer, and That Changes Everything
The other piece of this is how long it can take someone to actually buy. We're all consuming SO much information online, and your potential clients are being exposed to more content, more offers, and more businesses telling them they can solve the same problem. There is a lot for people to sort through before they decide who they trust enough to pay.
That means someone can discover your business today and not be ready to buy from you for six months, nine months, or even a year. That doesn't necessarily mean your marketing isn't working during that time. They may be watching you, learning from you, looking at your work, and getting more comfortable with the idea of eventually hiring you.
I see this play out differently with my own offers. With The Signature Site, I'm asking someone to make a $3,000+ investment in their website. That's a significant decision, and people can justify living with a website they know isn't where it needs to be for a surprisingly long time. They may know they've outgrown it, know they need to do something about it, and even know they want me to be the person who redesigns it, but that doesn't mean they're ready to make the investment today.
So they watch. They see the websites we're launching, look at the quality of our work, read what I have to say, and follow along as I consistently show up in my business. Then one day they reach out and tell me they've been following along for months, even though I had no idea they were there.
I've noticed that the buying cycle for Seen & Paid can be shorter, even though it's still around a $2,000 investment. My theory is that the difference isn't necessarily the price, it's how urgent the problem feels. People can convince themselves that their website is fine for another six months. When they're struggling to bring in leads and they know their marketing is directly connected to making money, solving that problem can feel a whole lot more urgent.
This is why consistency matters so much. If the person who needs your offer might take nine months to make a decision, your marketing has to last longer than a few weeks. Posting consistently for a month and then disappearing because the engagement wasn't what you hoped for doesn't give your marketing enough time to do its job.
Consistency isn't only about constantly finding brand new leads. It's also about staying visible to the people who already know you so you're still there when their timing finally lines up with their interest. You have no idea who has been watching for months or who is one month away from finally being ready to buy, which is why one post should never have enough power to make you question your entire marketing strategy.
If Likes Don't Tell the Full Story, What Should You Measure?
I'm not saying likes and comments don't matter at all. Engagement can tell you whether people are connecting with your content, but I don't think it should be the main thing you use to decide whether your marketing is working.
One number I pay close attention to on Instagram is external link taps. I want to know how many people are taking the next step and leaving Instagram to learn more about my business. From there, I can look at my GA4 data to see where my website traffic is coming from and get a better picture of what people are doing after they leave Instagram.
Think about the difference between someone liking your post while they're scrolling and someone reading that same post, going to your profile, clicking your link, and landing on your website to learn more. The second person may never have liked the post, but they took an action that required more intention. They wanted to know more.
That's why I would rather look at the numbers that are closer to actual buying behavior. How many people clicked over to your website? How much website traffic is coming from social media? How many discovery calls were booked? How many DMs or inquiries came from something you shared? Most importantly, how many of those people eventually became clients?
Those numbers give you a much better picture of whether your marketing is moving people toward your business. A like tells you someone interacted with your content. A link click tells you they wanted to know more.
Is Your Marketing Actually Capable of Reaching Your Goals?
This is where I don't want us to swing too far in the other direction. Knowing that you have a silent audience should take some of the pressure off your engagement numbers, but it doesn't mean you get to assume your marketing is working without looking at the bigger picture.
Sometimes we need to do the math.
Start with your financial goal. Let's say you want your business to make $200,000 this year. Look at your offers and figure out how many you need to sell to reach that number. Then look at your conversion rate and ask yourself how many qualified leads you normally need in order to make one sale.
For example, if you need to make 40 sales to reach your goal and you typically close one out of every four qualified leads, you need around 160 qualified leads to give yourself a realistic shot at reaching that number.
Now look at your small business marketing plan and ask yourself a harder question. Is the amount of marketing you're currently doing realistically capable of bringing 160 qualified leads into your business?
If your goal is $200,000 and your entire marketing strategy is posting on Instagram twice a week, with no SEO, no blog, no email list, no podcast, and no other way for new people to discover you, that probably isn't going to be enough.
That's not a judgment. It's math.
Your goals, your marketing output, and your capacity all need to be in honest conversation with each other. That doesn't mean you need to panic and start posting on every platform tomorrow. Maybe you need to be more consistent with the channels you already have. Maybe you need to add another way for your target audience to discover you. Maybe you need to look at your offers or your conversion rate. There are a lot of things you can adjust, but you can't know what needs to change until you're willing to look at the numbers honestly.
And you definitely can't answer that question by looking at how many likes your last Instagram post got.
Your Job Isn't to Get Everyone to Engage, It's to Stay Top of Mind
There are people paying attention to your business right now who may never give you any indication that they're there. Some of them are learning from you, some are trying to decide whether you're the right person for them, and some may have already decided they want to work with you when the timing is right.
I actually think knowing that should feel freeing. You don't have to get every person who sees your content to like it, comment on it, or raise their hand so you know they're interested. You need to keep showing up, create content that speaks to the right people, and have a marketing strategy that keeps you visible long enough for those people to remember you when they're ready to buy. That's a very different goal than trying to make every post perform.
And that's exactly why we focus so much on having an actual strategy inside Seen & Paid. I help business owners build a marketing strategy around their actual goals so they know what they need to be doing, where they need to be showing up, and how to stay consistent without judging their entire marketing plan by what happened on Instagram that week.
Your next client may already be watching without liking a single thing you share. The goal isn't to get them to raise their hand today. It's to keep showing up consistently enough that when they are finally ready, you're the business that comes to mind first.
