In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista sits down with Shayah from Virtuwell Balance to talk about websites! Together they cover:
- Running an online business from anywhere in the world
- Why having a website is more important than ever (and what a website delivers that social media does not)
- Which website platform should you use?
- Is one platform better than the other for SEO?
- Can you monetize a blog created through a platform like Wix or Squarespace?
- How video on your website can be the secret sauce to helping prospective clients get to know you and what you have to offer
- One essential element that you might be missing from your discovery call process
- Embedding your EMR platform within your website
- Whether you should use a booking platform or a Contact form
Links:
- The Mindful Marketer is a weekly resource giving actionable advice for Dietitians to market their practice in a mindful and genuine yet effective way! www.virtuwellbalance.com/mindful-marketer
- Check out Shayah at Virtuwell Balance (Dietitian Success Podcast listeners can get 10% off their services with Virtuwell Balance, just indicate that you found out about Shayah through this podcast when you book a discovery call with her)
- Check out the Dietitian Success Center membership here
- Connect with Krista on Instagram @dietitiansuccesscenter and @kristako.rd
- Check out our Freebies here – PES Statement Cheat Sheet, Client Resource Kit & Business Planning Workbook
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Dietitian Success Podcast. I’m Krista, the founder of Dietitian Success Center, an online learning platform for RDs and students. I am on a mission to help more dietitians build confidence and expertise in running successful, profitable businesses. I went to business school so you don’t have to.
My team and I have grown DSC to a platform that serves hundreds of members. We’ve experimented with all types of marketing, tech, sales strategies, productivity tools, systems, and more. And we want to spill the tea on what’s working, what’s not, and how you can leverage our insights to kickstart, expand, or elevate your own business.
Ready to dive into your business school crash course? If so, let’s get started.
Hey there and welcome to a new episode of the dietitian success podcast.
In this episode, I sit down with Shayah from Virtuwell Balance. And she has actually been on the podcast before to talk about websites. But today we’re talking about what some of the key differences are between just a website and a website that actually converts people to paying customers, paying members, paying clients.
So if you already have a website, or if you’re thinking about building a website, you’re going to want to listen to this episode because it is filled with simple tips that you can implement right away. And I’m so excited for you to hear all of the information that Shea has to share. I’m just going to do a quick introduction to Shea for those of you that aren’t familiar with her work. So she is the founder and CEO of virtual balance, which is a woman run holistic brand and web design agency for health practitioners and virtual balance specializes in creating authentic, aligned, and value driven brand identities, websites, and digital marketing solutions. That enhanced your practices, growth and impact.
And their mission is to empower health and wellness professionals across the us and Canada. To expand their reach, to attract the right clientele and elevate their practice through strategic, thoughtful design and organic marketing. So, like I said, in this episode, we talk about sales. We talk about organic marketing.
We talk about SEO. We talk about how do you incorporate your EMR into your website? We talk about local SEO and how important that is for people who want to find clients or patients within their geographic location. We talk about all sorts of things. So with that, let’s jump in.
Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me.
Oh my gosh. It’s, it’s funny. Cause right before we had press record, we were talking about how. Yeah, like we, the last podcast we recorded together we were both just at the very early stages of our business I think my business was still called the dietitian project at that time Yeah, yeah, which yeah, which is so funny.
Um, And we were both just like so early stage and it’s really cool to see three years later that like we’re both here we’re both still doing the things we have, like, we haven’t yet like you were saying we haven’t really had much contact over the last three years but like have been observing each other on social media and on LinkedIn.
And we’re both still here doing this stuff, which is really cool. Still chugging away. Still chugging away, I know, I love it. Okay, are you still traveling like you were before? I remember last time we talked you were like, traveling around the world and working at the same time. Yes, I would think I was in Southeast Asia, uh, maybe in Vietnam, I think last time we recorded or in Bali.
Um, yeah, so my husband and I, we both have online businesses and we’ve been traveling for the last like four or five years now. Um, all throughout COVID, which everyone’s like, how did you travel so much during COVID? We pretty much skipped countries as like they were becoming locked down, which is a really funny story.
Um, and I also am, uh, a former holistic nutritionist and a yoga teacher turned like design and marketing expert. So, um, I saw a need in the industry when I was working as a nutritionist, um, and a yoga teacher, you know, I was doing my own website, branding, social media, email, marketing, running group programs, working one on one clients and hosting retreats abroad.
Like while we were traveling and I had a lot of peers in the industry. Asking me like, how did you do your website? What, what’s up with your email marketing? How are you doing this? How are you doing that? And I really enjoyed those things. So I was like, Oh, I can just help you. I can show you. And I’m like doing these things for free for people and then realized, okay, I can start a second business here.
So that was when I launched virtual balance and. That was in 2019. So we’re going on five years, which is crazy. Um, and since then, now nutrition and yoga is kind of just a hobby, personal hobby of mine. I went full time in virtual balance very quickly. And, um, Since 2019, we have grown to a team of five.
We’ve worked with over 400 practitioners, um, across Canada and the U. S. mostly, and, um, actually including ones like who have been now featured on like Thrive Global, Women’s Health, Well and Good, um, CNN, CTV News. So our clients are doing some really cool things, which is fun. And yeah, we, we love helping dieticians, uh, leverage their branding website.
