40 Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Nutrition Business

April 22, 2025

In this episode of How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business, Chris is joined by his wife and marketing strategist Stacey Hughes to share over 40 marketing strategies that helped them grow their dietetic business into a thriving seven-figure operation. From humble beginnings with no time for marketing and three kids under three, they dive into how referrer relationships, like weekly meetings with GPs and chronic disease nurses, became the backbone of their growth. They also discuss the creative tools they used to stay top of mind—like branded recipe magazines, co-branded resources, conference speaking gigs, and even old-school postcards that delivered an impressive ROI. Whether it was building online calculators for eating disorder referrals or dropping off sushi platters to start conversations, their approach combined consistency, creativity, and community.

They also explore what worked when targeting the public, from SEO-optimised blogs and Facebook ads to cooking demos, webinars, and health challenges that boosted engagement and email signups. Stacey highlights how automation tools and AI have made marketing more accessible than ever, and why building visibility through regular content—like Lives, podcasts, and newsletters—remains crucial. They wrap up by sharing what they’d do differently today, from leveraging Google Ads to deeper nurturing of existing clients. This episode is a goldmine for any health professional wanting practical, real-world strategies that don’t require a full-time marketing team.

Episode Transcript

EPISODE 29 - FINAL
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[00:00:00] Chris Hughes: I remember there was a point there when early days, and I was a speaker, a nutrition, and another dietitian potentially pulled out of a conference last minute, and they asked me to come and present. Obviously I had nothing prepared and I was extremely nervous. There's gonna be about 200 nurses there that I had to present in front of, but I took it up and did it, and from there I then come back every year and presented at that very same conference, met all of the nurses in the area.

Pretty much all was able to expose myself to the nurses. So never pass up an opportunity to speak particularly to your referral base.

Welcome to How to Build a profitable Nutrition Business. If you love nutrition and you love helping people and you wanna be in the game long enough to keep doing that, then this is the podcast for you. Let's get into it.

Today's episode is all about marketing, and it's the marketing strategies that we used in our business that helped us grow to a [00:01:00] seven figure business over a very short period of time. When we started our business, it was just me. Essentially, for the first six months, we had three kids, almost under three, so my wife was busy being a mom at home.

I was just head down, bum up in the trenches, seeing as many people as I could. I didn't have the brain capacity to think of marketing strategies. It was just trying to get by each day and survive. Thankfully, my wife, who has a marketing business background, she stepped into the business after about six months and with her expertise, we were able to implement further marketing strategies that help grow our business.

I would like to dedicate this episode to Angela Taylor. So Angela is a mentee of mine. She's in her first year of running a dietitian business, and she suggested this episode to help think about those marketing strategies for those sole practitioners that are working really hard and probably don't have the time or the space to allow their brain to expand and think about what marketing tools they could use.

So if that's you. You're interested in learning about all the marketing strategies that we used. I think there's [00:02:00] about 40 that we've used. Then tune in. This is the episode for you. Thanks. Welcome back to another episode of How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business, and today I'm joined by one of our favorite guests, my wife Stacy Hughes, the marketing extraordinaire behind our dietitian business because as a dietitian business, the was a lot of strategies that I think we used that were quite effective to grow our business.

Yeah, so we've, we were chatting about this morning and I think there's two types of marketing targets, and one were those referrers and the other were from the public. Stacy, I think that when we started, like it was essentially doctors meetings, wasn't it? The doctors get paid for referring to us, so there's really a win-win there for us.

And so we would just have meeting after meeting each week. I'd be out meeting with a new doctor's practice, just trying to network and build up that clientele. And over the space of eight years that we were in business, we had. 200 doctors practices, I think on our list, multiply that out by number of doctors and we had [00:03:00] quite, quite a referral base that was coming from there.

And those doctors meetings were quite successful. Wouldn't you say?

[00:03:06] Stacey Hughes: And putting on lunch. That was really good. So even if the doctors were busy and they couldn't attend, it appealed to them. If you went there with some sushi platters or subway platters, that they would come in, grab something to eat, and then maybe meet you or one of our other dietitians and have a chat as well.

So even if they weren't there for the whole presentation or the whole time that you were there, having that lunch as a carrot really got them to come and meet you. I.

[00:03:34] Chris Hughes: Sometimes it was demoralizing. You'd actually go there and not talk to a doctor at all. Well that being there, who are you? What are you here for?

Okay, I've gotta go. So whereas other doctors' practices, you'd have a captured audience and it was great and you'd talk to 'em and we used to take our scanners and metabolic their indirect TERs just to show some of the features and services that we offered. And you just had those really good conversations.

And some doctors were lovely and others were not. [00:04:00] But that's okay. That's just the nature of it.

[00:04:02] Stacey Hughes: But it's this something you just persevere with. And like you said, it really. Was worthwhile having that many doctor referrers for us in the end.

