Medtech · Orthopaedics · nSTRIDE
128 patient referrals in one month. At £18.66 cost per acquisition.
A direct-to-patient marketing ecosystem for a non-surgical knee treatment, built from scratch with compliant messaging, paid search, patient persona research, and a national PR campaign.
The client
Medtech · Orthopaedics · nSTRIDE
Our client is one of the world’s largest medical device manufacturers. Their nSTRIDE treatment is an autologous protein solution derived from the patient’s own blood, designed to slow the progression of early-onset osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. At the time of the campaign, nSTRIDE was available at over 50 private clinics across the UK.
The challenge
2 million people with early-onset knee OA. Not enough of them finding treatment.
01
Invisible to GPs
GPs had limited awareness of non-surgical treatment options for early-onset OA. The default referral pathway pointed straight to pain management or knee replacement, neither appropriate for the target patient cohort.
02
Wrong language for patients
All existing product messaging was written for surgeons. Clinical terminology, procedure codes, mechanism of action. The language that convinces an orthopaedic surgeon means nothing to a 52-year-old who just wants to keep running.
03
Regulatory compliance
Medical device advertising regulations meant every patient-facing claim had to be substantiated, reviewed, and approved. The campaign had to be compelling and medico-legally clean at the same time.
What we did
A direct-to-patient system. Built from scratch.
Patient persona research
We segmented the target audience into five distinct patient personas, Janet, Dave, Margaret and Ed (primary), Martin and Lindsey, Jasper and Annabelle (secondary), with geographical mapping, lifestyle profiling, and channel targeting built for each one.
Compliant patient messaging
Working with the Centre for Pain Research at the University of Bath, we translated clinical language into accessible patient-facing copy. Every claim went through a regulatory review process with the client's compliance team before going live.
Full digital ecosystem
We built the nSTRIDE patient website including a 'Find a Clinic' locator. Each of the 25 participating clinics had a tracked landing page, so referrals were attributable by clinic, by keyword, and by campaign variant.
Paid search campaign
Google Ads campaigns targeting the right patient cohort by symptom, lifestyle keyword, and geography, optimised in-flight as conversion data came in. CPA of £18.66 against private consultations priced at £200+.
National PR and media
Secured national coverage including a Daily Mail feature with Strictly Come Dancing's Steve Backshall as a patient ambassador, alongside broadcast and lifestyle media outreach targeting the active 45-65 demographic.
The results
November 2021 snapshot.
128
Clinic referrals from the Find a Clinic page in a single month
3,718
Website sessions in November 2021 (3,000+ new users)
3.01%
Paid search conversion rate
£18.66
Cost per acquisition (vs £200+ consultation value)
157%
Uplift in conversions vs the prior period
50.9%
Improvement in conversion rate vs benchmark
Top-performing clinic pages: Nick Howells Bristol (14 referrals), Jamie Arbuthnot Midland Knee (11), Kent Musculoskeletal (11), Wiltshire Knee Clinic (12), Central Knee Clinic (10). Campaign expanded to broadcast and lifestyle media targeting in Q1 2022.
The insight behind it
“The product was good. The clinical evidence was there. The only thing missing was the patient not knowing the treatment existed. That is a marketing problem, not a medical one.”
Running a direct-to-patient programme?
We built the framework that generated these results from scratch. If you have a medical device or treatment that patients need to find, we know how to build the system that connects them.