And content marketing strategies as a valuable extension of their practice and a tool for helping more people. So our small, but dedicated team, um, is very passionate about this. And, uh, we want to make sure that your, your marketing strategies and branding and website is in harmony with your practices, mission, and goals.
And then it feels good. We should have fun marketing. It doesn’t have to be a bad, scary thing. And so, yeah, I think when we, when we first shot it, I’m pretty sure it was just you or maybe you had a VA. It was just me at the time, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So things have obviously evolved a lot, which is really cool.
So when someone works with you and your team, What exactly did they get? Great question. We have a few different packages. Um, a lot of dietitians and nutritionists just starting out will do our starter practitioner package, which is all outlined on our website, VirtuallyWellBalanced. com, and it includes branding, web design, copywriting support, basic SEO essentials.
Just getting you set up to have a good online presence and feel confident, um, and professional when you’re, you’re getting yourself out there, just, just starting. So that’s our most popular package I would say for, for people starting out. Very cool. Yeah. Um, okay. So I’m really excited to talk about this topic because you are someone who has a background in the nutrition space, but also works with a lot of dieticians and people in the nutrition space from a business perspective.
So I feel like you have a really good. lens in terms of the landscape and sort of what’s working for people, what’s not working for people. Um, so I would love to start there and kind of talk about like, what are, so first of all, actually, I’m wondering if we could talk about like the importance of a website, because I think that that there was a time and place where that understated.
People were talking about how, um, Oh, you don’t really need a website if you have a really good Instagram presence, right? And I think that’s I hope that that is Change. Yeah, so the case anymore But can we start by talking about like just the importance of a website first off and then let’s get into Okay, so you have a website but like what are some of the Mistakes and some of the things that you need to do well when it comes to your website and your online presence Yeah, I love this.
Okay. I have a lot to share. Um, yeah. So first of all, I’ve even noticed a shift in the industry, like in the design and marketing space with, um, leads coming through my business. I’m not having to sell people as much on the fact of. Like why they need a website. People used to book sales calls with me and be like, okay, so why do I really need a website?
Like, how is this going to help me? You know, and I would do a lot of our sales calls, like explaining this to people. Now people are coming to me being like, okay, I know I really need a website. Like, what are we, what are your packages? What’s included? When can we get this done? Which is really great. And I don’t know if that’s, um, just an under common understanding that has come about like after COVID, especially a lot of people going virtual and being online, everyone has like a stronger online presence now.
So I feel like you do need it to be a little bit more competitive in your industry. Um, Or if it’s also like a result of my marketing and the content that we share, because we do share a lot of like, you know, education and information about, uh, mindful marketing and how these, um, pieces are, you know, supporting your business and being an asset to your business.
Really? So, um, Yeah, I think that if a potential client wants to work with you, a dietician, and they’re just browsing on your LinkedIn, your Facebook or Instagram, actually LinkedIn is a little bit better because you can lay out your profile and like highlight links and have some more information on there that’s easier to find.
Now with Instagram, you can do like pinned posts on the top, which does help, but it’s still not giving easily accessible information and the most important information to like these people that want to work with you. They’re having to dig through all of your content and all of your posts. They have to follow you for a while.
You have to have a lot of touch points. Like Instagram is really the point of it is like building up a know, like, and trust factor, right? Whereas if someone lands on your website, they see that you are established, you’re a professional in the industry. You take your business seriously because you have branding, you have a website, and they’re going to be more likely even subconsciously to want to invest in that, right?
Yeah. So, yeah, I, I totally agree. And I think that that big, I think a big piece that you touched on there is like that trust factor. And I think trust is really communicated through it. Trust is something that people are looking for obviously when working with a health professional and I think that’s that that’s conveyed in your entire online presence and so making sure that looks good and looks professional is so important.
Absolutely. Yeah. And another big piece we hear, um, from dietitians is just the confidence that it brings. Like after people launch their brand and their website, they’re so confident, they really want to send people there. You know, they’re way more motivated in their business when they have those pieces behind them too.
We really find that. So let’s get into now that we’re talking about a website and having an online presence. What are some of those?
And two things to do and two things not to do when it comes to your website. Yeah, that’s what everyone wants to know, right? So I have a lot of information to share on this, and the first piece that I just wanted to touch on was website platforms. So before you even get started with designing your website, if you’re going to DIY or hire an agency or a website designer to help you out, um, a lot of people just get stuck on like what platform to use.
And I want to tell you that it really doesn’t matter that much. I use Wix. I’ve used Wix for close to 10 years now. That’s the platform that we design all of our clients on. We have over 300 websites on Wix now. It’s amazing. We’ve never had any issues with like functionality, freedom of design, um, you know, different applications that need to be connected with it.
It’s been great. It’s just my favorite because at the time it had true drag and drop design capabilities when I was starting to work in web design and Squarespace was like a little limited in terms of like keeping you in blocks. I think now they actually have, um, what’s it called? They have a new editor now where you have more freedom with design, but at the time.
