Problem
DePuy Orthopaedics was struggling to maintain market leadership and was faced with flat anatomic shoulder sales and rapid loss of units to competitors.
Insight
According to client research, only about 40% of patients seen for shoulder pain are referred to a specialist. And when they are, they might be referred to a rheumatologist, a general orthopaedist or a physical therapist – not a sports medicine or orthopaedic specialist.
DePuy needed to do something that had never been done in orthopaedics: they needed to speak to time-starved primary care providers. And they needed them to turn to DePuy surgical solutions for shoulder pain.
To make this happen, the PCPs first needed three things:
- Better education on shoulder ailments
- Information on best practices for patients with chronic shoulder pain
- Resources for proper patient counseling
Solution
Hart Associates designed MovingBeyondJointPain.com, a branded educational resource for PCPs that brought real value to physicians in the form of knowledge and diagnostic tools, and did it on their schedule. We collaborated with DePuy to integrate social networking elements. Additionally, MovingBeyondJointPain.com facilitated referrals to DePuy-affiliated surgeons. It also positioned DePuy as not simply a vendor, but a trusted partner.
Result
In the first five months, MovingBeyondJointPain.com logged over 4,000 visits from more than 50 countries. Primary care providers viewed an average of 4.5 pages per visit compared to the 2.37-page benchmark. PCPs also spent an impressive average of 7:06 minutes on the site and with the DePuy brand, which is considerably more than the 58-second benchmark.
The most important metric? Within the first year of the site, sales rose 26%.
