Fertility startups must balance growth with maintaining trust, as aggressive marketing can alienate customers.
Operations strategist Megan McDonell advocates for community-building and tangible connections to enhance trust.
Effective communication and personalized engagement are crucial in the sensitive post-purchase phase.
McDonell's three-step strategy helps brands scale responsibly by focusing on data, testing, and organizational alignment.
The ultimate goal is to ensure that growth efforts align with the brand's mission and values.
In femtech, the push to grow fast is real. But for DTC fertility startups, the usual tactics—loud marketing, automated funnels, and constant outreach—come with real risk. When the product is tied to someone’s most personal hopes, even well-intentioned growth efforts can feel impersonal or out of touch. The question is simple but serious: how do you scale a business built on trust, without losing what made it matter in the first place?
The answer, according to operations strategist Megan McDonell, lies not in marketing alone, but in a disciplined operational approach designed to protect the human connection at all costs. As the Founder and Lead Strategist at BRY Consulting LLC, McDonell helps mission-driven organizations build the systems needed for sustainable growth. For her, everything starts with recognizing that in fertility, you're not just supporting a customer. You're stepping into one of the most emotionally significant moments of their lives.
Selling a dream: “In the reproductive space, it's very personal,” McDonell says. “It's not like selling a watch; it's selling a person their dream.” Fertility brands aren’t offering products; they’re offering hope. And when that hope feels transactional, trust evaporates. For McDonell, every operational choice must reinforce the emotional weight of the journey. Packaging, follow-ups, and even automation should feel like extensions of care, not tactics.
Community first: For brands navigating this delicate and deeply personal terrain, McDonell points to one essential strategy. “The way organizations in this space are succeeding is by forming a community,” she says. In a historically underserved sector, many consumers are still discovering what’s possible, making education and connection as vital as the product itself. But true community-building isn’t just a feel-good tactic. It’s an operational commitment. From how companies structure engagement to how they scale messaging, success hinges on whether they can turn one-to-one support into a collective sense of belonging.
Tangible trust: To build that trust, brands must make their story accessible and avoid forcing users to "dig to find information." But beyond storytelling, McDonell points to the power of tangible connections that bridge the digital and physical worlds. "It sounds so simple, but something like sending customers a thermometer to test their basal temperature can make all the difference," she says, offering an example of a simple operational choice that deepens a customer relationship. "Something that simple can really connect with a person."
The ultimate sign of a trusted community, however, is when its members feel safe enough to share their own journeys. "Featuring intimate stories on a marketing site—where people are going public and saying, 'I was successful at conceiving'—is such a good angle for building consumer trust," McDonell explains.
Support vs. spam: This trust, however, can be shattered in an instant. The need for sensitivity is most critical in the post-purchase journey, where a single misstep can undo months of careful relationship-building. McDonell points to a common mistake that prioritizes scale over awareness. "When a brand sends text messages to promote a sale, it feels impersonal," she warns. That one-size-fits-all approach fails because it's blind to the user's emotional state, turning a supportive tool into an intrusive reminder.
Soul at scale: While the principles of connection are clear, McDonell’s core expertise lies in building the operational engine that runs them. She laid out a practical, three-step blueprint for how any mission-driven brand can de-risk growth and find new audiences without losing its soul. "First, you have to dive into the data to understand if there is another user that you're missing," she advises. From there, the key is to test and validate. "Then, you must run a minimum of two or three iterations with a small group to get a good case study started." For McDonell, every strategic decision must ultimately feed into a unified mission, ensuring the entire organization is aligned. "Finally, you have to ensure everybody is collaborating and understands the goal to have a successful delivery."
