Positioning 101: What It Is, Why You Need It Now More Than Ever and How to Build Yours in 4 Steps As A Nutritionist

If you’ve been in business for five years—or five minutes—you’ve probably heard the word brand more times than you can count.

Maybe it makes you think about logos, colours, fonts, or how your Instagram feed looks. And while those things matter too, they’re not where your brand really begins.

Before the logo, before the website, before the perfectly curated grid, you need to know who you really are and what you can offer, and to who.

So without further ado, let me introduce you to… ✨positioning✨! This sparkly thing will help you put everything you need in place in a way that will grow your business: your messaging, your offers, your content, your marketing, and even the opportunities that come your way are tight to this one thing – positioning.

I’ll explain exactly what positioning is, why it is important for you as a nutritionist, and how to create yours (step by step!). By the end of this blog you’ll walk away with your ✨positioning✨ and next steps on what to do with that.

Now go grab your pen and paper cause this is about to get practical.

What is positioning?

You can’t say it simpler than this: Positioning is what you want to be known for and to who.

In other words, when someone talks about you (cause you are doing an amazing job!), what do you want them to say? What are you the absolute go to for? Cause I’m pretty sure if someone says “I have serious period pain every month and I think I might have endometriosis”, you’ll want the other one to say “I know just the perfect endo nutritionist for that.”

Maybe you’re:

• helping women with PCOS improve their relationship with food
• supporting busy professionals with sustainable & guilt-free weight loss
• guiding new mums through postpartum nutrition while enjoying their new chapter

The more specific you are, the easier it becomes for people to remember you and refer you. Or come back and ask for help when they deal with the problem you’re solving.

Because people won’t search anymore for “a nutritionist”, but “a nutritionist who can help with…” or even browse their problem, without knowing they need you yet. They’re just looking for someone who understands their specific problem.

That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to work with anyone that doesn’t fit your positioning. Of course you can still say yes. But having a clear positioning helps the right people find you and immediately think: “That’s exactly who I need, they know me.”

Why is it important to have a strong positioning?

Once you’ll have a clear positioning, marketing, creating the website, strategies, allocating resources will get so much easier.

Instead of trying to speak to everyone, you’ll know what content to create, where to show up, what conversations (and where) to join, what partnerships or podcasts would make sense to focus on, and after all, which opportunities are worth your time so you can meet those goals of yours.

If however your audience is too broad, your sales and marketing efforts will get quite confusing. Yes, you can create content, but are you sure it helps your potential clients the way they need?

Being broad might also stretch you thin, thinking you have to show up everywhere because you’re afraid of missing opportunities. But you’re just a human, aren’t you?

I hate to be the one to say it, but… You can’t be everywhere and do everything for everyone. (Been there, done that - would. 100%. NOT. recommend).

Strong positioning gives you focus AND attracts the people who need you, especially if you think about the following reasons.

Why do you need positioning now more than ever?

So now you know what positioning is and why it is important. That’s always been the case, but we both know there are a few reasons why standing out is more important than ever.

People are spending more carefully

The economy has been unpredictable, and many people are being more intentional about where they invest their money, which 👏.

But their problems are still there and because they feel alone and don’t know where to go next, they might end up picking the wrong someone for them, when you were just around the corner.

They should be confident and feel safe about making the right choice. And your clear positioning helps them understand why you’re the right person to help.

We’re in a trust recession

People have been burned before. They’ve bought programmes that overpromised and underdelivered and they’ve followed general advice to be able to feel themselves again.

Trust is harder to earn than it used to be, when “nutrition experts” are rising every day and good information is hard to find. So showing your expertise right away and the transformation you provide, people might feel like you know them before you even talk, so they’ll feel safer choosing you.

You’re no longer just competing with other nutritionists

We have to address the elephant in the room - the big old generalist called AI.

Whether we like it or not (we definitely don’t), people can go straight to their favourite AI tool for meal plans for PMOS, nutrition advice on gut issues, and general information is delivered in seconds.

