In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista chats about:
- Using snail mail to market yourself outside of social media
- Updates on the DSC YouTube strategy
- How to get out of the content creation hamster wheel (and what to focus on instead)
Links:
- Subscribe to the DSC YouTube Channel
- Connect with Krista on Instagram @dietitiansuccesscenter and @kristako.rd
- Check out the Dietitian Success Center membership here
- 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 back to. A new episode of the dietitian success podcast. We are doing a another business chats session today. Where I am going to talk about. Just some creative marketing tactics that we’ve been doing lately. That do not involve the use of social media. I think that’s always a really fun and interesting topic to talk about is how do we market ourselves outside of social media? I’m going to talk a little bit about a YouTube update.
So a few episodes back episode 1 68, I talked about. YouTube strategy and just how we are getting visible and YouTube. What are some of the steps that we’re taking to make sure we’re doing it in a strategic way? So I’ll give a little update there. And then the other thing I want to talk about. Because it’s something we’ve been talking about a lot as a team lately is just, how do we get out of the. Content creation hamster wheel.
And by that, I mean this like inherent desire to continue to create, create, create. How do we step away from that and actually promote. The things that we’ve created to the fullest extent. Because I think. We do an amazing job creating. But then sometimes we only talk about. The new resources that we have available within the dietitian success and our membership.
Like once. Or twice we’ll like send an email out and then we will share about it on Instagram. And it’s like, wait, We are doing ourselves and the incredible content that we’re creating a huge disservice by not sharing about it more. And so, we’ll talk a little bit about that and just like Marcus marketing. The heck out of your. The stuff that you’re creating.
So you can really use it to its full potential. All right, so let’s get started with. This idea of creative marketing outside of social media, outside of Instagram. So as you’ve heard me talk about on this podcast in the past, I am just such a firm believer that we have to think about marketing more broadly than just one channel. And we also don’t need to subscribe to the idea that there’s only one way to market your services. And I think for a while, there, there was sort of this there, there was sort of this idea floating around that, like Instagram was the be all end all when it comes to marketing, when it comes to getting clients or selling your services or selling your product. And I feel like the more time goes on, the more we’re sort of recognizing and realizing that that’s definitely not the case. And you can absolutely have a successful business, not even having a presence on social media, if you don’t want to. But I want to just talk through this one example. Of how I was thinking about marketing recently. And I think that there could be a lot of, I think that you could use this process. To think about marketing in your own business.
And so the thought occurred to me. How do I get dietitian success center to more people? So how do I actually get out there and put DSC in front of more people in ways that we haven’t before? Because that’s really what marketing is, right? Is it is getting your products in front of the target audience in front of the quote, unquote right.
People. And so in thinking about that, I was like, well, who are the people that just haven’t. Had exposure to DSE at this point. And so, you know, I was thinking to myself, well, okay. I guess one way to do it would be to like reach out to private practices or to private clinics. Not just private clinics, public clinics. Clinics that have dietitians or locations that have dietitians. Via email or via the contact form on their websites. And, you know, say a little blurb about DSC and what we have to offer. But then when I really thought about it, I was like, okay.
But if I put myself into their shoes, And this actually happens to us all the time where people will send us promotional things to our DSE contact form on the website. And quite often we just. Disregard because. It’s really hard. I think to communicate what you want to communicate in just like an email that’s sent through a contact form. And by that, I mean, oftentimes in order for people, I think like for people to really understand the value of dietitian success and, or they need to see our content and they need to see our handouts. And just see how user-friendly they are. See how they’re designed. And to really understand and experience the benefit and that’s. I don’t know how you would do that. Through a contact form on a website. And so I was like, I don’t think that’s the right type of outreach because I just can’t see people actually paying attention.
So then I was thinking to myself and you might be so putting. Putting my hat on. I have like general business owner. I think this could be applied to anyone that you’re trying to get in front of. And this whole idea of. Making sure. You’re thinking about how you’re putting yourself into their shoes and thinking about how they consume information and how they would receive. Certain. Type of marketing or piece of marketing. And would it actually work or not work and asking yourself that question? And so I was thinking to myself, I was like, well, okay.
