DIGITAL PR CASE STUDY

      Genea Fertility: donor data turned into AI search authority

      Fertility isn't a topic most brands can talk about without sounding either too clinical or too promotional. Genea Fertility, a 40-year-old Australian clinic network, needed to do both: earn genuine authority on donor conception ahead of a new donor portal launch, and make sure that authority showed up in AI search, a priority the business had flagged at board level.
       
      Rather than pitch the portal directly, we went looking for a story hiding inside Genea's own records. Three months of anonymised patient and donor data later, we had a dataset no fertility competitor in Australia could publish, and a digital PR plan to turn it into coverage that built search equity exactly where Genea needed it.
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      +115%
      Growth in AI Overview placements
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      44
      Pieces of media coverage
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      +93%
      YoY organic lead growth (donor program)
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      Genea Fertility is one of Australia's longest-running fertility networks, with clinics across NSW, VIC, WA and QLD. Its patient base spans couples experiencing infertility, solo parents by choice and LGBTQIA+ families, with donor conception one of its fastest-growing segments. The newly launched donor portal was built to make that pathway more transparent.

      The Need

      At onboarding, Genea ranked five priorities for its Digital PR program, with becoming the trusted voice on fertility innovation at the top and lifting AI search visibility marked as a board-level concern. The donor portal had just launched, so the question wasn't what to talk about. It was how to make one launch carry that much weight.
       
      Getting there meant working around three real constraints:
      • A regulated, high-stakes topic. Every claim needed sign-off from a practising fertility specialist, inside legislation that changes state by state.
      • AI visibility with no shortcuts. Genea needed evidence that coverage was shifting how LLMs and AI Overviews described the brand, not just a lift in backlinks.
      • One product, one quarter. Spreading the retainer across multiple donor-adjacent stories would have diluted the exact authority the portal needed.

      The Plan

      Genea had one new product to build a quarter around: the donor portal. Rather than pitch it directly, we split the strategy into two data-backed stories built to work together, each pointed at the same destination.
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      Sperm Health
      An expert briefing with Dr Anthony Marren built a commentary bank on lifestyle factors behind male fertility decline, widening the top of the funnel toward donor conversations without a clinical tone.
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      Sperm Donor Shortages
      Genea's own anonymised patient and donor records from 2022 to 2025, turned into an original, publishable dataset no competitor could replicate.
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      Six state-specific releases
      The data story was localised into national, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA and SA versions, each led by its own standout stat to maximise pickup with state-based health desks.
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      An exclusive-first strategy
      Held the data story exclusively for the Herald Sun's National Health Editor first, based on which outlets Qwairy showed carried the most weight in AI-generated answers on this topic.
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      Landing pages built to hold authority
      Two search-optimised pages hosted the campaigns on-site, with every backlink and internal link routed to concentrate equity on the donor portal itself.

      The Execution

      With the two tracks briefed, the work moved to building assets that could hold up under scrutiny before they went anywhere near a journalist.
      finance
      Mined the data
      Analysed anonymised patient and donor records from 2022 to 2025, surfacing figures like a 97.6% rise in donor sperm demand and a shift from a 66/34 to a near-even 51/49 local-to-international donor split.
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      Fact-checked every figure
      Triple-checked donor stats against source records and pressure-tested every claim with Dr Anthony Marren and Dr Tween Low, working inside a legislative framework that varies state by state.
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      Went exclusive before wide
      Gave the Herald Sun's National Health Editor first access to the data story, ahead of syndication across News Corp titles including Kidspot and the Daily Telegraph.
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      Linked coverage to the portal
      Routed every release, state variant and landing page back to the donor portal, so earned media translated into structured authority rather than isolated mentions.
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      The hero asset was a search-optimised landing page, not a press release. Every version of the data story, national and all five states, linked back to on-site pages built to rank, with Genea's own patient and donor data doing the work a generic pitch never could.

      The Challenges Overcome

      Three hurdles shaped how this campaign had to be built, each one specific to working in a regulated, sensitive category.
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      Regulatory and clinical accuracy
      Every claim needed sign-off from a practising fertility specialist, and donor figures sat inside a legislative framework that differs state by state. Full briefing interviews with Dr Anthony Marren and Dr Tween Low pressure-tested every stat and quote before it went anywhere near a journalist.
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      Earning AI-visibility weight
      Qwairy data showed News Corp mastheads carried the most weight in AI-generated answers on this topic, so the data story went to the Herald Sun's National Health Editor as an exclusive first, rather than pitching wide from day one. That trade-off paid off directly in Genea's AI share of voice gains once the story landed and syndicated.
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      Making coverage build the right page
      Media visibility on its own wasn't the target, authority on the donor portal was. Optimising the on-site landing pages and internal linking meant every backlink's equity flowed to the exact page Genea needed it most, rather than dispersing across the site.

      The Results

      The campaign moved the metrics tied directly to Genea's brief: AI visibility first, then keyword rankings, then leads on the exact program the quarter was built around. Coverage landed across News Corp's national network, with sentiment holding positive to neutral throughout a topic that could easily have gone the other way.

      Metric Before After
      Google AI Overviews 89 191
      Overall keyword visibility 5,787 keywords 6,457 keywords
      Top 3 keyword rankings 290 366
      "How to become an egg donor" Position #6 Position #1
      "Sperm donor bank" Position #13  Position #3
      Domain Rating (Ahrefs) 60 61

       

      rewarded_ads
      191
      Google AI Overview placements
      Up from 89 at the start of the sprint, the campaign's flagship win against Genea's #1 priority.
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      44
      Pieces of coverage
      Earned across national, regional and international media, at an average linking Domain Rating of 69.
      rewarded_ads
      366
      Top 3 keyword rankings
      Up from 290, with "how to become an egg donor" and "sperm donor bank" among the biggest movers.
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      115%
      Growth in AI Overview placements
      Placements in Google's AI Overviews more than doubled, from 89 → 191.
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      55M+
      Estimated audience reach
      Across the campaign's 44 placements, including syndication through News Corp's national network.
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      93%
      Organic lead growth
      YoY growth in leads from Genea's donor program enquiry channel, from 28 to 54.

      The Conclusion

      For Genea, this campaign showed digital PR working as genuine AI search infrastructure, not a coverage exercise measured in link counts. By anchoring one quarter around a single product and building the story from data no competitor could publish, we gave Genea real authority to speak on a topic that demanded precision, and made sure that authority landed on the exact page tied to the donor portal launch.
       
      That's the real value of digital PR in a category this sensitive: earned media that shows up as AI visibility and donor program leads, not just placements in a coverage tracker. Digital PR, clinical accuracy and technical SEO working as one system, not three separate workstreams competing for the same audience.
      "StudioHawk's digital PR work is built into our fertility strategy. This quarter we anchored campaigns around our donor program, and the earned media reached the patients actually looking for that information. We're already seeing it lift our AI search visibility, one of our key GEO metrics. What sets StudioHawk apart is how they read the data and understand our category, they know what this means for patients, and they shape that into stories media actually want to run."
      Tanya Rivera
      GM Marketing, Genea Fertility

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