You know, I also designed on show it WordPress, um, lots of different platforms and Wix was also the cheapest in the industry at the time. And when I would hand it over to clients, um, they would have the least amount of questions about how to make edits and changes themselves. Like anytime I use any other platform, cause we did design on multiple different platforms in the beginning of my business, whenever I gave a client a Wix site at the end, it would give them my little tutorial video off for them.
I would like, wouldn’t hear from them. And I would reach out and be like, is everything okay? Do you need help with everything with anything? And they would just kind of say like, no, it’s great. I love the website. I can make these changes. And so for me, as a business owner and wanting to grow my business, that just made the most sense for me to go with the ease of use for my clients.
So, and now we’re still with Wix. Um, like I said, it’s been great. We love it. But I’m also not the type of, you know, designer business owner to be like, never use Squarespace, never use show order WordPress, like they suck. Honestly, like through my time in the design and marketing industry, all of these platforms have different pros and cons.
They’re all like pretty good. I would just say. If you want to DIY your own website, get some free trials on multiple different platforms. They usually all give you free trials. Try it out, get in there, like play around, watch some YouTube videos and figure out which one you think is the most simple for you.
Um, if you want to hire, um, a website designer or an agency, then, the platform again, at that point, it doesn’t really matter because you’re going to have. Designing it for you. So you need to look for someone who you’re in line with their design style. So look through their past projects and like case studies or things like that.
And if you love the websites that they’ve designed, then you probably want to work with them because you’re in alignment on a design and layout and things like that. Um, The only piece with that is maybe if, if it’s a designer you want to work with is using WordPress, just ask if they’re coding, like you’d probably know if they’re coding because a coded, anything that’s going to be coded is going to cost you a much higher investment.
And it’s going to also be a lot harder to you for you to fix and make edits and updates afterwards. So I would probably suggest Wix, ShowIt, or Squarespace are the three most popular that I see for ease of use. And I think the other piece here is a myth that I want to bust because everybody says or thinks that, um, WordPress is best for SEO.
So I don’t. Understand from my industry, um, expertise that this is true. Um, I think that WordPress has been around the longest and has the most amount of websites hosted on it probably. So overall, when someone’s doing market research on this and they see like some of the best websites in the world who have the best SEO happen to be on WordPress, That is because they’ve been around for so long and they have the most volume of websites, right?
Um, if you are someone like Amazon or Walmart, or like you have so much content and so much products, like you probably need a lot of functionality and a lot of customization and coding, then WordPress is great for you. People like dieticians, yoga teachers, acupuncturists, like Reiki healers, we don’t need those big, massive websites, right?
So like I said, the three that I mentioned, um, are, are going to be fine for you, Wix, Squarespace, or Showit. And in terms of, um, SEO this just matters more in terms of the professional you’re having do the SEO on your website for you than the actual platform itself. So if you’re working with an SEO specialist and they know what they’re doing, they can make you have good SEO on any platform.
Um, I think a lot of people DIY their website and they try to do some SEO and they’re like, I’m not being found on Google, like Squarespace sucks or Wix sucks. I’m going to go to WordPress and then they go to WordPress and they don’t have any better results because they’re the ones doing their own SEO.
Yeah. But if they had, um, If they’re making sure it’s done properly or they have a professional doing it for them. Um, you can have great SEO on all these platforms. So I feel like that’s a lot of information, but no, that’s really important. Thank you for, for busting that myth because that’s what I’ve always heard as well, but I don’t really stay up to date in terms of the web community.
So I wasn’t really sure where things stood on that note. Um, I think the other really interesting thing that you mentioned as well, and something to consider when you, when someone’s choosing a platform is like one of the experiences that we’ve had is we’ve moved to a custom WordPress site, just because of our, just because of how our site works and what we.
And your volume of content probably too. Exactly. Our volume of content. Um, but one thing that you have to consider too, is like. Um, and then there’s also the maintenance component too, right, which is a lot different on WordPress than some of these other platforms, right? Like, we just didn’t expect how, Yeah, just what would be required in terms of the ongoing maintenance and just like updates and troubleshooting and all of that good stuff.
Whereas when you’re on a platform like Wix or Squarespace or Kajabi or whatever, that’s a lot easier. So that’s been a big learning for us and just something to consider for people as they’re making that, as they’re evaluating. I know I’m such a big proponent of like when you’re first, and we’re even on WordPress, but like when you’re first getting started using a platform.
Like Wix or um, Squarespace or whatever. Can I just ask you a question on, cause I, I think that this is probably going to, I think that this is probably on people’s minds and I’m not sure if you know the answer, but um, one of the things that people have been, or a lot more dieticians have been getting into is actually trying to monetize their blogs.
So what I mean by that is like, you know, once they get a certain amount of, you know, of search traffic to their blog is applying to high end ad networks like, um, uh, Mediavine, is one of them. So that they can actually have, like, banner ads on their blog and actually start to make some passive revenue from that blog traffic.
Do you know anything about that? Do you know if that’s something that you can do on platforms like Wix or Squarespace, or do you kind of have to have a WordPress site in order to do that? Yeah, you can. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, we see it a little bit. It’s still not super, super big. Um, a lot of our clients are more, um, concerned about the aesthetic of the blog and how that will make it look because it’s not very pretty to have ads on there.
