Do you want more clients or patients as a dietitian, nutritionist or as a fitness trainer doing nutrition?
Then you are in the right place. We are going to show you the right strategies that you can start using today.
Let’s go directly to the tactics:
Content marketing for nutrition
It might sound intimidating but content marketing is simple. It is defined by The Content Marketing Institute as
… a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Neil Patel defines it as
…a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis.
This is just an umbrella for other tactics that are presented below.
Create a nutrition blog
Create a blog and write about subjects of interest for your patients.
An article should have a compelling title that describes the subject, an intro and the body of the article. Quality images (ideally made by yourself) and videos are always a good choice.
Write about nutrition in social media
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn… and the list can go on.
You don’t have to be on all of them. Choose one and master it. Post constantly. Create a posting calendar and stick to it. Be consistent.
It is a very good idea to promote articles from your blog. Distribute content written by others (reshare/redistribute). Just think what would you like to read if you were in your visitor’s shoes.
Video content about nutrition
Youtube is a huge channel that attracts a lot of visitors. Create video content with you talking about nutrition. Destroy myths, talk about trends, criticize diets, help people to choose the best diets.
As a small note, always create a summary of the video in the video description. Google owns Youtube but it doesn’t really understand sounds, just text. Write about 200 words – these words are going to be indexed by Google and will help your SEO efforts.
Facebook and Instagram are good places too where to distribute your videos. Just keep them short and interactive.
You can start doing videos right away, you don’t need expensive gear. Just use your smartphone and a quiet room.
SEO for nutrition
Who says that ads should be expensive?
With SEO you get free and passive traffic (you know that passive is passive as longs as you do something for it, don’t you?). It takes a big investment of time and it is strongly related to content. Basically the more content that you have the better it is for SEO. The more time visitors spend on a page the higher it will appear in Google Search because Google believes that the page must be good since a lot of people interact with it.
I will write a separated article presenting a few simple strategies that you can use to optimize your website for SEO but the basic rules are simple:
- create content for people, not for Google (it doesn’t like to be tricked)
- create content that is useful for people
- make the user experience as pleasant as possible
- write longer articles (at least 300 words)
- have a descriptive title and put it in a H1 heading
- include images in your content
- link to external websites with authority
- have quality links to your website (if you write a post about the keto diets, link to the Wikipedia page that talks about keto or some big name)
- don’t try to fool Google
- DON’T try to trick Google… is that clear?
Corporate nutrition
Go to the HR department of a corporation and propose them a free workshop about nutrition. There are real people coming to the workshop. Who can be your patients.
It is much easier to win someone’s trust if they don’t feel that you try to sell them something.
Speak at local events about nutrition
Go to farmer’s meeting and give a presentation about the importance of vegetables.
Talk about how to eat healthy at your children’s school. They might not have problems but they have parents. And who dares to refuse an innocent child?
Speaking engagements at medical conferences
You might think that doctors can’t have problems. You might be right (I married one, I can’t say anything bad).
But they have patients. And who can refer you better patients that doctors in other fields?
Don’t forget your business cards when you go there and put your name and website address in your presentation.
Offline ads
This one might be pretty expensive but people still see printed ads. Some even read printed newspapers! (no, it’s not a shame to have a real newspaper in your hand).
Write nutrition articles in local newspapers and websites (guest posts)
This is useful even if you have a blog – you will get links to your website but especially if you don’t have one. You will use the audience that you didn’t create. Having journalists as friends is always good. Be there when they need an expert opinion.
Online communities
Facebook groups, forums (no, they are not dead), reddit, Quora are places where people come for information and to interact with other people. Try to contribute and help people without asking anything in exchange. Just have your website or Facebook / Twitter / Instagram in your signature.
Word of mouth
The best future clients are the ones that are referred by past happy clients because they are the living (ideally) proof that your methods are working.
Ask your happy patients to recommend you to other people. It might sound a little bit awkward but remember, they are happy with the result and a question won’t hurt anyone. In the worst scenario you will get a “no” (but you already have it if you don’t ask).
The list can go on but I will stop here. You can pick only one that you would like to master. Or you can try several of these for some time and see what’s working better. Just don’t wait hoping that people will come.
Which one would you like to try first?