[00:04:11] Chris Hughes: I think the best avenue for us was when they would have doctors meetings or professional development meetings and offering to put yourself out there because I think it's easy to assume that doctors are experts in everything, but they're not.

And if you offered to do an update on nutrition advice around. Lowering cholesterol, it can be a little bit hot topic if you like, and so being able to present on something like that would usually capture quite a few doctors. I found that to be quite successful, so yeah, it was quite good. Even the nurses though, most of the referrals are coming from a practice that's got a chronic disease nurse, so really building that relationship with them and meeting with them regularly was really important.

We also do like a research update. I would do a video and send out a research update to a lot of the nurses and doctors and it was quite often the nurses that would give me feedback on that. And I like found it really [00:05:00] interesting whether it was iron supplementation schedules or the latest research around diabetes and nutrition or whatever it may be.

And it just kept you in the, at the forefront of their mind. Yeah. What other stuff do you, can you remember that we did Stace.

[00:05:16] Stacey Hughes: We used to have a healthy food guide subscription that we would send to all the practices. So I think at that time maybe it was about 15 doctor practices and we used to send it with a card or a letter and we'd also put a sticker.

So I'd order a whole heap of healthy food guides. Um, that's like a magazine with heaps of healthy recipes for them. I guess this was pre covid before. When they were allowed to have magazines in their waiting room, and we'd stick a sticker on the front too. Something about with compliments from CQ Nutrition and our details.

But yeah, the nurses, we get the great feedback from the nurses too, wouldn't we about that? I guess it's like that kind of lumpy mail tactic [00:06:00] as well. They're getting something that's not. I guess it's something of interest. They're getting a magazine that's quite informative and entertaining that they can put then in their waiting room as a gift.

So yeah, that was a really effective one.

[00:06:13] Chris Hughes: Yeah, so it was costing us like, let's say $60 or $70 a month. Yes. I think that was a bit of, which is why we probably didn't keep doing it. But yeah, I think it was a unique gift and way to build brand awareness early on. I think that worked quite well. We also did posters up about what we do.

I think it's easy as dietitians, you get pigeonholed into weight loss or whatever. And so the DAA actually had a really good resource that we utilized and put our branding and everything on it and added to it and whatever. And it was all of the conditions that we could help for. And I had many conversations with doctors over the years because it's there in front of 'em.

It was on their desk, and they're like, I didn't realize that this is something you could help with. And particularly now around the mental health space, there's so much that nutrition can play a role. And so keeping that in [00:07:00] front of the doctor is really important.

[00:07:02] Stacey Hughes: Yes, and even just rebranding different resources and things like that, that we could give to the nurses or doctors that, that then they could give to their patients.

[00:07:13] Chris Hughes: We talked about that, like if we're doing that again, is to create like a, a graphic and you could co-brand it with your best referring practices, couldn't you? That would be a pretty cool feature. And it would give the clients just an initial insight into the services and your expertise and what you could offer, but as long as it was providing value to them, and it's a win-win for the doctors because.

They've got nothing to lose. It's just adding value for their clients and putting their brand on it. So that's something that has real merit that we could do.

[00:07:41] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, because now you have things like Canva, tools like Canva, which are easy to create, and there's AI tools built within Canva as well that could create some really awesome infographics.

Things that you could get printed out quite cost effectively from Vistaprint or places like that. And then [00:08:00] give to the referring partner to give out.

[00:08:03] Chris Hughes: I think about our resources now. Like we thought they were pretty cool at the time, but because

[00:08:08] Stacey Hughes: we had a color printer, but yeah,

[00:08:11] Chris Hughes: Canva. Yeah, it just blows your mind what you could do.

Now, we also built, we were established at the time that the eating disorder care plan come out at the back end of 2018, I think it was, and it was very new to the doctors. They like anything new, there was a bit of onboarding and so we took it upon ourselves to become the local expert. And there, there was a downside to this and an upside is that we built a really big referral base off the back of it was the upside, but the downside was that I almost become a hotline for all the nurses and doctors doing these care plans, wanting to know what to do, how do we refer, blah, blah, blah.

And so you were often on the phone for no remuneration, just helping them do these referrals. So we end up building an online calculator for screening tools and going through some of the questionnaires. That could help them then [00:09:00] refer a client on, and that was quite useful. If you're half handy at tech, it's a really good idea to just, how can you make it easier for them to refer?

So an online calculator, particularly what you can do now with a OI, it's something that probably could invest in and advocate to your referrers.

[00:09:16] Stacey Hughes: We also used to do a pre-appointment form that we, this is when we first started, this is probably one of the first things that we did, and we had them printed out as in booklets.

So it was a pre-appointment form. And we gave every referring practice a booklet, didn't we? And then they, it's something they could tear off. And we were still getting those years later too, weren't we?

