How To Write A Nutrition Business Plan (2024 Guide)

Writing a nutrition business plan is crucial to empowering your career and helping you to become your boss.

To help you write an effective business plan, we will guide you through this process by explaining:

• Why A Nutritionist Business Plan Is Important
• Step 1-Why Your Nutritionist Business Plan Should Begin With A Summary
• Step 2-Include A Company Summary In Your Nutritionist Business Plan
• Step 3-Describe What You Aim To Sell When Creating A Nutritionist Business Plan
• Step 4-Outline Your Marketing Strategies In Your Nutritionist Business Plan
• Step 5-Carry Out A SWOT Analysis As Part Of A Nutritionist Business Plan
• Step 6-Include Your Financial Plans & Projections In A Nutritionist Business Plan
• Step 7-Conclusion of Business Plan

Before we begin, did you know you could increase your earning potential and career prospects by earning a Personal trainer diploma? In doing so, you can create bespoke workout programmes that work alongside your nutrition advice! 

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Why A Nutritionist Business Plan Is Important

Before we explore the steps in this article, it’s important to explain why a nutritionist business plan is important to the future success of your business.

First, it creates a step-by-step plan that allows you to set short and long-term goals. These will help you attract investors who will be able to see you have a strategy to generate revenue.

This will also result in you providing calculations for the capital you require to keep your business operational, deliver services and most importantly, keep it profitable. 

Finally, a nutritionist business plan can help you identify problems you may encounter and find solutions that can help reduce risks towards your business.

In summary, a nutritionist business plan can help you understand how to create a unique brand for your business and find strategies for it to succeed in the fitness industry.

Now that you understand the importance of a nutritionist business plan, let’s examine how you should start your plan.  

Step 1-Why Your Nutritionist Business Plan Should Begin With A Summary

An executive summary is a great way to begin your nutritionist business plan. It provides an overview of what will be discussed in the document to captivate readers, which usually contains:

• A mission statement-this involves you describing your business’ purpose and what unique selling points it can offer consumers.
• A description of your company here you can inform readers of your business formation, its locations, the products it offers and a list of your team.
• An overview of your products and services-how your products and services will operate in the market and what gives them a competitive edge.
• Financial plans and projections-an opportunity to discuss what funds your business requires to start up or additional funding required, should your business be operational.

If you require inspiration on how to present this information, Forbes has a brilliant example of how to make your summary look professional:

When you’re writing your mission statement, company description, products and financial information, it’s important to avoid using cliche language.

This will help you focus on language that represents your business capabilities rather than offering promises that can’t be delivered.

You’ll also benefit from writing this section of your business plan after the main content has been written, this will allow you to provide the correct information in this section.

Step 2-Include A Company Summary In Your Nutritionist Business Plan

The next step in your nutritionist business plan must include a business overview. You’ll have briefly touched on some of these talking points in your executive summary.

Here, you have the opportunity to provide further information to the reader including:

• The status of your business are you a start-up or currently operational?
• Company structure-who owns the business, who is in your team and their qualifications and experience.

Providing a company summary can help investors understand the level of investment you require based on the status of your business.

If you’re a start-up or have ideas to grow your business, you may require more investment to assist with these plans.

When discussing your company structure, this is a good opportunity to introduce yourself and the team you’ll be working with.

This is a great opportunity to list each team member’s position, responsibilities, qualifications and experience as demonstrated by this template on Visme:

When you provide investors with information on your company structure you’ll be able to demonstrate that their investment is in professional hands.

This is because you’ll be able to list your team's qualifications, and expertise and based on these factors, what their responsibilities within the business will include.

After you’ve provided this information you can then move on to the next crucial step, what your business will sell to generate revenue.

Step 3-Describe What You Aim To Sell When Creating A Nutritionist Business Plan

Your nutritionist business plan must list and describe the services and products you plan to sell to consumers.

This is an opportunity to demonstrate you have unique services and products that are doable for your scale of business. 

It’s also important to detail any costs associated with delivering these items from the capital required to create them and also the prices you plan to charge.

You need to make sure this list of services covers everything you offer currently and also products that you later plan to launch.

