Start An Online Nutrition Business

If you want to understand how to start an online nutrition coaching business, you will need to carry out research to successfully launch one.

In the following article, we will guide you through the steps to make sure you have the information you need to have a successful nutrition business:

• Step 1 - Get The Right Qualifications For Your Sports Online Nutrition Coaching Business
• Step 2 - Decide What Services You Want To Offer Before Starting an Online Nutrition Coaching Business
• Step 3 - Conduct Market Research For Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business
• Step 4 -  Choose A Platform To Run Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business
• Step 5 - Create A Business Plan So You Know How To Sell Your Nutrition Coaching Business Online
• Step 6 - Securing Insurance And Other Legal Requirements For Your Nutrition Business
• Step 7 - Create Packages To Generate Profit For Your Online Nutrition Business
• Step 8 - Learn What Marketing Tools You Can Use To Attract Customers 

Before we begin, if you’re not already qualified as a nutritionist, here at OriGym, we can help you on your career journey with our level 4 sports nutrition course.

Alternatively, you can learn about our full range of qualifications by downloading our course prospectus.

Step 1 - Get The Right Qualifications For Your Sports Online Nutrition Coaching Business

If you’re already a qualified nutritionist, you can skip this step and learn about the services you could offer in step 2.

However, if you’re not a nutritionist, you’ll need to understand what qualifications you require to operate an online nutrition coaching business.

Before you enrol on a nutrition course, it’s important to make sure it’s Ofqual-regulated. This will provide you with a vocational framework to train you to industry standards.

OriGym’s Ofqual-regulated level 4 nutrition course can help you on your journey to becoming an online nutritionist.

Whilst a nutritionist is not a protected title having this l4 qualification will make you more appealing to clients and teach you the skills to be effective in this role.

This is because the qualification enables you to deliver nutritional advice and diet planning for clients who hire you to help improve their health. 

It will also educate you on specialist diets you can provide clients but also understand the legislation that shapes nutritional information.

Once you’ve achieved your level 4 nutrition qualification, you’ll then want to decide what nutrition services you would like to offer.

Step 2 - Decide What Services You Want To Offer Before Starting an Online Nutrition Coaching Business

Starting an online nutrition coaching business is never easy. To compete in the marketplace, you must understand the services you'd like to offer.

One of the ways you could decide on the services you offer is by understanding your strengths in this field. 

You may, for instance, come from a background where you’ve specialised in building clients' muscles and wish to offer this service as a nutritionist. 

Alternatively, you could offer weight loss services to clients, a highly sought-after service from people seeking a nutritionist.

Finally, if you have additional qualifications you can use them to offer specialised services.

If you have a Level 4 diabetes qualification, you can use this to offer specialist services to offer low-sugar nutrition plans to help clients with diabetes.

Once you’ve identified your strengths as a nutritionist and the most profitable services you could offer, you will need to find the right way to present them.

You could offer meal plans as demonstrated by The Healthy Habit to help clients focus on eating healthier diets:

After you’ve decided on the services you would like to provide, you will then need to carry out market research to understand how competitors sell their services.

Step 3 - Conduct Market Research For Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business

Market research is a great way to boost your online nutrition coaching business’ chances of success.

It’s an effective tool to help you write an online nutrition coaching business plan, and identify competitors in the market and how they promote themselves.

There are many ways you can conduct market research. Here we will focus on how can you conduct research using:

• Google My Business
• Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram

Let’s take a further look at these forms of research in more detail.

How To Use Google My Business To Research For Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business

Google My Business is a great tool to discover how many online nutrition coaching businesses operate in your local area and help you understand your competition.

If you want to launch an online nutrition business in Liverpool, for example, you can Google 'nutritionist Liverpool' to see similar businesses operating in the city:

After you’ve conducted this research, you can then visit each website to see what services they provide.

We’ve decided to investigate Nutrition Therapy Practice’s services further as they rank as the top search results.

When we click on their website and visit their ‘Plans & Pricing’ page, we see that they offer several different services, three of which we have listed below:

From the ones listed, you can see that they offer:

• Consultations 
• Health or dietary assessments
• Food diary analysis

These are some of the features you could include in the packages you wish to sell to customers.

Using Google My Business is great for market research because you can quickly and easily see what your biggest competitors are doing well and where they can improve.

You Can Also Use Instagram To Research Other Online Nutrition Coaching Businesses

Alongside Google helping you visit the websites of your competitors, social media can provide you with useful insight into the services they offer and the reviews they’re given.

If you visit Facebook and then type ‘nutrition coach UK’ into the search bar, you’ll discover Nutrition Coach’s page as one of the top results.