What AI can’t replace is your expertise, experience, perspective, and ability to support a human being through change (a change that you probably went through yourself).

Having strong positioning helps people understand your value quickly and why you’re the person they want in their corner rooting for them, not being just another source of information.

Create your clear positioning as a nutritionist in 4 steps

While you can find 4,763,892 articles on the internet about positioning, half of them tell you to “find your niche”, and the other half want you to create a 17-page customer avatar and know your ideal client’s favourite oat milk.

We’re not doing that.

Your positioning doesn’t need to be complicated. People simply need to understand who you help, how you help those people and why you’re the best (lowkey, you already know you are the best!).

So let’s get into it.

1. What do you offer?

Grab your notebook, open your Google doc, whatever floats your boat and write down all the products you have and/or every way someone can work with you.

This might be 1:1 consultations, group programmes, memberships, self-paced courses, pre-registered workshops, e-book or any other offer you have. It’s important to list the ones you can be paid for, not your free e-books right now.

If there’s something you don’t want to offer anymore, cross it off the list. I suggest writing it and then cross it, rather than not writing it at all, so you see it. It’s important to know you took into account and now you intentionally choose to leave it behind.

2. Who do you serve?

Do. not. say. everyone. Please? If you still feel the need to say that, take a few days off and re-read this blog after. Let everything sink in.

If you’re ready now, start by looking at the people you already served and what challenges and desires they have when they come to work with you.

What kind of people keep showing up? Are they women with PMOS? Busy moms approaching perimenopause, high-achievening women struggling with gut issues? Others? Again, list them all (or as many as you can).

Now, ask yourself: “Who do I genuinely love working with?” And, is there anyone else you could serve or would like to serve?

For example, you could have a lot of PMOS women on your list, but you would like to serve more PMOS who are approaching menopause from now on. Or maybe you had that one client with endometriosis and would like to shift your focus on that.

From your list, choose the one that feels right for you. (It’s ok if this takes time, but don’t spend weeks on it – the gut feeling is never wrong, that’s the anxiety talking). You don’t have to marry this person, you can absolutely serve more than one type of woman, but trying to speak to everyone at once usually means nobody feels like you’re talking to them.

3. What’s the outcome of working with you?

This might be the most tricky part, but you got this. I’m sure you already have the answers.

List the top 5 things that change for your clients after working with you. It’s not that they have a meal plan now, it’s the fact that they are able to focus better at work because they are properly nourished.

Or maybe they have more energy to play with their children. Or less anxiety around food. Or being able to go out anytime now that they don’t have to plan their lives around their period.

4. Write your positioning statement

Now it’s finally time to bring together everything. And to make things easy, I even have a few templates you can use to write your positioning statement.

You can try one of these:

• I help [people you serve] achieve [outcome] through [service].
• I help [people you serve] go from [current struggle] to [outcome] with [service].
• I support [people you serve] to [outcome] without [thing(s) they don’t want].

And if you need a few examples…

• I help women with PCOS improve their energy and regulate their cycles through personalised nutrition support.
• I help busy freelance women improve their gut health without restrictive diets.
• I help women in their 50s feel like themselves again through holistic nutrition coaching.

Next steps after nailing your positioning

You did iiiit! (If you’d like some feedback, you can drop me a message and let me know your positioning)

Research your (new) people

Now that you know your positioning statement, you can start building everything else around it. You can research your audience deeper - look where they hang out online, what questions they ask the most, what words they use to describe their struggles.

Work on your messaging

Once you have your research, analyse and create sales messages that resonate with your people.

Create (or tweak) your offers

You might notice that your offers should include more support or that you need to spend more time on 1:1 with your (new) audience. Update deliverables, prices or anything else needed for your offers to match your new positioning.

Create your brand strategy guide

This should be your go-to document for anything and it should usually serve you around 5 years.

It keeps your positioning, messaging, values, personality, goals, all in one place so that every piece of social media content, every new sales page or every future team member will work on the same page.

And if you need help with all of that, I’m always here for you.