There is no better time than now to get the word out about how proper nutrition can change a life! As obesity levels in the country continue to rise, it is more important than ever as nutrition coaches to speak our minds! Traditional marketing is often times too expensive for the limited budget of small businesses, therefor relying on guerrilla marketing ideas may be a better alternative.
Many nutrition coaches or business owners depend only on their current network of friends, family and clients to get referrals. Unfortunately, many times their reach just isn’t broad enough making it hard to earn a consistent income.
In this blog post we will discuss 4 cost effective guerrilla marketing ideas that we think will grab people’s attention and help get you noticed in your local area.
What Is Guerrilla Marketing?
Guerrilla marketing is an innovative and cost-effective way of getting a business noticed by their target audience. It bypasses traditional methods of marketing, such as paid advertising campaigns, in favor of creative ways to market using guerrilla tactics like guerrilla videos, guerrilla partnerships, guerrilla events, guerrilla giveaways and more. Creative guerrilla marketing campaigns are designed to generate maximum exposure for the brand in a budget friendly way.
By utilizing guerrilla tactics that are creative and unexpected, businesses can reach more people while also creating positive associations with their brand. Guerrilla marketing works because it creates an emotional connection that resonates with the target audience and encourages them to engage with the product or service being offered in a meaningful way.
With guerrilla marketing ideas, nutrition coaches can capture the attention of their local market without spending too much money.
Why Should A Nutrition Coach Market Their Services?
A nutrition coaches job doesn’t end at providing clients with expertise and support regarding their health and wellness. Coaches must also learn to market themselves in order to draw more people to their services. If a nutrition coach does not market their services, they will be missing out on many potential customers causing the nutrition coach’s business to remain stagnant or even decline.
Without adequate promotion, prospective clients are unlikely to find them and be aware of the benefits they offer. Furthermore, without utilizing marketing tactics, the nutrition coach may miss out on lucrative opportunities to engage with an audience and establish themselves as an expert in their field.
Ultimately, failing to effectively market their services can lead to a lack of visibility in the competitive health and wellness industry.
Creative marketing strategies help with the following:
Create awareness:
By marketing their services, nutrition coaches can inform potential clients of the benefits they offer and how they can help them reach their health goals.
Reach more people:
Marketing allows nutrition coaches to expand beyond their current network and reach a larger audience.
Stand out from competition:
Nutrition coaches need to differentiate themselves from other professionals in the same field in order to be successful. Effective marketing is key for distinguishing one’s own coaching practice.
Build credibility:
Through strong branding, testimonials, and content promotion on social media platforms, nutrition coaches can boost their reputation and build trust with potential clients.
Increase revenue:
The more clients a coach is able to help, obviously the more money they will make. In order to survive, the business must generate revenue.
3 Guerrilla Marketing Examples To Generate Buzz And Build Brand Awareness!
Guerrilla marketing tactics don’t have to be expensive or elaborate to draw attention and get people talking. They just need to be different, cost effective, provide an experience, and also show a little brand personality so customers develop a sense of who you are.
I have used the examples of guerrilla marketing I am providing several times, and they have worked extremely well.
Pop Up Experiences and Events
Developing a relationship with another small local business is a great way to help each other build a following and share audiences. A pop up event is an excellent example of how two businesses can share the responsibility of running an event, and also benefit in the marketing exposure as well.
We have partnered with both a coffee shop and an athleisure boutique to create a comarketing pop up event.
At your events you should:
Create a sing up or even a waiver if needed to get names, emails and phone numbers; this is the main purpose of the event and absolutely must not be skipped (these are called leads & help build your email list)
Have some sort of experience, seminar, or seminar & workout
Create a drawing for free stuff
Coffee Shop Marketing Event
At this event we partnered with a local coffee shop a lot of our clients go to. We hosted a nutrition talk at the coffee shop, and the coffee shop gave away free samples of our co branded protein shakes.
We had people sign up for the event ahead of time to capture their lead info, we had a giveaway drawing for a Inbody & interpretation, a free month of nutrition coaching with a 3 month sign up, and the coffee shop gave away 3 different $25/gift cards.
Both parties were responsible for advertising this event. We used a Facebook event page, fliers at the drive through and on the counters in the coffee shop, Instagram, plus we both emailed our entire email list.
Athleisure Boutique Marketing Event
The owner of the boutique we partnered with is also a yoga instructor. We collaborated with her by providing a free 30 minutes workout, and then she provided 30 minutes of yoga when the workout was done. After the workout/yoga were over we had a private shopping event in her boutique where we did a drawing for participants to win an Inbody & interpretation, a free month of nutrition coaching with the purchase of a phase I package, plus a $100 gift card to the gym. The boutique owner offered a 20% discount during the private shopping event to anyone who participated.
For this particular event, we also included a nearby coffee shop and healthy protein ball maker who donated coffee and healthy balls to the event. This furthered our effort in raising brand awareness for all three of these small businesses.
Our shopping-fitness-yoga event was a huge success, and we gained approximately 50 leads who have the potential to become future customers. The boutique owner made a TON of sales, plus 2 people joined our nutrition program!
