Hey there!
It’s Krista, your dietitian business coach. I’m here to break down the steps of marketing for dietitians and how to effectively market your product or services.
The Dietitian Success Center business membership includes a variety of business-related courses for dietitians, including our new MEGA 10-part Marketing Mastery course on marketing strategies for dietitians, where I teach you:
- How to develop a rinse-and-repeat style monthly digital marketing for dietitians strategy, including:
- Offline (in-person) marketing tactics
- A step-by-step process for creating and implementing your very own strategy
- How to know what to talk about with your marketing
Marketing for Dietitians and Why it Matters
Marketing is an essential part of any business! There is often a perception when we start a dietitian business that “if I build it, they will come”… but sadly, that’s not how it works! We need to get in front of our ideal clients and prove to them that we have a solution to their challenges.
Effective marketing:
- Helps to ensure that people know what you do and identify if your offer/content is right for them
- Ultimately encourages people to buy from you or pay for your services
- Is often an afterthought in business (we typically spend much more time crafting and delivering our services than working to get new or consistent clients)
The more effort we put into attracting clients the more successful our business is going to be.
What is Marketing?
In its simplest form, marketing is the process of generating interest in what you do.
Good marketing means that we can communicate the ways in which we can make people’s lives better with the work that we do. This leads people to “know, like and trust” you enough to want to buy from you.
This means that if I am going to buy from you, 3 conditions have to be met. I have to:
- KNOW you – be familiar with your work and what you do
- LIKE you – resonate with your content or approach
- TRUST you – know that you actually have the solutions to the challenges that I have
Our entire goal in marketing is to enhance these factors. When these factors are met, that’s when we can expect sales to come in.
Get started with a FREE Dietitian Business Planning Workbook for a step-by-step breakdown on how to create your dietitian business plan, steps for how to define your niche, pricing and marketing strategies for dietitians, as well as goal-setting tips.
Social Media Marketing for Dietitians
A really common question that I get when it comes to marketing is: “Do I have to use social media to market my services?”
The answer is NOT NECESSARILY!
This is a really common challenge many entrepreneurs are facing now. We have so many strategies at our disposal and there’s constant pressure to use all of them because we want to mimic other peoples’ success. When in reality, so long as we are able to access our ideal client (whether that be through Google search, connections in our community, referrals from other practitioners, etc.) we don’t necessarily have to rely on a platform like Instagram.
Keep in mind that there are many successful businesses out there that do not use social media.
If you love social media and want to try it out, it can be an amazing way to reach a bigger audience and build awareness of your product or services. I also encourage you not to mistake the fear of being “bad at social media” prevent you from trying it out.
If you are someone who has tried social media and you just don’t like it, it doesn’t feel good, or it brings up negative emotions, that’s okay! There are other marketing tactics that can work to achieve the same goal – which is getting in front of your ideal client.
Offline and Online Marketing Strategies for Dietitians
I like to divide marketing into 2 different subsets, offline marketing and online marketing.
Offline refers to anything you do locally in your community, including partnering with organizations, running in-person workshops or referral building partnerships.
Online marketing means using creative online content to showcase your value and knowledge including:
- Social media (Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook)
- Website, recipes and blog posts
- Email newsletters
- Online/free trainings or challenges
- Sharing work or research on Linkedin
- Making YouTube videos
- Having a Facebook group
- And so much more!
PUSH vs. PULL Marketing
Push and Pull marketing are two strategies that are used within the marketing world to get in front of our ideal audience. However, they are very different.
If we haven’t been exposed to what effective marketing really means, we often think of “push” marketing as the very first way to market our business or product.
Push Marketing
The goal of push marketing is to bring what you offer to customers. This typically involves paying for visibility. Push marketing is transactional and can be much more limited in terms of actual brand loyalty.
Examples:
- Paid ads on your Facebook or Instagram feed
- Billboards
- A bench with realtor information on it
Pull Marketing (Also referred to as “content marketing”) is best for when you want to create loyal customers by providing content that showcases your value. We draw consumers in with our content by providing high-quality, useful information for free.
Pull marketing is what I like to focus on. We’re going to create high-value content to attract our ideal client to us (plus, it allows us to build our brand, it’s more effective, and it’s free!)
Pull marketing allows us to build the “know, like, trust” factor, attract people to our offer and give people the opportunity to test-drive our services before they buy.
Examples:
- Blog posts
- YouTube videos
- Free downloads (lead magnets)
- Social media marketing
- Podcasting
Pull marketing takes time. There is often an assumption that once you create an Instagram post you will automatically make a sale. Or, you post a blog article and expect that someone will automatically subscribe to your email list.
This is why marketing can be frustrating at times – because it isn’t necessarily always transactional in nature. We don’t always see an immediate return on our time spent on the piece of content we’re promoting. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not working in the background!
Marketing Strategies for Dietitians
The whole goal of a marketing strategy is to create a “rinse and repeat” routine that we can do every month to get predictable results. Having a solid marketing strategy really reduces the overwhelm and ensures we allocate the right amount of time to our marketing tactics every month to show up consistently. So what does this actually look like?
4 Steps to Developing a Marketing Strategy:
- Decide where you will show up: what channels you will use to market your services? The goal is not to show up on every single channel, but to pick a few key ones.
- Decide how frequently you will show up on those channels. Consistency is key and more important than frequency, decide on a realistic frequency that works with you and your lifestyle.
- Decide what you will say and what type of content you will share that will resonate with your target audience, answer questions and solve problems. (We have an entire video about coming up with content topics in the Marketing Mastery course!)
- Schedule your marketing strategy in your calendar to make sure it actually happens.
In the DSC Marketing Mastery course, I discuss the pros and cons of different marketing tactics and channels. Then we put this into a cohesive strategy that allows you to show up consistently!
Key Takeaways
- Effective marketing helps us to get in front of our ideal audience and prove to them that we have a solution to their challenges
- You do NOT need to use social media for marketing if it doesn’t feel good for you
- Pull marketing takes more time but is more effective, helps build your brand and is free!
- Building your email list helps you to keep potential clients around for longer so you can develop a “know, like, trust” relationship
- Having a solid marketing strategy can reduce overwhelm and simplify the whole marketing process
The DSC business membership includes access to 40+ courses for dietitians including Marketing Mastery, a marketing strategies for dietitians course where you can put these steps into action and feel totally confident marketing your dietitian business!
Dietitian Success Center is THE professional development resource for dietitians, dietetic students, and dietitian entrepreneurs. Our mission is to make it easier for dietitians and dietetic students to build expertise. We do this through evidence-based courses for dietitians, community and ready-to-use client handouts. Plus – we give you the tools to start and grow your dietitian private practice!
