Whether you are an HSN Certified Nutrition Coach, or some other type of nutrition professional looking to grow your nutrition business, your livelihood quite clearly revolves around getting new clients. Learning how to get nutrition clients is going to be one of the most important lessons you will learn. After you get these new clients, learning how to keep them is the next step!
Obesity statistics in America are staggering. Over 100 million adults (41.9%) and 14.7 million children (19.7%) are affected by this often times self inflicted chronic disease. Now more than ever people need nutrition and health coaches to help educate them on the methods needed to overcome obesity in order to live a longer healthier life.
It’s extremely important to recognize that there is opportunity EVERYWHERE to educate and promote yourself as a nutrition coach. In this article we will discuss 5 ways to help you get noticed by potential wellness clients.
Why Is Getting More Nutrition Clients Important?
Clearly if you have chosen the path of nutrition coaching as s profession your main goal is make enough money to support yourself. Getting more nutrition clients is a sure way to do that. However, there are additional benefits that you may not have thought of when it comes to adding more coaching clients to your list.
Getting more nutrition clients is important for a number of reasons.
Increased income
The more clients you have, the more money you can earn as a nutrition coach. This can help you sustain and grow your business, allowing you to focus on delivering quality nutrition services to your clients.
Professional growth
Working with a diverse range of clients can help you refine your skills and expand your knowledge, allowing you to continue to grow professionally.
Making a positive impact
The more clients you work with, the more people you can help improve their health and wellness through nutritious eating habits.
Building a reputation
The more successful outcomes you achieve for your clients, the more your reputation as a nutrition coach will grow, making it easier for you to attract new clients.
Increased job satisfaction
The satisfaction that comes from helping others improve their health and wellness can be incredibly rewarding, and working with a larger number of clients can help you experience that satisfaction on a regular basis.
Overall, getting more nutrition clients is important because it helps you build a successful, sustainable business, while also allowing you to make a positive impact on the health and wellness of others.
Now that we have established our “why’s” let’s get right into the “hows”!
The 5 Tips On How To Get Nutrition Clients For Your Nutrition Business
When reading this article it is best to assume you are starting from ground zero. Even if you have an established nutrition business, taking an overall look at set up from start to finish can give a fresh perspective.
The most basic concept of telling people about your business to get more clients is so simple, but the process of implementing the concept is sometimes challenging.
Step #1 - Nail Down The Basics
Before you even begin looking for new clients it’s very important to do a self assessment and nail down the basic.
Establish your why
People buy from people. Knowing why you want to help people is extremely important. Your why can help potential clients identify with you. Talking about it and being open about the experiences that led you to this career can often times be considered a lead capture tool.
Identify your target audience
Do you want to help professional athletes? Maybe you want to help middle aged moms wanting to look good in their skinny jeans after 5 kids. You could simply want to help anyone looking to learn how to live a long healthy life.
Identifying this demographic is important because all of your messaging will be focused on this primary group. If you want to help moms but your messaging talks about creatine use around sporting events, you are going to confuse. Confusion leads to lack of engagement, and you will then struggle to find clients.
Do you have a front end offer and ongoing pricing set up?
What happens when a lead books a call or an intro? What are you going to sell them? Do you have a front end offer and coaching packages set up? Maybe you are selling a 12 week transformation moving into ongoing coaching. Potentially you could be enticing people with a 28 Day Kickstart which then moves into ongoing coaching. Whatever your “hook” is, ensuring you have all your pricing and packing offers set up is extremely important.
Step #2 - Make a BIG Announcement Plus Tell Your Friends And Family Members
Tell the world using your current following on social media and in emails to let your entire audience know about your new career!
Make a family member or friend your first “test” client. It’s common practice for HSN Certified Nutrition Coaches to gather a test client during their nutrition coaching certification process to practice their skills on. Part of the agreement with this test client is for them to help promote and talk about the nutrition business during and after the process in order to help with promotion.
Somebody who loves you is extremely likely to provide a steady stream of praises in order to help spread the word about your new services to their friends and colleagues.