Um, but, um, I do have some other suggestions on monetizing your blog, but yes, I think it’s like a piece of code that you can embed onto the page and that’s kind of how it works. You can do it on those on Squarespace and Wix as well, but in terms of monetizing your blog and just collaborating more, um, we see like dietitians who, you know, work in different niches.
They’ll do like guest blog posts on each other’s blogs, um, to like leverage each other’s, networks and following. So that maybe is not necessarily a direct, um, like profit from a blog because it’s like a collaboration, but eventually the idea is that it brings more traffic to your site and maybe you’re getting clients from the other person’s, um, audience.
Um, or if you do have a lot of traffic on your site, people can pay you to do a blog on your site. Um, we’ve seen like a lot of recipe creators like reach out to like gluten free or like celiac dieticians and be like, can I write a blog post on your blog because you have a lot of traffic? I’ll pay you like 300 to have this blog on there.
You can even like then charge them more if you want to have it like a featured post at the top of your blog or something like that. There’s. There’s a few different strategies we’ve seen play out there. It’s not like a huge revenue piece, but fun collaboration and can bring in a little extra money.
Totally. Okay. That’s really interesting. Thank you for, for, um, thanks for talking about that. Okay. Let’s go to the next thing. Yes. Okay. So also some mistakes we see like, and this is before you even start working on your website or start working with somebody else, um, is photography, videography, um, and branding.
So you always want to have consistent branding across everything that you’re doing. So in terms of logos, you want to have one to two logos. um, probably a main logo goes in the header on your website. A secondary logo goes down in the footer. That’s usually how it’s laid out. Um, you’ll want two or three fonts that are legible, easy to read and understand, and then three to five colors that are, you know, a mix of some complimentary and contrasting, um, colors, the contrasting colors you kind of want to use for like buttons and things like that to stand out across the website.
So that’s one piece people, especially who DIY their website, they don’t have branding. They don’t even think about that before they get started. And then also this makes your design process a lot more difficult. If you just go onto a platform and you’re like, okay, I’m going to design my website now. And then you’re like, I have to decide on this and this and this and this.
And then you’re trying different things and you’re in like analysis paralysis and you don’t move forward because you don’t have a strategy. Right. So I guess that’s the first piece is like not having a strategy for your website in terms of, you know, these things that I’m going to cover in a moment, first one being branding, um, and then photos and videos.
So again, you want to keep your branding in mind when you’re getting your photos and videos done so that you don’t have like clashing, if you’re wearing like a bright red shirt in your video, and it like does not match at all with the colors on your website, because it’s going to be shown on your website.
Right. You want to have a mix of vertical and horizontal videos or photos that you’re adding on so you can use them in different ways. And in terms of video, I keep saying video, so this is something popular that we’ve been seeing is a very short, um, and I say like 20 to 30 second video, Um, which really helps to build the know, like, and trust factor, especially for people who are finding you on Google, um, and they’re not coming through social media, seeing a video of you just being like, hi, I’m so and so, like, I really love helping my clients do this.
This is like my main service. I’m located in, you know, X, Y, and Z. So if you’re in a state or province, I love to walk my dog and my favorite food is pizza or something just like a few fun facts about you and like what you do, um, is really fun and we’ve seen a lot of, uh, video views, um, and traffic like increase through this, having it on either the home page or the about page.
And instructing people to watch it as well. So you have to incorporate it into your content. So the content like above it or beside it somewhere says like, you know, watch this video or click play on the video next to this, or even include little like arrows in your content. Um, and like telling people what to do, which is something you have to do across your entire site with your, um, calls to action.
You always have to tell people what to do. So when you add a video onto your site, too, it’s the same thing. You have to tell them to watch it. But the video has been great. Yeah, that’s so smart. And I feel like particularly for dietitians, because I think a lot of times dietitians can sometimes come across as a little bit Like it can be a little bit intimidating sometimes to approach a new health care provider, right?
If you don’t really know them or if you It’s a very personal service. Yeah, it’s very personal service. And like you had mentioned, and I think that there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of, can be a lot of stigma associated with people who work in the nutrition field as being kind of like the food police or, you know, they’re going to be judgy around what you’re eating.
Obviously we know that that’s not true, but the person on the other end might not know that’s true. That’s, that’s not true, right? And so I think such a good opportunity for you to, um, yeah, just like help people understand who you are and exude warmth and welcoming as opposed to, yeah, coming across in a way they might assume.
Yeah. That’s really smart. Yeah. We also encourage dietitians to, when they’re sharing like their favorite food or drink or activity to maybe say something that’s not. A hundred percent healthy. Like you notice I mentioned pizza or say like I love to have a glass of wine in the evenings or like I mean everybody does these things and nobody’s perfect and I feel like that makes you more approachable to like if if you’re like I do yoga every day and go running with my dogs and eat spinach salads and green juice like they’re gonna be like oh my gosh that person yeah it’s so true yeah yeah Yeah, so that’s kind of a little fun thing we do as well.
