How to Get Online Nutrition Clients: Client Support and Achieving Goals

When you’re running an online service-based business of any kind, getting a consistent stream of new clients is one of the biggest hurdles to clear. The same is true for an online nutrition business! However, once you figure out the strategies that resonate with your audience and convert them into dreamy clients, your entrepreneurial journey in dietetics is well on its way to becoming the thriving private practice you always dreamed of! 

I’ve written plenty of posts on how to market yourself as a private practice RD and how to reach more dreamy nutrition clients. So, for this post, I instead want to focus on the service you’re offering. After all, no matter how stellar your marketing strategy is, if you don’t have VALUABLE, EFFECTIVE, and THOUGHTFUL offerings, the audience you attract won’t convert to paying clients. It’s so important to provide client support and goal achievement methods that’ll convince your potential clients that you’re the Registered Dietitian for them! 

Here’s how you can provide a stellar offering that supports your clients and helps them achieve their goals: 

How to Get Online Nutrition Clients: Client Support and Achieving Goals

Create packages vs. one-off offers. 

As an RD, you know that healing through nutrition takes time. Actually, getting to the root of health issues or needs will lead to long-term life change, but nothing can happen in a one-off consultation. 

The ideal client would stick around for at least a 3-6 month program. I say this not just because long-term clients make you more money, but because they actually make a bigger impact on you and your business! When you can map the progress of your clients through your coaching services, it allows you to refine your program, collect more testimonials, build more credibility, and make a deeper contribution to public health. 

All around, your nutrition coaching business will be more influential and attractive to your dreamy clients if you create packages over one-off offers. Each package should be 3-5 months long and suit your target audience at varying points on their health journey.  

Refine your counseling style.

Helping clients reach their goals, both big and small, will have the biggest impact on your business! After all, it’s the clients who need to make the lifestyle changes, so until you, as a nutrition coach, can figure out how to motivate people to break their habits, your business can’t be truly successful or enticing to new clients! 

So, whether you want to improve client retention, progress, or conversion, consider refining your counseling style! Techniques like motivational interviewing, SMART goal setting, self-monitoring, relapse prevention, self-advocacy, and psychosocial support can be extremely helpful in improving patient outcomes and getting more clients. 

Measure client success beyond the scale. 

As RDs, many of our clients are very scale-focused. They’re concerned about those surface level results that can sometimes be difficult to achieve or maintain. To really encourage your clients and empower them to see the full picture, measure their success beyond the scale. Of course, how you do this depends on your niche, but you could map improvements in labs, energy levels, digestive health, and more! 

Highlight the tools you use to track client progress. 

Speaking of progress, there are lots of ways to encourage, produce, and reveal progress. Digital tools are a great way to do this with online clients! Check-in forms, food journals, curated meal plans, habit trackers, wearable fitness gear, online messengers, and even social media groups can all boost your client engagement and add value to your programming, which is very enticing to prospective nutrition clients looking for the best online RD!

Provide resources for common client challenges throughout the year. 

Being a good RD requires you to be super adaptable. Not only do you have to be flexible with each new client and their unique challenges, but you need to be ready to adapt with the seasons, too. 

There are common challenges we see pop up at the same times every year (depending on your niche), so provide your clients with additional resources and tools to get through these tough times. (Think holidays, busy summer schedules, etc.) It shows that you’re PROACTIVE, SKILLED, and VALUABLE! 

Personalize your communication with each client. 

Anytime someone joins a new service, they’re a big skeptical, especially when it’s online. They start out on high-alert, making sure they’re getting the most out of their time and money. So, if at any point your program or delivery feels too rehearsed or cookie-cutter, the potential client may assume your offer is of low quality. Of course, this is not true, but in the world of online nutrition, you need to stand out and make it clear that you can tailor your expertise to get your dreamy client to their goals. 

From the start, ensure you’re personalizing your communication with your client. This will help you build trust, rapport, and a strong therapeutic relationship. Plus, it demonstrates empathy and respect, making clients feel heard and valued! This is huge for online nutrition clients where the lack of in-person interaction can feel limiting. This deeper connection will help you get more clients and keep them!

Foster a sense of community between clients. 

A great resource for nutrition professionals is their own clients! Those who are already working with you can be one of the best tools for converting your target audience into dreamy clients and retaining those clients once they enroll in your offers. 

Now, you can’t assemble a traditional support group when your clients are all over the world. However, social media is the perfect place for an online support group where people can interact, share information, and encourage one another all the time! Prospective clients can see the progress of your current clients, motivating them to become paying customers. Just make sure you moderate your group, set rules, and stay present to keep it a useful space for your clients. 

Showcase client testimonials and reviews. 

No matter how flashy your sales pitch or call-to-action, people will always be skeptical of online brands of any kind. Even with a wealth of credentials and qualifications, it can be hard for clients to fully commit. However, word of mouth and client testimonials are POWERFUL. 

Members of your target audience trust the testimony of others, so showcase those as often as possible! Even consider incentivizing your clients to share reviews and recommendations that you can then share with your audience. Seeing the REAL results of REAL people will be a game changer for attracting new online nutrition clients!

If you’re not sure how to tastefully get those reviews, here’s how to ask for client testimonials. 

Client support and intuitive goal setting can be the key to attracting online nutrition clients!

Getting and maintaining clients is the challenge of any service-based business, but this is even more true when your business is online! As an online private practice, a good marketing mix is the best way to generate consistent new leads that actually convert. One of those principles in that marketing mixture should be creating an attractive offer that includes lots of client support and goal setting techniques. 

If you’re not sure how to refine your programming and marketing approach, it might be time to hire a Dietitian Business Coach! I can help you with all aspects of your business growth and development to help you reach goals as efficiently as possible. Take this quiz to see if nutrition business coaching is right for you.