[00:09:37] Chris Hughes: Well. To the point where we were trying to move away from them to online.

[00:09:42] Stacey Hughes: Yeah. She wanted online

[00:09:43] Chris Hughes: doctors to move online and there was resistance 'cause they loved that little pad, but they just rip it off, give it to the client, and the client would bring it along and so they actually would scan it.

I had many a nurses say to me, care plan nurse, so that they would scan that. And put it in the client's file. 'cause there was a lot of useful [00:10:00] information on there that they could use. So it was that. That was a good tool. But yeah, now with online doing it that way, I probably wouldn't worry about it, but

[00:10:08] Stacey Hughes: wouldn't worry.

Yeah, because you do use QR codes now to go to some sort of online form. Yeah, which would be better to use. But yeah, that was another. Tangible thing that people like to use.

[00:10:21] Chris Hughes: Speaking at conferences was another really big one. I remember there was a point there when early days, and I was a speaker, a nutrition, and another dietitian potentially pulled out of a conference last minute and they asked me to come and present.

Obviously I had nothing prepared and I was extremely nervous. There's gonna be about 200 nurses there that I had to present in front of, but I took it up and did it, and from there I then come back every year and presented at that very same conference, met all of the nurses in the area. Pretty much all was able to expose myself to the nurses.

So never pass up an opportunity to speak particularly to your referral base. [00:11:00] And then the other thing with us too is that it's doctors. Were a big part of it. We didn't invest too much in this, but other allied health practitioners can also be another referral source. We did have meetups and certainly collaborated with other allied health professionals, but I.

The key thing for me was that the doctors get paid to refer to us.

[00:11:19] Stacey Hughes: They were the ones to concentrate on, wasn't it?

[00:11:21] Chris Hughes: It was, yeah, certainly not neglect other allied health professionals, but in terms of where that's going to go, like it was important to invest your time, whether there's gonna be a return on your investment.

[00:11:31] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, creating those relationships with the nurses, which we've spoken about, and sometimes that might mean making them co bringing coffees for them or creating some sort of staff training that you could do for them. So yeah, just always being in the forefront of their mind as well.

[00:11:49] Chris Hughes: And that forefront of their mind was something that we tried to think about constantly.

But the gifts, we never did mouse pad, but we're always thinking, okay, what is their on? Space or [00:12:00] desk that we could do that. Were there reminding, and I've seen exercise physiologists do this well, like correct sitting techniques for posture and things, which I thought was quite clever because it's right there for the doctors to use.

And so I'm thinking like if you're doing sort of infographics and they could hand out to clients or, I love the idea of we didn't do this moving forward doing a new nutrition business. I would do this where you would do a client journey case study. Now, whether that was a video format or just a little one page document, if the client has been diagnosed with diabetes and they come to see us, this is the process that they may follow on the outcomes we'd expect.

Yeah, I think that would be quite useful. Whether it's a booklet or video, like it's gotta be the easiest format. For the whoever's receiving it. I'd probably collaborate more with pharmacies as well, like some sort of lead magnet or something within pharmacies. 'cause most people are going from the doctor to the pharmacy and there's a real nutrition focus at pharmacies.

So doing something like that or. Doing like [00:13:00] an ebook now, like with something like meals, you can do recipe eBooks, that you can do that as a free lead magnet where clients could get a free customized recipe ebook by scanning a QR code at the doctor's surgery, and then it's branded as yours. And then there's information within that recipe ebook that's all about your business, and they can book an appointment and everything the way we've got the features set up in the recipe ebook.

So there's a lot that you can do, like in terms of marketing. When I was thinking about this podcast, I'm like, oh crap, what did we do? We didn't do that much. But when you sit down and think about the eight years worth of business there, there's a lot that we did do. And then there's so much more you can do now with the tech that's available.

Now. What about the public? So this, you've marketed your referrer base. What about now targeting the public? What did we do that worked well?

[00:13:46] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, we obviously had a website and we'd had a WordPress website from the very beginning. And to amplify it, we had the SEO optimized blogs, so you would write blogs.

This is obviously before ai, so it [00:14:00] wasn't as easy to do. You would create blogs and we would upload them to our website. So yeah, our website was actually really good. SEO optimized, and I'd done a few courses as well. Around that, making sure that it was SEO optimized.

[00:14:17] Chris Hughes: Yeah, and we had Annie as well. Annie was a, oh, that's

[00:14:19] Stacey Hughes: right.

[00:14:20] Chris Hughes: Writer. So we'd pay one of our dietitians to

[00:14:22] Stacey Hughes: write a regular blog. So yeah, we'd actually do a weekly blog, I'm pretty sure. So we paid her for a number of ones to write. So if writing's not your forte, you could think about hiring someone and getting them to do a package of 10 or 20 blogs that you could easily upload to your website.