This will help inform investors that in the event your premium service or product is not generating enough revenue, other services can be optimised to generate income.

Since you’re specialising in nutrition, the revenue streams that might feature in this section of your nutrition business plan could include: 

• Nutrition consultations
• Nutrition packages
• Recipes 
• Ebooks
• Diet plans
• Event Speaking

Make Sure You Include Prices in Your Nutritionist Business Plan 

To work out how much to charge, you can see what competitors are charging for services similar to yours.

If you were planning to offer a nutrition package as part of your business model, for example, Bare Nutrition could provide an insight into what you could charge for this type of service:

As you read about their 'Signature Package,' you might want to make your package more competitive by offering a lower price or an extra consultation session.

Once you’ve listed all the products and services you wish to offer and their associated costs, it’s important to list the production costs associated with them.

For example, you may require a full-time member of staff to help deliver consultations, which according to the Payscale for a nutritionist is £25,341:

There may be periods when you may need to consider discount introductory offers to make them appealing to consumers.

After listing your revenue streams, you’ll need to identify the target market you wish to promote your services.

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Step 4-Outline Your Marketing Strategies In Your Nutritionist Business Plan

Marketing strategies are a crucial part of your nutritional business plan. These will help you implement techniques to attract clients and boost your revenue. 

There are several ways you can gather market research to develop effective marketing plans. Let's take a further look at them.

Identify Your Target Market

When you’re trying to identify your target market, it’s important to gather information on key factors like the age, gender and location of the people likely to purchase your services and products.

Based on data gathered by the UK Parliament, 75% of people aged between 45-74 in England are likely to be obese or overweight:

Providing evidence in your market research can help you hone in on the demographic you wish to market your services to.

Remember the more information you gather, the more accurate your marketing can be when finding the correct demographic who requires your services.

Secondly, you can carry out online surveys on your social media page to find a target audience. SurveyMonkey is a great tool that can assist you in this process as you can find websites:

Not only can you learn more about the age, gender and location of your demographic who answers these questions but you can also ask questions based on your proposed services and see if there is demand for them.

You can also contact competitors and mystery shops to find out more about what their business offers.

This will be useful if your competitors do not list their prices on their sites, and require you to email them to find out more about their services.

You could even read their reviews online to understand what are the best and worst qualities of their services.

For example, on Google reviews, the Nutrition Therapy Practice is described as being knowledgeable and caring in the delivery of their work to their clients:

These are qualities you may wish to emulate or build upon to make your services competitive in the market.

This will help inform you about pricing, location and the most effective ways you can promote your products.

Once you've carried out all of your market research, you need to develop marketing strategies to act as a framework for you to follow

Detail Your Marketing Methods in a Nutritionist Business Plan

In this section of your business plan, you need to detail different marketing methods you’ll use to promote your nutritionist business such as Google My Business, Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

Let’s explore these in more detail.

Marketing Method #1- Google My Business Can Help Increase Your Business Exposure

Creating a Google My Business profile is a great way to promote your business online if you haven’t created social media accounts or an official website.

It has many benefits for your business, allowing you to reach a wider audience, including:

• Your business appears on Google Maps and local listings
• Get customer feedback on your services through reviews
• Provides analytics to understand who is searching for your services

You can list these benefits in your nutritionist business plan, alongside a brief overview of how you’ll create a Google My Business profile: 

To demonstrate how this information could be presented, you can even use a nutritionist business with its own Google My Business profile, for example at Realise Nutrition:

As you can see from their profile, they have included the following information for users to read:

• Name of business
• Opening hours
• Address
• Website
• Reviews

In your business plan, you can state that these features will be used when you use Google My Business to create your nutritionist profile to boost your exposure and user engagement. 

Marketing Method #2- Use Google Ads To Generate Leads And Customers

Next, you should describe how you’ll use Google Ads which are advertisements you wish to appear at the top of a Google page for a certain keyword search.

If you search for ‘Nutritionist Liverpool’ you’ll see how these Google ads work as they are listed as sponsored ads on the results page:

In your business plan, you can also describe how you’ll use Google Ads to inform investors how you’ll make your ads appear on the top of Google results using:

• Targeted ad
• Budgeting
• Google Analytics
• Google campaigns

For example, if you want to run a nutritionist business in Liverpool, here are some of the keywords you could use for a targeted ad when using Google Keyword planner:

This will inform investors of the marketing strategy you have, along with the associated when you plan to use Google Ads for your business.