You can visit their website to understand the feedback they’ve received in their reviews to understand what services they offer that could work for you:

After reading this review, you can see one of their clients praised Nutrition Coach for assisting her with a medical issue and showing empathy towards their condition. 

If you have the relevant expertise, you may want to market yourself as a nutritionist to assist clients with medical conditions.

This will improve your professional standing in the marketplace and combined with compassion towards your clients’ conditions will encourage them to retain your services and help increase your business revenue as a result.

You could also use Nutrition Coach’s Facebook posts as a way to understand promotional campaigns you could run.

Recently, they have offered cooking classes for beginners interested in plant-based diets who want to understand the diet’s advantages and disadvantages:

If you run an online nutrition coaching business, you might be able to incorporate something similar to this. 

Alongside the personalised services you offer, you could offer weekly online cooking classes for current clients or those seeking healthier eating habits.

This could give you a competitive edge by providing a unique service that other nutritionists might not provide.

Market research will help you identify areas where your business can profit and is also most at risk. This will help you create your business plan in step 5.

If you’re enjoying this article, why not give these a try?

• How To Become A Nutritionist
• Salary Of A Nutritionist
• The Key Skills Needed To Become A Nutritionist

Step 4 -  Choose A Platform To Run Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business

After you’ve conducted your research for your online nutrition coaching business, you’ll need to choose a platform to run your business on.

One of the first platforms you should consider running your nutrition coaching business on is a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace:

With website builders, you'll be able to integrate your social media platforms and e-commerce store, allowing people to visit your website and purchase packages from it.

It’s important to remember the more features you require for your website, the more you’ll pay to maintain the site:

Alongside the website you build, you’ll also benefit from using social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

If you set up a Facebook Business Page, you’ll benefit from being able to engage with new and current customers.

It can help direct traffic to your website using Facebook Ads and using Facebook Analytics and help you understand the demographics interested in your services.

Amelia Freer’s nutrition Facebook page demonstrates how you can promote yourself, using cover photos and featured ads to promote your services:

Finally, you can also use a video platform such as Zoom to hold single or group phone calls to assist your clients:

This will be a great tool to help you direct people to your appointments and address any questions you might have.

After learning about the different platforms that can benefit your online nutrition coaching business, let's talk about how they can create an effective business plan.

Step 5 - Create A Business Plan So You Know How To Sell Your Nutrition Coaching Business Online

After you’ve decided on the platforms you want to run your business across, you’ll then need to create a business plan for an online nutrition coaching business.

A well-researched business plan should cover the following areas to help your business succeed: 

• Executive Summary-an overview of the business you want to run
• Company Summary-detailing the type of business you want to start, along with the services you would like to offer 
• Market Analysis-discussing what marketing research you’ve done
• Marketing Strategy-how you should aim to promote your business
• Sales Strategy-how you plan to convert people’s enquiries into customer sales 
• Financial Summary-detailing the sources of income for your business

A plan can help by identifying the needs of your business, including:

• How to secure future funding
• The direction your business should take
• Areas for development

Let’s explore these areas in further detail to see how they can benefit your business.

How To Secure Future Funding For Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business

An online nutrition coaching business plan should focus on your business activities for 1 to 3 years.

It will help investors understand how your business operates and understand who your competition is.

This gives investors a blueprint of the path your business will take over several years, giving them confidence in the returns they will receive from their investment.

The Direction Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business Should Take

Thanks to the market research you’ve carried out, you’ll be able to write a plan that details the direction your business should take.

The direction of your business could take, should be centred around three questions:

• What does your business currently offer? 
• How would you like to grow your business? 
• What do you need for your business prospects to succeed?

These questions could be answered in the following way:

For instance, you run a nutritionist business that helps clients lose weight- to increase your business revenue, you could offer low-sugar diet plans to help diabetic clients.

To make your business profitable in this area, you will need to make sure you have the correct qualifications and ad campaigns to promote these services. 

Achieving a level 4 diabetes qualification, for example, will give you the expertise to assist this group.

Alongside this, you can create an ad campaign on Facebook and Google to promote these services and help you get clients as a nutritionist.

Understanding The Areas For Development Will Help Your Online Nutrition Coaching Business Succeed

Any well-researched business plan will also include areas for development. In your business projections, you might identify that your nutrition business needs to expand.

As a result, you may wish to explore new markets that specialise in other areas, such as personal training.=

This would require you to complete a diploma in personal training to understand how to write programs for your new client base.

Your new set of skills would enable you to offer nutrition-based services as an add-on for your personal training clients. 

Once you’ve created a business plan, you’ll need to secure insurance and other legal requirements for your business.

