4 Essential Steps For Online Nutrition Marketing

Health Coaches are some of the most passionate people I know when it comes to educating others about health and wellness. You have a subject that you are driven to share with others, knowing that you could help transform lives with your coaching.

Almost everyone I know who has gone into a healing profession has this passion, so why do so many people struggle when it comes to sharing their message online?

What is the key to Online Nutrition Marketing?

I fell for the “build it and they will come” trap years ago when I built my first website.  I spent weeks making sure the fruit in my header and footer looked just right, that the swirl in my logo was perfect and that all my products had perfect descriptions.  This took untold months and cost me over $5,000 before I ever made a penny.

I would love to show you the site today, but it is only a memory now. I learned that an e-commerce dropship site was a lot more work for the return than I had imagined.

When deciding to take your message online you need to have more than just a good idea and passion for the subject. These are both important but only part of the equation. So what is the equation? My friend Marc Beneteau of WordPress Academy gave this excellent summary of Brendon Burchard’s best selling book ”The Millionaire Messenger”.

This was written from an internet marketing perspective, I would change the order of his step for some people and his emphasis on step 3 is because he is a web technology trainer who teaches people how to use WordPress for their business.

1. Work From Your Passion

Find a topic that will keep you energized for the long haul, this will become your target market. Perhaps you or a close friend or family member have overcome a health challenge.

This is usually the easy one for health coaches but it is easy to forget why you got into this business when you are struggling to find your niche and doing all the hard work it takes to be an entrepreneur. Make sure to take care of yourself and keep your creative juices flowing.

2. Connect With Your Tribe

Where does your group of prospective clients gather online? What sort of things do they search for on the internet? What are their challenges and questions? This is an important step that many of us skip over. We need to learn how to do proper keyword research to learn what people are actually looking for online. Facebook has made finding groups of people much easier since it seems like everyone is on Facebook these days. Don’t forget “old school” places like blogs, internet forums, and other social networking communities that are specific to certain groups.

Join these communities, partake in the conversation. Share your experience and pay attention to what questions and struggles people have. Your goal here is NOT to necessarily sell your products or services here.

The hardest part is growing a community and having them know, like, and trust you.  Just be yourself and make sure when people come to your website or Facebook page you have a way to collect their name and email address so that you can develop a better relationship and keep in more constant contact with them.

As you do develop programs and products, tell them about what you are doing.  If you’ve done your homework, there will be lots of people interested in what you are providing.

3. Create Products and Programs

Working with individual clients is great, I love the feeling of helping someone to achieve their health goals and break down old barriers. Having said that, being able to work with many people at once has lots of advantages, of which more money is only one.

It allows you to affect a larger audience, it leverages your time, if you deliver your programs online you can turn them into products that you sell as home study courses for people that can’t afford your services, etc. These can be group coaching programs, group cleanses, online classes, workshops, the sky is the limit. Even cooking classes can be done online, look at the popularity of The Food Network.

4. Create A Nutrition Marketing Platform

Even if your focus is not necessarily nutrition, you still need a web marketing platform. This is more involved than just one bullet point but basically comes down to a few key elements.

You need to have some sort of lead generation product that you give away in order to get people to share their contact information with you. This is typically done with an opt-in form on your website and either some sort of report, video, online course, or newsletter where you continue to build the relationship by delivering high-quality content that your readers want.

Needless to say, you need a website. My favorite platform for this is WordPress. You need to get targeted people to your website, also known as traffic. This can be done through SEO (search engine optimization), advertising, social media, and from people you find while you are connecting with your tribe.

Now all you have to do is offer your products and programs from step 3 to the people that join your “tribe”. You can even team up with other experts in your niche that have great products that you want to offer to your tribe. This is known as affiliate marketing or joint venture partnerships.

The key to this is only offering top quality programs and products that you know your group wants and needs. I’ve been on many lists of internet marketers who just endlessly try to promote other people’s products and I end up just hitting the unsubscribe button. If you create great products, it will also be able to find others that want to promote you as well.

Summary 

Continue to engage with your tribe and build new products and programs. These can either be brand new programs or they can be more extensive versions of what you already offer. You can offer your products in many different forms, from a free or cheap e-book, online courses, DVD’s, CDs or live programs.

Whatever you do, try to keep your focus on delivering awesome content that will serve your audience. If you do that, before you know it, you will have a loyal following eager to invest in your products and services.  This will make nutrition marketing a piece of cake.