Blog

Home // Blog // 3 Ways to Increase Your Practice’s Revenue

3 Ways to Increase Your Practice’s Revenue

Photo of woman and piggy bank

As a registered dietitian, you’re excited about caring for and providing nutritional education to your clients. You know that the knowledge you’ve gained can help others live better, healthier, longer lives—and you take great pride in that fact.

Still, you have a practice to run, and you need to make ends meet.

So how can you not only survive, but thrive during uncertain times? From a purely financial perspective, it’s important to maximize your practice’s revenue in any way possible.

Fortunately, there are several ways to accomplish this. Let’s discuss 3 methods to increase your revenue and keep your practice going strong!

1. Increase Your Prices

“Ha!” you may say. “If it were that easy, don’t you think I would have done it long ago?”

But before you laugh, think about it for a moment: When you first started out as an RD, you had limited experience. You probably didn’t have very many clients. You also didn’t have an established reputation in the community.

However, now that you have the experience, the clientele, and the reputation, doesn’t it just make sense that you would charge a higher price for your services?

Actually, increasing the price tag for your services is a well-established strategy — it’s called “premium pricing.”

Premium pricing is especially appropriate for companies or individuals that offer a unique product or service, and have a considerable competitive advantage. Doesn’t that describe your practice as a registered dietitian?

Of course, if you want this strategy to work then you have to ensure that you’re always “putting your best foot forward” when it comes to your practice.

In other words, not only should your core services be top-notch themselves, but all the peripheral aspects of your operation should feed into the perception of high value: the appearance and functionality of your website, the quality of your videos, even your practice’s logo and other graphic design elements.

2. Add a Product or Service

Another way to generate more revenue from your practice is to expand your catalog of product/service offerings.

And as an RD, there are a ton of ways you can go with this one! Here are just a few examples to illustrate the concept:

  • You could start offering virtual sessions to your clients
  • You could branch into group coaching sessions
  • You could (finally!) launch that 6-week course you’ve been dreaming about
  • You could write a cookbook full of health-conscious recipes, either in physical or electronic form (or both!)
  • You could expand into guided “how-to” videos (think “cook with me” videos, pros and cons of a specific food item, etc.)

Of course, before you dive headfirst into a new product line, or commit yourself to a new service offering, you may need to ask yourself some thoughtful questions, such as:

  • Is this something that I can do without sacrificing my credibility or damaging my reputation? In other words, will my target audience actually believe in my ability to successfully provide this product or service to them?
  • Do I have the required knowledge and skills to make this work? For example, if I’ve never led a group coaching session before, do I feel confident that I could handle the demands of that service offering? Or do I need to do some more research first?
  • Will this product/service fit into my current business model? Can I use current aspects of my practice as leverage for the launch of this product or service? For instance, do I already have some videos published online, and could I use them as a springboard for a new video series?
  • Is it worth it on a purely financial basis? Or will it cost me more money, time, and/or energy than I’m willing to give?
  • Do I really need to expand my practice in this way?

Some of these questions may be difficult to answer, but they are key to making a good decision about whether to add a new product or service to your lineup.

3. Serve New Markets

The final method of increasing revenue that we’ll consider is to expand not your product or service catalog, but your target market.

As a registered dietitian, your potential target market includes… well, everyone! (Everyone has to eat!)

Of course, in reality, you’re likely already focused on a specific market segment, such as seniors, athletes, pregnant women, etc.

(If you’re not, we recommend that you STRONGLY consider doing so now. If you’re stuck, ask us how.)

But even if you work in what you consider to be a very specialized field, there may be new markets out there that you can successfully penetrate.

  • If you’ve only worked locally, consider other cities you could target with an additional office. (Even better, think about adopting a telehealth mindset and treating distant patients virtually.)
  • Consider different age groups that might be suffering from ailments that you can help with. For instance, if you specialize in sports nutrition and primarily work with young athletes, think about helping aging athletes, as well.
  • If you’re able to add other specialties to your service mix (such as diabetes, sports nutrition, or eating disorders) there’s no time like the present. For some, this would be as easy as a foot doctor deciding to become a dentist—but it might just work for you.

There are two caveats here, however.

First, don’t get too overzealous about expanding your market. If you’re running a solo practice, for example, you don’t want to spread yourself too thin. In our experience, RD’s tend to take on too much or go too far when they should just be pilot-testing.

Second, if you want to expand, make sure your new market is adjacent to what they are currently doing, so your messaging doesn’t become too “scattershot.”

To feel comfortable enough to work with you, clients need to feel like what you do “makes sense;” any confusion in the buying process is likely to send them running for the hills. So while a message like “Now treating children, as well” is perfectly understandable, you might scare your buyers off if you announce “Now offering sports nutrition and help with the Mediterranean diet!”

But if you can “dip your toe into the water” without sacrificing anything major in terms of your time, your core customers, or your finances—then, by all means, test out a new market.

The Takeaway

It’s true that one of these three methods—increasing your prices, adding a product or service, or expanding your market—may work better for your practice than the others. Then again, maybe you can incorporate all three!

Whatever the case may be, keep on the lookout for new ways to increase your practice’s revenue. If you do, you’ll experience continued growth for years to come.

Stephanie Hofhenke

Stephanie Hofhenke

I founded STRING Marketing in 2010 to build on my passion for helping private practitioners impact the lives of patients and consumers across North America. I’ve come to develop a deep knowledge of the unique challenges practitioners face — and as a result, I’ve built a remarkably effective toolkit that helps you take those challenges on. To date, we've launched over 400 private practitioner brands and websites. We'd love for you to take a look.

Stephanie Hofhenke

I founded STRING Marketing in 2010 to build on my passion for helping private practitioners impact the lives of patients and consumers across North America. I’ve come to develop a deep knowledge of the unique challenges practitioners face — and as a result, I’ve built a remarkably effective toolkit that helps you take those challenges on. To date, we've launched over 400 private practitioner brands and websites. We'd love for you to take a look.

Stephanie Hofhenke

Stephanie Hofhenke

I founded STRING Marketing in 2010 to build on my passion for helping private practitioners impact the lives of patients and consumers across North America. I’ve come to develop a deep knowledge of the unique challenges practitioners face — and as a result, I’ve built a remarkably effective toolkit that helps you take those challenges on. To date, we've launched over 400 private practitioner brands and websites. We'd love for you to take a look.

Ready to solve the marketing puzzle for your practice?

The Practitioner's Growth Playbook from String Marketing - for RDs, integrative medicine practitioners, health and wellness practitioners and more

Does this sound familiar?

“I know I could get more of the right kind of patients… If I just knew where to put my marketing money.”

At STRING Marketing, we hear it from our clients all the time.

That’s why we created our free Practitioner's Growth Playbook.

When you’re done reading, you’ll understand the ins and outs of practice marketing — and you’ll finally know exactly what to do next.

Follow Us:
Latest Posts: