What Do Brands Expect From a Dietitian and Nutrition Expert Partnership?
Written by nutrition student Safura Husainy. Edited by Dietitian & Snapstudio55 founder Elis Halenko.
Why Brands Need RDs & Nutrition Experts
Working with brands as a dietitian is a great way to provide expert insight into their products and help elevate their brand. As a registered dietitian, you can show how brands and their products can fit into a balanced real-food lifestyle. This is important because it can sometimes be confusing for consumers to know which products are best for them, as well as identify health misinformation online. It’s up to registered dietitians to educate the public, provide evidence-based recommendations and tackle health misinformation that may be circling social media. By partnering up with brands we trust and that align with such goals to serve the public, we can ensure better health and nutrition education for the public. Below are a couple of points that brands expect from a dietitian or nutrition expert brand partnership.
What Brands Are Looking for in a RD Partner:
Credibility & Approval:
Credibility is important for brands when looking for a partnership, which is why brands like to establish a relationship with reputable sources like registered dietitians. The reason is that they can educate customers about their products, while also driving credibility and gaining trust from their consumers. So, whether a brand features you, the dietitian, or vice versa- it shows the audience that this health food company trusts you as an expert, and they should too.
Creativity & Ideas:
Along with gaining credibility, brands are seeking innovative and creative ways to reach consumers. To achieve the latter, brands are looking to partner with a creative individual that shares unique, creative, and specific ideas for a partnership. So, based on this, what you can do is identify your strengths and expertise. Do you host cooking classes, have an ebook, podcast, or cookbook? Do you like to host events and presentations? The opportunities are endless! So take a look at things from their perspective and ask yourself how you can help them specifically, as well as what you currently offer. One fun way to think about this is by thinking about making yourself really stand out-make it hard for them to say no!
Consumer Trust:
Gaining consumer trust is important for both the brand and the dietitian. If the brand isn’t aligned with your philosophy, and values, and does not promote sound health benefits, you will jeopardize and maybe break your audience’s trust. This is why partnering with brands that align with your niche and passions (i.e. gluten-free, whole-foods, nutrient-dense, gut health, low sugar, baby-healthy) helps you better serve your clients when they ask for food or brand recommendations. It is important you are the trusted reliable source of the knowledge surrounding brands and resources to share with your audience. By having partnerships with brands that are a good fit for your audience you can help guide their decision-making process while they grocery-shop, making it a little easier for them as well.
Consumer Insight:
Consumer insight is understanding your consumer’s behavior and collecting feedback that can be used to improve your product or service. Analyzing consumer insights allows companies and brands to truly understand what their consumers want and need, helping businesses understand how their target audience thinks and how to engage them with their brand. So once you understand the things your audience loves and wants to see more of, you can give them more of it! This is a great way of gaining deeper engagement and stronger consumer relationships. What’s a better way than social media to engage with your audience in real-time?
Consumer Education:
With all the health misinformation available to consumers online, it makes it difficult for them to make informed decisions and navigate such a complex healthcare system. This is why consumer education is crucial. Consumer education helps protect consumers from unprofessional behavior from businesses (i.e. false advertisements) so that they have ample information to make informed decisions based on reliable facts. Therefore, it is our job as dietitians to help our audience make these informed decisions and debunk such nutrition myths.
Not only do we as dietitians need to use evidence-based data to reduce the confusion, but we need to translate this information into plain language to make it easier for them to understand and make informed choices. However, the challenge is not just communicating accurate information but presenting it in a way that can be easily understood and used for decision-making. Think back to the creative aspect! It is important to captivate your audience and maintain their attention for them to really absorb the information you are providing.
Research also proves how easy it is for certain products/brands to convince consumers into purchasing a certain product. For instance, the longer a consumer looks at a specific claim, the more likely they are to purchase the respective product. Moreover, the lower the price and the higher the perceived healthiness and/or tastiness of the product, the more likely it is to be purchased. Consumers with higher nutrition literacy, health motivation, and knowledge also looked longer at the health claims, but interestingly this did not affect the purchase decision (Steinhauser et al., 2019). This goes to show how far implementing knowledge translation for the public goes and the outcomes it can have.
Reference:
Steinhauser, Janssen, & Hamm. (2019). Who Buys Products with Nutrition and Health Claims? A Purchase Simulation with Eye Tracking on the Influence of Consumers’ Nutrition Knowledge and Health Motivation. Nutrients, 11(9), 2199. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11092199
Brand Visibility & Product Awareness:
Brand awareness is how familiar the target audience is with the brand and how well they recognize it. Brands that have a high brand awareness are often referred to as ‘trendy,’ ‘iconic’ ‘popular’ or ‘up-to-date’. Brands strive to establish awareness of their brand because it makes their product valuable when marketing and fosters trust from consumers, especially during the early stages of starting a business.
In a world where consumers rely on others’ opinions and reviews before purchasing a product, brand trust is crucial. Once a consumer connects to and bond with a brand, they are more likely to repeat the purchase and bridge the gap between initial trust and loyalty.
Brand awareness is not only about fostering trust, but also about making an impact and building a personality to be sincere and transparent, tell a story, or receive feedback. These are also ways that humans connect - which is very similar to a human-brand relationship!
Oftentimes, brands can also gain brand recognition when partnering with a more trusted brand, company, or individual - that is why a partnership with a registered dietitian can help elevate a brand. But when establishing this partnership to promote brand awareness, both parties must keep in mind that when interacting with the audience, you are doing it in ways that don’t only ask for participation, loyalty, or money. We don’t want a shallow approach when interacting with our audience or our partnerships- it’s key to seem genuine and passionate!
Affiliate Sales & Product Trial:
This brings us to our next point-affiliate sales. Affiliate sales refer to generating commission from the sales you make. Dietitians must keep in mind that affiliate sales can seem or even be unethical if you are promoting a product for your self-interest. If you believe in the product, that it adds value and benefit to your audience, is something you’ve actually used before and you know it’s effective-then it is OKAY! At the end of the day, you can always negotiate your own terms and do what feels right and authentic for you. P.S. You don’t have to feel pressured to agree to an affiliate partnership if the brand doesn’t align with your values.
Call to Action:
With so many registered dietitians on social media, there are plenty of opportunities for dietitians to build their business, as well as work with brands that they trust, support, and align with their health messages. If you are a brand that would like to collaborate with me, head on over to @snapstudio55, and send me a DM to chat more!