[00:14:39] Chris Hughes: Look, I, I think with AI now,

[00:14:41] Stacey Hughes: yeah, you probably just do it through, you could do

[00:14:43] Chris Hughes: day. The key thing with AI though, and some people see it as cheating, but. For me, I'll use a I to give me the foundation of a blog and then I'll still spend 20 to 30 minutes refining it, matting personal touches, and it's just given me the structure.

And then obviously you've always gotta validate some of the stuff that AI [00:15:00] spits out at you as well. You gotta make sure what you would actually say and that it's evidence based, but it's certainly really helps to craft the structure and it makes it so much easier. So in term blogs is just a no brainer, and particularly when you just ask it to do SEO optimized blogs and put that in your prompts.

Say, I need you to act like a world leading copywriter. I need an SEO optimized blog on blah, blah, blah. Yes, give it plenty of detail. But yeah, definitely an optimized blog with some call to actions to go book an appointment or download your free ebook, collect their email. So again, we talked about the Kajabi on here before, but.

Using like some sort of tool like Kajabi, where you're collecting their email for a free gift that you're giving them as a result of that reading that blog. So it's like a call to action as part of that?

[00:15:48] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, and you can put those on Facebook and Instagram ads as well if you post about your blog on Facebook and Instagram and then no one sees that post.

You could turn [00:16:00] that post into ads, show new people, they see the ad, and then they click through to your website.

[00:16:06] Chris Hughes: Stacy has her own business, Stacy hughes.co. So you actually honed your craft on our business, so you Facebook ads and met her ads through our business and that was able to grow our following court substantially through ads.

[00:16:19] Stacey Hughes: I would concentrate now more on the lead form ads. So the form on Facebook and Instagram has been a lot of changes with, or things to make better in that space around lead form ads. So I would do that And just explain that

[00:16:33] Chris Hughes: just so that you're capturing their details.

[00:16:35] Stacey Hughes: Yeah. So you're capturing their name and email, so you're either deliver something of value, so on the last page of the form they can download something.

So maybe it might be either five. Things you need to buy at the supermarket to lose weight or something like that. Some sort of checklist or downloadable. But you've got their name and email or I would, yeah, like brand awareness type ones, but using the lead [00:17:00] form, so get their name and email and maybe a bit more information.

Ask them some qualifying questions like, are you interested in seeing a dietitian? Or, yeah, something like that. And then nurturing them on email once you've got that name and email and just explaining about the process of seeing a dietitian, how much it costs, that type of thing.

[00:17:19] Chris Hughes: One of the best marketing tools that we used was the postcard.

You remember the postcard?

[00:17:25] Stacey Hughes: Yeah. Postcards. I totally forgot about this until you reminded me about the postcards.

[00:17:29] Chris Hughes: We would get 300 odd referrals a week. We had quite a big business, and we'd get quite a few referrals. And these were care plans mostly, or DVA or whatever it may be. Some of those referrals, I forget what the percentage was, but maybe 10, 20% never acted on it.

States come up with an idea and there's a business out there where you could actually do all this online, put in the client's address. It would send them a postcard that you've created the copy for, and we would offer an incentive to come for their first appointment. It might be a free meal plan or [00:18:00] something to that effect.

I remember the return on investment. I think the postcards posted out, all printed and everything, were about a dollar or $2 each, which might sound expensive, but we would send out maybe a thousand or something, but it would be more than a $30 return. So for every dollar we invested, we were getting $30 back, and that was, I do remember we were only measuring that on the initial metric of first appointment.

So that wasn't counting whether that person come back 2, 3, 4 times.

[00:18:28] Stacey Hughes: Yeah,

[00:18:29] Chris Hughes: so it was such a great marketing strategy that I, again, was skeptical about, but it paid off. It was huge. 'cause no one gets mail anymore.

[00:18:38] Stacey Hughes: No, but it was something we got our VAs to do because we would download the data, the people's names and emails and how many visits they had left that were unused.

But we'd put it into an online program and that would, that program would send the postcards, so that was worth it.

[00:18:58] Chris Hughes: So maybe when we added up the time, it was [00:19:00] more than a dollar.

[00:19:01] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, but still, I think whatever it was we worked out, it was well worth it. And we only knew that from collecting that data of.

What we'd received, how many people then came for their appointments? So we were emailing and texting and calling them, but then they also received a postcard as well. So that was worth, yeah, it's

[00:19:24] Chris Hughes: so many touch points.

[00:19:25] Stacey Hughes: There's so many touch, and that's Google. Everyone's coming out now that people need 20 touch points before they.

Purchase with someone so that obviously that might be different when they've got a chronic disease and they have to come for the appointment. But still, it's just that principle about the different touch points and being again, in the front of people's minds.

[00:19:46] Chris Hughes: Plenty. Well, yeah, that's a lot. Okay. It's a full-time job marketing.

