In this episode of the Dietitian Success Podcast, I talk about how to market yourself consistently without burning out, why ManyChat has been one of the most impactful tools we have used in the last year for growing our email list, and the three principles that have shaped how we approach brand sponsorships and that I think every dietitian entrepreneur should know.
Inside, we cover:
- Why marketing is non-negotiable in your business and the excuses that are keeping you stuck
- The concept of micro marketing and why five to ten minutes a day beats a blocked-off half day you never actually do
- Specific micro marketing actions you can take in five minutes or less
- What ManyChat is and how it works with your Instagram account
- Why the old “link in bio” approach is no longer effective and what to do instead
- How we got a 79% conversion rate on our auto DM welcome message
- The three principles for landing brand sponsorships that apply regardless of your audience size
- Why one-off sponsored posts often underdeliver and what to offer brands instead
- How to follow up strategically with brands based on their budget cycles
Whether you have been avoiding marketing because it feels overwhelming, wondering whether automation tools are worth it, or curious about brand sponsorships as a revenue stream, this episode is packed with practical and actionable advice.
Links:
- Try Practice Better FREE for 14 days, then new users can save 20% off their first 4 months with code DIETITIANSUCCESS20 at checkout:
https://sites.practicebetter.io/dsc?utm_source=sponsorship&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=dietitian-success-center&utm_content=podcast1&utm_term=ba - Check out the Entrepreneurship Tier of Dietitian Success Center: https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/entrepreneurshipfordietitians
- Join the Dietitian Success Summit 2026: https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/the-dietitian-success-summit-2026
- Follow @dietitiansuccesscenter on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansuccesscenter/
- Connect with @kristako.rd on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristako.rd/
- Free Starter Kit: https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/
Marketing Without Burnout, How to Use ManyChat, and How to Land Brand Sponsorships as a Dietitian
By Krista Kolodziejzyk, RD, MBA, Founder of Dietitian Success Center
Three of the most practical topics I cover on this podcast, and three areas where I see dietitian entrepreneurs getting stuck, spinning their wheels, or leaving real opportunities on the table. Let’s get into it.
Marketing Without Burnout: The Micro Marketing Approach
Before I get into the framework, I want to say something direct: marketing is not optional in your business. It is non-negotiable. When I look at the intake forms from dietitians who have purchased summit tickets and I ask what their biggest pain point is, business growth comes up more than almost anything else. And business growth is synonymous with marketing. More people knowing you exist, more people understanding what you offer, more people finding their way to you. That is marketing. And if marketing keeps getting pushed to the back burner, growth is going to keep feeling impossible.
At the same time, burnout is real. Overwhelm is real. The feeling of having an endless list of things you should be doing and no idea how to fit them into an already packed schedule is one of the most common experiences dietitian entrepreneurs share with me. So the goal is not to add marketing to your plate as one more giant thing. The goal is to make it something that fits into the life you already have.
That is where the concept of micro marketing comes in.
What micro marketing actually means
Micro marketing is the idea that consistent, small marketing actions taken daily compound into meaningful business growth over time. Instead of trying to carve out a half day every week to do all your marketing at once, which often gets bumped the moment a client wants to book into that slot, you commit to one small marketing action every single day.
Five to ten minutes. That is it.
Here is what that can look like in practice. Sending a follow-up email to a clinic you reached out to a few weeks ago. DMing another dietitian to introduce yourself and your services. Hopping on Instagram Stories to share a quick thought from a client conversation you just had. Using Claude or ChatGPT to draft a blog post and posting it to your website. Starting to pull together an email for your list. Sending a pitch to get on a podcast that you have been meaning to reach out to. Commenting thoughtfully in a community where your ideal clients spend time.
None of these take a full morning. Most of them take less than ten minutes. And the cumulative effect of doing one of these things every single day for thirty days, for ninety days, for a year, is enormous compared to doing nothing because you are waiting for the perfect two-hour block that never comes.
A practical way to systematize this is to create a recurring task in whatever project management tool you use, whether that is Asana, Monday.com, or ClickUp. Open the task and brainstorm a list of micro marketing actions specific to your business. You can use an AI tool to help you generate that list. Then set the task to appear in your list every day as a prompt: what is the one marketing action I am going to take today? Check it off when it is done. That simple.
The goal is to stop thinking of marketing as a big project and start thinking of it as a daily habit. One seed planted every single day grows into something significant. One seed planted only when you have a perfect dedicated block of time grows into almost nothing.
Why this works especially well for busy dietitians
The traditional advice around marketing, block off a set amount of time every week and dedicate it entirely to this, works well for some people and some seasons of business. But as your practice gets busier, that blocked time is often the first thing to go. A patient wants that slot. An urgent task comes up. The block disappears.
Micro marketing removes the dependency on a large block of time. It does not require a perfect schedule. It requires five minutes and a habit. And habits are far more durable than scheduling intentions.
ManyChat: What It Is and Why It Has Changed How We Grow Our Email List
If you are creating content on Instagram and directing people to the link in your bio to download your lead magnet or access your free resource, I want to offer you a more effective way to do this. It is called ManyChat, and it has been one of the most impactful tools we have added to our business in the last year.
What ManyChat is
ManyChat is a third-party automation tool that connects to your Instagram account and allows you to set up automatic DM responses triggered by specific actions. The most common use is setting it up so that when someone comments a specific word on one of your posts, or sends you a DM with that word, they automatically receive a direct message from you with a link to your lead magnet, your free resource, or whatever action you want them to take.
