Hey there! It’s Krista here, the founder of Dietitian Success Center and a fellow dietitian. I want to share my best tips for defining your nutrition niche. Regardless of the “type” of nutrition business you are starting (e.g., private practice, consulting, freelancing, etc.), this information is for you!
Defining your niche can bring clarity and focus to your nutrition business idea in terms of who you are trying to attract to your services, product or offer. Even if you aren’t working with clients 1:1 and want to freelance or consult for companies, it’s still important to have an idea of the ‘type’ of client you’re targeting.
Do you feel like defining your nutrition niche is a stumbling block while thinking about the business you want to build? In Dietitian Success Center’s Defining your Niche course, one of our many business courses for dietitians, we review how to get clear on your target audience and ideal client. You also gain access to our Defining Your Niche worksheet where you can put these steps into action.
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Defining your Niche is a Foundational Business Step
Defining your nutrition niche is an important first step in your dietitian business plan. Coming up with a business name is often the first place people start, but there is a step that comes first – we need to come up with our target audience and ideal client profile. Once we know who our ideal client is, we can come up with branding and nutrition business ideas that will serve this person.
To clarify, a niche and target audience essentially mean the same thing – who are the people you are trying to obtain as customers, clients, members, etc.? An “ideal client” is a fictional persona that you develop that characterizes your target audience.
Having a clear sense of your ideal client helps you:
- Understand their unique challenges and where you can solve their problems and answer their questions
- Know exactly what to talk to them about on social media, your website, etc.
- Come up with content and offers that serve them
How Narrow Should Your Niche Be?
“If you’re speaking to everyone, you’re speaking to no one.” – Seth Godin
While it’s true that we can’t create offers for EVERYONE, sometimes there’s a false belief that in order to be successful, you have to “hyper-niche”. By that I mean, choosing a niche that is super narrow and super specific (e.g. ONLY working with people who have a specific medical condition like PCOS).
However, I’ve interviewed countless successful dietitians on The Dietitian Success Podcast who still have focus in their businesses, without needing to hyper-niche. Check out Episode 97 with Kate Davis, Sports Dietitian and Episode 134 with Sophie Dolan, where she shares her experience growing a digestive health focused insurance-based practice.
Both of these examples showcase dietitians who still have focus (e.g. sports and digestion) without the need to hyper-niche (e.g. only working with runners, or only working with people who are implementing the Low FODMAP diet). Keep in mind, if you have a specific interest in one area and want to hyper-niche – go for it!
10 Nutrition Niche Ideas
So ultimately, it’s important to still focus on a target audience in your business, but you can think more broadly about what that target audience looks like. Your target audience could be a nutrition-related condition, but it could also be a life stage (e.g. older adults), a population group (e.g. athletes), a philosophy (e.g. intuitive eating) or a specific problem (e.g. companies who need to improve the health of their employees).
Here are a few nutrition niche ideas to consider. You may find yourself being drawn to the broader topic (e.g. women’s health), or a more focused topic within that (e.g. PCOS):
- Women’s health
- Could focus further into PCOS, Endometriosis, Pregnancy, etc.
- Digestive health
- Could focus further into SIBO, IBS, Low FODMAP, Colitis, etc.
- Sports nutrition
- Could focus further into working with athletes who are involved in specific sports
- Older adults
- Could focus further into dementia, diabetes, etc.
- Intuitive eating
- Could focus further into intuitive eating for kids, intuitive eating for women, etc.
- Your community
- If you operate an in-person practice, your niche could be the community in which you operate
- Disease prevention
- Could focus further into weight management, pre-diabetes, heart health, etc.
- Families
- Could focus further into parents with kids, teens, etc.
- Pediatrics
- Could focus further into picky eating, baby led weaning, etc.
- Recipe development
- Could focus further into small-to-medium health food companies, large corporations, specific cultural food brands, etc.
- Consulting
- Could focus further into only providing nutrition writing for food blogs, etc.
Benefits of Identifying a Focused Nutrition Niche & Target Audience
Identifying a target audience provides you with:
- Focus for marketing – you’re able to access your target audience where they are gaining health information (instead of trying to show up everywhere)
- Focus for defining your offer – so you can create a specific offer(s) that solves your target audiences problems
- Focus for creating a brand that ‘speaks’ to your target audience
- You become the subject matter expert instead of feeling like a generalist
- Focus for creating a lead magnet that attracts your target audience
- It permits you to build your competence and confidence in a specific area
- You become the go-to person on that topic and will be approached for more opportunities in that area (speaking engagements, interviews, etc.) because you have a specific subject matter expertise
Defining a niche is often a stumbling block for dietitians and students, as they think about building a business. There might be imposter syndrome at play (what if you want to work with a population group but question if you “truly have the expertise?”). Remember, in the words of Seth Godin, “if you are speaking to everyone, you are speaking to no one”. We want to have a focus in terms of who we are trying to attract to our business.
In the Target Audience Toolkit, we walk through how to conduct a niche self-assessment to reflect on a niche that is aligned with your interests, past experiences and overall business vision. Check it out here.
