In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista Kolodziejzyk reflects on what’s working and not working right now with regard to online marketing. She talks about websites, email lists, SEO and social media!
Links:
- This episode is sponsored by Awe Contracts; listeners can get 10% off legal contracts using the code “dietitiansuccesscenter” at checkout (we also receive an affiliate commission on any purchases made using our link and promo code): https://www.awecontracts.com?aff=dietitiansuccesscenter
- Check out the Dietitian Success Center membership here
- Check out our Freebies here – PES Statement Cheat Sheet, Client Resource Kit & Business Planning Workbook
- Q&A – What Metrics Should You Track, How I Keep Track of Money Every Month & How to Collect Email Subscribers
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. So, 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 and welcome to a new episode of the dietitian success podcast. Today. I wanted to record an episode about just some observations that I’ve been having with regard to what’s working and what’s not working in the marketing world right now. And I think that. I mean, looking back on, haven’t been in. The online business space for an incredible amount of time.
But. I probably within, you know, The last five years, I would say I’ve been just sort of observing. What’s some of the shifts are that have happened. And I think. You know, what’s really important to remember is that. Because our world, our society, our economy, how we consume information products that are available to us, services that are available to us are always changing and shifting.
It makes sense that. Marketing would change and shift to in terms of what is working and what’s not working. And so I think that. You know, we have to make sure we’re flexible to those changes and we’re sort of staying on top of what’s new and what’s relevant and letting go of what’s not working anymore.
I think that’s. One of the most challenging things. As business owners is being okay with letting things go. And I’m going to talk about. Just some of the things that we’ve been letting go. With regard to marketing in dietitian success center. And because we get attached to these activities that we do on a day to day basis.
Maybe we feel like we’ve, you know, just figured them out or we’ve started to work them into. Our consistent weekly marketing plan and we feel really good about it. And so it feels not so good to have to let some of those things go. But at the end of the day, we have to continue to pay attention to what’s actually working. And by what’s actually working.
I mean, you know, tracking and measuring. Your efforts and actually being able to critically reflect on what is working and what’s not working. And so this is something I’ve talked about quite a bit in the past, but just this idea of tracking metrics in a business and how important that is. anD what I mean by that is, you know, every week we just have a simple tracker and maybe some of you have already implemented this.
Some of you maybe have not. But having just a simple tracker to be able to pay attention to. What is. What is working, what’s not working. And so if you pop into, for those who are members of dietitian success center, if you have the nutrition plus business membership you can just search the term metrics in the search bar. There’s a Q and a session that I did. A while ago, but in that Q and a session, I talk about metrics that I recommend some business owners track. And so I also have a very basic template for that, a Microsoft or not Microsoft, a Google sheets template for just some really basic metrics that you can track in your business.
So it includes things like just revenue. Search traffic. So how much traffic are you getting to your website? Let me just pop it open, actually. And I can see email subscribers. Instagram. Number of people. Now I’m going to talk a bit about what I feel like is important to pay attention here.
And what I don’t feel like is important to pay attention here. But I think that, you know, just having some sort of simple process in place, simple tracking process in place is really important for being able to make those data evidence-based decisions in your business. And so versus responding to just like how we’re feeling about things or what we think is happening.
Let’s respond to what’s actually happening. anD so the reason why I thought that this would be timely is because we are of course thinking about what are the plans for the new year. And so I’ve been paying a lot of attention. To what’s happening in our business and dietitian success center. And really trying to come up with some concrete plans for things that we’re going to continue to do and things that we’re going to let go of.
So, and what I just want to mention here is that I never believe that there’s ever one size fits all. This is really my observation of what’s been working and not working for us specifically. I think that, and I’ve been having quite a few conversations with. I have this small intimate group of business friends. There’s just three of us and we chat. Very regularly on a platform called this is kind of an aside, but if you’ve never heard of Marco polo it is an awesome app for being able to have. Just really for being able to send ad hoc video messages to a group of people.
And so we have a Marco polo thread for our little group, our little business group. And it’s really an opportunity and a space for us to just be able to chat with each other and talk through things that are going on in our businesses. Ask for advice, ask for feedback. And you can do it via video chat.
So you’re not having to type out some long exhaustive email. You’re able to just speak freely about what’s going on. And that can be a really. I can just feel really good and it can be also a way more efficient way of communicating. So anyways, Marco polo definitely recommend checking that out. But anyways, we’ve been talking quite a bit about this concept of things that used to work for us and things that are no longer working for us.
