In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista Kolodziejzyk reviews some quick tips for 1. How to reset your mindset if you’re feeling frustrated about marketing, 2. A quick tool you can setup to see what’s working/not working when it comes to your digital marketing and 3. Strategies for pivoting when you find things aren’t working the way you thought they would.
Whether you’re relying on in-person or digital marketing for dietitians, this episode is for you. Â
Links:
- Access our freebies – the Business Planning Workbook, Client Resource Kit & PES Statements Cheat Sheet here: https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/freebie
- Learn more about DSCÂ https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/Â
Episode Transcript:
 Welcome to the Dietitian Success Podcast. Here at Dietitian Success Center, we’re all about making it easier for you to build your confidence and expertise. Whether you’re a dietitian or a dietetic student, we’ve got something for you. I’m Krista, your host and the founder of DSC. Now, are you ready to ditch the imposter syndrome and join our incredible, vibrant community?
If so, let’s jump in.
Hey there. Welcome back to a new episode of the dietician success podcast. Hope you’re having an awesome week. I am officially at. Rounding in on 37 weeks pregnant, which means I am just about full term, which is so exciting. And so over the last week and probably the next week, I don’t know. We’ll see how I’m feeling. We’ll see. When the baby comes, obviously. But one of the tasks that I’m working on wrapping up is prepping a number of podcast episodes to go out over the next couple months so that I can sit back, not have to worry about posting publish or publishing rather new podcast episodes. But knowing that things are coming out regularly for all of you.
I am in the midst of that over the last six months or so I’ve been batch recording episodes. So I haven’t done it in a condensed amount of time. I find that’s not a great amount of, that’s not a great. Process for me, I can’t. I just, if I were to say, Hey, I’m going to batch record five episodes this week. I just know I will not do it. I have to spread it out over a longer period of time. So over the last six months or so I’ve been booking just some extra, a couple extra podcast guests here and there in anticipation of this time so that I can post them. When I’m off. So there’s a lot of really awesome episodes that are coming up in the next couple months. But as you see new podcast episodes being published. You just know that I am not actively live publishing those have all been pre scheduled. So I’m not planning on recording podcast episodes in those first, early weeks slash months of having a newborn baby. But I thought that this. Topic. Would just, this is one of those topics that every once in a while, We just need to, we just need a little refresh, right? When it comes to marketing and marketing mindset, every once in a while, every single one of us needs a little pep talk. To keep going when it comes to marketing. And the reason why is because marketing is hard. Marketing is very hard. Marketing has also really fun. And I think it gets so much easier as time goes on and you learn more about what works for you, what doesn’t work for you, but staying consistent with marketing is challenging reason being, I think this is the number one reason is that we don’t always see the direct results of our efforts. We might, put out some Instagram posts, publish a podcast episode, throw out some emails. And maybe all of those things together. Lead somebody to want to work with us in two weeks from now,
But it’s tough to always know that’s what’s happening. We have to maintain this belief that what we’re doing is going to work and is working over time. Even if we don’t see that direct, immediate instant gratification result, that is a huge part of business mindset that I think sometimes. Is overlooked a little bit. When we have conversations around sales and around marketing. So I thought, Hey, let’s just record this super short, quick episode. Giving you some. Tips and some ideas. For how can I look at my marketing and how can I refresh and how can I reset my mindset? For the end of the year, so that I can really go out with a bang. So first thing, and I liked, I was like to start off the conversation around marketing with this visual. That marketing is like planting seeds. Every time we show up every time we talk about ourselves in our businesses. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter where it is. It doesn’t matter if it is to our neighbor or on Instagram or through a blog post or online, or we’re a guest on somebody’s podcast. Or we go and pitch ourselves too. I’m a practitioner in the community or whatever. Every time we show up and we talk about our businesses. We are marketing ourselves and we are planting a seed with someone. Maybe even many people, if you’re doing like a free workshop or something like that, maybe you’re even planting a seed with a number of people. But as we know, seeds, take time to come to fruition. They take time to bloom. Depending on the type of seed you plant. Sometimes it’ll come to fruition soon. Sometimes it’s going to take years. And I really believe that this is why businesses tend to grow over time because you’ve had time to plant more seeds and consequently more seeds have started to bloom. Into paying customers into paying clients, et cetera. So it’s like we can always have this visual in the back of our mind of planting seeds every single time. We talk about our businesses. And in order to keep planting these seeds, we have to keep showing up consistently. So let’s talk a little bit about what that means, what that looks like, and also what we can do. To reflect on maybe what’s been working and what hasn’t been working and come up with a couple of action steps that we can take to refresh things before the end of the year. And this conversation, or rather this podcast episode is coming off of. Something I was thinking about as we were actually doing our team DSC planning retreat for 2024. So we over the last two years last year it was actually when we went to fancy. Which is the conference in the nutrition conference, food and nutrition conference and exhibition in, it was in Orlando last year, we went as a team and we use that as an opportunity to. Plan out a little bit of 2023. Just chat in person about what the business was going to look like. And honestly, talking about plans in person and strategizing in person is just so much different. It’s so much more effective. Than even doing it on zoom. There’s just a really different energy around it. And so this year, I decided, Hey, let’s bring. Our little small, but mighty team together again in person to map out our 2024. And so one of the things we did as a starting point of that planning session was to come up with a SWOT. Which maybe you’ve heard of this term before, but SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It’s really an opportunity for you to reflect on what is your business doing well? What are some of the weaknesses? What are some of the opportunities you want to pursue? What are some of the things that you need to make note of that are happening in the world or in the community, or in terms of the competitive environment? What are some of the things that we need to pay attention to going into the next year? And so a big part of this