Um, now we had a huge email list and we've said on this podcast before, we didn't probably utilize it to the best of our ability. Yeah. But there was times where we did, and [00:20:00] certainly I think now that you're talking about 20 touch points, having some sort of like email sequence once they opt into, so let's say they had downloaded a free me lead magnet checklist recipe ebook, that then qualifies them for a email sequence and it might be.

An email sequence on diet modifications to enhance bone strength or something, and then they get an email every day for a week that provides really value, nutrition based tips that you know is gonna help them. So it, I think something like that, once you've set it up, is low cost and it just adds to those touch points, doesn't it?

[00:20:37] Stacey Hughes: Yes, definitely.

[00:20:39] Chris Hughes: We also used to do like a recipe videos. So we used to do a recipe series, didn't we? We'd put recipes together. They were always popular, but it's just, it was a time consuming exercise.

[00:20:50] Stacey Hughes: It was time consuming. And you bought equipment and set up your phone and cameras to record it, and then yeah, that was time consuming.

[00:21:00] But we. We remember we used to do cooking classes as well, so we'd get people in to learn how to cook basically. And we'd just do really basic recipes. But they were really popular as well.

[00:21:13] Chris Hughes: They were, yeah, maybe we always charged for the cost of food. We made it really cheap.

[00:21:16] Stacey Hughes: Yes. Like $20 or something maybe.

[00:21:19] Chris Hughes: And we, yeah, you'd get a good uptake from it, which was great. Or we made sure all of our offices were set up with cooking facilities, health expos. They're always really hard though, weren't they? Like you? You never really know. What your return on investment is, and that doesn't mean they don't work. When the NDIS was established, we went to a number of health expos.

[00:21:37] Stacey Hughes: They're always on a weekend, so that sometimes was tricky. Yeah. Like it's a whole day on a weekend. Hard to gauge whether the return on investment was, but. Yeah, probably in terms of brand awareness and getting people familiar with what a dietitian does, that was helpful.

[00:21:55] Chris Hughes: We, the NDI spo we certainly got business from, but just with all the tools out there now [00:22:00] where you can measure your metrics and return on investment.

Yeah. Things like that where you, it's difficult to measure. It's, it's hard to say how successful they were, but they, they, they didn't, especially if you

[00:22:09] Stacey Hughes: did have to pay for your site too, because sometimes, yeah, remember there were some that were like $500 for your site.

[00:22:17] Chris Hughes: So if you put $500 into ads, it might get a

[00:22:20] Stacey Hughes: better return.

It's hard to say,

[00:22:21] Chris Hughes: isn't it? Same with sponsoring local sports teams or fence. It's good from a generosity local community spirit aspect, but I just don't think we ever got a return or any feedback from it. If you get your brand on the back of a shirt that no one notices, I don't wanna deter anyone from sponsoring their local footy team, but I think we ever got a huge return from that.

[00:22:43] Stacey Hughes: It's more just goodwill and things like that, isn't it?

[00:22:46] Chris Hughes: What about Google My business? We were pretty good with Google my business. Yeah,

[00:22:48] Stacey Hughes: Google My business is still a very strong marketing tactic even today, and we used to have our VAs Post on there regularly, so I would recommend people still do that.

Yeah. And I use it [00:23:00] in my business to collect. Testimonials, but I know we didn't do that. Or CQ Nutrition.

[00:23:05] Chris Hughes: Yes. So testimonials. It's, I understand why we can't use testimonials For anyone that is a nutrition professional that's not regulated in their profession, they probably can use testimonials, but certainly dietitians being a regulated profession can't use them and they can't for the reason that could be manipulated.

Which ultimately could influence someone's decision to, to engage with services, which could be misleading, which is, it's a real shame because word of mouth that testimonial or other users experience is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, isn't it? This,

[00:23:39] Stacey Hughes: yeah, definitely.

[00:23:41] Chris Hughes: So it's, it's a tough one, but if you go to the Apple website, there's a few things with it.

Okay. So a testimonial that you've got no control over. So it's testimonials in advertising essentially. So as long as you, if you've got no control over it on your Google page or on a review page or whatever it [00:24:00] is, and they've done it, they've found it, and you've got no control over that. That's a, so that

[00:24:04] Stacey Hughes: would be Google my business.

'cause they could review you on Google.

[00:24:08] Chris Hughes: Yes. But you don't want to be sharing, you can't

[00:24:10] Stacey Hughes: send it out.

[00:24:11] Chris Hughes: Yes. So they've gotta do that independently. You can't manipulate the review or you can't do it anyway. On Google My business, I don't, no. But as long, like you can't take clips out and edit it, but they can, you can use a testimonial.