And so though I’m speaking mostly of things that are relevant and we’ve been observing for DSC. I do think that some of these. Most of these can be applied to most other types of businesses. And I think what’s important from this episode is just for you too. Just to give you an opportunity to sort of reflect and think about, Hey, is what I’m doing, actually working for me. I’m going to talk a bit about social media, you know, is how is social media working for me?
Is it working for me? In what way is it working for me? Is it bringing in clients? Is it not? And I’m I okay with that? Et cetera, et cetera. That is my just sort of disclaimer at the beginning of this, that I never believe there’s a one size fits all. I think that, you know, different things can work for different people in different industries, depending on when you got started, depending on your audience size.
But this is just what we’ve been observing with regard to the landscape right now.
Okay. So some of the things that we have really I’m going to start with what we’ve found has been working well, and then I’ll get into what has not been working well. So what has been working well? Number one is having a website. I often get this question around. Do you think I need a website for my business? Yes, I do believe that businesses need websites.
There was a time in place where. And this was a few years ago. I think if I’m remembering correctly a few years ago where it was, it could be enough to just have. An Instagram profile to be able to direct people to, because people were getting a lot more traffic and a lot more clients and a lot more attention when it came to Instagram, because there were fewer people using Instagram for nutrition or business purposes.
I’ll talk about that more in a bit, but. I don’t actually believe that’s the case anymore. I don’t think we can just rely on Instagram to be able to truly allow a perspective customer. Or client or member or patient or whatever, to really understand. What you do, how you can help them to the extent that they want to make a purchase decision. I just don’t think that. We, I don’t think Instagram is like user friendly enough or set up in a way that is conducive for people to really understand and see everything that you have to offer.
And so I feel like having a website is so important as just like an educational Homebase. For people to learn about you and what you have to offer, but also a way for people to be able to find you. AnD again, I’m going to talk about this when I talk about what’s not working so well, but. One of the things that we’ve been observing is just how much lower our Instagram traffic is than it used to be traffic and engagement too.
So by that, I mean, you know, how many people are following us, how many people are seeing our stories or our content. When we put it out there into the world, It’s just not the same as it used to be. And that’s okay. It’s just a reflection of the environment. And I know that there’s a lot more people out there that are creating content.
We’re all competing for the same set of eyes, to an extent. And so, you know, because of that, we just can’t really rely on platforms like Instagram to send us potential members or customers like we could have before. So our website is really important because it’s a space where people can find us on Google, which is still, you know, the number one way that people are searching for products or services.
Like what most of us that are listening to this episode are offering. So having a website I do believe is super, super important. Now do you have to have it right at the very right off the bat? Maybe not depending on if you have a you know, if you have a. Perspective client base, let’s just say, so for example, I was chatting a little bit within the dietitian success center, business nutrition plus business membership members have the opportunity to be able to send me a video or an audio question, and then I’ll respond back.
So I was talking to somebody this past week. Who has past experience as an athlete in a specific area, in a specific discipline. So for them, they are planning on launching a private practice related to sports nutrition, and they clearly have a pretty big network because they were very heavily involved in this sport. They have a network of people that they’ll be able to go to when they launched their business to say, Hey, I’m offering these services now, are you interested in that? Now for this person, you know, potentially they might not need a website right off the bat in order to launch in order to start seeing clients because they have. You know, sort of this built-in potential customer or client base, but that might not be the case for everyone.
And so it, depending on your unique circumstance, sort of ask yourself the question. Is this going to be. Necessary for me right off the bat. If somebody is interested in my services, do I have somewhere to be able to send them. For more information and do I have a way of actually being able to attract my ideal client? And so a website is really conducive to that, especially right at the beginning.
So, but the thing is too is we don’t necessarily need to be investing an incredible amount of time and money and resources into a website at the beginning. My first websites were always DIY. I made them myself on Wix. They were super cheap and cheerful. Wix or Squarespace, whichever you’d prefer. They have really awesome templates that are easy to customize.
We have a full Wix website course within DSC, the business membership. So it walks you through exactly how to. Create a website and wicks. So it doesn’t need to be. Anything, super expensive. That can be something done down the road. But I do believe having a website is essential for a business these days.
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Okay. So the next thing that I really feel is still working so well. Is Google search traffic and making sure that your website. Includes SEO. So search engine optimization keywords so that people can find you on Google. Now, if you are completely new to the world of SEO essentially what this means is that. People search people tend to use different specific terms when they’re looking for content or products or offers like yours. And so the idea being, we can learn what those keywords are.
