It's simple: you add competitors, locations and hashtags; the service fetches their followers and follows them, drawing their attention to your account. When someone sees a new follower it feels good—they open your profile and if your content is interesting they often follow back. Once you get that follower they're "warm"; you just need to convert them with the right content.
Every touch with a potential client via follows can grow your followers and lead to sales. Sometimes follower count doesn't grow but reach does—and that's not always bad.
Example: our client runs an adult shop. People don't rush to follow. But they message in DMs and order. Sales went up, followers didn't—you decide if that's bad.
Another example: a café account. Followers barely grew, reach did. We couldn't fully measure why—the client wouldn't run a "show you're following and get a gift" promo, so we couldn't track conversion properly.
So it's hard to judge mass following by one metric. Same with paid ads: if you don't plan how to measure conversion you'll think you're wasting money. One clear plus: the account started ranking higher in Instagram search.
Bottom line: mass following is still relevant. It's a trickier way to grow your Instagram now but still effective and cost‑efficient—important when you're bootstrapping. Be patient: Instagram often applies temporary limits. Switching services all the time only makes things worse for your account.