As a nutrition professional, there's a good chance that advertising and selling your services feels "icky" and unnatural to you. If you are struggling with what to say in your marketing, then let your successful clients do the talking!

Client testimonials are one of the best ways to market your services. But they work even better when they read like inspiring stories. People love stories. They love seeing a "before" and "after" that they can relate to.

Who to Ask for Testimonials

Collect testimonials from your happy, successful clients. Think of the individuals who have attained the best results through working with you, and who are happy to talk about how your services changed their lives.

The perfect client to ask for a testimonial is someone you absolutely loved working with and who loved working with you just as much. Sharing their story is sure to attract more clients with similar goals, needs, and attitudes.

How to Ask for Testimonials

We are here to help you start asking the right questions that will craft your best client stories. Here is a template you can copy, paste and customize when asking a client for a testimonial.

"Hi ________________,

I wanted to reach out and congratulate you again on your health transformation. You’ve worked so hard, earned amazing results, and I’m proud to see how far you have come. It has been wonderful to work with you and I must say, I am so honored that you chose me to come on this journey with you.

Your story is so inspiring and if you are open to it, I would love to share it! I'd be so excited to feature your hard work and success on my website and share it to motivate others who are just starting out with their own transformations.

I’m hoping that you’re open to sharing a little bit about your experience from where you started to where you are now.

Here are the things I think people would love to know about your journey:

• What made you decide it was time to take action and transform your health?

• Why did you choose to work with me specifically?
• What were you feeling before starting the program?
• How did you feel during the program?
• What was your biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?
• How do you feel now?
• What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to achieve what you have achieved?

Any other feedback you have for me would be so appreciated.

I can't wait to share your story."

It's typical to focus on ourselves when we ask clients for testimonials, but you will get a better quality testimonial when you instead focus on their personal story. The best testimonials are the ones that don't sound like an advertisement, but a genuine success story that just happens to include you and your amazing practice.

How to Use Client Stories in Your Marketing

You can share your client stories and testimonials in many different ways, but here are the strategies we have seen nutrition professionals succeeding with:

1. As a Blog Post: Client stories make great blog content because you can tell the tale of their journey from beginning to end with meaningful detail. Featuring a client on your blog doesn’t have to read like an ad, but can offer value to readers and generate interest in working with you.

2. On Social Media: Writing social media captions can be hard – so let your clients do it for you! You can pull one or two-sentence quotes from your client's testimonials to use in your social media captions. You can also take screenshots of the love notes they send you (with their permission and respect to their privacy) and share those in your Instagram Stories.

3. Add to Your “Work With Me” Page: Shortened client stories can make a great addition to pages where you advertise your services, like your “Work With Me” page or a sales page for your program. Keep them to two to three sentences here so they don’t distract from your main call to action.

4. In Your Free Talks: Sharing client success stories can increase the conversion of your free talks. If you’re giving a free talk about meal prep, you could tell a short story about one client you worked with who didn't have the time to cook at home until they hired you to create customized meal plans that fit their needs. This will help your audience understand how you impact the lives of people just like them.

The most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to sharing client stories in your marketing is that the goal should always be to show people exactly how your services helped your client achieve their goals. Each story should directly relate to one of your services and have a call-to-action inviting people to work with you and achieve their own transformation.

Now, get out there and start collecting stories! Email at least one happy, successful client this week to ask for their story.