Jessica Moller is the founder of Aligned Practitioner, a marketing agency based in Portugal. Aligned Practitioner works in a B2B setting, helping wellness doctors and coaches grow their brands. In this AMA, Jessica tells us all about personal branding, marketing trends, wellness, and Aligned Practitioner.
This Slogging thread by Mónica Freitas, Jessica Moller, ex_pat_pat, Jack Boreham, Sara Pinto and Cris Silva occurred in slogging's official #amas channel, and has been edited for readability.
Hey @channel, please welcome our next AMA guest, Jessica Moller, the founder of Aligned Practitioner, a marketing agency based in Portugal. Aligned Practitioner works in a B2B setting, helping wellness doctors and coaches grow their brands.
Please feel free to ask Jessica anything about:
Hi Jessica Moller! Thank you for joining us!
Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and what you do?
Hi all, thank you for having me!
I am Jessica, a marketing strategist, and a mom of two little ones from Portugal.
My marketing career started in the UK where I graduated with an advertising master’s and right after started working in the fiber optic laser industry as a marketing and social media strategist, this was a big passion for me but becoming a mom was a bigger passion. So in 2015, I decided to quit my corporate job to build my own business and be able to have children and stay at home with them. I moved with my husband to Germany and started freelancing as a web designer and social media manager.
It was in 2019 right after having my second daughter that I decided to take my freelancing career more seriously and build my own marketing agency. I moved back to Portugal, after 10 years, and I now have a marketing agency in Portugal where we help functional medicine practitioners craft a powerful online presence and website to become leaders in their field and attract ideal patients organically with Web Design and Content Marketing.
Jessica Moller Wow, such a great journey! How was it to start your own business? What are the main challenges you still face?
Mónica Freitas
Starting my own business was a rollercoaster, especially with a newborn and a 2 years old toddler at home. The first year I was working at night and because I was charging a very low price I had to have many clients that were too much for me alone. During my second year, I decided to invest in a business coach and learned to price my services the correct way, and started offering high ticket offers and changed my target audience from health coaches to doctors and clinics. I am now able to have a small team that helps me a lot with clients’ work.
The main challenges I would say first being a stay-at-home mom, I lost a lot of clients at the beginning because I couldn’t manage my time between kids and work. The second challenge was changing my money mindset and giving value to my work.
Jessica Molle, and why did you decide on the wellness area?
Mónica Freitas
I have always been into wellness and holistic healing for my own health problems, but it was a coincidence that my first client was an IVF coach, and she started referring to all her contacts. When covid started, I decided to use that extra time at home to become a certified health coach, so I did the IIN Holistic Health Coach Certification, and during the training, I got in contact with a lot of the students and noticed that the majority had no knowledge on marketing or how to start an online business. So I decided to join both my marketing and wellness knowledge and have packages specifically for the wellness area, and having a certification in health coaching has helped me gain more clients and as they all are looking for someone that understands their coaching programs and not just marketing in general.
Hi Jessica Moller, I'm glad we have you here! The wellness area seems quite specific. Do you find it more challenging to engage within this theme?
Sara Pinto, I have worked with different niches, from engineering to business coaches, and I find the wellness area a lot more appealing for me. Maybe because is a theme that I am really passionate about, and I just love to keep learning new things from all my clients. That makes my work a lot more fun. It can be challenging in terms of having to be very careful about what you write, but it is very fascinating for me.
Jessica Moller, about copywriting, do you have any tips to make it more engaging?
Sara Pinto
I have 3 main copywriting tips that I always follow:
Hi Jessica Moller, great to have you. Quite a journey indeed! How would you compare the climate around entrepreneurship in Germany vs. Portugal? I just recently read somewhere that you don’t have to pay taxes for foreign income gained as a company resident in Portugal, very interesting.
Hi ex_pat_pat, that is correct, in Portugal you only pay taxes if you have clients inside Portugal, everything else is free from taxes! That is a very good thing about having business in Portugal, especially for me, that all my clients are in the USA.
Hi Jessica Moller! What would you say are the "secrets" to making it online? It's such a competitive market.
Cris Silva, the “secret” is having a very specific niche and offering something that will make you stand out from the crowd. For example, for me, the secret has been being a certified health coach.
Also, are there some specific challenges when it comes to marketing wellness brands compared to other businesses?
Cris Silva, I would say the main challenges marketing a wellness brand are with copywriting, we need to be very careful with what we say and have 100% sure that the sources from our research are from a certified healthcare website, paper, or book. Another challenge is if we are doing marketing for a health coach, the consumer needs to be aware that all the information we are providing is mainly informative, and if they have any concerns about their health they need to contact a doctor.
Jessica Moller, it must be no easy task being a full-time mom and business owner. Both take a lot of care and attention.
Not easy at all, especially starting a business during covid lockdown without being able to go outside with the kids. But it was a great challenge 🙂
Jessica Moller, wellness is such a big area. Is there a branch of wellness you'd like to work with? E.g. Mental health, eating disorders recovery, nutrition, etc.
I have worked with clients in different areas of wellness except one that I am really passionate about, women’s health and hormonal imbalances, so I can say that this is one of the areas that I would love to work with.
Jessica Moller, that's great! Being able to work in areas that interest you is what it's all about.
Jessica Moller, I'm sure you'll get the chance! How do you go about personal branding and marketing an individual?
Mónica Freitas, I think even if you have a company, building your personal brand is essential, I believe people will follow you first and then your business. So it is essential to understand your why, your beliefs, values, and the passions that drive you to do what you do, this will help you create a relationship with your target audience and will help you stand out in your field.
When building a personal brand for my clients, I focus exactly on that, understanding their beliefs, values, and passions. We also work on building their ideal customer avatar and brand personality, so we can transcribe it into words and design that will attract their ideal client.
Jessica Moller, there are so many pages about health online and with that fake news. It makes it hard to distinguish the good sources from the bad. What new trends do you see coming into marketing and social media?
Cris Silva, definitely video-based content and podcasting are going to be the trends for 2022, but even though YouTube and TikTok are the trends we should not forget about the power of copy and keywords to rank on Google and YouTube.
Jessica Moller, that's good advice, thank you! Since everything is so visual nowadays, would you say it's harder to grab the readers' attention only with copywriting?
Sara Pinto, grabbing a reader's attention is not easy, and you only have a few seconds to make them read the full article/blog. You need to grab their attention right in the first sentence, and the best way to do it is by knowing your audience’s pain points and incorporating them in that sentence. That way, you are making it about them and not you or your product, and they will continue reading.
Of course, just text is too boring, so the best is to combine images and video to grab their attention throughout the article.
Jessica Moller, that's excellent advice. It's been so great to have you on, but unfortunately, we will have to wrap up this AMA. Thank you for your insightful answers. To wrap up any final thoughts for our readers and where can people check out you and Aligned Practitioner?
Thank you very much for having me.
You can check out more about Aligned Practitioner on our website http://www.alignedpractitioner.com and you can also find us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/alignedpractitioner