Let's TalkLet's TalkThe highest ticket and the longest decision in elective medicine, sold to two people at once - where a success-rate claim is the most scrutinised sentence on your website.
Success rates are the most compared and most challenged numbers in fertility marketing. Send us your current claims and the data behind them, and we will show you where the framing is exposed, where it undersells you, and how the clinics ranking above you present the same figures.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
Fertility outcomes are reported nationally and comparably, which means a claim on your site can be checked against the underlying data by a patient, a competitor or a regulator. Rates framed per cycle, per transfer or per patient describe different things, and a clinic quoting the most flattering denominator without saying which is running the single largest claim risk in the category.
An IVF cycle is a five-figure decision made by a couple over a long period, often after other routes have failed. Campaigns built for a same-week booking convert almost nobody. What works is a nurture programme measured in months, addressed to two decision-makers who are researching separately and arriving at the consultation with different questions.
A growing share of patients arrive with fertility coverage through an employer benefit programme rather than paying directly, which changes the qualifying question from can you afford this to is your employer covered. Clinics still marketing purely on price and financing are answering a question a significant slice of their market no longer has.
This is the most sensitive category in elective medicine, and creative that reads as salesy does more damage here than anywhere else. Urgency tactics, countdowns and aggressive retargeting are actively counterproductive with a patient who has usually had a difficult year. The clinics that convert sound like clinicians, not like a funnel.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
Someone freezing eggs is usually planning ahead rather than responding to a diagnosis - often younger, often weighing career and timing, and making a decision with no immediate clinical pressure. They need different channels, different language and a different pace from couples facing infertility. Running both through one campaign serves neither, so we build them separately.
A promotional email arriving after a failed cycle or a loss is one of the most hurtful things a clinic can send, and generic automation makes it likely. We design the systems so that once treatment begins, marketing contact stops and communication passes to the clinic's care team - without passing clinical detail into marketing tools to do it.
Imagery and language that assume every patient is a heterosexual couple quietly exclude a meaningful share of the people a clinic serves. Same-sex couples, single parents by choice and people using donors notice who a clinic's marketing is speaking to. Writing inclusively is not a campaign angle; it is the difference between being considered and being skipped.
How every success rate on your site is defined and whether the framing is defensible. This is the highest-risk content you publish and usually the least reviewed.
A sequence measured in months, not days, addressed to both decision-makers. Most clinics lose cases in month two, having stopped following up in week one.
Employer benefit coverage asked about early, because it changes the conversation entirely for a growing share of patients and is rarely on the enquiry form.
Creative reviewed for voice as carefully as for compliance. In this category a tonal misstep costs more than a policy one.
Budget follows cost per started cycle against cycle value. At these case values a more expensive enquiry that converts is comfortably the better one.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
An evening or online session where a clinician explains the process, answers questions and meets prospective patients without pressure fits a decision made carefully and often by two people together. It gives partners a shared starting point and lets a clinic's approach be judged directly, rather than inferred from a website.
Gynaecologists and primary care physicians refer more readily, and earlier, when they know exactly when a referral is appropriate and what happens next. Simple referral guidance, prompt acknowledgement and a report back on the patient's progress make a clinic the easy choice for the physicians who see patients first.
Fertility treatment involves many appointments, tests and anxious waits. A consistent person to call - rather than a general phone line - is one of the things patients mention most when describing a clinic to others, and it is a structural decision the marketing can highlight only if the clinic actually offers it.
Cost is a significant barrier, and patients often do not know what their coverage includes or what financing exists. A dedicated conversation about money - separate from the clinical consultation - reduces the number of patients who quietly stop after the first appointment because the financial picture felt unclear.
No fertility clinic in our case studies, and we would rather say so in a category this sensitive than stretch a comparison. The clinic group below is the mechanism: conversion moved off the form fill and onto the booked consultation, and demand split by service line. Cost per lead fell 57% in two weeks. For a fertility clinic the parallel is measuring consultations and started cycles rather than enquiries, because the gap between those numbers is where the whole business sits.
Read the full case studyOur success rate was stated in a way that actually undersold us and was still exposed. Nobody had looked at how it was defined.
We were following up for a week on a decision people take five months to make.
They rewrote the whole tone. The previous agency had us running countdown offers, which was mortifying in hindsight.
More careful than with anything else you publish. Fertility outcomes are reported nationally and comparably, so a claim can be checked against the underlying data by a patient, a competitor or a regulator. Rates per cycle, per transfer and per patient are different numbers, and quoting the most flattering one without stating the denominator is the single largest claim risk in this category. We review how each claim is defined and framed, as a marketing review rather than legal advice.
Months. An IVF cycle is a five-figure decision usually reached after other routes have failed, and it is made by two people researching at different speeds. Clinics commonly follow up for a week and record the rest as lost interest. The cases are not lost at enquiry - they are lost in month two, when nobody was still present in the conversation without being pushy about it.
Significantly, and most clinics have not adjusted. A growing share of patients arrive with coverage through an employer benefit programme, which shifts the qualifying question from affordability to whether their employer participates. If that question is not on your enquiry form and not in your creative, you are answering a financing objection a meaningful slice of your market does not have.
Clinical, plain and unhurried. This is the most emotionally weighted category in elective medicine, and urgency tactics, countdowns and aggressive retargeting actively repel patients who have usually had a difficult year. The clinics that convert sound like clinicians explaining options. It is the one vertical where we review creative for voice as rigorously as for policy.
With genuine consent obtained for advertising use and careful handling, and with awareness that your state board's testimonial rules apply here as they do elsewhere - in some states, restrictively. Patient stories are powerful in fertility precisely because the decision is emotional, which is also why they need the most careful consent and framing of any material you run.
Written for owners weighing this up, whether or not they work with us.
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