The people closest to you can often times be your biggest cheerleaders! Make sure your circle understands and knows what you are doing. Make it easy for them to send you referrals.
Often times we see new coaches mention their new role with family and friends but they don’t take the time deeply talk about it. Doing so can really help develop a baseline referral network.
Step #3 - Insert Yourself In The Community
Community involvement is HUGE. At the beginning of this article we talked about opportunity and how potential clients can come from anywhere. Establishing a presence in your community is a place to shine and you never know who is watching.
There are several ways to do this, but keeping an open mind is extremely important.
Just like gossip spreads fast, the word of good health can too if you insert yourself into the right place at the right time. The sky is the limit here, but don’t be afraid to think outside of the box. Here are some examples.
Participate in community events such as health fairs. Checking out facebook is a great resource when considering events to sign up for.
Offer a free inbody and intro as a prize in a charity event for your kids or relatives school. Even if you don’t have kids yourself, I bet some of your friends do. The PTA and sports teams are constantly having fund raisers for their different programs. Offering an inbody or free consult on how to use the plate method as a silent auction item is a great way to reach a new audience.
Partner with a local coffee shop, smoothie shop or cafe. Developing a relationship and establishing a partnership with one of these types of businesses is a great way to promote your nutrition practice. Additionally it helps the other business owner. The two of you can work together to get more potential clients.
Let’s say you partner with a coffee shop and the name of your business is “Aim Higher Nutrition”.
Come up with menu items or specials. Come up an “Aim Higher” approved latte both you and the coffee shop owner can promote to their clients.
How does this help you? Your name will be associated with a healthy option at this business. Healthy is in line with your why and this business has 100’s of clients that visit it each month. Your name on the menu or on the counter associated with this option will expose you to many ideal clients.
How does this help the coffee shop owner? It is guaranteed they currently have a number of clients interested in living a longer healthier life. Offering this type of product not only helps increase satisfaction amongst certain current clients, but it also helps them reach new clients as well. Additionally you pushing your latte to any new client that comes onto your practice is going to help the coffee shop get more customers.
Offer a free talk at their establishment. I have done many “nutrition talks” at our local coffee shop. We have a partnership with them and we use both of our audiences to promote our talks.
We both benefit from these events. Participants get free samples of our menu items during the talk which helps promote the coffee shop. They get free nutrition information from us by attending the talk which helps build our expertise in the field and exposes us to more people helping us gain qualified leads.
Step # 4 - Gather & Share Testimonials
Testimonials are an important tool for businesses to build credibility, attract new customers, and improve their reputation.
How can testimonials help a nutrition business?
Testimonials provide social proof
Testimonials serve as social proof demonstrating to potential customers that other people have had positive experiences with the business and its services. This can build trust and credibility making it more likely that people will choose to do business with the company in the future.
Testimonials Help Build reputation
Testimonials can play a role in reputation management by counteracting negative reviews or feedback that a business may receive. By showing a balanced mix of positive and negative feedback, businesses can demonstrate transparency and credibility, and show that they are committed to providing a high-quality customer experience.
Testimonials help with SEO
Including testimonials on your website can also help improve its search engine optimization, as it provides fresh, relevant content that search engines can index.
Marketing
We will elaborate on this in our 5th tip so read further. Nutrition client testimonials can be used as a form of marketing and advertising, as they allow businesses to showcase the positive experiences that their customers have had. This can help to persuade new customers to try the company’s products or services.
Overall, by not using testimonials, your nutrition business may miss out on important opportunities to build trust, attract new clients, and establish a positive reputation in the marketplace.
Step #5 - Build A Content Engine
Social media is the currency of our generation. If you are not using it to tell your story, provide education and attract new paying clients, then you are missing out.
Social media can be challenging for many nutrition coaches for a variety of reasons, including:
Lack of time
Running a successful nutrition coaching business often requires a significant investment of time and energy, and many coaches may struggle to find the time to create and manage social media accounts effectively.
