A Simple Formula to Find Your Nutrition Niche

How to find your nutrition niche and stand out as a dietitian. Guest Authored by Brianna Fear-Keen (Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Business Coach for Dietitians and Nutritionists worldwide).

Your nutrition niche

Let’s talk about why each and every one of you need a niche in nutrition and working out what that is for you all.

By finding the clarity you need to identify your niche, I want you to be able to monetize your passion. Grow your community, attract your ideal clients, have greater impact and generate income for your business. Sound good?

What is a nutrition niche?

There’s no need to overcomplicate this. It’s simply a set of related topics that revolve around a problem or a community. Your niche doesn’t define you and it doesn’t put you in a box. It positions you as an expert in nutrition, and experts have specialties.

In order for you to stick out in a saturated market, you have to become an authority based on personality, purpose, and promise of what you’re going to deliver to the customer and the problem you solve for them while taking them from A to B in their journey.

Let’s take a look at an example. Let’s say we’ve got a dietitian who used to be a dancer.

This dietitian can niche down to a sports dietitian. This RD can niche down further as a sports dietitian for either aspiring, professional or retired dancers. From there, they can continue to niche down further if they wanted too (think: retired middle age dancers who follow a vegan diet).

Drill all the way down and find a sub group of clients within a topic/group/audience. Get super specific.

So why exactly you do need a niche?

Niching down isn’t going to limit yourself and it’s not going to lose you customers or sales. You need a niche to market to your ideal clients. Have you heard the saying “when you speak to everyone, you appeal to none”? You get results when you speak to ONE type of person who has a very clear problem they want you to help them solve.

People buy from specialists. In fact I’m going to go bold here and say they will buy faster and with less resistance when you niche way, way down.

The more specialized and targeted your message is, the higher your chance of connecting with your intended audience. You want to get your message to resonate with them, to make them feel heard and understood. People want specific, tailored advice and they will pay for that.

The next question is always how do you actually figure out your niche in nutrition. You’re going to start with an industry, then think about the market, then focus on a specific person who’s got a specific problem.

4 benefits of working within a nutrition niche

Here are 4 reasons why you’re going to want to spend a little time and find your nutrition niche.

Limit competition:

If you are running a general “I do it all!” practice, you’re competing with all of the dietitians who are offering general nutrition services AND every dietitian who’s got a specialty (AKA: niche) in the area your potential client needs helps.

When you offer a niche service, you’re then catering to a particular target audience who has very clear needs. You can more easily predict what question that client will ask, what kind of assistance you can provide and make them feel much more understood which is a huge part of keeping your clients happy.

All of these things also reduce the competition you’ll have, as less dietitians will be having that same exact conversation with potential clients. And when you have less competition, you can more easily stand out as THE expert in that space.

Cost effective marketing:

When you are targeting a niche group of people, advertising and messaging is simplified. It’s easier to create the marketing and it’s easier to reach those you’re marketing to.

For example, for my family law firm, I am able to advertise directly to people who are going through the separation of divorce, rather than everyone who needs legal assistance. It makes it a lot easier to target the people you want to attract to your tailored service.

If we take the example of a sports dietitian, you’ll have much clearer messaging when you can speak directly to those retired dancers interested in a vegan diet who are also over 40. That’s a much more simplified and much clearer message.

Create referral partnerships:

When you find your niche in nutrition, you’ll discover a bunch of businesses that are not in competition with you but serve the same types of clients in a different way.

You’re going to be able to then target those businesses and create referral relationships. These relationships expose you to a larger number of your target audience and having access to referrals is a great way to generate ongoing business by building a reputation in your niche.

For example, the dietitian who nutrition niche with retired dancers can build relationships with dance studios, doctors offices (or even more specifically podiatrists or orthopedists) and gyms to generate consistent business.

Establish community:

When it comes to community, people like to hang around people they feel are just like them. Because of this, you can actually find groups of people who are your exact niche and target audience spending time in the same places.

A perfect example of this are Facebook groups. No matter what your specific nutrition niche is, there are vibrant groups full of people who may need your assistance.

Spend a little time wherever your niche hangs out. Read the questions asked in the Facebook group, look at what’s being posted on Instagram or TikTok, learn the habits (good and bad) that come up over and over again in this community. And then start chiming in. Begin to build a reputation as being an expert in your chosen nutrition niche and you’ll start to see a community form around you.

Knowing your why and what makes you, you

Here we will start to uncover the framework for your profitable nutrition niche. Knowing what makes you uniquely qualified to speak to your chosen community is the first step before you being to design your offer and get paid.

Let’s start with some things to get you thinking about yourself and what you offer.

What questions do you need to ask yourself?

What do you know? (Think: education, certifications, skills, anything you know or have learned)
What have you accomplished that you could teach others? (All you need is to have done a step 1 of something and this might be leaps above your niche, ie: something to teach them)
What have you experienced/overcome that that has impacted on who you are today?
What do you like?
What do you do for fun?
What are key elements of your lifestyle?
What do you value?
What are some of your strengths?

If answering some of these questions are difficult for you, ask the opinion of partners, children, parents, siblings and friends. Sometimes they know you better than you know yourself. Ask them how they would describe you and/or 5 things that make you, you. You might be surprised at the answers they give.

What is your why? Or why does your business exist?

This is your purpose, belief or reason for why you do what you do. When you can answer these questions, you’ll have the foundation on which your business is built on.

Finding your why is the first stop before knowing the how (as in: how will you succeed). Discovering your why injects passion into your goals. As your ideas turn into reality the “why” will remind you that the work you’re doing is bigger than just making money.

You are a problem solver. People are going to come to you because they want a problem solved or they want you to teach them how to solve it on their own. The passion you have for your nutrition niche will make sure you keep working for your clients, helping them to solve their problems every day.

Be very clear about who you are trying to attract and market too. This will help you to build out your Ideal Client Avatar, the final piece in defining your niche.

Your Client Articulation Statement

A good “I help” statement defines your business in a nutshell. It boils down the reason for your existence and delivers that concept to your clients in a way that is easy to understand. This can include:

Who your customers are (and sometimes, where you operate)
What products or services you provide
The ultimate value/positive outcome of those products/services
How you make it possible

To give these ideas some legs, try filling out this statement:

I help_________ by _________ so they can ____________.

This can help you clarify the problem you solve, how you can help and what’s the desired outcome from working with you.

Here are some examples to get you thinking:

“ I help busy working women lose weight, manage their time and prioritize themselves so they can feel good about themselves and their bodies whilst changing their relationship with food”.

“I help people in the real estate industry to eat nutritiously, fueling them properly for a busy day ahead at work so that being overweight, obese or at risk of heart disease is no longer a problem for them”.

“I help aspiring professional dancers to fuel properly for performance, build skills for independently preparing meals and learn how to have a healthy relationship with food so that they can feel confident and have optimal performance for now”.

And that’s it!

How to clearly articulate what you do for whom and the outcomes that can be achieved from working with you as a dietitian nutritionist. I am wishing you all the best with your business and I hope to see you all flourish in your businesses.

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This post was guest authored by Brianna Fear-Keen (Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Business Coach for Dietitians and Nutritionists worldwide). You can find her at www.theambitiousdietitian.com