When launching a nutrition business, there can be an overwhelming amount of business, legal and marketing tasks that you’d like to accomplish. The good news is, you don’t need to have everything in place for your marketing strategy. Starting with just a few, effective marketing steps, you can announce your new practice and start connecting with prospective clients.

Follow these 5 Tips For Marketing Your Private Practice

1. Order Business Cards

One quick item to check off your list might be to check up on your stock of business cards. If you don’t have business cards yet, now is also a great time to order them! Ordering a fresh set of 250 cards might be just what you need to motivate you to start handing them out. If you don’t yet have a business card, it’s easy to get started. Websites like VistaPrint.com have online creators where you can quickly create a card in minutes and take only a few days to ship.

2. Start a Newsletter

This may sound like a lofty venture, but really, it’s much faster than you might think! Get started by signing up for a mail-service, like MailChimp (which has a free-to-use plan), or look into newsletter services that may be provided by your website developer. (With Wix, for example, you can send out a newsletter directly through your website!)  Compile a list of email addresses, whether they be from past clients or anyone who has expressed interest in your practice via email. Newsletters are great to keep clients feeling in the loop and remind them of their experience with your practice.

The last thing you need to come up with is content. It can be hard to find the time to consistently create new newsletter and/or blog content — it’s especially difficult if you are building your private practice while working another job.

Here’s how to get new content out consistently, even if you’re short on time:

• Block off a solid amount of time each week or month to work on your newsletter. You’ll need at least 2-3 hours in a sitting to get the ball rolling and make progress on your content. Decide if you want to block off time each week, or choose 1 weekend a month to dedicate to your content creation.
• Create content smartly that can be repurposed across multiple channels. If you write 2-3 blog articles, that content can be used in your newsletter and broken down into smaller content to use across your social channels.
• Have a marketing content calendar. That’s right — have a calendar for each day/week and write out topics that you’d like to blog about or share on social. It will allow you to see an overview of your content, looking at several days/weeks at a time.

3. Reflect and Refresh

Take a few hours to  check through your practice’s website, blog, and social media platforms. If you haven’t read through your own “About” page recently, it might be worth checking through it again. Is it up to date? What’s new with you? What’s new at your practice? Do you offer any new services? Are all the details right? This is a good quick task, but it can make a huge difference.

4. Utilize Social Media to Expand Your Brand Identity

Whether you update your Instagram every single day or might need to dust some virtual cobwebs up off your profile, there’s never been a better time to hop in and start sharing your expertise. Directing effort towards your social media sites regularly will help your practice to gain a following and likely, new clients who want to seek you out because of your knowledgeability.

5. Advertise Your Nutrition Practice

Have you ever considered placing an ad online? If you’re preparing to take on new clients looking to devote real effort towards their New Years’ Resolution, a Facebook Ad might draw in just the attention you’re looking for. We recommend Facebook advertising because you can run fast and short ad campaigns, on a budget you set yourself. You also can target the audience to reflect your ideal client by specifying items such as location.