Difficulty in finding the right content
Nutrition coaches may struggle to find the right content to share on social media, particularly if they want to avoid repeating information that is widely available elsewhere.
Limited resources
Many nutrition coaches are solo practitioners and may not have the resources to invest in social media management tools or professional photography to enhance their online presence.
Uncertainty about the best approach
With so many different social media platforms available, it can be difficult for nutrition coaches to determine which platforms are best suited to their target audience and how best to use them to reach their goals.
Challenges in standing out
The nutrition coaching industry is highly competitive, and it can be difficult for individual coaches to stand out from the crowd on social media and attract new clients.
Despite these challenges, many nutrition coaches have successfully leveraged social media to grow their businesses and reach the right clients. By investing time and effort into social media management and developing a clear strategy for online presence, as a nutrition coach, you can overcome these challenges and achieve your goals.
Below are some examples of how to build your engine. Remember that to begin we recommend starting with one or two platforms. After you have become more organized repurposing the content to other platforms is highly suggested.
Tip #1 - Post on Instagram & Facebook and use Instagram Reels when possible.
By posting to both your professional and business accounts you can reach a broader audience. Now you don’t want to spam your personal account with a ton of business related content, but sharing something like a nutrition kickstart or an infographic that you posted that could really help is a great idea.
Utilizing Reels and short form video when possible will increase your chances of being seen in the Instagram algorithm. Instagram promotes the use of reels to more users as they are competing with TikTok and Youtube.
Tip #2 - Share social posts to your stories
Most people will look at Instagram and Facebook stories more than they look at a businesses social feed. Sharing your feed posts and Instagram Reels to your stories will help reach more people.
Tip #3 - Build an email list
Building an email list is extremely important. Building your content engine will slowly help you build a following. Only utilizing and Instagram, Facebook or YouTube to engage these followers is a mistake because you don’t own these platforms. They can be taken away from you at any moment. Google owns YouTube and Meta owns Facebook and Instagram.
Have you ever heard from an influencer you follow that their account has been suspended for whatever reason? Well, if not – it happens. If that happens to you and you haven’t asked for email addresses from your following, then you are going to have to start from square one to build your pages back up. Additionally having an email list allows you to engage your follows with a monthly newsletter. You can also target certain demographics emailing special content to certain types of users.
Tip #4 - Upload Video Content To YouTube
Videos offer a versatile and engaging way for you to engage with clients through education and entertainment. Just like Instagram, YouTube offers a short form video product called YouTube shorts. With over 30 billion views daily, Shorts is another amazing platform to put content on.
Shorts are only able to be 60 seconds long. That being said, creating longer videos using the same content as you post to Instagram Reels or YouTube short is easily done. Even 3-5minute videos on a YouTube channel can engage your audience.
If you are an HSN Mentoring client, you have access to fresh new content to use on these platforms monthly. Utilize the resources we give you to create.
Often times nutrition coaches are extremely uncomfortable recording themselves on video whether they are uploading a Instagram Reel or a YouTube short.
Overcoming this fear would be very beneficial to your nutrition business considering so many users are consuming content on this platform.
Tip #5 - Use your videos in other content you create
Repurposing videos is a great way to get more views to them, and give clients another way to consume your content.
For example, if you are sending emails to your email list, link a YouTube video. If you are a member of a group on Facebook, share a link to your video there if you think it could help someone in the group.
Not using social media as part of a nutrition business’s marketing strategy can result in missed opportunities and potential drawbacks in terms of reaching a wider audience, engagement, trust, promotion, and relevance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, getting more nutrition clients requires a comprehensive approach that involves targeting the right audience, establishing clear and competitive prices, announcing your services to friends and family, gathering testimonials from satisfied clients, and leveraging the power of social media.
By following these steps, you can build a strong foundation for your business and attract new clients who are looking for the guidance and expertise you have to offer.
Remember that building a successful nutrition coaching business takes time and effort, but by implementing these strategies and continually refining your approach, you can create a thriving practice that helps people achieve their health and wellness goals