That’s really cool. Do you feel like you have to have Professionally done photos and videos. Oh good question Absolutely not If you can or you want to or you’re able to invest in that. Yes. I think it makes a big difference but the Smartphones these days have such good cameras on them If you can have a spouse or a friend or a colleague or someone come and help you take some pictures or do it Even get like a tripod, like you don’t even have to have someone, um, just make sure you have some good lighting again, like I said, keep your brand colors in mind and you can take some of your own photos, like in your kitchen, outside at your office, that’s another thing, having a mix of, you know, Green space office at your computer, because a lot of us are doing, you know, virtual work or in your kitchen or with food or smoothie or something like that.
So it is incorporating pieces of your work, but not every picture is like, you know, you making a meal in the kitchen. I feel like that was a trend for a long time with, with dietitians. So those are important, but we need a mix. Yeah. Yeah, so true to make you seem like a real person too. Yes. Yeah. So awesome.
Yeah. I think that’s great. Um, in terms of branding photos, videos, and then, okay. Another big piece for converting clients, more clients through your website is online booking apps. So, We have a lot of new dietitians starting in business and maybe they don’t have like a platform or an app set up yet. And they’re like, well, I just want to use the contact form on my website.
And we’re like, Hmm, we really don’t suggest doing it. Um, first of all, you’re supposed to have a HIPAA compliant. Platform. Like if, if you have a contact form that says like there where they can’t leave you a lot of information, it’s just like your name, email, your phone number, best time to reach you at like.
What’s your social media profile or like, you know, I dunno, some random questions that are super short, then that’s fine. But especially if you have the box that says like, leave me a message, people will really fill that in with a lot of personal information that should not be going through like Wix or Squarespace or whatever platform you’re on.
Right? So that’s the first piece of that with the contact form. And then also we just see, this is a trend that we know, especially with in the health and wellness space and especially with dieticians that when people are on your website, they are. Feeling stressed, sad, anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated. And if they want to book with you, we need to make that easy for them.
But like, we want them to be able to book with you right away. If they fill out a contact form, maybe you don’t get back to them for a day or two. And then maybe by then they change their mind or they’re having second thoughts and they’re like, I don’t, I’m not really going to book right now. So if they’re on your website and they want to book, we should give them the opportunity to book right then and there.
So. This is where we’ve seen like clients who we’ve convinced to do this. I’ve seen way more bookings a lot faster in their business. And a little tip that, um, Krista, I’d like to hear if this is actually something you suggest for dietitians as well. But we have, um, suggested offering a free 20 minute call, um, like a discovery call connection call.
And what we say is, this is like a 20 minute call to discuss your struggles and you can leave with one piece of advice to make things better today. This is actually a sales call. You’re gaining information about them, figuring out if you’re a good fit to work together, but they’re going to be telling you what they’re struggling with.
So you’re going to learn if you’re a good fit to help them. And what their goals are, but also you don’t have to sell them right on that call. You can give them one piece of advice that is going to like actually help them make a difference with their struggles And they’re going to implement that or they’re just going to feel very supported And chances are they’re going to come back to you the next day or the day after Like wanting to buy a package or book with you.
Yeah So we’ve, we’ve done this and some people say like, Oh, you shouldn’t offer free calls. We find the free calls are very valuable. Um, so yeah, I, I just wanted to hear, hear your input on the free calls, but yeah, we found this, we found this piece like really important. Position it as like book a call to discuss your struggles and leave with one piece of advice to help you.
Yeah, sometimes they’ll end up booking with you on the call. Sometimes they come back, but you’re leading with value. Yeah, right. So true Yeah, and I really like how you framed that as like I I often use the term discovery call and sometimes I I think i’m like You know, that’s, that term is very jargony.
Like I know what that means, but, and people who are in, you know, business or private practice sometimes know what that means. Um, but the client on the other end might have no idea. And so I actually really love how you’ve, how you’ve positioned that. And especially with the, like leaving with one piece of advice, I think that that’s so, yeah, it’s, it’s very warm and it’s very inviting and it’s very non focused, which is really how like authentic sales should be, right?
It’s like, it’s about leading with value and not asking for anything necessarily in return. And so. Yeah, I so appreciate that. I think that that’s a really good tip and an easy thing for people to implement good Yes, if you take anything from this call do that. Yeah, 100 Okay, so can I ask you a question then on that note?
Um, so for practitioners that are bound by Uh, regulation or license where they can only practice with people within their province or their state. How do you navigate the whole having a public booking page? And having traffic coming in from anywhere? But, like, let’s say, because I live in Calgary now, so, like, let’s say I’m a dietician in Calgary and I can only see people in Alberta, but obviously knowing that, you know, people coming to my website can be coming from anywhere and technically maybe I can’t work with those people how do you navigate that?
But we usually, I mean, not usually depends on the practitioner. Some people like to put a little like blurb in their footer. Um, some people, if they really want it prevalent, we’ll do like a pop up on the website, but I’m really not, really not a fan of pop ups. Um, but when they’re going to book with you, I mean, chances are, if somebody is following you for a little while, reading your content, reading your blogs, your social media, like looking at your website, they’re going to know because you’re going to have written on there.
Like you only work with people in certain states or provinces or things like that. Um, but when they actually go to book with you, have a little checkbox on like the booking form that says, um, I can only work with people with clients in, you know, X, Y, Z, do you confirm that you are located here? And it’s like a little checkbox they have to tick.