SWAT discussion was thinking about our marketing and what is working, what has not been working. And one of the things we’ve really been trying to do. Over 2023 is to make sure we have, and this is something you can do to make sure you have hard data around your marketing and your marketing results. And this is not difficult to do so if you have not already done this, make sure that you set up a Google, a free Google analytics account for your website. And the reason why this is important is because Google analytics is going to tell you. What are the different traffic sources or what are the different, so where are people. Coming to your website from. And this is one of the best ways to understand how is our marketing or which marketing channels or platforms are working for us and which ones are not. Because generally for most of us, that is the pathway that somebody takes. They find out about us from somewhere. They go to our website, they book, or they buy from our website. And so that website is that like central point. That people visit in order to make the purchase or make the booking? Not always, obviously. But that’s generally going to be the case. And so Google analytics gives us a lot of really good data. It can tell us who is finding us from different social media channels. How many basically how much traffic are we getting from Instagram or from LinkedIn or from YouTube? How much traffic is coming from organic search, which means just people searching for you for something like you on Google and finding your website or stumbling upon. Upon Or stumbling across a blog post you’ve written a direct traffic. So when you share your website link out there in the world. So like we do with this podcast and we shared links in the podcast description, we’re sharing a direct link to the website. So how many people are finding us through those direct links? Et cetera. And so that really tells us okay. What should we be doing more of? So what is already working? What do we want to capitalize on further? And then what is maybe not so worth our time and effort
And so one of the things that we have noticed over the last year, Is that our organic search. So the effort that we’re putting into blogging and SEO. And direct traffic far exceed. The traffic that we’re getting from various social media platforms now. I think I still believe social media. Plays an important role in terms of brand building. It still does bring in people. Just not nearly as many, so that helps us understand. Okay, then what do we prioritize? And so for us, It’s prioritizing SEO, blogging our website performance versus. Getting super, super active and visible. On social media. And I think, this is one of those things that this is one of those challenging ones where. We have to do some reprogramming. I see this a lot where there’s this. Misconception that when we are first starting a business, we have to be on Instagram in order to be successful. And that’s just honestly, so not the case. And every time I try and get. Every time I have this, an opportunity to talk about marketing. I really try and reinforce that point. That. Yes. Again, I do believe Instagram plays an important role. I believe it can play a great role for brand building, for relationship building for and by brand building. I basically mean somebody building a know like, and trust factor with you personally. But it’s not the be all end all. It’s not the be all end, all. There’s so many other channels we should be using and we can use. Two. Get more clients and to market more effectively. So this is one of those reprogramming moments, I think for a lot of people where it’s okay, let’s actually look at the hard data and let’s ask ourselves the questions and be honest with ourselves. And yes, like I get it. You might really enjoy Instagram or maybe you don’t at all. But if you do enjoy it, yeah, a hundred percent, it can still serve a purpose in your business. But we want to also be critical and ask ourselves where people actually finding us and how are people. What platforms are actually bringing in paying clients and paying customers, because at the end of the day, that’s the goal. And so another thing we can do here, so I would say set up Google analytics, if you haven’t, if you have Google analytics set up, but you just haven’t looked at it in awhile. Go over to analytics. Take a look. Filter for the last six months or so, or just look month to month, even for the last six months and see what’s grown. What has not grown? Where people coming to you, where people finding you. So that’s the first thing. And then the second thing. Is take out a sheet of paper or a Google doc or whatever, and ask yourselves, ask yourself, where did the last five clients or customers. Come from. If the answer is, I don’t know, then this is a great time to start asking that question. So it can be something that you add into your intake form. How did you find out about me? You could just ask it. Casually when you start a conversation with a client. I think this is one of the best questions that you can ask to really start to understand, what marketing is working. And I know for us, we ask this when people join. The DSC membership and. Sometimes it’s really fascinating. It’s an open-ended question. So sometimes people would be like, oh, I found you. On this. With this webinar that you did last year for whatever company. I’ll have completely forgot that I did that. But it’s such good reinforcement and validation that the seeds that have been planted over the last few years. Do eventually start to come to fruition. And there might be channels. Maybe you’re finding that a lot of people are saying, Hey, I found you through this provider, like their physician or whatever. That can be a really good indication to nurture that relationship, make it even easier for that person to refer people to you because they’re already doing it. Really capitalize on what’s already working. And so that’s the second piece is ask yourself. Where did the last five clients come from or find you. And don’t be afraid to pivot as trends evolve. So have a system for tracking and measuring. Pay attention to what’s working and adapt as you need to. And I think if you’re feeling frustrated, sometimes that can be a really good sign that it’s time to just reflect and refresh. Because it’s okay. That things change in the world of marketing. I think. Some doors will close. Like at one point Instagram was working really well for a lot of people and then it stopped working. But whenever there’s doors that closed, there’s always doors that open to, we just have to be willing to see those new opportunities for marketing that Hey, maybe actually feel better and are more aligned for you. So keep planting the seeds. Pay attention to what’s working set up some of those systems for tracking and measuring. And at the end of the day, don’t be afraid to adapt. I hope that’s a helpful little pep talk for you. On this Thursday or whenever you’re listening to this podcast episode. I’m excited to bring you some awesome interviews with some amazing guests over the next couple months while I am officially on leave. And after a couple of months, I will make sure and record a podcast episode to talk about just what it has been like. Balancing the mom piece and the entrepreneur piece. I’m looking forward to talking a bit more about that. All right i hope you have an amazing week and i will see you next thursday