Marketing Method #3- Use Facebook Ads To Broaden The Reach Of Your Audience

Finally, you can describe how Facebook Ads will help broaden your reach. You can list what type of Facebook ads you wish to create to increase your exposure, such as:

• Image Ads-to help generate in your business
• Carousel Ads-using multiple images to help generate sales
• Video ads-to create engagement with your product

You can also visit Facebook Ads library to find real-world adverts from businesses that offer similar services to yourself.

For example, if you want to promote your nutrition packages, you could use Wayne Nutritionist’s advert as an indicator of how you would like to present your adverts:

As you can see from this advert, they’ve provided a link for users to query about these services further.

You can also describe the process that will be involved in creating your Facebook ads, once you’ve created an account, including:

• Ad Objectives-is it to generate leads, sales or engagement
• Choosing your audience-depending on the demographic you wish to target, based on factors such as age, gender and location.
• Where do you wish to run your ad-such as Facebook, Instagram or both?
• Budget-the length of time you want to run the ad for, along with times and days of the week you wish them to appear.
• Measuring analytics-to see how well the advert performed and the process involved to make any amendment if data indicates the advert is performing well.

These details will help you provide relevant information to investors when you describe how you aim to create effective Facebook ads.

How To Show The Impact Of Your Marketing Strategies

If you’ve already published social media adverts, you can use them as evidence to showcase their performance and how you marketed them:

This should include costs to help with the creation of marketing materials or if you’re operating as a startup, the marketing plans you have for the future.

If you’re hoping to secure capital from investors, you should include data that demonstrates the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

This should include details about the reach and engagement of your adverts to show how well they performed on the multiple social media platforms they appeared on.

We’ve included an example of how this information could be presented in your business plan, illustrating the leads that were generated over 4 weeks using Facebook ads:

You can also include a chart to show the costs associated with generating each lead. This can help investors understand how much funding you may require to generate more leads:

If you’ve not run a marketing campaign already, you can simply include projections including the estimated expenditures and projections you require and anticipate to make.

Step 5-Carry Out A SWOT Analysis As Part Of A Nutritionist Business Plan

Once you know the services and products you’re business is selling to the public, it’s important to carry out a SWOT analysis.

A SWOT analysis is a form of strategic planning that identifies your business' weakness:

• Strengths-these are features of your business that will give you a competitive edge in the marketplace such as qualifications, experiences and passions.
• Weaknesses-these include areas of your business that need to be improved to become profitable, such as poor marketing strategies and lack of skills.
• Opportunities-it’s a chance to improve the weaknesses you’ve identified that could increase your business revenue such as new services or marketing strategies.
• Threats-identify risks that could stop you from turning your opportunities into revenue such as your competition and costs.

Here is an example of how the areas of a SWOT analysis could look for your business:

When you’ve determined which sections of your business apply to these areas, it can help you plan your next moves to resolve any problems you believe require attention. 

In the example above, you could complete a PT qualification to address the lack of qualifications you identified as a weakness.

If you need help completing a SWOT analysis you can discover the pros and cons of being a nutritionist to help you write one.

Step 6-Include Your Financial Plans & Projections In A Nutritionist Business Plan

Including financial projections in your nutritionist business plan is important, particularly if you’re looking to secure investments and loans.

The amount of information you include in this section is dependent on who you’re seeking investment from but also the status of your business, for example, is it in the development stages or has it been launched?

If your business has only just started you should include projections compared to financial reports if you’ve been operating for several years.

It’s important to make sure you mention expenses, such as wages, rent and utilities here, as this will provide an accurate picture of the profits you hope to make.

This section of your business plan will also involve you detailing how you expect your business to generate revenue and sustain a cash flow to keep your business sustainable.

To make sure your financial projections are as accurate as possible, it’s important to include the following information in your nutritionist business plan:

• A Business balance sheet
• A Business income statement
• A cash-flow sheet

We’ll now explore these in more detail and explain how they can benefit your nutritionist business plan.