Step 6 - Securing Insurance And Other Legal Requirements For Your Nutrition Business

Before starting an online nutrition coaching business, it’s important to make sure you’ve got the correct insurance coverage.

Having the correct insurance coverage will protect you from any claims that result from: 

• Client injury whilst they’re visiting your premises
• Professional negligence in the advice you gave to a client
• An accident you suffer that prevents you from working

Let’s take a look at some of the forms of insurance you can purchase should any of these scenarios happen to you.

Public Liability Insurance Will Cover Any Accidents That Happen At Your Place Of Business

Online nutrition coaching jobs require liability insurance like other jobs in the fitness industry.

It will cover you should you have a face-to-face consultation with a client and they:

• Injure themselves during an appointment with you
• Your equipment is damaged at your place of business

In the event this should happen, liability insurance helps with the cost of any damaged equipment and legal costs associated with a client’s claim against you.

If you didn’t have this form of insurance, any claims would have to be covered by your expenses, which can be costly and damaging to your business.

If you visit AXA, you will get a breakdown of the coverage you’ll receive in the event you need assistance with a claim:

It’s important not to dismiss the importance of public liability insurance as it’s possible for accidents to occur at any point, no matter how professional you are.

Personal Trainer Professional Indemnity Insurance Can Help Cover With Advice You Give

Public indemnity insurance is different to liability insurance as it covers any poor advice you give to clients which have caused them illness or health problems.

It is possible, for example, to give bad advice to clients resulting in them having an allergic reaction to the food you recommended in their diet.

Since you’re working as a nutritionist, giving advice will happen constantly throughout your working day, which means such a scenario could happen.

You may wish to secure indemnity insurance from Hiscox, as they cover a wide range of issues that you could encounter:

This makes professional indemnity insurance important as this makes sure any legal costs and compensation payouts are covered by your insurance provider.

Personal Accident Insurance Is Important For Online Nutrition Coaching Jobs

Whilst getting coverage for your clients and your equipment is important, it’s also important to make sure you get coverage for yourself, in the event an accident happens.

Personal accident insurance will cover any minor or serious injuries you encounter that affect your ability to carry out work.

You may, for instance, trip on the floor during a phone consultation and break your foot and be unable to walk on it. 

With personal accident insurance, you’ll be able to have the costs of medication, treatments and operations covered.

The amount of coverage can vary in price depending on the provider you decide to go with.

If you decide to go with Insure4Sport, they can provide you with coverage for up to £50,000 for any rehabilitation costs:

Regardless of years of experience in the industry, anyone can make mistakes that cause harm to themselves.

That’s why it’s important to have personal accident insurance to cover any treatments you require.

Other Legal Requirements You Need To Consider For Your Nutrition Business

Alongside these types of insurance, you’ll also need to consider the following to make sure you’re business is operating correctly: 

• Registering Your Business-with gov.uk to make sure you’re registered with HMRC to make sure you can submit your taxes correctly.
• Hiring an accountant-such as KG Accountants, to help you with your tax returns and find business opportunities to potentially boost your revenue.
• Carry out DBS Check-once you’ve completed your DBS check, your clients can be assured that you have no criminal background, and if you hire staff, you can ensure they are safe to work with too.

Now that you’ve read about the insurance and other areas you need to help your business operate correctly, you can then design your packages to bring in clients.

Step 7 - Create Packages To Generate Profit For Your Online Nutrition Business

After reviewing the insurance you need to operate an online nutrition coaching business, you’ll then need to consider the packages you want to offer.

During your research, you may have found different ways to create packages. However, if you’re looking for a sustainable income, the best packages should be monthly based.

Alongside creating monthly packages, you should also keep package details clear. This will help the customer understand exactly what services they’re receiving.

It will also inform them of the price associated with the service. For example, you may want to offer an initial assessment as part of your package. 

You would also want to sell the package for £130 and time restrict consultations to a maximum of 60 minutes and detail what the consultations include; such as self-assessments and calorie intake.

It’s also important to make sure your packages are self-contained, offering the right services for the right audience.

This will prevent you from receiving complaints that clients were mis-sold a package because they expected a different set of services.

A great example of how a company markets its packages this way is Therapeutic Kitchen:

As you can see from their packages, the more expensive options offer more follow-up consultations.

They are also time-restricted, so clients understand how much time they will spend with the nutritionist and what they’ll be receiving for their money.

Eat Fresh and Feel Good below follows this model too, offering packages with time-restricted consultations and follow-ups as part of their fortnightly or monthly packages:

When you’re considering packages to sell, make sure your customers understand how long their packages will last, along with the length of the consultations.

