[Top Agency Series] Journey to 220 Million Instagram Followers with Zach Benson of Assistagram

Zach Benson is the Founder of Assistagram, an Instagram marketing agency with a network of over 220 million Instagram followers to drive brand awareness, leads, and sales. They’ve helped businesses grow their Instagram following by 30,000 or more followers per month.

Zach has worked with companies run by people like Russell Brunson, The Rock, and even helped the official Dubai account and so many more.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• How Zach Benson landed the Official Dubai account deal
• How to use hashtags to grow your Instagram account
• What you can learn from big accounts and how to leverage them
• Zach shares insights on how to improve your Instagram account
• How Zach met Tony G and what they’ve been doing together
• When and how to buy an Instagram account
• How Zach determines the value of an Instagram account
• Zach talks about what Assistagram does for their clients
• How the letter R influenced Zach’s journey
• A big shift in Zach’s life that ended his breakdancing career
• Zach shares his journey towards meeting his birth mom in South Korea

In this episode…

The size of your page traffic is a big deal in today’s online business world. One of the many traffic sources that have proven to be incredibly valuable is Instagram. Instagram is a potential gold mine for driving traffic, increasing product awareness, and everything else that creates buzz online, and knowing how you can use this to your benefit can help make or break your business.

The problem is, not many business owners know how to leverage everything that it has to offer. An even bigger problem still is that a lot of them have no clue on how they can increase the number of followers they have and turn their Instagram page into a booming success.

Zach Benson of Assistagram dives deep into the world of Instagram and how to enjoy all that it has to bring to the table on this episode of Inspired Insider. Tune in as Zach talks to Dr. Jeremy Weisz about how his company grew to have 220 million followers on Instagram. He also shares his top Instagram growth hacks, the challenges he faced as he was growing his company, and how he determines the value of an account.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Assistagram
• Zach Benson on LinkedIn
• Zach Benson on Instagram
• TEDx by Zach Benson

People Mentioned

• Russell Brunson on Instagram
• Gary Vaynerchuk on Instagram
• The Fat Jewish on Instagram
• Kim Walsh Phillips on Instagram
• Nature is Metal on Instagram
• Ed O’Keefe on LinkedIn 
• Tony Grebmeier (Tony G) on LinkedIn

Books

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz
• Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea by Oren Klaff
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
• Average Sucks: Why You Don’t Get What You Want (And What to Do About It) by Michael Bernoff
• The Purse Strings Effect™: The Secret to Selling to Women by Wendi Schenkel-Arcane
• The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrews

 

 

Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of iInspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders and I’m here with Zach Benson. And if you don’t know, Zach, I’m gonna introduce him in a second. But this is the path to over 220 million Instagram followers. And, you know, just to give you I always Zach likes to point out some other interviews people should check out inspired Insider, you know, Chris Ategeka. Most people probably never heard of him he started two nonprofits and two for profits. But when he was 7, he became an orphan in Uganda, his parents died of AIDS and to raise his five is one of five and so he had to raise his siblings because of that, and he went on to speak nine languages went on to get his PhD at Berkeley, when he won a lottery in this village to go to the US to college. So it was pretty crazy. Also check out the PipeDrive Founder or Umrmas co founder Urmas had brain surgery got married, moved from Estonia to the US all in the same year. Zach at the time had 10,000 customers now they over have over 100,000 customers on Pipe Drive. I actually use it I love it. And many more on InspiredInsider.com and this episode is brought to you by Rise25 I co founded with my business partner, John Corcoran, what we do is we help b2b businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 partnerships and clients and help them run their podcast, like Zach will say about Instagram. The number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at how to give to my best relationships. And I have found no better way to have the people I really admire and love like people like Zach on the podcast share their thought leadership and we help companies do that. So check out Rise25.com and you can check out a video of John and I breaking down how you get ROI. We also banter like an old married couple. And so, you know, with no further ado, Zach Benson. This has been a long time coming Zach is a Founder of Assistagram. Assistagram is an Instagram marketing agency with a network of over 220 million Instagram followers to drive brand awareness, leads and sales. That’s what I love about Zach’s approach is not just for vanity, it’s really to drive a business forward. And that awareness in the followers and you could see if you’re watching this Hey Tony G, you know, Tony G says hello, here but um, if you’re watching this, you know, you see a Assistagram and their their website here. It is not just about vanity, it’s really about how do you drive that brand awareness and leads and sales. And so Zach talks about having a like an actual funnel, having it set up properly, but he’s all about giving you know what I mean? And that’s what he’s about. And that’s what I respect about him is they’ve helped businesses grow their Instagram following by 30,000 or more followers per month. He’s worked with companies, like run by people like Russell Brunson, The Rock, and even help the official Dubai account and so many more, check out Assistagram.com. Zach, thanks for joining me.

Zach Benson

Hey, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.

Jeremy Weisz

You know, there’s so much to do and like you know, I really, when I think of people like Chris Ategeka, I think of you in a bit because it’s not there’s been this like smooth ride to the top right? It never is for an entrepreneur and their journey. So we’re going to talk about your journey a little bit. And I’m sure there’s many videos you can watch as Zach breakdancing, because that’s what he did full time, actually. But I want to start with, you know, Dubai, actually, because I think really, what that embodies your philosophy on life and business. You want to talk about how that came to be? And what I’m what I’ve been talking about.

Zach Benson

Yeah, so how I got the country of Dubai to basically, you know, sign me and my company and how have us like run the whole entire nation. campaign was all through cold email outreach, right? So I just saw an opportunity, I saw an ad, I saw them say, Hey, we’re trying to get over 20 million tourists visits through Instagram, and then by 2020. And I just emailed them, Jeremy. And I was like, hey, like, we can help you do this, like, let’s hop on a call. And, you know, I told him, of course, like some other stuff about me and clients we’ve worked with, but I was like, I think that really, the thing that attracted them was that I was willing to do that, for free, right to build the relationship to get a country like Dubai, under my belt was life changing, because as I I helped them for free, me and my team, and we reached out to influencers and a listers, and basically said, Hey, come over to Dubai, create content share about your experience, you know, we’ll pay for it, like it was super powerful is a super powerful thing for me to leverage because I could basically say that I’m partnered with Dubai, like the country. And all of these a listers from all of these countries in the world, became my friends. And that’s how we grew the network. And then in return, for free stays, and the whole works in Dubai. These influencers a listers did me favors, right. As they grew, my clients, they shouted out and promoted other companies that I wanted to work with. And so it was a great leverage point. And that’s how I built up the 220 million network.

Jeremy Weisz

What was why Dubai? Why’d you choose that because there’s a lot of accounts on there that probably have a lot of influence and big followers and, and cachet to their name.

Zach Benson

You know, Dubai is huge. They have, they have a big budget, they have a lot of money. So but I mean, I just thought is like a cool place. Like I love the city. I love the I love like all of the fun things that they offer, like skydiving and all these like, find really cool, like, seven star hotels. So I’m like, this would be like the perfect destination that everybody like would want to go. And so it kind of made our job a little bit easier, because we were working with the big budget. And we could basically say like, Hey, we’re, you know, partners country to Dubai Tourism Board, you know, would you like to come on a free like all expenses paid trip? Who’s gonna say no to that? Yeah. And so, yeah, it was really, really, really cool. So we picked we chose to buy for those reasons. Because I think it’s one of those places like in the world where everybody wants to go, but they just don’t go because it can be quite expensive. But when you have everything paid for? I mean, why not?

Jeremy Weisz

So cold email, cold email is key. What did you include? And what was that cold email? what it looked like?

 

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