Given potential obstacles and competition, attracting more clients to your nutrition business can feel like a tricky game. One of the best ways to garner more eyes on your content and services is to include bonus offers. The promise of something valuable included at no extra cost sparks a sense of urgency and can convert leads and lurkers into paying clients.
As a nutrition practitioner, you may have high-value nutrition services and programs set up but struggle with converting leads into paying clients. Perhaps you also host plenty of free challenges, cooking classes, and seminars, and run a regular newsletter, but haven’t yet offered an incentive for leads to purchase your products and services. It’s time to change that!
That Clean Life Ambassador, business, and health coach Kathleen LeGrys of Health Coach Solutions is an expert on the topic of offering bonuses as part of your nutrition business. We spoke with her about why bonus offers are so integral to a successful business plan and how to make them as effective as possible to attract more clients.
How Bonus Offers Can Help You Attract More Clients
Offering bonus incentives can be a powerful strategy for attracting more nutrition clients to your services. In a competitive market where individuals are increasingly conscious of their health and well-being, providing added value through bonus offers can set your services apart.
Kathleen notes that incentive bonuses help get people off the fence. She also emphasizes that bonus offers can work for any type of program or service. No matter what you’re selling, there’s also an opportunity to add valuable bonus offers and boost sales.
As long as they are tailored to your audience and their perceived needs, bonus offers could be anything from exclusive access to something, 1:1 support, free assessments, or personalized plans.
These incentives entice potential clients and showcase your commitment to their health journey. By emphasizing the extras they'll receive, you create a sense of value and differentiation, making your nutrition services more appealing.
Furthermore, positive client experiences resulting from these bonuses can lead to word-of-mouth referrals, expanding your client base and solidifying your reputation. In this sense, bonus offers are an investment in the long game of your nutrition business.
Choosing a Bonus Offer
When choosing a bonus to attract more clients, first consider what incentives would resonate with your audience. Then, determine the best way to structure them to optimize the perceived value and the amount of sign-ups.
Consider client pain points
A bonus offer should address your client’s roadblocks. Whether it's offering personalized consultations for dietary concerns, providing educational resources, or creating exclusive content focused on overcoming common hurdles, a targeted bonus demonstrates a genuine commitment to improving your client's well-being.
Kathleen says you should be asking questions about your clients like:
- What is most challenging for them?
- When you're working with them, what's the biggest roadblock?
- Where are they feeling stuck?
This personalized approach not only sets you apart in a crowded market but also fosters a deeper connection with your clients, showing them you’re attuned to their struggles and dedicated to guiding them toward solutions. This also helps build a foundation for long-term client satisfaction.
Complement your niche
Every nutrition business has a unique niche, so craft a bonus that aligns with yours. Tailoring your bonus to cater specifically to the needs and preferences of your target audience not only enhances its attractiveness but also demonstrates a deep understanding of their unique challenges and goals.
When the bonus is closely aligned with your niche, it becomes a powerful tool to attract more clients who are genuinely interested. This fosters a stronger connection with your audience and boosts loyalty.
Reflect on your service
Your bonus offering should always be based on the program or service being sold. This helps create a cohesiveness that ensures your client is likely to be interested and able to utilize it.
For instance, if you’re selling a course on "How to Make 30 Paleo Meals in 30 Days", it wouldn’t make sense to include a free 7-day vegan meal plan. Perhaps a paleo grocery list or a paleo dessert guide would be a better fit.
Price it right
Make sure your audience knows the value of what they’re getting for free. Kathleen recommends including the monetary value of each bonus on your sales page and newsletters. People don’t know the value of your offers unless you tell them, and this isn’t something you want to leave ambiguous.
A good rule of thumb is to make your bonus worth approximately 20% of the price of the program you’re selling. For example, if your offering is priced at $1000, then the value of your bonus could be around $200.
This is enough to hold significant value without feeling like it’s “too good [low] to be true” when selling — and without requiring a ton of extra effort or lost value on your end.
Boost urgency
We’re all incentivized to some degree by the fear of missing out — especially when we might lose an opportunity we really want.