Those are called, those search terms are called keywords. We can learn what those keywords are and we can incorporate them into our website so that when somebody is searching those keywords, our website is more likely to be discovered by them. Right. So we’re really trying to match our website to somebody’s search intent. And so there’s a few different ways that we can add keywords to our website, but one of the best ways is by having a blog. That’s why most people have blogs on their websites.
Of course, we’re using a blog to be able to produce high quality content that will help people free content that will help people. But we also want to use it as a way to be able to attract. Those that are looking for the product that we are selling. So what we do with regard to having, or I’ll just sort of walk through our strategy for keywords for Google search traffic, and a lot of this I’ve learned from. So Katie Dodd is a registered dietitian who has a program called the blogging accelerator program.
I took that course a few years back and she had some education in there on how to do keyword research, how to create a keyword optimized blog. And so we’ve taken some lessons from that and then sort of customized it to make a process that works for us. So essentially what we do. Is we use a platform called key search. Now key search does have a free version where I believe you can search for five keywords a day.
And then beyond that you have to upgrade to the paid. We have the paid version of key search. And so what we do is we go every once in a while, we’ll go into key search and we’ll search. Keywords that are related to the type of content that we create. So things like, you know, dietitian business or a nutrition, handouts we’ll search those types of terms. And we’ll see, you know, what are some related keywords that people are using that are. That have a similar search intent because sometimes. What we assume how we assume people search is not always how people actually search.
So I might think, you know, oh, people would Google nutrition, handouts to find a company like DSC that might actually not be the case. We might find through key search. That when we, you know, type in nutrition, handouts, Hey, actually more people are searching for. Client. dietitian client handouts or something like that.
And so we know to use the term dietitian, client handouts more often than nutrition handouts. So that’s basically how we use key search. We search for terms, we look for related terms that we can then create content. About. So an example, when we search things related to dietitian business, like a few keywords that show up for us are things like dietitian business plan, dietitian, business coach dietitian business cards.
That was another one. And so we have blog posts that are related to those three different topics that are directly about those three different topics, because we know people are searching for them. And so we want when people search for them in Google for our website to show up. So anyways, so that’s something we’ve been working on for a while now. SEO and Google search.
It’s a slow burn. So the sooner you can start getting SEO, optimized blog posts onto your website, the better because it’s going to take time for Google to start actually. Recognizing them and showing them to people. And so you want to try and do that soon so that you can start to capitalize on that sooner. But that’s something we’ve been working on for awhile and we’ve really found that is a source that just continues to grow.
And the best thing about it. As you create one blog post. And it just continues to bring in people. So it’s so much more effective as a marketing strategy, so much more effective and efficient. Then when we put out Instagram content, for example, because when we put out a post on Instagram, You know, we’ve worked hard on it.
We’ve created something in Canva. We put something out there into the world. How many people are seeing that? You know, It depends, but not a whole ton of people. And then it’s basically as good as gone because then it just gets buried in our feed. Right. And sometimes people will land on our platform and they’ll go back and they’ll look at old content, but not that often. Versus this blog post that we’ve created, which is just going to continue.
We’ve created it. We’ve written it, it’s done. It’s uploaded it uploaded. We really never have to touch it again, unless we want to update it in the future. And it’s just going to continue to bring people to our site and people that are. You know, really looking for. The type of thing that we offer, the type of thing that we sell.
So having a blog is really helpful. From a marketing perspective, having a website, having a blog. And then what I also want to add on to this as something that is absolutely still working is an email list. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again many times. Having an email list. Is Such an important foundational piece of a business, because when somebody subscribes to your email list, they join your email list.
You now have the permission to be able to pop into their inbox whenever you choose. And of course they can unsubscribe if they want to, if they don’t want to receive them anymore. But you’re now able to get in front of that person. Again, and again, and show them what you have to offer. And that’s a really important part of the sales and marketing process is for people to have exposure to you and what you have to offer in multiple different ways. It’s not just a one and done thing, you know, I’m often not going to see something. And just let’s say that I am interested in an online course, you know? I might get shown that course one time on Instagram and I might say, oh, that’s interesting. Cool, but I might not think to actually purchase it versus if I’m getting emails about this course consistently, they’re educating me.
