Kate Freeman started a nutrition blog, and it was pretty popular. So popular, in fact, it made her think about whether, after her son reached Kindergarten age, if she should return to her government job or press on and see if she could build a nutrition business.
That was in 2012, and now, in 2019, the Healthy Eating Hub boasts two locations in Canberra, Australia, a team of 10 and a strong social media following with their Facebook page having 15,000 followers.
As you’ll hear, the Healthy Eating Hub isn’t into fads and diets. In fact, you very quickly come to realise that Kate and the team are all about keeping it real, for real people.
Kate has also realised how important marketing is to her business and how her focus has shifted significantly.
In the episode, among other great insights, Kate outlines how a lead magnet, The Hub’s Guide to Healthy Convenience Food, generated a bucket-load of leads for Kate and her team.
You can visit the Healthy Eating Hub’s website and social profiles through the icons below.
Enjoy!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
As part of the service, I have had this episode transcribed. Transcribing, proofing, and editing a podcast episode is A LOT of work. That’s why I use a service called REV who provide professional freelance transcriptionists who are vetted for quality. While they offer a 99% accuracy guarantee, I do not proof-read their work extensively. Instead, I simply copy and paste below and, as such, please note that this is not a verbatim transcript of the episode and I have trimmed things like the intro, close, and mid-show ad.
Daniel: What sort of food would you describe yourself as?
Kate: I don’t really want to pick just one food because I like lots of foods. And so I would describe myself as a buffet.
Daniel: Very good.
Kate: All the foods. All the foods in different combos, in different ways. You never know what you’re going to get.
Daniel: I like that answer. I was hoping for carrot or chicken nugget, but we’ll accept buffet. Now there’s lots of businesses out there that are in the same space. They offer nutritional help. What makes the Healthy Eating Hub different?
Kate: We are actually really making ourselves different in the market by helping people form a more long-term perspective with their nutrition, and help them develop habits one at a time. So, most nutrition programs, or diets, or different places that you can go and get help, really encourage people to change everything about their diet all at once. You know, like follow this meal plan, or cut out all the carbs, or do something and change everything all at once. Whereas we encourage people to just focus on one small part of their diet, repeat that, get really good at it and then move onto the next thing, so that it’s actually sustainable and realistic for them.
Daniel: It does sound like a great differentiator. It’s something that I think people can get their head around, particularly if they haven’t really been engaged in this space. It’s almost small steps. Small, medium and long-term goals so that they can, punning intended, take a bite out of the first one and then digest that and move on.
Daniel: Kate business owners have a lot of balls to juggle when it comes to getting things done, particularly small and medium businesses. There’s the finance, there’s the people, there’s the legal side, there’s the IT, and of course the marketing, but in the cold, hard light of day, everyone has to prioritize. We don’t have unlimited resources, time or money, or staff. How much of a priority do you place on marketing compared to the other areas of your business?
Kate: Yeah, that’s such a good question because it’s actually changed recently. So, up until a couple of months ago it was a priority, but in terms of time, I probably only spent the equivalent of maybe half a day’s work on it a week, because I was still having a full client load. So, I still saw clients, and then had my staff to manage, and then things like the finances and bills, and pays and everything. But in the last couple of months I’ve really sort of understand that if I don’t get the marketing right, and if I don’t get new leads and make more sales, that we will cease to exist as a business. So, I now probably spend, I reckon about 60 to 70% of my time on marketing. Like trying to get metrics in place, and test different things, and yeah, really be a little bit more strategic about it rather than a bit machine gunish.
Daniel: So, those things that you’ve been doing for a while, and now with a little bit more time on your hands to be able to test some things, what’s been the most successful marketing tactic that you’ve employed? The one that you just think, Oh, we could not do without that?
Kate: Definitely social media. So, we have used that from the very beginning because the business really started because I started a blog and a social media page, and so that’s where we’ve grown. And then from there it was people started asking for help with their nutrition, and then I thought, “Oh, I could make some money out of this as well and make a business out of it.” So, social media has really grown with us, and it helps us understand our market too, because we like having that conversation I guess with people. And so yeah, the posts that I do on social media where I ask questions, like tell me about your biggest barriers? Or let’s explore why this is really hard? Like that really conversational social media post is vital. I think if you just bombard them with stuff like content, which they love as well, which is really good, all the time, I don’t know it gets a bit old. Whereas whenever we do a post that is asking them to talk with us or engage with us, that always does a lot better. So, I think we’ll always do that on social media and I guess act like we’re real people, because we are on the other end of the keyboard, you know, rather than a social media page where people are like, “Is anyone actually listening on the other side?”
Daniel: So, on social media what channels do you use? And those ones where you’re trying to have a conversation with your audience seem to do really well, is there any particular type of content in those conversational posts that you find really resonates with your audience?
