How to Get Clients as a Nutritionist: 11 Top Tips

Coming up with how to get clients as a nutritionist, and expand your customer base, can be tricky.

Fortunately, we’ve got a list of 11 different tips for how to get nutrition clients so you can focus on honing your expertise and coming up with the best nutrition plans!

Before we start, if you’re interested in creating a holistic wellness plan for clients, why not invest in a diploma in personal training?

You can also download our free course prospectus to find out about our other Level 4 personal trainer courses!

#1 - Use Social Media Ads to Attract More Nutrition Clients

First on our list for how to get clients as a nutritionist is using social media advertising to boost your presence online and direct people to your site and services.

The popularity and prevalence of social media makes it one of the most effective platforms and arenas to find new clients, as well as being accessible, and relatively inexpensive in comparison to other advertising methods.

In fact, depending on the parameters you set, and what you want your ad to do, you will often pay-per-click.

This means you only pay when the ad has been successful, and people click through it to land on your desired web page. 

Below is the data from our own social media advertising. Firstly, you can see how many impressions have been made, meaning how many times our content has been put in front of people:

This is a huge number which in turn creates ‘leads’, or contact information from people interested in signing up for your service:

The two main platforms you’ll do this on are Facebook and Instagram. We’ll look at these individually now so you know how to set them up and start gaining clients!

Use Facebook for Nutritionist Social Media Ads 

If you want to know how to get nutrition clients using Facebook ads, the most effective will be pay-per-click.

When you create a Facebook ad you have two options:

• Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Pay-per-impression (PPI) 

Pay-per-impression (PPI) is for when you want to grow your following and awareness of your brand, so this isn’t as effective if you’re looking to get more clients!

With PPC, you can set a specific budget and pay every time somebody clicks through the ad and to your sign-up page for your website. 

You’ll need to set up a Facebook account if you haven’t already:

You’ll then need to create a separate page that’s purely for business purposes rather than a personal account:

Learning how to create fitness Facebook ads is a crucial skill if you want to know how to get more clients as a nutritionist. 

This from A Healthier & Stronger You is a great example of a successful and succinct ad:

By downloading this resource you can use people’s email addresses to check in with them and begin the sales process, opening a dialogue and building rapport!

People are much more likely to pay attention to and when there’s something on offer and a free resource is a great way to do that.

They’re a cost effective way of promoting your business and reaching a broad range of people!

Using Instagram Ads to Get More Nutrition Clients

Learning how to get clients as a nutrition coach means you’ll want to utilise advertising across several different platforms.

This will allow you to target different age demographics and test out different strategies for different socials. 

Similar to Facebook, you can choose to run a campaign based on impressions or clicks to a certain web page.

Instagram also has a higher engagement but it goes through the same software and design as Facebook because they’re owned by the same company.

This means you’ve got all the customisable options of a Facebook ad with the wider engagement and reach of Instagram!

Once you’ve created your ad it will look something like this:

The copy on this ad is short and sweet, giving people plenty of information without bombarding them with text.

Having the Daily Express story and logo in the ad also adds credibility and trustworthiness to the brand by association.

You should also include this kind of social proofing in your own ads. Having testimonials and comments from previous clients proves a positive experience from a source prospective clients can trust!

You can find detailed instructions on the Meta website, as below:

As you can see, you can choose to run the ad across all Facebook platforms including Instagram, to reach a wider audience.

#2 - How To Get More Clients As A Nutritionist With Google Ads

The reason Google Ads play such an important role in how to get clients as a nutritionist is that it’s one of the most effective ways of getting people to find your brand.

Google is the largest platform in the world and you can guarantee that people will use it to find the services they want.

This means that you can feel pretty confident all of your potential clients will turn to Google when they’re looking for a nutritionist.

You base your ad on certain search terms, for example ‘nutritionist in Liverpool’, so that your ad will show at the top of the first Google page when people search for this term. 

For example, here’s our own Google ad for a similar search term:

The more you narrow down your search terms the more likely you are to rank highly. 