The seller is educating me on. What this course is how this course can help me. What’s included with the course, et cetera, et cetera. I’m going to be so much more likely to want to make that purchase. And so an email list allows you to nurture a potential client or a potential customer for a longer period of time. And so, and an email list also is something that you own as well, right?
Like you own this email list that is an asset in your business. All of those followers that you have on Instagram, that is not something that you own, you know, you could get blocked out of your account at any point. Instagram could decide to shut down at any point. And you would, you know, you would essentially lose all of those people.
And so, and that actually did happen to me a couple of years ago for those who’ve been following me for a little while. I was blocked out of my Instagram business account for, I think a week and a half, maybe two weeks. I can’t remember. For a reason that they’re BA they’re like, you know, security bought just basically picked out something that they thought. They thought my business account was mimicking.
And another account. It wasn’t, it was just my personal account. They basically picked up that images were the same. Cause I obviously post images of myself on both accounts. So they thought that the business count was a mimic fake account. And so they blocked me out of it without even without any notice, without nothing. That’s just a. That’s just an aside and sort of a caution that we don’t want to put all of our eggs in one basket, but anyways and we hear about people often that, you know, their accounts get hacked or whatever they lose access.
Anyways, email list really helpful. Really important. So that’s another thing that we feel like is working well and even better. Is, if you can create an SEO optimized, freebie lead magnet, which allows you to passively grow your email list. That is also really helpful. So for example, one of the things that one of the freebies that we have available is a PEs statement, cheat sheet. That is a keyword that dietitians and dietetic students are already searching for on Google.
And so we decided to create this freebie so that we could match that search with a free resource that we have available. People search it in Google. Our free resource comes up. They have to join our email list in order to download that free resource. So. Anyways, that’s been a really fruitful one. So that’s another thing that is definitely working.
I think, you know, another thing that is working in will always work is just getting in front of your ideal client and having the opportunity to actually explain what you have to offer and why it’s helpful. This can be done through a speaking engagement, through a webinar, through a workshop podcast. This is something that whenever we’re, whenever I’m asked to speak, I pretty much will always say yes, even if it’s for free, just depending on what’s going on in the business, what’s going on in my life. But for the most part, I’ll say yes, because. It’s always going to be a good opportunity for me to get in front of my ideal client, but, well, I would caveat that with just making sure that the audience is actually your ideal client. If they’re not, it might not be worth your time. But if it is then cool.
Yeah, I think any opportunity you have to get in front of people is always going to be a good thing. Okay. So those are some things that are working well for us. What is not working as well for us. And again, this has been, this is backed by our own metrics that we have been tracking and actually seeing. Where are people coming to our website from?
And so the way that we’ve found this out is by looking at our Google analytics and within Google analytics, you can see. Where is your search or where are, how are people coming to your website? That can be a really great starting point. To sort of understand. What marketing is working. So we were noticing that those that were coming from platforms like Instagram. It was just way lower lower volume when you compared it to people that were coming through us through. Sorry, who were finding us through Google search. So much lower. To the point where it was you know, That’s been something that we’ve really thought about, how do we do this in a way?
Okay. Because the other thing that I want to say, because you might be sitting here thinking, well, are you recommending that? We just ditch social media all together? No, I’m not. I’m not recommending that. Because I do still believe that there is absolutely a place for social media. In terms of being able to build your brand.
So for example, You know, when somebody is looking for your type of service, maybe they find you on your website, but then maybe they go to your Instagram account to learn more about you and what you have to offer. It’s really helpful for that. I think it’s really helpful for connecting with other practitioners and building a network and community. That’s how I’ve met my little business group that I talked about earlier.
We just met on Instagram. So that’s really important. I also think as just a creative outlet, if you’re somebody who just wants to explore and enjoys. Instagram and creating content on it. Cool. That’s awesome. But I think we just need to all be really clear on what we’re using it for and what What benefit it brings to our business and actually asking ourselves the question, is this bringing me clients?
If the answer is no. Then how else am I getting clients? What other marketing tactics am I using to get clients so that I’m not just solely relying on something like Instagram? Okay. So that’s all to say. I’m not recommending that we ditch it altogether, but I’m just saying, let’s think critically about how we’re actually, what marketing platforms are actually bringing us in clients or customers, members, whatever you call them. So yeah, when what we were observing is okay.