Kate: There are. So, we focus on Facebook and Instagram. We’ve got Twitter as well, but I have found that that’s not worthwhile, so we don’t really do much on that besides automatically post blogs and recipes when that publishes on the website, that just happens automatically. So on Facebook we find that we do content … I think content around being time poor. Content around convenient, easy meals that are healthy, and content around pressure that people feel. And I guess the best way to explain that is I think that there is this high expectation these days with social media to look a certain way, you know, like healthy is supposed to look like you’re supposed to be really lean and have a six pack and cascading blonde ponytail. And …
Daniel: I’m not ticking many of those boxes, Kate.
Kate: No, me neither. Me neither. And I think, and there’s also, you know like a healthy meal has to be, you know, this kale filled nourished bowl with activated charcoal, and I think it’s just, it all still feels a bit too much, where sometimes I say to a client, I’m like, “If you are busy, and you don’t have time for dinner, and you’re on your way home from soccer training, just go into Woolworth’s, buy a bag of pre chopped stir fried vegetables that are raw. Go and get some of those salmon fillets. Get a packet of like brown rice vermicelli noodles, and literally you can pull a stir fry together with some soy sauce and honey, and you made it 10 minutes.” And they’re like, “Oh really? Is that healthy?” And you’re like, “Yeah.” It doesn’t have to … And I think just breaking down those high expectations. So, when we put that kind of content online, like we did a lead magnet, which was 47 convenient meals from the supermarket, which was literally go into Woolworths, buy these four products and throw a meal together. And these four products are healthy and great for you to use and a really easy. And that’s been fantastic. We’ve actually generated nearly 1400 leads in the last month who’ve gone onto our mailing list from downloading that through Facebook.
Nugget: Attention. Attention. Marketing nugget.
Daniel: I think sometimes as businesses, we kind of forget that our target audience often doesn’t know as much as we do. We spend all day with our heads in a certain space, a certain industry, and we understand it deeply. Of course we would. We live and breathe a day in, day out, but then we go and communicate with lay people, or people that don’t know as much as we do, and we kind of forget that they don’t understand everything as deeply as us. They don’t get it as quickly. So, don’t be scared to almost dumb down your content and communications a little, and break things down into more basic parts for your audience. You might be surprised how it resonates with them. That’s a great tactic there by Kate, eBooks and lead magnets like that are great because they are usually evergreen, meaning they stay valuable to your audience for a really long time, maybe even forever, and they are in-depth content pieces that demonstrate your expertise. Demonstrating your expertise builds trust with your audience and people buy off people they trust.
Daniel: The key here for Kate is gating the content. So, gating content means putting it behind a form or a gate that people have to travel through to be able to access it. So, here it’s a form on a website and people provide their details in return for the eBook. Then Kate puts them into her database and adds them to her regular communications. Gathering contact information like this is very important because essentially people are giving you permission to contact them. You just need to use that permission wisely.
Daniel: You speak about the eBook, and you’re driving people to that through lead magnets with social media posts. You’ve got the blogs, you’ve got your website obviously, where the blog lives, and your social media posts, do you execute any traditional i.e. non-digital marketing tactics that have been really successful for you? And if so, why do you think they are successful when so much advice is around the importance of digital marketing?
Kate: I actually haven’t. Like I’ve never done a print ad. I’ve never done TV or radio or newspaper ad.
Daniel: Any workshops that you’ve run for people that they turn up to?
Kate: Yeah, we’ve tried workshops, and we find we’re hard to draw a crowd to, so we’d do a post that say who would be interested in coming to a workshop on blah a topic, and heaps of people would be like, “Yeah, that’d be great.” And then you put it out there and then no one actually comes.
Kate: The only traditional marketing I ever tried, like back in the day was I paid $800, which back then felt like so much money, to put my logo on, you know the little thing that they staple your prescription drug thing to. You know, and you go and you fill a prescription. Yeah. They’re like “Put your logo on the back of that. You know, because everybody has those and they put them on their fridge, you know, their prescriptions and stuff.” Anyway, so I did that. And then it wasn’t until a week later that I’m home staring at a prescription on our fridge for my son’s Ventolin, and we had it on the fridge with the prescription facing out, so the logo on the back for whatever company was on the back promoting, you couldn’t see it anywhere. And I was like, “That’s such a dumb idea, and I just paid $800 for that.”
Daniel: Well, sometimes we do you need to try some of those things, and sometimes in marketing we think something’s going to be amazing, and it turns out to be a dud. And there’s other times where we think, “Hmm, I’m really not sure about this.” And for some reason, and we can’t explain why. It just seems to really resonate with people and do well.