Um, that’s typically what, what we’re doing with bookings. Yeah. Okay, cool. And you sort of recommend actually setting up that, setting that up through like practice better. And then that. So that’s actually another question that I have then, is like, how do you recommend integrating, let’s say, Practice Better, because most of our, our members use Practice Better with your website, like, do you embed it within a page on your website, or do you just have a separate tab that goes, when people click on, like, booking, it goes to your Practice Better, like, how does that work?
Yeah, we do both either is fine. Um, we, I don’t have like studies or statistics on like, what is better in terms of ease of use, I think they’re both fine. We sometimes just try different things and do different things based on what our client wants. But yeah, we can embed, um, like forms and bookings and services and things like that, right onto the website.
Or we do like the sales, uh, page, the service page, whatever, and wherever it says, you know, book now or learn more or schedule your appointment. When you click that button, that just opens a new tab into practice better. And I think sometimes people, people used to think that the whole, you know, clicking it and opening to a new tab is like, Um, but I don’t think so.
I think that’s very common these days. People are used to having like a million tabs open and things being connected. Um, so yeah, I think either is fine, but practice better is great. We love it. A lot of our clients, um, use it as well. And yeah, integrates very well with, with Wix. Awesome. Okay, great. So then. Yeah, when people can’t, and this is actually something that I saw on your, on your Instagram, and I was like, ooh, let’s talk about this for sure.
Um, what do you do if there’s people that cannot, for regulatory reasons, if there’s people that cannot share client testimonials? Yeah, we see this a lot. Obviously we work in the health and wellness space and medical professionals, therapists, dieticians. So one of the most popular things we see is case studies.
Um, putting together a case study, it doesn’t even have to be like a formal like PDF that people download and like read through all the details of your case study. It can just be as simple as like, Client experience case study on your website and like a scroll or even that goes through a few of them and just says like this client came to me with this struggle wanting to do this, this is how we work together and then this is their result.
Like super simple, you can write it in a few sentences. Um, then you’re just like presenting it as a case study. Um, that’s been super successful. And then the other thing is, um, getting endorsements from peers. So if you worked with another dietitian or a doctor or a therapist or anybody that you partnered with in your career, have them write a little blurb about you and how, um, Um, you know, they enjoyed working with you.
They see that you have amazing success with their clients, like the types of things you do with their clients. Um, and you can put those on your website as well. Those work just as well, actually, if not even better than the client testimonials. And then I’m curious too, I’m wondering if we can talk a little bit about, so this is sort of a sort of niche within website, but because you work with so many people in this space, I’m curious, because you see a lot of offers, have you noticed anything that you feel like is really working in terms of what people are offering? Um, and that could be components of an offer, so it could be You You know, whether it’s packages or one off sessions or things that are included within, uh, a package, meal plans, whatever, it could be related to pricing.
Like, is there anything that you’ve noticed that you’re like, this, this seems to be a trend, this seems to be working quite well for practitioners, or, or is it sort of all over the place? Yeah, really good questions. Okay. So, um, I think what we’ve seen now depends how you look at this. Um, if it’s like in terms of what sells better or what has better ROI or what has better client success, like for not my clients, I mean the clients of the dieticians.
Um, so overall what I think is best in terms of services is. Definitely selling packages, um, with at least three sessions seem to be the best. Of course, if you offer one off individual services on your website, people will buy those right. But we’re not just looking at what is going to sell more. We’re talking about what is going to get your clients the best result and also a best ROI for you.
So if they’re purchasing in a package of however many sessions. meal plans, like a community or whatever’s included with that is going to have a better ROI for you. And they’re going to get better results because they’re sticking through with it longer. Right? Like how many times have you done a one off session with someone?
They feel overwhelmed and then they never come back. You put in so much energy and time and effort into that one session. So it’s not a lot of ROI for you. And then you don’t see them again. Right? So, and then it’s not good for them either because they’re not, they probably don’t do much with that information.
So, What we see successful is, um, practitioners who offer at least three sessions in a package. And, some type of a community as well. We’ve seen people whether this is in like Slack or Facebook or Twitter. Different types of community groups so that it also encourages your clients to want to continue paying for sessions with you because they have a community aspect.
So as long as they’re continuing to purchase, packages with you, like, like a three, six, 10, 12 package, they get access to the community. And if you can make that community valuable, then that’s also going to be a big piece and why they’re wanting to, um, continue working with you. So. There’s a couple pieces that I’ve seen.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. That’s awesome. Yeah. Um, and then I, I’m curious too, you know, because you guys, deal with and talk about branding and SEO, what have you noticed in terms of like, what is working for people from a marketing perspective right now? So like, what is actually bringing traffic to websites?
What’s, what’s working? And is there anything that you feel like it’s maybe not working so much? Yeah. Okay. So there’s two pieces here. Blogging is amazing for bringing in traffic, but it’s a little bit of a longer term strategy, right? It does take time to build up content on there that people want to return to keep reading.
It takes time to get, um, Google recognizing like what types of services you’re offering to have a better understanding of the content on your website to better match your. searches. So blogging is a little bit of a long term strategy, especially, you know, if you’re doing it for SEO. Um, but we do see that have huge success for people.