Tip #1 A Business Balance Sheet Can Help Investors Understand Your Nutritionist Business  

A balance sheet consists of two columns that help you understand your assets, what you owe and your business’ equity.

The column on the left lists your assets which indicates how you can deliver and fund services whilst also increasing growth.

Assets can range from equipment to your nutritionist business plan that helps you deliver your services.

The column on the right indicates your liabilities, these are financial obligations you owe to third parties such as payments to suppliers or bills you have to pay.   

Business assets can fall into one of two categories, these are:

• Current assets-such as stock or cash holdings you could use to pay for future expenses. 
• Non-current assets-such as property and equipment that are expected to be used by your business for more than 12 months.

Apple Inc. provides an example of how a professional balance sheet should look:

If your place of business is rented or requires you to pay a mortgage, this would be included in the liabilities section.

When you’re reviewing your balance sheet you may discover that your liabilities will focus on start-up costs including any loans that you were issued.

If you’re able to show a positive cash flow along with assets that generate income, you’ll be able to establish yourself as a reputable business, indicating to investors you’re able to repay any money that is loaned to you.

Tip #2 A Business Income Statement Is A Vital Component Of Understanding Your Finances

A business income statement is a critical part of your nutritionist business plan as it shows you the profit you’ve made following the deduction of taxes from your income.

It generally details your revenue, expenses and net income allowing you to determine whether a profit can be generated by adjusting costs or reducing losses by adjusting your business plan.

Your income statement can provide useful information to investors who are looking to offer you capital as they can see how profitable your business is.

The Washington Bankers Association provides an example of what an income statement would look like:

Your income statement can help you identify financial strengths and weaknesses that can later form part of your SWOT analysis.

We recommend that you produce an income statement every month if you’ve just launched your business. This will help you keep track of your finances and adjust your spending accordingly.

Once you’ve established your business you can then move to create quarterly and annual statements.

Tip #3 A Cash Flow Statement Can Help Your Business Identify A Positive Cash Flow

Finally, your nutritionist business plan should have a cash flow statement. It helps indicate the amount of cash that is entering and leaving your business.

A successful business will always generate more income compared to its outgoings which means it has a positive flow of cash.

Investopedia has created a useful cash flow statement to illustrate what information should be included in the statement such as net earnings and subtractions:

This information can be used to identify business strengths and weaknesses to help maximise revenue. 

You may, for instance, try to increase revenue by offering more features in your online consultations after identifying this as a financial weak spot on your cash flow sheet.

A cash flow sheet should also indicate which areas of your business are generating a low income so you can allocate portions of your profits to make these areas more profitable.

Once you’ve included these three pieces of financial information in your business plan, it’s time to consider what you should include in the conclusion of your plan.  

Step 7-Conclusion of Business Plan

Finally, it’s important to make sure you summarise the points you’ve raised in your nutritionist business plan with a conclusion. The statement doesn't require much information and can be kept short.

This is a great opportunity to reiterate the potential your business has, highlight important sections of your plan and mention where you plan to take your business.

Here’s how our closing statement for our hypothetical business Better Life Nutritionist Liverpool might look:

CONCLUSION

Better Life Nutritionist Liverpool is a health and fitness company that aims to improve the lives of its clients. We aim to compete with other nutritionists in the market by offering specialised services that are designed from the research we’ve conducted. We’re confident that investors will receive returns on their investments when they collaborate with us on this business venture.

Our marketing strategies will continue to evolve as the business continues to grow and attracts new clients. We are expecting our client base to grow by 50% in the next 10 years and see a 90% increase in revenues during this period.

It’s also important to include data in this section if you’re looking to secure funds from investors. 

This will indicate to investors how the business will grow and generate revenue but crucially how they can receive returns on the investments they make.

If you require a nutrition business plan sample pdf to help complete your business plan, The Princes Trust has downloadable templates to help you create your own.

Before You Go!

After reading this article, we hope you have all the information you need to create your nutritionist business plan.

Remember you take to expand your career opportunities by enrolling on a level 3 PT trainer diploma.

You can discover what other courses are available at OriGym with our 2024 course booklet.