Be careful about overpromising in your marketing messaging.
Without naming names, I recently came across a new product in the fertility space marketed as a lower-cost, direct-to-consumer option compared to in-office fertility care. The package includes at-home hormone testing, virtual REI support, and access to prescription hormone medication if applicable. Without listing any data, the product page states that it will “optimize your pregnancy chances” and will “increase your likelihood of becoming pregnant.”
This messaging, quite frankly, is dangerous.
My own experience with mismanaged expectations
I vividly remember when I was early on in my journey to conceive, flying blind with zero reproductive education. This would later go on to serve as inspiration for the original Cofertility, which started out as a platform filled with educational fertility content. And at the same time, wearable tech was experiencing its heyday. I would religiously wear my ovulation tracking bracelet nightly for months without any red flags — so why, I wondered, was I still not getting pregnant?
Common guidance says to visit an REI if you’ve been trying for over a year if you’re under 35, or after 6 months if you’re over 35. I was 28 — but I decided to stop wasting my time with a silly bracelet and go see an actual fertility specialist. And thank goodness I did, because after some completely non-invasive bloodwork, totally painless ultrasound, and some other imaging, I found out I had a full septum almost dividing my uterus in half. Sure, I ended up still experiencing years of unexplained infertility even after resolving the septum issue. But the moral of the story is that there is zero substitute for in-office care and marketing that implies otherwise can be harmful.
Marketing in the fertility space is…complicated
For many, in-office care is just not possible — it’s incredibly cost prohibitive, OBGYNs often treat infertility reactively, and some patients live hours away from their closest clinic. Because of that, I’m still totally supportive of things like at-home testing that make fertility knowledge more accessible. But these products need to be marketed with very transparent disclaimers. In this one’s case, this information is there, but buried at the bottom.
I’m all for instilling hope throughout the fertility journey. But femtech marketers need to keep in mind that women experiencing infertility are an incredibly vulnerable audience. As such, they deserve to be treated with the utmost sensitivity. If something can save them time on their fertility journey, that’s amazing. But it needs to be beta tested and data-backed. Remember, consumer trust is earned.