For example, if you localise your keyword (including your location), you won’t have to compete with companies or services on a national level in the same way, targeting your market more directly.

It’s easy to set these up with your Google account:

For more information on targeting specific demographics, check out our exploration of the top 9 strategies for marketing your nutrition business. 

Similar to social media ads you can set a budget and objective for your ad, deciding how long you want to run the ad for and what you want to get out of it for your business.

Google ads also pay-per-click too, so you’ll only need to pay when the ad works and people click through to your website!

However, ranking for particular terms may involve bidding for ones when they’re competitive. If several businesses want to rank for a particular search term, only the company that has bid the most will rank with their ad.

You should be aware of this when you’re creating your ad budget to see how much competition there is for your niche and location!

#3 - How To Get Clients As A Nutrition Coach Using Google My Business

Next up for how to get clients as a nutritionist is by using Google My Business. This is another Google service that will provide you with clients and allow people to find your services.

The key feature of Google My Business is that people will find you in a local search. This is where people search based on location, like our example before, ‘nutrition course Liverpool'.

When the search term has a location, meaning it’s a local search, this is what’s called “high intent”.

Essentially this means that whoever is doing the search is already prepared to invest in your services and is actively seeking something in your specific market.

Someone searching ‘nutritionist Liverpool’ wants to find and pay for nutrition services in Limerick, so they’re further along in the sales process than people who, for example, see your ad on Instagram.

You can include the following in your listing:

• Contact details
• Reviews
• Address
• Photos
• Website

Having everything streamlined in this way makes it easier for people to contact you and be directed to your website.

Having reviews will build people’s trust in your brand and show your previous successes with other clients.

Our complete guide to Google My Business for fitness professionals will tell you more about the service and how you can optimise it to get nutrition clients!

Putting work into your other features, like your website and social media pages, will improve your ranking on Google and help your business page climb to the top like these:

We’ll look at these details later, when we talk about how to get clients as a nutritionist using an effectively optimised website!

#4 - How To Get Clients As A Nutritionist By Utilising Social Media Communities 

If you’re wondering how to get clients as a nutritionist, one of the easiest ways is by creating an online community, or contributing to one, which centres around nutrition.

One of the easiest ways to do this is through Facebook groups, which has a huge range of existing groups, and simple tools with which to create your own.

The benefits of creating your own group are that you’ll have control and focus. You can be the centre of the group and ensure the focus is on engaging with your professional services!

You’ll be able to use it as a research tool to see what members of the community want out of their nutritional services, using this to improve and better tailor your service.

You can assert your expertise and encourage people to pay for nutritional packages and advice by:

• Answering people’s questions in comments
• Doing informational and educational posts
• Offering recipe ideas
• Offering hints and tips for certain goals
• Encouraging people to discuss, where comfortable, their current nutritional lifestyle choices

Take Shelley Rael as a great example. If you provide a useful and interesting space for people to join, you could end up with a huge amount of members:

Starting your own Facebook group is an easy step for how to get clients as a nutrition coach. Once you’ve made an account you can click on the following button to create a page:

You’ll then be able to add members you already know and add suggested members based on their existing interests. 

You can invite people to join and get the ball rolling with posts and discussions!

#5 - Use Bark To Bid For Nutritionist Clients

Bark is a platform where you can get linked with individual clients who are searching for a service that you offer.

The reason this is one of the best options for how to get clients as a nutritionist is that people are more directly connected to your business.

Just like what we said about Google Ads, and localised searches, people going through channels like these are “high intent” and more ready to sign up for what you’re offering.

You sign up by providing details of where you are, the services you offer, and the distance you’re willing to cater to.

You’ll then get provided with a list of potential clients within that radius and be provided with details of their:

• Age
• Goal
• Dietary restrictions
• How many other professionals have contacted them already regarding their needs
• How they want to work e.g if you want to become an online nutritionist you can see whether clients would be happy to work remotely

If you’re wondering how to get clients as a nutrition coach as directly as possible, this is one of the best options.

