Are you a Dietitan or Nutritionist looking to stand out from your competition at the begining of the year? No doubt, it’s a very BIG market. Everyone and their mother has a resolution of getting fit in the New Year.

The question is: are they finding you?

Here are three questions to ask yourself when looking to stand out from your competition.

Why hire you and not the other dietitians?

The first thing to do when entering a flooded market is assess the other people in your industry and ask yourself what is different about your service. I have seen a lot of different approaches: The anti-diet dietitian, the science-based dietitian, the holistic nutritionist, the over qualified dietitian, the approachable dietitian, the cool dietitian.

What do you do differently? Keep this answer in mind while moving to the next couple questions. As I move on I’m going to pretend I’m a holistic nutritionist looking to reach people who would be interested in my services. So that brings me to the next question-

Are there people who want my services, and who are they?

Do a lot of research. Look up holistic nutritionists online, where are they advertising, who is their demographic? Find out who is interested in your niche, and then find out as much as possible about that group. What makes them tick? What magazines do they read? What hashtags do they use, what websites and more importantly social media are they on?

Here’s a sample train of thought:

My offering is natural diet consulting.

What demographic is that? Women between 25-34 

What are women 25-34 interested in? Pinterest, Yoga, Natural Health Magazines, Natural Food Stores, Connecting with women online, Very little facebook, lots of instagram, favorite store is lululemon, etc.

When you understand your target client, dig as deep as possible into who that person is. Is this woman suburban? Is she a city dweller? What is her favorite store ? What does she dress like? You probably want to reach people who can afford your services, so that means this person probably makes 60-100k at least.

With your arsenal of info, move on to the next question:

How do you reach these people?

From our research in the previous question, we now know that our target client is on pinterest and instagram. Pinterest now has rich pins which allow users to buy directly from links on pinterest.

One thing to consider is that people on pinterest generally are doing a lot of research before pulling the trigger on a new product or service. So you will want to check out the competition (type in keywords into pinterest and see who and what comes up. Find patterns) and make sure you are a desirable option for your customer.

The next best thing to use is Facebook; they have a very powerful method of finding your demographic and showing your ads directly to those people (saving you time and money) and the number ONE way women shop is via referral. In fact, women are 80% more likely to hire someone referred to them over another service even if they don’t know the person! So make sure once you start getting business that you are asking for referrals.

So there you have it! The three most important things to ask yourself when entering a busy season as a dietitian.  Is it a lot? Yes. It is A LOT. SO much to think about.

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