You know, our Instagram and social media in general. Now, interestingly, I think LinkedIn was LinkedIn is actually performing better for us than Instagram, which is interesting. In terms of bringing people to our site. But upon observing that it sort of became very clear to us that it is going to make more sense for us to focus more time and attention and resources on building up our email list, creating blog content. You know, maybe creating new freebies to grow our email list, creating podcast content. Versus Instagram content.
So we are still active on Instagram. Because again, for those reasons that I stated before, it’s still really important to. For brand building and just for awareness, but we’re not necessarily relying on it as a huge traffic source for membership. The other thing we are experimenting with right now. Is a platform called many chat, which you may have heard of, you may not have heard of it. But perhaps you’ve seen on Instagram. When somebody, and I think more like I’ve seen it a lot with food bloggers influencers who are who are. Like they’ll have a call to action, for instance, in an Instagram story will they’ll say, Hey, DM me the word X, whatever that word is cookies.
And I will send you this direct. I will send you this recipe and then you basically send them a DM with the word cookies, and then you automatically get a link for the recipe. That is through, that’s done through a platform called many chat. I actually just set up many chat for our Instagram account yesterday because I want to experiment with it.
They have a free plan. Which is really cool. And so I, right now we are offering a promotion where you can get your first three months for 50% off first three months of DSC for 50% off. And so I created a many chat where when I post to Instagram stories and I say, Hey, you know, DME, the word DSE, or I guess not word DME. The letters. DSE. And I’ll send you the promo code. We’re experiencing Banting with that.
So let’s see how that goes. I think it could be really interesting too. Just sort of see whether something that’s a little bit more actually, I think that this could work really well for freebies. I don’t know if it’s going to work well for a sales related thing. You know, offering people a promo code.
I’m not really sure, but I think it’s going to work really well for our freebies. So, you know, DM the word. DM us the word PEs. And we’ll send you our cheat sheet. I think that will work really well, but we’re just going to test out the promo code for 50% off first. And then we’ll see how things work with the freebie.
But anyways, That’s also a call to action to maybe experiment with many chat and see how that goes for you. I think again, there’s not a ton of people using it right now, so it could still be a good way. I mean, I just heard of it, so it could be a good way to. You know, maybe build your email list or direct people somewhere that you want them to go. And it’s a little bit more active, I think then I’m just saying to people, oh, Hey, just click the link in my bio to access this recipe or whatever. Which I don’t know.
Are we still doing that? I haven’t done that on a long time. Unless it’s something that I really want to see. So, yeah, that’s that’s just an aside about many chat. Now the other thing that I think. Now I want to, I’m going to come back to this topic. In the future. I. My little business group, and I have been talking about recording a podcast episode in the new year about this same idea what’s working.
What’s not working and commenting on pricing. And what’s working and not working. So I’m not going to talk about this too extensively, but I think one of the things that we’ve been observing collectively. Is whether or not. High ticket offers sell in the same way that they used to. And I think for a lot of people, they don’t necessarily. I think this is for a number of reasons.
I mean, The economy. What’s happening in society, but more so probably because things like high ticket coaching and buy high ticket, I mean, higher price point, just to be clear. More premium offers, you know, typically maybe more than $500 for an extensive coaching program or a big course or whatever. I think. Largely, this is due to the fact that there’s just a lot more choice available to people. There’s a lot more programs, similar programs out there, courses out there than there was before.
I think that courses used to be a bit more novel. Now there’s just a lot of people creating them, which is not a problem necessarily. It just means we might have to reevaluate how we’re pricing our offers. And whether a high price point works or whether it doesn’t. And this is something that we just need to experiment with.
Do we adjust our strategy to be higher volume, lower price point? And I think, you know, for some people we are still seeing higher price point working, but for others we’re not. And so if you’re somebody who’s Hey, you know, my business has really slowed down. Is it time for you to rethink how you structure your offer? Not necessarily giving people discounts.
That’s not what I’m saying. But can we restructure? In order to. In order to be able to perhaps. Include an offer that is a lower ticket, maybe a little bit more affordable to be able to cater to those people that are going to be a little bit more budget conscious. Price conscious, et cetera right now. So, again, this is a topic I want to talk about a little bit more. In depth in the future, but it’s just sort of something that I’m observing. Okay.
So I hope that you enjoyed that episode. I hope it was educational for you. This is something that we’ve been talking about quite a bit within the DSC business community, particularly with regard to Instagram. So anyways, if you are a DSE business member, make sure and pop into the community and give your thoughts. Otherwise, I hope you have an awesome week. And I will see you next Thursday.