This is because, similar to fitness email marketing, you’ve got a direct line to your potential clients. 

Your search will bring up all of the aforementioned details, plus contact information for the potential clients:

You need to pay for credits in order to do this, to receive people’s contact details and start to discuss their nutritional needs. 

How many credits each client’s information is worth depends on the potential income of working with that client. So, how much you pay is relative to how much you could make.

For example, you can buy 80 credits and this equates to around 10 leads: 

#6 - Use A Referral Scheme To Gain Nutrition Clients

Using a referral scheme is one of the best ways to source customers when you know how. 

To gain new nutrition and wellness clients you can capitalise on the strength and rapport you’ve built with existing ones, so that they recommend your services to people they know and encourage them to sign up!

This is where you get an existing client to refer a friend in exchange for a discount they can both share.

The reason this is so effective is that you’re reinforcing a positive relationship with an existing client, by rewarding them, whilst also potentially gaining a new one!

Also your existing client is providing an endorsement of your business and services to their friend or family member by doing this.

People are much more likely to trust an opinion of somebody who’s already used a service, and had a positive experience, especially if it’s somebody they know. 

A great example of how you could do this is Datum Sorti Wellness:

As you can see, by referring a friend or family member, both the client and the friend get a discount on their programme.

This will benefit you as well as the client because you’ll be gaining a customer, and building trust in your brand and services, whilst offering a great deal to your clients! 

---

If you’re finding this helpful, why not check out some of our other articles about nutrition and business?

• How to Write a Nutrition Business Plan
• How to Become a Sports Nutritionist
• How to Write a Nutritionist Bio: Step-by-Step Guidance

#7 - How To Get Clients As A Nutritionist By Creating And Optimising A Website

If you’re interested in how to get clients as a nutritionist, one of the most obvious and effective ways is through a dedicated website.

Having a website that’s got all of your information, whilst also being easy to navigate, is one of the best options for how to get new clients as a nutritionist.

But how exactly can you optimise your web page to ensure that you get more people landing on it, signing more people up for your services once they’re there?

The biggest way is by focusing on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). We’ll run through this a little now.

Focus On SEO To Optimise Your Nutrition Website 

Search Engine Optimization is a set of factors that will help you to rank higher on Google when people search for certain terms related to your business.

Some examples of this include: 

• SEO driven blog posts that provide educational material for your target market
• Optimising the pages on your website where people sign up for your services, using keywords and search terms in this copy
• Writing the copy on your website in a succinct and thorough manner
• Make your website mobile friendly, checking it looks right on a mobile device as well as a computer or laptop

In simple terms, the higher you rank, the more likely people are to click on your page. In fact, the first organic results on Google (that isn’t a paid ad), gets a quarter of all clicks through!

After that, the second and third drop dramatically so the more you can boost your ranking, the more you’ll get new nutrition clients!

This is why it’s such an important step in how to get nutrition clients. You can do this in a variety of ways and we’ll look at each now in more detail.

How to Rank Higher Using Blog Posts

Writing informational blog posts on relevant nutritional topics is important if you want to know how to get nutrition clients.

This is because it will assert your expertise and give the person both a useful resource and an insight into the quality of your service.

You can include some of these SEO features we’ve already mentioned to boost your content and rank higher on Google: 

• Writing in a succinct and clear way
• Including links to other pages on your site to narrow people down to the sales pages
• Do keyword research to find out key search terms from your demographic

We’ll look at keyword research in a little more detail now.

How Keyword Research Can Boost Your Blog Posts 

These blog posts, as well as the copy that you write on your site about what it is that you offer, should include keyword research.

Keywords are words or phrases that people regularly search for, related to your business. By including these in your writing, you will rank higher for that word and more people looking for things related to your business will land on your web page!

You can find these keywords with research tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs:

Once you’ve discovered some keywords and search terms, this will shape how you write your blog and what you include.