So what avenues don’t feel so crowded when it comes to getting somebodies attention, grabbing somebody’s attention. And I was like, what if we.
What if we opt for an experiment with just like old school, snail mail. You know, what if I were to actually print off some of our handouts, get them. Professionally printed. Maybe design, like a cute little sticker or something with our logo on it. To include within the, or to include. And I actually put together like a packet. And I mail it out to different practices. In the area and just see what happens. And so that’s what I’ve been doing.
And honestly, this is a true experiment. I have no idea how this is going to work. Maybe people will just throw these packets out. I’m hopeful that they won’t. I really tried to design them in a way where like, you. It’s intriguing. So for example, like we have, you know, some dietitian success center branding on the envelope.
The envelope is like, sort of. Not intentionally, but you can kind of like see a little bit of the images inside through it. So I think if I received that, I’d be like curious enough to open it. And so we printed off, I printed off four of our most common hat or sorry, most popular, not most common, most popular handouts. And I got them professionally printed through canvas.
They do amazing print services. If you ever need printed anything. So printed those off. I designed some stickers with our new branding, just on Canva. Again, got those printed. And then I just did some research to see who’s to look up public addresses for like in-person dietitian businesses. So clinics, whatever that had their business address listed on Google. So actually has like a physical location that they would be able to receive mail. And so, yeah, so I put together these packets and I’m going to just continue to send them out and see what happens. And then I also put together a one page info sheet. About just who we are, what we do.
And it’s very high level. And then the call to action on that is if you’d like to get a digital copy of these handouts that you can provide to your clients, then scan this QR code, fill in this form and they will be sent directly to your email. And then that we were able to collect email addresses, and we’re also able to track the effectiveness of this type of campaign. Because if I’m seeing that. You know, I can even look at like how many people have viewed this page.
That’s how I know. Or rather this form. That’s asking them to put their email in. I could see how many people viewed that form. And therefore I could see how many, so I can see if people even opened the info packet and took action on that QR code. And then of course, if I’m able to see that they actually wet the next step and downloaded those, or put their information in to get the digital downloads. I’m able to track the effectiveness that way.
And then of course, Being able to then see, okay then did they take the next step step of becoming a member? And so I have no idea how this is going to work. We’ll see, I will. Report back on this in maybe a couple months, because I do think that it’s not, I mean, it’s never going to be like an immediate, I don’t think anyways, it’s probably not going to be an immediate result. I’ll have to give it a little bit of time. But. We’ll see. We will see. I think I would enjoy receiving something like this to my address.
Something that’s actually valuable, actually useful. I can use it directly with my patients, clients. It’s really not asking much of me. And so we’ll see what happens with that. I will keep you posted. And one thing I also want to mention here too. It’s just this idea of this idea of kind of understanding and being able to calculate the return on some of these. Investments that you may be making. And so this is just like a really practical piece of information, tidbit of information.
But in order to really understand whether something is going to be, or was worth it for you from a marketing perspective. And so if you’re considering, oh, well, you know, maybe I want to spend some money on this marketing campaign campaign. And so for me, this is a campaign. I spent money on printing the handouts on the staff. Stamps all of that stuff, the envelopes.
So I spent money there. And in order to calculate the return on investment. I need to understand how many members need to. Come in to the membership in order to get my return back. And the way that you do that, the really just like quick and dirty way that you can do that is to understand the lifetime value of your customer.
Or, and I just say customer, but you could say client, patient member, whatever. The lifetime value of your customer, because for me, it’s not just that. So I don’t know how much I, I spent, I think I still have to do this calculation, but I probably spent a total of like, maybe. $500 on this campaign. And that’s only because I really went the extra mile to get like really high quality printing done.
You don’t have to do that, obviously. But also postage and Canada’s quite expensive. Like each stamp was $2. And I think I ended up getting a hundred of everything printed. I don’t know if I’ll actually end up being able to manage sending out a hundred of these kits. But I probably says, spent about $500 and. I don’t want to just consider like, So our membership prices are $34 for the nutrition membership and then 50 54 for the nutrition plus business. So I’m not just going to go $500 divided by 34.
