Think about the last time you made a purchase decision – maybe it was a grocery item, a coffee, or a skincare product. Chances are, you gravitated towards one that looked familiar, trustworthy, or aligned with your values, even if you’d never tried it before. That’s the power of branding. It shapes how people see and connect with a business, often before they even experience the product or service.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the essentials of nutrition branding for your business and offer practical insights into creating a brand that aligns with your business goals. Whether you’re starting your business for the first time or looking for a branding refresh, you’ll learn how to build a strong brand that resonates with your ideal clients and helps you stand out.
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Why is Nutrition Branding Important?
Branding is far more than just a logo and color palette. It’s a comprehensive process that encompasses the entire perception of your business—your reputation, communication style, the experience clients have with you, and the emotional connection they feel towards your work. Successful nutrition branding allows you to build trust, showcase professionalism, and create a lasting impression.
Your brand is made up of several components:
- Visual Branding Aspects: The visual representation of your business; your logo, color scheme, typography, templates, images/photos and more!
- Products & Services: The services or products you offer
- Communications: The way you speak to your audience, including tone and messaging
- Actions: The day-to-day behavior of your business, including customer service
- Reputation: The public’s perception of your business, including client testimonials
All of these elements come together to create your brand identity, that tells the story of who you are and what you offer.
Once you have strong, cohesive branding:
- Content creation becomes easier
- You stand out and become memorable
- You establish trust and credibility
- You build an emotional connection with clients
A successful brand goes beyond the services you offer—it’s about building relationships with your audience.
How To Build Your Nutrition Branding
Put Your Ideal Client at the Center
Whether you work with clients 1:1, run group programs, create digital products, or work with food companies, nutrition branding should revolve around your ideal client.
You’re not trying to appeal to everyone—you’re aiming to attract the people who need your services most. By understanding your ideal client, you can design your brand to meet their specific needs and solve their problems.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What does your ideal client value?
- Where do they spend their time?
- Where do they spend their money?
- How do you want to be perceived by them?
Your brand essence should reflect who you want to attract and the values you share with your target audience.
Consider How You Want Your Business To Be Perceived
Before you get started with the visual aspects of branding, you need to know your brand essence. Your brand essence encompasses how you want your clients to perceive your business. It incorporates the key components of your business core values, your ideal client’s values, and how you want your business to be recognized.
If your business were a person, what would they be like?
Consider making a list of words, phrases, emotions, and images that you want to come to mind for your ideal customer or target audience. How do you want them to perceive your business?
You can create this list on your own or use a tool like this one. Try to pick three main words that encompass your brand essence.
Tell Your Brand Story
Your audience connects with stories, not just products. Storytelling is a powerful tool in branding because it humanizes your business and gives your clients a reason to trust you. Why did you start your business? What problems do your services (or products) solve? Bringing this story to life through your messaging, visuals, and tone helps create a more memorable and engaging brand.
Your ideal client should be the hero of your brand story. Visuals like your logo, color scheme, and imagery to support the narrative, and create content that resonates emotionally with your audience. By building a compelling story, you make your nutrition branding relatable and engaging.
For example, here at Dietitian Success Center, our hero is dietitians! We focus our content and branding on building up dietitians to help you feel more confident. We also are a company run entirely by dietitians, we share the desire for trustworthy, forward thinking materials, respect for the profession of dietetics and a love of food!
Choose Your Visual Branding Elements
Step 1: Create A Moodboard
Your visual branding elements tell the story, visually, of your brand essence. A helpful first step can be to create a mood board – a collage of pictures, words, patterns, colors, etc. that conveys your brand essence at a glance. Remember, your ideal client is the “hero” of your brand story. Consider how you want them to feel about your brand, not just what images and colors you enjoy.
You can use tools like Canva, Adobe Express, or even ChatGPT to help you create your moodboard. You can also search Google or Pinterest for moodboard inspiration specific to your niche.
Step 2: Select Your Colors
After, or while, putting together your moodboard you might already come up with some colors to use. Try to choose 3-5 colors, with a mix of:
- Main colors (your main brand identifiers)
- Accent colors (for subtitles, buttons, etc.)
- Neutral colors (think backgrounds and borders)
When selecting colors, keep color psychology in mind. Colors evoke emotions and can influence how people perceive your brand. In one study, researchers found that quick purchasing decisions can often be based on just colors! Though the science isn’t quite conclusive when it comes to what colors to choose. This can be highly influenced by context, culture, and personal preference.
In general, certain colors can evoke certain emotions:
- Blue: Trust, security, professionalism (often used in healthcare/hospital branding)
- Green: Health, balance, nature
- Yellow: Optimism, warmth, energy
- Red: Passion, urgency, strength
- Orange: Confidence, creativity
- Purple: Sophistication, luxury, wisdom
- Pink: Youthful, fun, playful
The colors themselves are not even the whole story! Color shades can also make a difference.
For example:
- A brand that uses striking neon style colors (like the example above) would appeal to a certain audience. The brand essence words that come to mind might be: fun, youthful, forward thinking.
- Whereas, a brand that uses soft pastels might appeal to a different sort of audience. The brand essence words that come to mind might be: calm, natural, new life.
Step 3: Select Your Typography
Another important, but often overlooked, element of branding is your brand typography. This is the font style that you use across your content. Try to choose 1-2 for titles and headings and 1-2 for body text. You can search for inspiration but remember to come back to your ideal client and your brand essence.
For example:
- Serif fonts (the ones with the little lines that extend off the letter) tend to portray a traditional, nostalgic, and academic essence
- Sans serif fonts (no little lines extending off the letter) tend to feel more modern
- Cursive/Script fonts are fancy, creative, and whimsical; they can add a touch of creativity to your brand but are often hard to read so should be used sparingly.
Step 4: Create Brand Images and Templates
Once you’ve defined your brand essence words, created your mood board, and decided on brand colors. You’re ready to get creative with your visual branding.
Depending on the stage of your business (and how much your want to DIY or outsource), this might include:
- Your logo
- Your website elements
- Brand photography (photos of yourself and/or your products and services)
- Content templates (such as handouts, social media post templates, lead magnets, etc.)
- Physical branding items (business cards, posters, letterheads, etc.)
Overall having a consistent idea of your brand essence and imagery can help to create cohesive, recognizable brand elements that will stand out and help you find the right clients that you can help.
Creator tip: utilize the Canva Brand Kit to save your brand colors, fonts and logo in one place so you can easily use them in content creation.
Additional Tips
- Choose and Stick to Your Brand Elements: Don’t get stuck in “analysis paralysis.” Select your branding elements and remain consistent. You can always refine them over time.
- Avoid Frequent Brand Refreshes: While it’s normal to evolve, avoid changing your brand too often, as it can confuse your audience.
- Stand Out: Be inspired by other brands but make sure yours is unique. Focus on your values, vision, and purpose to differentiate yourself.
- Seek Feedback: Test your branding with friends, family, or your target audience for valuable insights.
Bringing it All Together: Building a Cohesive Brand
When building your nutrition branding, remember that your brand is more than the sum of its parts. A strong brand identity reflects your values, vision, and purpose while aligning with your ideal client’s needs. Incorporating storytelling, emotional connection, and visual consistency will help you create a brand that stands out and makes a lasting impact.
By incorporating these strategies, you’ll be well on your way to building a brand that not only looks great but also resonates deeply with your audience. Branding isn’t just about what you offer, it’s about the message you send and the relationships you build with your clients.