Social Media Giveaway Guerrilla Marketing
A social media giveaway can be done solo, or you can include another small local business to partner with. As you can tell by now I’m big on partnering with other small businesses because I believe in helping each other grow. Partnering in the giveaway allows you to share each-others current audiences and helps promote both of your businesses in an unconventional way. You may as well gain attention from both demographics. Word of mouth travels faster than a lot of times fliers or emails ever will.
To facilitate a giveaway…
You must use some creative thinking when deciding on a giveaway item.
During our last giveaway, we gave a way a free month of a 3 month nutrition coaching package plus a free Onramp package to fitness. Our partner, the same athleisure boutique as above, gave away a $50 gift card.
Announce your giveaway on social media.
We announced our giveaway drawing and the rules to participate and shared it across both of our social platforms.
Include the instructions & rules to participate.
We set up a week long giveaway. Our rules were that in order for people to be eligible for the drawing at the end of the week, they had to follow both mine and the boutiques social media accounts, plus tag two friends in the comments.
Every night, myself and the boutique owner would go into our social accounts and tally the followings/tags. At the end of the week we drew for the prizes we both agreed to give away and announced the winners on both of our platforms.
Both of us gained a ton of followers to our social media accounts using this marketing tactic. By promoting a giveaway, potential clients are much more willing to engage with your posts because they have the opportunity to get quite a bit out of it.
One thing to keep in mind if promoting your giveaway on Instagram and Facebook is to make a public statement in your post relieving Instagram/Facebook from any obligation related to the giveaway. They do not want to be held liable should you not giveaway exactly what you say your are in your post. If you don’t add this disclaimer, they may remove your post.
Free Nutrition Talk Seminar
Free nutrition talks are an amazing low cost advertising strategy to promote your brand and also help a lot of people with their health at the same time. At my gym, we offer to do 1 FREE nutrition talk to any company in our community. Asking your current gym membership if they own or manage a business you could speak at is a great place to start.
Additionally we do the same for sports teams, schools and daycare centers. These talks can be done virtually or in person, however I like the first one to be in person as it seems that interaction is much higher at the in person events.
At HSN Mentoring, we provide a ton of nutrition talk topics to our current clients who are a part of our mentoring program.
If you are not part of our mentoring program, a few great ideas for nutrition talks could be, “Reducing Added Sugar For The Whole Family”, “Creating A Healthier You In 2023“, or “How To Use The Plate Method; Real Life Examples”.
During your nutrition talk events make sure you are giving something away, just like during your other guerrilla marketing events. Giveaways allow you to get names and email addresses of potential customers. When dealing with employers or educational establishments, the likelihood they will give you employees private information is slim. You must create a way for employees to voluntarily give you their contact information, and a drawing for something free is a great way to do that.
Healthy Eating Establishment Partnerships & Guerrilla Marketing
As we have stated several times above, developing relationships with local businesses to share some of these types of guerrilla marketing techniques is a great idea. And it doesn’t stop at just pop up events.
At my gym and also at Healthy Steps Nutrition Headquarters; we have restaurant partnerships that help promote our brand visibility, and also support our goal of helping the world live a healthier life. Our name and logo are associated with menu items at a couple different eating establishments in town.
The idea is to get people to make healthy choices. By working with an owner of one these establishments, you can determine which items are worthy of the healthy mark. Negotiating a time when the menus are going to be reprinted to potentially get your logo next to these healthy items is a great idea. Or, simply adding a sticker with your logo on it next to the menu items could work as well.
We landed two nutrition clients from the last restaurant we had a logo on the menu at. They were reading the healthy options we had our name next to on the menu and decided to use our contact info the owner also had on the menu to reach out and book a free intro.
Conclusion
Don’t stress about not having a huge marketing team or marketing budget!
You can use all of these guerrilla marketing examples to help create a complete marketing strategy on your own. Using unconventional methods to market your business can pay off in the long run.
Guerrilla Marketing Strategies Are Beneficial Because
They are cost effective and allow you to reach a large audience without spending too much.
They are creative and provide a unique way to get the word out about your nutrition coaching services.
Guerrilla tactics can help you stand out from other coaches in the community by using unconventional methods of advertising.
Guerrilla marketing allows you to be innovative and come up with new ideas or repurpose existing ones, giving you an edge over competitors.
You can target specific demographics more efficiently as guerrilla tactics generally involve smaller groups of people who may be more likely to take action on your message.
Guerrilla marketing allows for an easy way to measure results so you can adjust campaigns quickly if needed.
Remember to use creativity when designing your marketing campaign and coming up with marketing ideas. Standing out and not doing things exactly like others do will allow you to gain a ton of publicity.
Let’s take some action today! I want anyone who has read this article to come up with a guerrilla marketing idea to use for their nutrition business! I want you to make a list of the tasks needed to get done in order to make marketing happen, and a date you plan to get started.
Email me at heather@healthystepsnutrition.com! I want to know what your great example is!