And that would tell me how many members need to join in order for me to make my ROI back because. With a membership. Obviously there’s reoccurring revenue built-in so, you know, somebody probably isn’t going to just stick around for one month, they’ll stick around for longer. And so what we do then is we take our total revenues over time from the membership divided by the total number of customers that we’ve had.
And that gives us a rough idea of what our lifetime value is or the average dollar value. Spent from a customer from one of our customers. And then I can see, okay. Well, how many customers based on lifetime value, do I need in order to. Make this or in order to see the ROI here. And you could really use this tactic for anything that you are thinking about spending money on in your business to understand what the return would be.
So even if you’re thinking about purchasing a new course or purchasing coaching or whatever looking at, okay, well, you know, what is the lifetime value of an average customer? And how many do I need them in order to offset this investment? So, anyways, that’s just one way of thinking about this marketing and creative marketing. And just to summarize that when you’re thinking about how to communicate with your target audience, putting yourself into their shoes to say, okay, What would it look like for me to receive information about this?
How would I like to receive information? If I received an email to my contact form on my website, would I just delete it? Or would I pay attention if I received snail mail? Would I Chuck check it or would I pay attention? And how do you make them pay attention? Okay. So that’s number one, creative marketing. The second thing I wanted to talk about is just a little YouTube update.
Real quick, I just want to pause this episode to talk about a brand new piece of content that we’ve recently released in the Dietitian Success Center membership that is available to all members. And this is our thyroid toolkit. And I want to tell you exactly what’s included within this toolkit. So if you work with patients or clients, chances are you’ve probably encountered thyroid issues, whether that be hyperthyroidism, or hypothyroidism.
These conditions are incredibly common in the nutrition world. So with this updated toolkit, we provide you with a full evidence summary that covers the background of thyroid disorders, how they’re diagnosed, common medications used for treatment, medication, nutrient interactions, and considerations, of course, when it comes to nutrition therapy.
Including how to handle when a client comes to you for weight management, considerations for things like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, or gastrointestinal issues that often come with thyroid issues. And plus, we cover specific nutrients that are relevant for thyroid disorders and the evidence surrounding these things.
Things that you’re probably going to be asked about, like vitamin D supplements, B12, goitrogens, soy, gluten, and so much more. And not only do you get this comprehensive literature review, but you also get the complete collection of client handouts. Which you can provide to your clients either as printouts or via email, whatever you want.
These handouts include things like tips for a healthy heart, anti inflammatory foods, principles of intuitive eating, 20 ideas to move your body, food sources of iodine, a hunger and fullness scale, Quick and easy food ideas, constipation, lactose intolerance, the Mediterranean diet, non weight health and wellness goals, thyroid medications and food, an iodine fact sheet, and so much more.
Plus, we also give you a thyroid nutrients reference sheet and lab values reference sheet so that you don’t have to keep scouring through Google. To find up to date evidence based resources, all of these tools have been designed by dietitians for dietitians. You can get all of this, plus hundreds of other resources, for only 34.
We are told all the time how much value is included in this membership for only 34, but we price it that way because we still want to keep it accessible to all practitioners. So pop on over to dietitiansuccesscenter. com to learn more.
So if you go back to episode 1 68, I talk about why we are starting to dabble in YouTube. And what type of content we are starting to create on YouTube. And so we’ve already started, which is really cool. We’ve started to run with this strategy. One of the things that we’re wanting to do, and we’re sort of experimenting with is. We did a little bit of market research to understand that a lot of dietitians want. Evidence-based good quality, plain language, YouTube videos that they can send to their patients or clients to help them understand some basic nutrition concepts. So things like label reading or like how to build a healthy plate. And so we’re like, well, why don’t we create those videos?
And then it’s just a free tool that you can use to send to your patients and clients they’ve all been designed to be plain language. So that means under grade seven reading level. And they’re very visual. They’re fun. They’re just user-friendly and I mean, they’re coming from dietitians. So it’s it’s information that you would be sharing in the way that you would be sharing it. And so, so far we have published, I’m just pulling up our YouTube channel here. So far we have published. So how to read a nutrition label for kids. How to read a nutrition lab label in five simple steps, managing morning sickness.