You should choose the content of your blog based on the keywords you find as this will tell you what your target audience want to read and know!

This will then cement you as an industry expert and somebody who understands the wider scope of nutrition and the industry that you’re a part of!

For example, Rachael Hartley’s blog The Joy of Eating showcases her expertise in her niche, intuitive eating:

She writes content around intuitive eating based keywords to reach her target audience and assert that she’s an industry expert in this area.

Our article on How to Get More Clients from a Fitness Blog: Step-by-Step has plenty of tips you can use for your nutritionist website too!

#8 - Establish a Niche to Get More Nutrition Clients 

Next up for how to get yourself clients as a nutritionist is to make sure your brand has a niche. 

This is something that you offer specifically, or an area that you specialise in, that makes you stand out from the crowd.

Having a niche, rather than just offering generic nutritional services, means that you’ll have a specific, target market that you can corner.

It will also give you a USP (unique selling point), and encourage people to sign up for your services because you can offer bespoke, specialised advice.

There’s nothing to stop you branching out and offering a huge range of holistic services under this umbrella if you know how.

To get nutrition clients you could specialise in:

• Vegan and plant based nutrition
• Pregnancy nutrition
• For particular goals such as weight loss or to support a particular exercise regime
• For a particular medical condition such as a IBS or skin conditions like acne

Once you’ve asserted yourself as an expert in this area, you can be the go-to specialist for this particular niche.

The Vegan Nutritionist is a great example of this. She specialises in vegan and plant based diets without limiting what it is that she actually does with her clients:

As you can see, though she specialises in vegetarian and vegan diets, there’s lots of manoeuvre within this niche.

Just as you’re more likely to rank higher and reach your target demographic with location specific keywords, you’ll also narrow down these searches with a niche specific one.

Ranking for a more niche keyword makes your services that much more specialised and will target the ideal prospective clients!

So, deciding on a niche will reinforce your experience and expertise to prospective clients and make them more likely to sign up!

#9 - How To Get Clients As A Nutritionist By Expanding Your Services

Once you’re established in your career, and you want to know how to get more clients as a nutritionist, you can start to expand!

Once you’ve developed your niche and grown your brand you can start to think about how to cater to a wider variety of clients and offer different services.

We’ll briefly run through some of the options now!

Offer Sports and Exercise Nutrition to Gain New Nutrition Clients

One of the most lucrative and exciting ways you can expand your services is by moving into the arena of sports and exercise nutrition.

This is nutrition specifically designed to help people with athletic performance. This might be a particular sport or eating in a way that will support an exercise regime.

This makes this a particularly versatile specialisation because though you can become a nutritionist for a sports team or for athletes, you can also use it to inform and help with people’s everyday fitness goals.

For example, this will inform how you work with people wanting to lose weight or build muscle, eating in a way that works in tandem with a particular style of training.

The Bodybuilding Dieticians are a great example of this:

They focus specifically on creating plans and providing services for people wanting to work on body composition and building muscle.

They don’t just work with athletes and those entering competition but the general population who have goals specific to this specialism:

You can develop this specialisation with a Level 4 sports nutrition course. This will provide you with the fundamental knowledge and practical skills to support athletes and different fitness goals with nutrition.

Get Corporate Nutrition Clients by Going into Food Nutrition

Alternatively, if you want to know how to get clients as a nutritionist, and want to work in several different spheres, food nutrition is a great option.

This is a great opportunity to have an extra revenue stream and deal with bigger, more corporate clients.

You can make some extremely useful connections with this role that could inform and expand your work with individual clients. 

For example, you might work with a company or institution to develop safety policies or menus.

This job description for a role working with McDonalds illustrates these duties and what would be expected of you:

As you can see, part of your responsibility is to ensure that everything is accurately labelled and all allergen information is up to date and safe.

This includes translating this information to the public by including it on the menu in an easy-to-understand way.

You can work freelance or independently in a consultancy capacity. This way you can establish connections that can be mutually beneficial where you do cross referrals or promote each other’s services.