There is ways you can use testimonials if they're not talking about clinical outcomes. So if they're talking about the friendliness of your staff or the ease of making an appointment or their experience with the service, as long as it's not related to the clinical outcome side of it. So there, there are ways you can use them, but yeah, you just gotta be very careful if you're a regulated profession.

[00:24:48] Stacey Hughes: And what would be the worst case scenario?

[00:24:51] Chris Hughes: Are you flaunting the law?

[00:24:53] Stacey Hughes: No, I'm just asking what would be just, I'm just wanna know, will you lose your license? Oh, I'd imagine

[00:24:59] Chris Hughes: there'd be a warning and burn your

[00:24:59] Stacey Hughes: [00:25:00] practice down. What? What do they do?

[00:25:02] Chris Hughes: You gotta do the right thing. Now. One of our best marketing tools was a health challenge, 30

[00:25:09] Stacey Hughes: day health challenge.

[00:25:11] Chris Hughes: Now these, you could do smaller versions of this. That was pretty extreme in the end. Like we put up a big prize money and it was really about people doing a nutrition course. But we social media following triple. Over the space of probably two years

[00:25:25] Stacey Hughes: and we probably invested the most we ever invested in ads.

We did do for the Health Challenge, but that also increased our list quite significantly every time we ran the Health Challenge.

[00:25:38] Chris Hughes: Yeah. Yeah. So that if you've got a niche, you could do a challenge. It doesn't have to be over the top, but it's just gives some, gives people something to take part in. And they get to know you and they're engaged in it.

And so I, it was a really useful process for us. So I would recommend that highly, like it can be done quite well. It doesn't [00:26:00] have to be too commercial in nature, but it certainly can be done and provide value to people. So yeah, it was great for us.

[00:26:07] Stacey Hughes: Even we would do smaller versions of that, and I think during Covid as well, when we weren't able to do the in-person things was like a seven day reset or a 30 day reset or something like that.

We used to have a tangible seven day reset book that we would sell or have in our clinics. So yeah, that was something that you could just do a smaller scale down version of that type of thing.

[00:26:30] Chris Hughes: Also something that we did towards the end was a podcast, and there's also advertising on Spotify too, another avenue, but having your own podcast or going on other people's podcasts, right?

If you are working in the online space, I think it's quite useful from a local aspect. I used to have a weekly spot on the local radio A, B, C.

[00:26:51] Stacey Hughes: And

[00:26:51] Chris Hughes: that was hugely successful for us from a local standpoint. If I was more online, I would just focus on a podcast. So a broader audience [00:27:00] nationally or internationally, whatever you wanna do.

But then locally, yeah, that, that local radio gig was huge for us 'cause

[00:27:06] Stacey Hughes: and we would even like really amplify it with our social media content too. So we would say things like, you know, join. Make sure you tune in on Wednesday to listen to Chris Hughes on that segment on the A, B, C. And then once you would do it, we would put it on social media as well as a recording and things like that.

So we really amplified that content,

[00:27:28] Chris Hughes: but it also gave us content. Yeah, it, we could repurpose that content. Repurpose it. Yeah. I had to come up with content every week.

[00:27:36] Stacey Hughes: Yeah.

[00:27:36] Chris Hughes: And quite often it was research based or it might've been theme-based. dietitians Week or Christmas,

[00:27:42] Stacey Hughes: or, yeah, yeah.

[00:27:42] Chris Hughes: Christmas, whatever it was.

But otherwise it was research updates and yeah, it was great. Wasn't it like in terms of the content it gave us, like it was such a good tool. Another thing we did was a Facebook group.

[00:27:54] Stacey Hughes: Oh, yes. We still have that Facebook group today,

[00:27:58] Chris Hughes: so it's quite, that's quite useful [00:28:00] because you've got a captured audience.

Obviously they don't see every single post, but it's a good way to collect like-minded people so you know what they're in there for. So I found I've, we found that quite useful and built that up over the time we had it. And then also doing live. On Facebook was quite good. So I remember there was a period there where lives were new and so they would get a lot more reach and so Stacey would've a gun to my head and I'd have to be on Facebook.

Doing lives all the time is probably where I become. I wouldn't say confident, but accepted the fact that I had to get in front of a camera. Yeah. Even the head like this. And so we'd jump on and do Q and As and say, I think that's a really good tool locally as well. 'cause you can promote that, couldn't you?

You could promote that locally, that there's a webinar or whatever coming up and people could engage with.

[00:28:50] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, and even you could do a regular segment or something like a show or something like that, like once a week, maybe [00:29:00] every Wednesday on I will come up with a catchy title or something that that is something you could introduce like today, which would be quite effective.

You could do it on any of the platforms where you do like a regular segment. Yeah.

[00:29:12] Chris Hughes: Remember, you and I used to do product reviews.

[00:29:15] Stacey Hughes: Oh, that's right. Product reviews. Yeah.