One of the best ways to boost urgency when including bonus offers is to structure it as a limited-time offer versus something clients can receive anytime. Kathleen says your bonus offer should also be something new to your clients, not something they could purchase from your site another time.
You can also highlight your bonus using strategic timing to attract more clients. A fast-action bonus encourages clients to buy “before it’s too late” (such as, during a live webinar).
Timed bonuses can be offered during certain periods of your sales schedule.
- You could start with 2-3 bonuses that all clients will receive.
- An additional bonus could go to the first 25 people who enroll or who purchase within the first 24 hours.
- In the middle of your launch, when sales tend to slow, you could add a brand-new bonus to incentivize more people.
- Finally, you can include a great bonus on the last day of your launch, when a large number of sales tend to come in anyway. This targets those who have been procrastinating.
Kathleen also recommends offering your best, highest-value bonus on the first day that your program is for sale. Your bonus should be very specific and something your clients can’t get anywhere else.
Bonus Offer Ideas
Now that you better understand the value bonuses have to bring to your nutrition business and how to structure them for the most positive response, you’re probably ready to brainstorm. We’ve detailed some ideas to consider below.
Meal plans and recipes
Kathleen says one of the best bonuses you can offer is a collection of recipes or meal plans. This is because it's so hard for people to make changes to the way they eat, shop, cook, and prepare food. Meal plans and recipe collections are a great way to offer something that’s going to make feeding themselves well quicker, easier, and less stressful.
When you use That Clean Life, creating and sharing recipe compilations and meal plans becomes easier and faster. It also makes it simple to search for delicious recipes your client will love and curate them into a full meal plan with your custom branding.
Cooking classes
When selling a nutrition service or course, the odds are good that your clients are interested in getting their hands on anything that will make it easier to feed themselves well.
Kathleen notes that virtual classes are just as valuable to teach clients how to make healthy, quick meals. Cooking skills are something your client can benefit from in both the short and long term and can make sense for a wide variety of offers.
Learn more about how to take your cooking classes online.
Workout plans
Nutrition and fitness go hand-in-hand. Many clients who are interested in your program or service offering may also be looking for more personalized support in their fitness routine as well. If you’re offering a course on Nutrition for Weight Loss, for instance, you could include a 14-day workout plan to support weight management goals.
Bonus coaching
If you’re selling a coaching program, those who invest in it are likely to find value in additional opportunities for guidance. A bonus coaching offer could allow for more individualized advice they may not otherwise want to pay for. Plus, it doesn’t cost you anything extra besides some of your time.
Grocery store tours
Grocery store tours can be helpful, particularly if your clients are new to a certain way of eating or leading a healthier lifestyle. The grocery store can be overwhelming if you’ve never shopped intentionally for your health.
Offering a grocery store tour as your bonus is a great way to add value without requiring a lot of extra effort on your part. This could look like an in-person group tour for local clients or a virtual tour for a broader audience. Either way, you can point out strategies for healthier shopping, provide actionable tips, and foster lasting connections.
Learn more about how to design a grocery store tour session.
Attract More Clients With Bonus Offers
Bonus offers are an essential component of any nutrition service or program launch. They are a proven way to incentivize more sign-ups and convert more leads to clients. Start by considering your niche and client pain points, followed by structuring the timing, price, and details of your offers to optimize interest. Ideas could include things like extra coaching sessions, meal plans, recipe compilations, grocery store tours, or workout guidance.
Using bonus offers strategically not only helps boost sales now but also sets you up for repeat clients and higher sales numbers later. If you’re ready to take the next step in creating your unique nutrition bonus offers, take a demo to see all the ways That Clean Life can help you create beautiful nutrition plans for your clients.
Kathleen LeGrys is the creator of Health Coach Solutions, a way to help health coaches find top-quality programs and resources in one location. As a longtime health coach herself, she quickly realized how helpful it was to have a comprehensive and organized approach to help her clients truly succeed. That’s why she offers everything from done-for-you health coaching programs and business-building resources to mentoring and ongoing support through her business. Learn more about Kathleen here.