Another thing that is like a short turnaround ROI, um, is email marketing. So we have seen actually a lot of, um, dietitians and practitioners who can accept, um, like insurance. Or if you’re doing like functional, anything functional where you can like do tests, like review or, um, give tests and things like that and use that on insurance.
We’ve been doing this thing quarterly where we help our clients send out and remind your email to their list saying like, um, remember to use your benefits before they run out. And from that email, people, our clients have so many people book in. It’s crazy. Like it’s just a simple email. And we put the booking links right in the email so there you can actually see the statistics are booking right from the emails.
So that’s a really easy, like short thing you can do. I always suggest to our clients to be sending out at least a once a month monthly newsletter. Um, and yeah, I think those are blogging, email marketing are huge. Like even in, even in my business and we do like design and marketing. Um, we have our newsletter, the mindful marketer, uh, which I need to share with your audience as well.
It’s super fun. We just started back in, in March and it’s, um, really to help, to help you gain a better understanding of your audience and selling in a more genuine way. So it’s not fully focused on sales. It’s Focus. We share information and actionable advice for you to sell and market in a genuine, authentic way that is like focused on building relationships over making sales.
And then the sales will follow. So we do this every Monday we have, it’s a weekly newsletter. So we share a lot of holistic marketing advice in there, but, um, yeah, email marketing has been great blogging. And actually I have another tip for your blog, just because I see this a lot with dietitians on your website.
Yep. On the about page. Um, a lot of, a lot of you, I love because you have so much amazing information to share, but sometimes it’s, it’s like too much for people to, um, digest. Right. And especially a lot of people in the nutrition space, like get into this work because they’ve struggled with their own, you know, nutritional.
Issues and they have a lot to share on like how they’ve overcome things or maybe how they’re still struggling with things, which I think is great. Those stories really help you connect and relate to your audience, but it can be a lot to share on and like an about page on your website. So what we usually suggest is, um, sharing like a little intro blurb about yourself and then click.
A button that says, um, like read more on the blog or like read my full journey on the blog and then write a blog post where you can go into all the details you want about your story and your journey to health and wellness. Um, so that’s another tip connecting, connecting with the blog, but. So smart. I love that.
Okay, so let’s talk about SEO for a second. I talk about SEO quite a bit because, um, Google is one of our, and Organic Search is one of our main referrals for Dietitian Success Center. So people just finding us through our blog posts and becoming members that way, which we absolutely love. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving.
So can we talk a little bit about SEO and can you just tell us why it’s important? Yeah. And I also love how you said organic marketing there, because that’s one of the things that we focus on. Organic digital marketing is one of our specialties. And sometimes people say like, what is organic mark marketing?
You know, they don’t really understand. So our organic is just basically through your content and on page optimizations. The opposite of that is paid ads. So anytime you’re paying a platform to boost you up, it’s not organic. Basically is the best way I can describe it. So we don’t do like paid advertisements on Google, which they can be great as well.
We just don’t offer that in our business. We focus on organic content marketing and same with on Facebook and Instagram. You know, are you creating viral reels and content just because it’s good content and people want to see it, or are you like paying into the, you know, their Google and Facebook or Instagram and Facebook ads to boost you up?
So that’s just the difference there with organic marketing. And. In terms of SEO. So there’s just a few things that you should be aware of. Um, if you are doing a DIY website. Something that is a huge pet peeve of mine when I see URLs on people’s websites and it says like, you know, whatever, like, um, dietitiansuccesscenter.
com slash copy dash about of two, like, you know, and they just like duplicated a page, did some stuff and they never updated the URL. Oh my God, I hate that so much. So that’s just a basic SEO thing. You can go into the settings and update your URL. You want the URL slug to be the same name as the page name.
And then you, cause you can, so you get the URL slug, the page name and the page description are the three main pieces here. And you’d want to be using the same keywords in all three. So whatever you’re going to name your, your page or service page about page, whatever, um, you want to also have that in the URL slug and in the page description, which is like the little metadata.
And then in the content on your page, you want to be assigning, I don’t want to get too technical here. Each page on your website needs an H1 tag. So this basically tells Google what the content on your page is about. So this should be like a heading somewhere near the top of your page where you’re, Saying like the name of a service or introducing what you do or a problem you solve, you want to assign that piece of text as an H one so that Google eventually learns to recognize, like, that’s the type of searches that they can match it with.
And then throughout the rest of the content on the page, you just want to be using those, um, same keywords that you have in your meta description. Um, because Google, I think you need to mention, have the same keyword in your metadata, in your content, like five to seven times for Google to actually recognize like, Hey, this is what this content is about on this page.
And that’s just going to help you get matched better with people’s, with people’s searches. So just a few little. Yeah. SEO foundation, Sarah. That’s awesome. And do you feel like SEO is still relevant if you have a local business? So a local practice and maybe you’re not working with people, um, outside of your city, for example, how does that play in?
Yeah, it’s more important if you have a local business. Absolutely. So if, if you have a local business, especially if you’re renting an office space, or even if you can pay for a mailbox somewhere, um, a place where like a mailbox where your office location would be registered, then we can get you a physical location on Google maps, which is amazing.
So you can have your Google business profile fully optimized on Google maps. Then you’re going to come up even better in searches. Um, and. You also want to make sure that you’re connected to GA4, Google Analytics 4. You can set this up with your Google account and your website because you get better statistics on there than like the data that your website gives you for traffic.
