Justin Saunders's Authority Income Accelerator Review: Can Instagram Ads Scale Your Business To $100k?
Authority Income Accelerator (AIA) is a coaching program by Justin Saunders for consultants and coaches looking to scale their business. The program leverages Instagram Ads for client acquisition and helps its students automate the process.
There are over 2 billion active users of Instagram monthly, according to Social Pilot. And based on Meta’s April 2023 report, Instagram ads can reach up to 1.6 billion users. There is a high percentage that your ad will be put in front of your market.
However, it’s also worth noting that the average time Instagram users spend on the platform is 30 minutes according to Insider Intelligence. This is significantly less time than the average time people spend on TikTok, which is almost an hour. Another big hurdle on this is the 42.7% of internet users using ad blockers based on Hootsuite’s 2022 Digital Trends Report.
In this Authority Income Accelerator review, we’ll go over the pros and cons of the course, what you can get out of it, what its students are saying about the course and if there is a better business model that can give you passive income.
Who Is Justin Saunders?
Justin Sanders is a business growth consultant and a successful entrepreneur currently based on Miami, Florida. He attended college in University of Kentucky and graduated with a degree in Communications and Media Studies in 2017. During his university days, he also served as a social and intramural chair of the Beta-Nu Chapter of Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
Justin started working in the marketing industry as a door-to-door salesman for Odyssey selling their print and digital ads to local businesses. After discovering he has a talent for it, he switched to online marketing. By 2017, he co-founded New Media Age. It is a lead generation agency for health care providers, such as chiropractors, and for solar business owners.
He found his true passion by 2019 when he founded his coaching agency, Higher Ticket Freedom, after his friends started asking him tips to be a successful entrepreneur. This later on became Authority Income Accelerator helping coaches and consultants scale their businesses.
Justin Saunders’ Claims: Add $100k To Their Business Using Our Automated Instagram Funnel
Justin Saunders claim Authority Income Accelerator can add $100k to your business through a predictable way of acquiring clients with automated Instagram ads.
Justin Saunders’ Claims Debunked:
- Paid Ads Bidding System - Instagram ads follows the same paid ads bidding system in which your ad is competing against all other ads for a space in the platform. And whichever ad pays more, gets the space. It can bleed you dry in the long run.
- Market Demand - Scaling to a consistent 6-7 figure a month will largely depend on the industry. If there’s a lot of demand from the industry market you’re trying to be a coach of like AIA’s student, Jack Woodburn in ecommerce, it’s very possible. However, if you’re a bit more like Molly who only caters to a very slim market, reaching $100k might need more than Instagram ads.
What is Customer Acquisition on Instagram?
Instagram is a social media platform under Meta, the same company that owns Facebook. Instagram’s main activity is photo sharing which users can like, share and comment on. The picture sharing social media is first released on October 6, 2010. Last July 2023, a complementary app to Instagram, Threads, is released, which is mainly a text sharing platform.
Customer acquisition in Instagram is attracting and generating quality lead from the social media platform.
How Effective Is Instagram For Client Acquisition?
Client acquisition is the process of bringing in new customers to your business. Client acquisition starts from consumers gaining awareness of your business through ads or influencer marketing to consideration such as visiting your business profile or website, and conversion when the prospective lead finally makes the purchase.
Instagram is effective for client acquisition with 83% of the 2 billion users using the platform to discover products and services according to Social Pilot. In addition, Sprout Social’s study showed 150 million users use Instagram to communicate with businesses. It is an established channel of communication between customers and businesses.
Is It Hard To Acquire Clients Through Instagram?
It is not hard to acquire clients through Instagram if you’re a brand with less than 10,000 followers. The conversion rate can go up to 2.6% as per Bazaar Voice’s research. Businesses with over a million followers saw the lowest with 0.7% conversion rate. However, according to Instagram, 50% of their users get interested in brands after they saw it on the platform. That is still a billion of monthly Instagram users up for grabs.
Authority Income Accelerator Alternatives
- Lead Gen Accelerator by Faizan Saeed - The course is a coaching program focusing on digital marketing and client acquisition. The course claims to add $10k to your monthly revenue in 90 days.
- AgencyBox by Dylan Vanas - AgencyBox is a coaching program for digital marketers to scale their business. The program has a price range of $997 to $4997 and up.
- Agency Navigator by Iman Ghadzi - This program is for agencies looking to scale their business. You can get templates, tools and funnels you can use in your agency right away at the cost of $1499.
- Peaceful Profits by Mike Shreeve - This service is for freelancers, coaches, and consultants who aim to scale their business. The program specializes in low-priced book offers.
5 Challenges of Instagram Paid Ads
- **Smaller Market:**Based on Data Portal, there are 4.2 billion social media users in the world. There is an average of 5.5 new user every second. And focusing on Instagram’s 2 billion users alone can be more of a limitation to your business scaling.
- Not Future-Proof: Instagram is currently 4th place in Global Data’s report of most used social media platform. However, the rising platform, TikTok, easily outperformed Twitter, Messenger and Pinterest and is sitting at 6th place.
- Highly Competitive: According to Statista’s most recent report, 80% of marketers are in Instagram which you’re directly competing with because paid ads follow a bidding system.
- Expensive: Paid ads requires you to test different ad variations to know which one works for your business. There is no guaranteed ROI.
- Prone to Copying: Instagram ads are trackable through Facebook ads library. Competitors can view your ads which makes it easier to copy.
Conclusion: Is Instagram The Best Platform For Client Acquisition?
Google is still the best platform for client acquisition and local lead generation is the best business model that leverages it. The major problem of Instagram paid ads is its bidding system in which you have to invest a lot of money to be in front of your target market. With local lead generation, all you need is $500 to set up your site and 10 to 15 pages to rank it. After that, you collect leads from Google’s free traffic.
Automated Instagram ads can also bring you clients, however you still have to close those deals or hire someone to do them for you. With local lead gen, your site brings leads to the business owner and you watch your income flow in passively.
Instagram also caters to a significantly smaller market per month compared to the 89 billion times Google is visited in the same duration according to Similar Web. Top that with the 8.5 billion search queries it processes daily as per Internet Live Stats. And local lead gen presides on that.
Local lead generation is a rank and rent business model. Once you rank your site, it stays there for a long time, then you can rent it out to small businesses. The tree care site I set up years ago still earns me $2000 per month. And you can do this multiple times with over 50+ niches out there. All of my sites earn me $52k a month. So, if you’re looking to make more money, instead of scaling your business, you can invest in a lower risk business venture that is local lead gen.

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