So pregnancy nausea, and how to create a healthy plate from a dietitian. And then we also have a couple of practitioner resources as well. We have how to write a PEs statement, how to use the nutrition care process and eight I’m in practice. I filmed a day in the life. Of a dietitian entrepreneur. Just for fun.
And so, yeah, so we have a number of videos on there. The link for our YouTube channel. Is in the description of this episode. But you can also just look up dietitian success center on YouTube. And you should find us there and then make sure and subscribe to that channel because we will be releasing more of these patient patient education videos. So that you can share them with your patients, send them to your patients.
So anyways, I hope that I hope that those are helpful for you. And so that is a little YouTube update. We are starting to actually already notice. Some views happening on some of these videos, we did design them and make sure and listen to episode 1 68. If you want more information on YouTube strategy and how do you create. Topics intentionally, or how to come up with topics intentionally. So that, you know, you’re actually creating things that people are searching for. And so that’s how all of these ideas came to be.
That’s how we chose these content topics. So yeah. Give us a follow on YouTube. And then last but not least is I wanted to talk about the whole content creation hamster wheel. Reason why I want to talk about this is because I had one of those moments the other day, where. I now, if you are on our email list or you are a DSC member, you know, that we release new content and update content constantly. Which is part of the value in what we offer.
And it’s part of what we do best. We have processes in place to be able to do these things really efficiently. But I had this moment, the other day where I sat down at my computer and I was like, whoa. I am feeling overwhelmed because we have a lot on the docket for the next few months. So we had a discussion as a team about, okay, how do we take a step back? And pair this down. And operate more as a, or in a fewer, bigger, better type mindset. Versus just trying to pump out, pump out, pump out more content. And so the thought being well, how do we make sure that we maximize the marketing and the sharing of each new piece of content or updated piece of content for our current members.
So they know what’s available to them and they’re not feeling like, you know, this stuff is just sort of like dripped out released, but they don’t really know. And then also for of course, perspective members who are, might be interested in joining, how do we get really transparent about what exactly is new?
What exactly we have to offer? So what we decided to do, and this is the lesson that I feel like can be applied back to any business. Is when you release any new piece of content, whether that be a podcast episode or a blog post, or you come out with a new offer. A new course, a new digital product, an ebook, a new addition to your one-on-one or even just one-on-one. Group program, whatever it might be.
How do you, can you actually come up with a marketing plan? For that piece of content. So that to ensure that you’re sharing about it in multiple different ways. And so for us, that means, okay, so let’s come up with a consistent plan. So that for each new piece of content, we are ensuring that we’re sharing it as an Instagram story. Sharing it as an Instagram, real posting about it on LinkedIn. Talking about it on the podcast.
So you probably heard the ad. That I recorded for our thyroid toolkit earlier in this episode. That is exactly what we’re trying to do here is just talk more about the awesome stuff we have available. So, yeah. So coming up with that plan, that process for each new piece of content and just slowing down a little bit, to make sure that we’re getting the message out there.
And so that’s something to think about for you is. What have you already created? Maybe that was a blog post that you wrote, or a podcast episode that you were a guest on or that you recorded. What have you already created that could be shared about in multiple different ways across multiple platforms? And to spend more time sharing. About the stuff that we’re doing. Versus always feeling like we need to create new.
All right.
So, and then even just makes me feel more relaxed, just like. Thinking about that, you know, knowing that like we can slow down a little bit and spend more time sharing marketing, and that ultimately helps lead to growth and enhanced user experience to. When people know all of the tools that are available to them. All right. Well, I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you are listening to this in real time, right now we are offering it is the end of May, 2024. We are offering your first three months of dietitian success center.
At 50% off. We are offering this promotion until like mid June ish. I can’t recall the exact date. Mid June. And you can use the code DSE 50 at checkout to take advantage. So if you’ve been thinking about joining DSE for a little while now is the time to do it because we don’t bring back this promotion often.
And so it’s a great time to join at a really good discounted rate. So we would love to see you in the membership. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and we will see you next Thursday.