Um, but yeah, if you have any kind of brick and mortar space, like some people are like, oh, I don’t own like my own You know, building, but if you’re just renting office space, or even we’ve had people, like I said, who get a mailbox somewhere and you can put your sign up, I think you have to have a sign.
That’s like Google’s, Google’s thing. Um, when you’re proving to like set up your Google business profile location, they want to see that you have like a sign somewhere. So, yeah, so very, very good. And even if you don’t have a physical location, you can still get on Google maps. If you serve a specific area, we can set it up through areas served.
Um, it’s just a little bit more difficult because Google Maps is made for local businesses, but we can still get you on there. Okay. Very cool. That’s awesome. And I think that that’s sort of, that’s like low hanging fruit a little bit, right? Because, when we’re talking about marketing, because where’s, Where do people go when they’re looking for a service?
They go to Google, they type in, you know, dietitian in whatever their city, and there’s that list of people that show up on that little Google maps panel, right? And I think oftentimes those are the ones that people go to first. So that is just like low hanging fruit. Yeah. Even other keywords, um, that if you don’t even say your city, if you just search like, Dietitians near me.
I think near me is a big one too. Like there’s some keywords like that that google uses to use location um But yeah, super super important. Yeah, totally Um, okay. That’s amazing. Thank you so much for all of that information. That was so so so interesting and so so absolutely Um, so tell us more about where people can find you and learn more about the work that you do So I’m always hanging out on my website, which sounds kind of funny to say.
Usually people send people to social media. Um, but because of all of our, our organic content marketing and Google email marketing and blog, I’ve been able to spend less time on social media, which is really nice. We still have a presence on Instagram and LinkedIn. I honestly don’t use Facebook at all. Um, But yeah, I’m not on there as much.
I don’t have to show up as much now. So, you know, we still post on there and I check in a few times a week with messages and comments, but I’m mostly on my website, hanging out on the back end of my website, um, with my team or, you know, with our, with our clients who are in Asana and Slack all the time, but we’re writing blog posts and email newsletters all the time.
So you can check out our website. Virtuel, V I R T U W E L L, virtuelbalance. com. And we do have the mindful marketer newsletter. Like I said, if, um, if you guys are interested in joining, we share a lot of insightful and actionable, um, advice. And this is really fun for me because we’ve done email marketing with our clients for years now, and.
I had a not so consistent monthly newsletter because, you know, I was always so busy in the business, working with our clients. And now that I have an amazing team who does most of the client work in the business, I’ve been able to focus my efforts on, you know, sharing my expertise in our blogs and through this weekly newsletter.
So that’s been really fun for me. Um, that’s virtualbalance. com slash the mindful marketer, but I can give you the links for these as well. Definitely. And I will post those in the description of this episode. Well, thank you so much. It was so good to talk to you. And just out of curiosity too, if people are interested in working with your team, what is sort of the turnaround time when it comes to, if they want to have a website built from the ground up?
Jen. So, because we also pride ourselves on, um, having a very hands-on hand handheld experience, like walking you through everything. We also support our clients through the copywriting phase. So we have a copywriter on the team who you get to work one-to-one with, and we create a Google doc that like outlines each of the pages on your website and we collaborate with you to help you write the content.
Which is amazing. Like one of the favorite pieces that our clients always say, because a lot of other agencies don’t, um, help you with copy, you just have to provide it to them, but we just found this is like such a more holistic way to work together and also have the copy. How we, how we want it as designers.
Sometimes clients would give us copy and we’d be like, Oh, we can’t really. Work with this. It doesn’t work with the design. So works really nice to go through branding, copy web design. You also get full mobile optimizations and SEO optimizations as well. Like we were just speaking about, we’ll set all of those tags and meta descriptions for you, um, and hook you up to Google my business and Google analytics, and we’re usually about six to eight weeks completion for our starter practitioner, um, Service depends on the number of pages as you go through some of our other services.
If you take a look on the website, like we have like a scaling group practice, people who are like therapists with, you know, groups, or even we had some, we’ve had maybe two or three like a dietician groups, um, that have done that large package with us. And that’s obviously a little more, uh, time intensive to get everything written and designed, but the basic package is most popular.
And yeah, it’s about six to eight weeks. That’s very, that’s a great turnaround. You can have a, you can have a whole brand and a website six weeks from now. It’s just really cool. I know. That’s amazing. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Shay. It was so good to see you and, and so good to talk with you. Thanks, Krista.
Thanks for giving the audience just so much information. I know that there was some really practical tips that can be implemented today. So I, I so appreciate that. So thank you very much. Good. Glad. Thank you.
I hope that you enjoyed that episode. As much as I did listeners to the dietitian success podcast can actually get 10% off of their services with virtual balance. So if you’re thinking about having a developer design, your website, do a website overhaul, then definitely reach out to Shea. And when you fill in the discovery call form. And the question asks, where did you hear about us, then make sure an indicate the dietician success podcast and full transparency.
This is an affiliate link. But regardless, you can get 10% off of your services. Thank you so much for listening. Have an awesome week and we’ll see you next Thursday.