For us at DSC, we have it set up so that when someone comments or DMs the word “starter,” they receive an automatic message that says something like: “Hey, so happy to have you in our little corner of the internet. You can join our free Starter membership for dietitians to access client handouts, practitioner guides, and our dietitian community forum. Tap to join.” And then there is a simple button they tap to opt in.
That is it. The entire process is seamless, it happens automatically, and it requires zero manual work on our end once it is set up.
Why this is so much more effective than link in bio
The old way of getting people from Instagram onto your email list was to tell them in your caption or at the end of your reel to go to the link in your bio. This required a two-step process: the person had to watch your content, then navigate back to your profile, find the link, and click through. That is a lot of friction. And in a world where attention spans are short and people are scrolling fast, most people simply do not do it.
ManyChat eliminates that friction entirely. The person sees your content, comments one word, and receives exactly what they need directly in their DMs within seconds. The barrier to entry goes from two steps with navigation involved to one tap.
We have seen a significant and measurable increase in people joining our email list from Instagram since we started using ManyChat. It just works.
The auto-DM welcome message
One of the newer features we have started using is sending an automatic DM to anyone who follows our account. The message is warm, value-forward, and genuinely helpful. It introduces who we are, what we do, and immediately offers something free. We have seen a 79% conversion rate on that auto DM, meaning nearly eight out of ten people who follow us and receive that message click through to our free resource.
The most important principle here is to lead with value. This is not a sales message. It is not a pitch. It is a genuine offer of something useful to someone who has just expressed interest in your work. When you lead that way, people respond.
ManyChat does have a free plan, which allows for a limited number of automations per month. If you are just starting out, that is a perfectly reasonable place to begin. As your volume grows, the paid plan gives you unlimited automations.
Landing Brand Sponsorships as a Dietitian Entrepreneur
Brand sponsorships can be a meaningful revenue stream for dietitians with an established platform, whether that is a podcast, an email list, a social media following, or some combination of all three. At DSC, brand sponsorships currently bring in approximately $10,000 to $20,000 per year, and I genuinely believe that number could grow significantly if we chose to prioritize it more actively.
Here are the three principles that have shaped how we approach brand partnerships and that I think are most worth sharing.
Principle one: think long-term, not transactional
There are two kinds of brand partnerships. The transactional kind, where a brand reaches out, asks for one specific deliverable, pays for it, and moves on. And the relationship kind, where you invest time and genuine connection into a long-term partnership that benefits both parties over time.
The partnerships that have been most valuable for us, both financially and in terms of the quality of what we are able to offer our audience, have been the long-term ones. We have invested in the actual people behind the brands we work with. We have followed up. We have stayed in touch. And as a result, we are top of mind for them when they are planning their marketing spend, and they are top of mind for us when we are thinking about who to bring in as a partner.
If you have worked with a brand in the past, even once, follow up. Check in. Treat it as the beginning of a relationship, not a closed transaction.
Principle two: follow up consistently and strategically
One of the most common reasons sponsorship pitches go nowhere is not that the brand is uninterested. It is that the timing was off. Brands work on budget cycles, and depending on when your pitch lands in their inbox, it may or may not align with when they are actively allocating budget to sponsorships and influencer partnerships.
This means that a brand that did not respond to your first pitch may absolutely be interested once their next planning cycle begins. The way to capture that opportunity is to follow up. Consistently, strategically, and without feeling awkward about it. You are not being pushy. You are making sure your name is in the right inbox at the right time.
When a brand tells you their budget cycle is starting in a particular month, make a note to reach back out a few weeks before. That kind of proactive follow-up is what moves from being a pitch they considered once to being a partner they actually work with.
Principle three: offer packages, not one-offs
A single sponsored Instagram post puts enormous pressure on one piece of content to generate results for a brand. If it does not get the views or engagement you hoped for, the brand has little to show for their investment, and the likelihood of them wanting to work with you again drops significantly.
What we do instead is offer tiered sponsorship packages that bundle multiple touchpoints together. A package might include a certain number of social posts, a sponsored email, and a podcast episode mention. The brand gets multiple opportunities to reach your audience across different channels. The chances of them seeing meaningful results from the partnership go up substantially. And when they see results, they come back.
When a brand reaches out asking for a single sponsored post, it is worth having a conversation about whether a package might actually serve them better. Sometimes they say yes. Sometimes they stick with the one-off. Either way, having the conversation positions you as someone who is genuinely thinking about their results rather than just taking their money for a single deliverable. That distinction matters for the long-term relationship.
The Bottom Line
Marketing without burnout comes down to making it a daily habit rather than a weekly project. ManyChat makes it meaningfully easier to convert Instagram followers into email subscribers. And brand sponsorships, approached with a long-term, relationship-first mindset, can become a reliable and growing revenue stream.
All three of these topics are ones we go deep on inside the DSC Entrepreneurship Membership, with coaching, office hours, and a community of dietitian entrepreneurs figuring it out together.
👉 Learn more about the DSC Entrepreneurship Membership
And find me on Instagram at @kristako.rd — I read every DM and would genuinely love to hear where you are at in your business.
Krista Kolodziejzyk is a Registered Dietitian and MBA, the founder of Dietitian Success Center, and the host of The Dietitian Success Podcast. She has supported over 600 dietitians in building and growing their businesses.