Daniel: So, humor can be a really effective element in marketing, but a lot of businesses, they shy away from it. I know you don’t shy away from it. And I remember a video a few years ago where you were throwing Easter eggs into the bushes and then hunting them out and claiming that that must make them paleo. Do you think that taking work seriously, but not taking yourself too seriously helps your marketing in your business?
Kate: I think it helps me because that being quite true to my personality, and because I would say that I am someone who cares deeply about a number of things in my life, but the way I approach those things is through humor. There’s sometimes I wonder when I am a bit silly when I think, “I wonder if people are like, I am not seeing that because she’s nuts?” I guess the people I have attracted through that, they resonate with me, so I guess in the end it actually works out well because I attract the kind of client who I want to work with and they want to work with me, and in the end that’s the best kind of client anyway. And if people don’t like the humor that I do online, they’re not going to be my client, which is fine, and they’re probably not the best client for me anyway. So, I guess I’ve come to terms with the fact that by being a certain personality online that I might polarize my audience a bit, but that that’s not necessarily a bad thing, so long as I’m resonating to the audience that I’m trying to target, I guess.
Daniel: We spoke about some offline non-traditional marketing that you tried that didn’t work, with the prescription magnets, you’ve spoken about some social stuff, has there been any marketing that you’ve tried either traditional or more digital stuff that just didn’t work that you think, wow, that was a real dud?
Kate: It’s probably taken me maybe, maybe two years of trial and error with Facebook ads, and certainly the first Facebook ads I tried didn’t work very well, because I didn’t really understand them and how to do it, and I’ve just over the years just kept asking questions of people who have done it before, or done like a little marketing course or something like that, and I’m slowly filling in the puzzle of how they work, and I don’t actually think I still fully understand them. But at the moment, like I’ve got an ad running for our lead magnet, and it’s costing me around 32 to 40 cents per conversion. So, every time someone downloads the lead magnet, and goes on my mailing list, it costs me 34 cents, which I feel is pretty good.
Nugget: Attention. Attention. Marketing Nugget.
Daniel: Kate thinks that 32 to 40 cents to convert someone from an ad to downloading that eBook is pretty good, and she’s right for her business. For you though, when you are looking at marketing tactics that require a direct spend, like digital advertising, the key to ask yourself is, what is an average customer worth to me? For example, if and average customer is worth $20 and you’re spending $1 per conversion from a digital ad, then that return is probably okay. It’s not great if you’re spending a dollar converting and only making $1.50 because there’s lots of other costs that impact your margins. However, if your clients are worth say $3,000 on average, and you’re spending just a few dollars converting them, then that’s amazing. It’s outstanding. But a word of warning, all that is happening here is they are firstly visiting your site, so you still need to get them to take action when they get to your site. So, you can run all the digital ads you want, but if you don’t convert them when they get to your site, it’s not probably a real conversion, i.e. they need to provide their details. Then even if they do provide their details, they are simply going on a database, so you really do need to think about how you are going to nurture and then convert those people once they are on your database.
Daniel: What do you do to keep up with your competitors and what they’re doing?
Kate: Oh, that’s a really good question. There’s a part of me that actually doesn’t lock doing competitor analysis. My mentors in the acceleration program at the moment want me to do one, and I don’t like it because it makes me insecure. So I don’t do that whole comparison thing. And then if I drink wine then I get depressed and I’m like, “They’re all better than me.” And anyway, I go down a spiral. So, I need to be careful with my emotional state with that.
Kate: But I do try and stay across what I feel are the key players in my market that they’re doing. But I do find if I spend too much time on it, it stifles my own creativity because I think that to be good, I have to do what they’re doing. Whereas I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of how I want to help people with their nutrition, and it is a little bit unique. And so I do find that if I give myself enough distance and just genuinely think about what’s the best way to help my customer with their goals, that I’m a bit, I just find my creativity flows that little bit better. But at the same time I would be silly to be completely ignorant. So I just, I don’t know, I follow them and just keep an eye on the different things that they’re doing, but at the end of the day, I actually find that my best way is just focusing on my own innovation, and thinking about my client and my customer, and really listening to them and be going, “Okay, well what can I do to help solve that problem for them?”
Daniel: I think anybody listening to that would really resonate, because I agree. Watching your competitors too much and potentially just following what they do, and doing the things that they do, and the messaging that they deploy, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re seeing a lot of success just because they’re doing that. So, absolutely focusing in on your own target audiences is what every business should do. Most of your eyes on your business and in your own backyard, and maybe just a sideways glance to your competitors every now and again.
Daniel: Kate, that’s a great chat. Kate Freeman, the managing director and nutritionist. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing the Healthy Eating Hub’s, marketing experiences.
Kate: No worries. Thanks for having me.