Now that you’ve seen the different packages you could create, let’s explore the marketing tools you could use to advertise them and attract customers.

Step 8 - Learn What Marketing Tools You Can Use To Attract Customers

After you’ve created your packages, you’ll then want to know how to promote your nutrition coaching business online to attract clients.

There are different methods you can use to bring in new clients, let’s take a deeper look at some of these examples. 

Develop An SEO Strategy to Boost Your Search Rankings

The purpose of SEO is to increase the quantity and quality of visitors to your website by targeting unpaid traffic.

If you optimise your website’s SEO performance it will help you appear higher in search results, attracting more people to your website.

This can be done by using keywords in the information appearing on your website which matches the words people are searching for. 

Ahrefs, for example, is an SEO search tool that can help you find the keywords to include on your site.

If you wanted to search for ‘online nutrition coach’ you would get the following matching terms:

You can then use the primary keyword listed here ‘nutrition coach online’ and some of the other keywords with lesser scores to generate content on your site. 

These scores represent the number of monthly searches being completed on Google. The higher the volume of search the more people are looking for services related to that keyword.

It’s also important to make sure you don’t use a keyword too often as this can hurt the SEO ranking of your website on Google.

You can see on Google that when you search for ‘nutrition coach online’ that PHNutrition ranks highest on Google:

This indicates that their website has been optimised on Google’s search rankings to organically rank at the top of the page, which attracts the most traffic to your website.

Use Social Media To Reach New Clients

Thanks to social media you can reach a wide audience and have better engagement with people interested in retaining your services.

This can be achieved using hashtags in posts to attract users to your social media account and help them learn about your services.

For example, if you search ‘nutrition coach’ as a hashtag in one of your Instagram posts, it will appear here in search results for people to discover: 

Alternatively, you can use stories on your Instagram account to promote your services and expertise so people are aware of what you can offer them.

If you visit shredtrition_by_sarah fitness and nutrition coaching page, you’ll see that they offer a series of stories for you to learn about their nutrition knowledge which will make you want to learn the nutrition packages they offer: 

Alternatively, you can use the bio section to create captivating introductions that make people aware of the services you offer.

The Foodie Dietitian, for example, highlights her areas of expertise to offer an overview of the list of services she could provide: 

Including her website in the description as well, will encourage people to click on this link to learn about her additional services.

Take Advantage Of Paid Social Media Ads

Social media ads tend to have higher conversion rates, meaning people who inquire about your services are likely to purchase them.

One of the ways this can be achieved is by identifying your target demographic on Facebook’s Ad Manager.

According to data held by Statista, the average North East of England has the highest levels of obesity and people aged 45-74 were more likely to be overweight according to data by the UK Government.

In Facebook’s ad manager, you’ll use these locations and age ranges to optimise your business’ ad performance and make sure it reaches the right audience. 

To make sure you’re Facebook Ads don’t run over budget, you can follow these steps on Facebook’s help page:

A great way to market yourself is to find a unique service you can offer people that your competitors don’t provide.

An example of this can be found by Jess Wilson Nutrition, which is currently a 1-Day Gut Flush Challenge as a free download: 

If you have a unique service that you want to promote on Facebook ads, you may wish to offer a free download (as Jess has done) for yourself to promote the packages you wish to sell. 

This could take the form of a free recipe for people interested in eating healthily, which when they download, informs them of the full package they could purchase.

Use Google Ads To Boost Your Business Search Rankings

You can use Google Ads to promote your services, sell products and generate traffic to your website since ads typically appear at the top of Google results pages which massively increases your visibility. 

With any advert, you need to make sure you have clear business and advertising goals. This will help you optimise the performance of your advert.

You also need to make sure you know what keywords to use, alongside the description you want to appear in the Google preview to provide the correct information to users.

If you searched for ‘online nutrition coach UK’, you can see ads that appear at the top of this Google search result:

After reading the Google preview for BodyScan UK, you see that they offer a wide range of services including nutrition planning and diet meal plans.

If a reader is interested in these services they could then learn further information about these services by clicking on the advert and clicking on the ‘Start Nutrition Coaching Now’ button:

When you create a well-purposed ad, make sure it directs people to a landing page where they can learn more about your packages but also offers them an easy opportunity to purchase one of them.

Now that you’ve had a brief look at some of the nutrition business marketing techniques, we’re confident you can implement them to help your online nutrition coaching business thrive.

Before You Go!

After reading this article, we hope you have the information you need to successfully start your own nutrition business.

Remember, if ’re looking to launch a career as a nutritionist, OriGym’s sports nutrition qualification can help give you the kickstart you need.

You can also discover the wide range of courses we offer by downloading our FREE course prospectus.