[00:29:17] Chris Hughes: You used to ask me,

[00:29:18] Stacey Hughes: I'd buy some things at the supermarket and say, are these good or not? Yeah, that was really good. We should get back into doing those.

[00:29:24] Chris Hughes: Yeah, you'd buy 'em and I'd eat them and do a review after I've eaten them. Yeah,

[00:29:28] Stacey Hughes: people loved them. They really did.

[00:29:31] Chris Hughes: Yeah. So with that then, so let's say you promote putting money behind a Facebook ad for lives, some sort of regular feature, the retargeting ads, you can set up from that as well. 'cause we used to use that.

[00:29:41] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, so retargeting is just people that have engaged with you. So the more people you get engaging with you on in any way, going to your website, on Instagram, on Facebook, watching your videos, watching your reels, commenting, liking, sharing, saving your posts, or any of those things, you can retarget those people.

[00:29:59] Chris Hughes: What if they've [00:30:00] just viewed it? Have they actually gotta like

[00:30:01] Stacey Hughes: it? They don't have to like it. They can just go show more even if they just paused on it. Okay. Face meta knows that, but if they did, you know the show more and they read more of the caption. Any type of engagement at all is captured by meta and that's a signal that's a person that's interested in your content.

[00:30:21] Chris Hughes: Remember we had, and we've spoken about this on this podcast, is we built an online calculator. Like a calorie calculator.

[00:30:28] Stacey Hughes: Yes.

[00:30:28] Chris Hughes: But we capture email. So it's a good lead magnet tool. But the retargeting would've,

[00:30:32] Stacey Hughes: yeah. 'cause you're sending people to your websites. We would retarget those people as well. Yeah.

[00:30:37] Chris Hughes: Yeah. And that was quite useful then too, then, because it's uh, yeah. Helps with the SEO and everything as well, doesn't it?

[00:30:42] Stacey Hughes: It does. Yes.

[00:30:43] Chris Hughes: So some sort of online quiz would be quite useful. Online calculator. Yeah, they're really build. If you need help, you're out. I'm happy to help someone. But that'll pretty simple to build.

And particularly now with ai, you can build them quite easily. Now also, we would do. This is probably the last of the things that we would [00:31:00] do. I can't think of too much else that we did, but like awareness day campaigns. So you just tap into whatever, and this is a bit hard to stay on top of because every day or every week it's international

[00:31:10] Stacey Hughes: or something,

[00:31:11] Chris Hughes: but just staying in tune with that and using that as part of your content strategy.

[00:31:15] Stacey Hughes: This would really help with you for free PR as well, because often it would be the local radio STA or local TV stations that would ring you up on New Year's. Day or things like that, and you get a bit of free PR from being active for these types of things. I can't remember any other ones, but yeah, probably Celiac Week or something like that.

Maybe you got some free PR that week.

[00:31:38] Chris Hughes: I remember I, I wrote a blog that went viral about those drinks and I was on Mama m Yes,

[00:31:44] Stacey Hughes: those sport, I can't remember what they were called now. The Strength Prime drink. So yeah, finding that topical. Topic that's big in the news and then leveraging that and trying to get in the media.

[00:31:58] Chris Hughes: Yeah. Yeah, so that one was [00:32:00] on meals. That was when we didn't have our, we'd sold Seeking nutrition by then. I still get like hundreds of views on that.

[00:32:08] Stacey Hughes: Yeah. Amazing.

[00:32:09] Chris Hughes: Yeah, a lot of our traffic coming from the us. Okay. So they're the things we did, what we didn't do that I would probably use now was Google Ads.

What are your thoughts on putting money behind Google Ads?

[00:32:19] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, learning Google ads, I'd probably learn that myself and do it because yeah, it probably wouldn't be that cost effective to hire an agency to do your Google search ads. But yeah, definitely spending some time investing in learning that and putting some money into it would be great.

[00:32:37] Chris Hughes: I've seen a lot of people do discovery calls, like free 15 minute discovery calls and look, that obviously works for people if they keep doing it. For me, bulk billing appointments, Medicare appointments can be a bit of a discovery call if you're quite clear on what that first appointment is. It's a collection of information and a rapport building session.

You might as well get paid for it is [00:33:00] my, my theory around that. Certainly that is an option for a lot of people. I know it's certainly big in the states where they do discovery calls. I think if you've got something like Medicare IT connect as a bit of a discovery call process.

[00:33:12] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, I think that, yeah, that's a lot of time, and I know I use it for my business, but it can be quite exhausting when you're on Zoom all day doing free 15 minute discovery calls.

[00:33:25] Chris Hughes: Understand that for a business like yours where the, the packages are a higher cost. But if you are charging a hundred or $200 for a consult, which is gonna be 30 to 60 minutes and you're giving away 15 minutes for free, on top of that, they don't see that as good value. But anyway, some people use it and good honor, it must be working for them.