We’ll look at cross referrals now in a little more detail!

#10 - How To Get Clients As A Nutritionist Using Cross Referrals

Cross referrals are when you have a mutual understanding and agreement with another professional doing similar work to you.

This is a mutually beneficial understanding that each will refer clients to the other where appropriate.

For example, if you make a connection with somebody who specialises in a particular medical condition you would agree to refer people on to them.

They in turn will refer people to you who maybe suit your niche and specialism more than theirs, or are more suited to your specific skill set.

So, if you want to know how to get clients as a nutrition coach, cross referrals are a great way to make the most of professional connections.

You will both get to enrich each other’s practices, and develop a good network to build on your skills and grow as a nutritionist, learning from other professionals. 

You can do this through the online communities we mentioned earlier, joining Facebook groups and interacting with other professionals.

If you want to know how to get clients as a nutritionist through these referrals, the best way is to introduce yourself and ensure you go to industry events such as conventions and conferences.

You can keep up to date with these by joining The Nutrition Society to see what conferences are on where you could make in-person connections with fellow nutrition professionals:

#11 - Follow Up With People To Gain New Clients As A Nutritionist

Last but not least for how to get clients as a nutrition coach, is the importance of following up with people who’ve made enquiries or shown interest in your services.

This means utilising the contact details you receive from prospective clients and using reminders or the right language to persuade them to sign up.

Not only will this create a dialogue between you, and start to build rapport, it will help you secure more clients by making the most of these opportunities.

Some people may forget that they’ve enquired, or may be unsure without further information. Speaking to them and offering more details about your services will help them make their mind up and become paying clients!

There’s several ways you could do this, either by phone or email. We’ll run through some of these options now.

You Can Gain New Clients By Reminding People To Book A Consultation 

If you want to know how to get nutrition clients with follow-up emails or calls, the most obvious one is to check in with prospective clients and remind them to book!

You can acknowledge that they’ve registered an interest and run through how they can book a consultation for more information.

A consultation is your opportunity to sell your services further and subtly persuade people to become paying clients.

This is also great for the client because it’s an opportunity for them to ask you any questions and get more details about how they could work with you to meet their goals.

Offering a consultation for free is a great way of encouraging people to have one with you.

It’s more attractive to potential clients when it doesn’t cost them anything and it’s your chance to showcase your expertise and turn them into paying customers!

Create Deals With A Deadline To Get New Nutrition Clients

You can also contact people with information about a deal you’re running but you should always include a deadline.

If you want to know how to get more clients as a nutritionist this is a great way of persuading people to sign up quicker, so they don’t miss out on the deal you’re offering.

For example, you might offer a small discount on your nutrition packages or offer a new combination of services.

Nourish is a great example of this, offering a temporary discount as an ‘early bird offer’ to entice new clients:

Adding a deadline will add time pressure and mean people are more likely to sign up!

You Can Gain New Nutrition Clients Using a Newsletter

If you’re wondering how to get clients as a nutritionist, using email marketing strategies like a newsletter is a great way to preview your services.

By having a newsletter you’re showing prospective clients a huge range of benefits and features of what you have to offer.

This might include:

• Success stories or testimonials from previous clients
• Recipe ideas
• Information about new services you’re offering
• Informational content 
• Your own story of becoming a nutritionist

Providing useful content will assert your brand as professional and trustworthy, encouraging people to sign up for your nutrition services.

Also by offering your prospective clients something you’re showing that you value them and makes them feel part of a community which increases their engagement with your business!

Before You Go!

Hopefully, now you know exactly how to get clients as a nutrition coach and you’ve found some ideas that will work for you! Don’t forget, you’ll be more attractive to potential clients if you offer a wider variety of services and cater to specific audiences. 

For example, by completing a Personal Training Diploma you will able to learn new skills and advance your existing knowledge, to work alongside clients who want bespoke workout programmes. 

You can find out more details by downloading our course prospectus for free!