Something that I would do moving forward is really target that corporate wellness space.

[00:33:49] Stacey Hughes: Yes,

[00:33:49] Chris Hughes: and that's something, it fell in our lap, but we didn't really go after that. But I would be going out seeing how it could work with corporate partners about offering services and value to their [00:34:00] employees from a nutrition standpoint.

[00:34:02] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, definitely LinkedIn. That would be a space to really promote those services that you have.

[00:34:08] Chris Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You can put programs together. Certainly the recipe eBooks with meals. Again, I'll give that another plug, but that's a pretty cool feature in terms of you could collect the emails of the clientele.

They get a free recipe ebook, and then within that recipe, ebook little webpage on your services and what you can offer. Little buttons where they could book an appointment or book a call or whatever it may be. So yeah, certainly that is something that we do. We didn't, I've said earlier, we didn't really nurture our email list, but you could do that with SMS or WhatsApp or Messenger now where people opt in and you just do a tip of the week or recipe of the week where you just keeping that relationship nurturing over time, couldn't you?

[00:34:49] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, definitely. We did use SMSA fair bit, obviously. Yeah.

[00:34:53] Chris Hughes: Marketing. Yeah.

[00:34:56] Stacey Hughes: Not consistent one. We probably used it for one-off [00:35:00] strategies, or if months like April where it's a really hard month income wise because of all the public holidays and staff off and things like that, I think we would use SMS in times like that.

[00:35:12] Chris Hughes: Yeah, and I suppose you've gotta be careful too with SMS.

[00:35:15] Stacey Hughes: People can opt out.

[00:35:16] Chris Hughes: Yeah, it only make

[00:35:17] Stacey Hughes: it easy for them to opt out. That's the only condition

[00:35:20] Chris Hughes: there. They make it not annoying too. They might like the first tip, but then get the shit with the rest. You'd be conscious about it, but WhatsApp and Messenger and that I think would be quite useful.

Email certainly still there.

[00:35:30] Stacey Hughes: I really like the idea of an online workshop series. I think that's, a lot of people say webinars are dead, but I really don't think so. It just creates that human connection.

[00:35:39] Chris Hughes: Would you do it for free? Yeah, I would do

[00:35:41] Stacey Hughes: it for free. Run ads to it, get people to register, have some type of call to action at the end of it.

[00:35:47] Chris Hughes: Just keep it nice and simple though.

[00:35:49] Stacey Hughes: Simple and short. We don't want, people don't, especially if you're doing it at nighttime, when people are tired, keep it short.

[00:35:55] Chris Hughes: And it wouldn't even have to be a three part, you could do it in a one part, couldn't you?

[00:35:58] Stacey Hughes: Yeah. You could just do a one webinar. Yeah, [00:36:00] one webinar.

Getting in front of the camera, talking about your topic, creating that human connection, and then giving them a call to action at the end. All of this

[00:36:08] Chris Hughes: is marketing and attracting new clients, but you know, if, if you've been in the business for a while, think about how can you leverage. More business from your existing client 'cause it's five times cheaper.

Or they say five to 25 times cheaper to get more business from an existing client than it is to go and chase a new client.

[00:36:29] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, that's right.

[00:36:31] Chris Hughes: So you know whether it was referrals or your marketing to your existing client base to come back again and access more services.

[00:36:39] Stacey Hughes: Yeah, like I guess things are focused on, on your new customers or new clients growing your list and then what you do, your marketing activities to your existing clients.

[00:36:50] Chris Hughes: There's a fair bit there. Like we, when we talk about this for a podcast episode, I'm like, oh, there's, is there enough to talk about? But there's probably between the two, there's a good 50 odd [00:37:00] tools strategy there.

[00:37:01] Stacey Hughes: Yeah.

[00:37:02] Chris Hughes: So there's certainly enough you can do this. Hopefully, if you've listened to this, you can get plenty of value outta that.

And

[00:37:07] Stacey Hughes: yeah, it let us know on Instagram what your favorite one is and what one you're going to implement.

[00:37:13] Chris Hughes: If you're interested in the recipe, eBooks for meals E I'll give that a plug. Yeah, yell out. I'll give you a demo just to show you the automated eBooks because they're, once you set them up, the clients fill out the form, you're, it's all hands off.

You actually don't have to do anything and it just produces customized recipe eBooks that have your business features and buttons and stuff in it that you can help promote your business. Alright, thanks Sta. Thanks for your time. No worries. Appreciate you giving it up.

[00:37:39] Stacey Hughes: I do. Thank you and talk soon.

[00:37:42] Chris Hughes: Do you find this podcast valuable?

There may be other nutrition professionals out there Will also, if you like, share and subscribe. It's going to help other nutrition professionals make an impact on the world just like you.

Thanks.