There’s no doubt about it – Facebook Ads are a super successful way to recruit patients for clinical trials. And my own experience over the last few years – where I’ve managed over £2 million worth of Facebook ad spend and delivered tens of thousands of clinical trial registrations – suggests that there is a bright future ahead for this method.
But you need to watch out for several potential pitfalls when using Facebook as your medium for driving traffic to your registration site. Not only from the perspective of Facebook’s own privacy policies and other restrictive terms, but also based on the problems of getting anything too ‘sales-ey’ through your Ethics Committee review panel.
Here’s an overview of the main issues you need to bear in mind when setting up a Facebook Ads campaign aimed at patient recruitment for clinical trials.
Getting Your Ads Approved by Your Ethics Committee
Seems like this would be quite a familiar issue – with every ad you create having to ‘pass muster’ before you’re allowed to put it out there. However, when it comes to Facebook Ads, there are certain things you’ll need to be aware of that perhaps might not come up when dealing with your other forms of advertising.
One of the main issues is that Facebook Ads work best when there are multiple variants of headlines, ad copy and imagery to be able to work with. So even if your carefully crafted headline for a national newspaper gets approval from the Ethics Committee (Review Board), you really want to have multiple versions of it that you can ‘mix and match’ for ongoing improvement within your Facebook campaigns.
On top of this, Ethics Committees are notoriously ‘matter of fact’ when it comes to the language they want you to use in your adverts. This is entirely understandable from their point of view, but can cause a few headaches when it comes to trying to craft compelling and persuasive messages that will attract your desired audience.
And it’s not only the language you use, of course. You’ll have to gain approval for a variety of images that can be incorporated in the adverts, too. (Plus video content if you’re using that ad format within Facebook).
Landing Pages (where your patients sign up for the trials) will also require approval from the Ethics Committee before they’re allowed to be used – giving us a whole set of different types of media that you’ll have to work hard to craft effectively for both maximum returns and Ethics approval.
Provide Multiple Versions of Copy and Images
There’s an obvious conflict between what we would want to be able to say as marketers – eg ‘Help us to cure XYZ by taking part in a clinical trial’ – and what an Ethics Committee will be likely to approve – eg ‘Take part in a clinical trial for XYZ’. My experience suggests it can be of benefit to develop some of your copy in a style of messaging that you are sure will be disapproved – in order to allow a slightly less ‘sales-oriented’ message to gain the green light. (The same type of idea can apply to imagery, too, with some potentially more ‘in your face’ imagery being submitted that you anticipate are likely to be rejected, alongside ones that are more likely to gain acceptance).
Getting Your Ads Approved by Facebook
Now, once you’ve got over this first set of hurdles outlined above, you still have to get your ads through Facebook’s own review stage – a process which has seen many potentially successful ad campaigns snuffed out before they even have a chance to go live.
With Facebook’s well-documented privacy issues over the last couple of years, there’s been a definite shift towards tightening up the review procedures – especially when it comes to sensitive personal information such as the kind of health issues we’d be dealing with in the clinical trials arena.
Facebook have always had a ban on the use of the names of prescription drugs – either in the advert or on the website the ads link through to – unless you’re an approved online pharmacy. Which could also obviously be something of a hindrance in the field we’re operating in.
Plus it contravenes Facebook’s terms of service to use language which identifies particular health issues for the specific person who sees the ads. For example, a phrase such as ‘If you have XYZ you might be interested in taking part in our clinical trial’ will almost certainly be rejected as it implies a health-related issue on the part of the person seeing the ad. In order to get round this, Facebook suggests using language that is aimed in a more general direction, focusing on the content of the trial, rather than any physical characteristics of the target audience. For example – ‘We’re looking for people with a diagnosis of XYZ to take part in a clinical trial’. (Which is a general statement of what you’re after, rather than an implication that the person you’re showing the ad to might have the diagnosis themselves).
The imagery you can use also falls into a stricter category for review purposes – with Facebook specifying you can’t use an image that could ‘shock or scare’ viewers. This can be problematic if you wish to include an image of someone in a hospital, for instance. (On the other hand, of course, from a marketing perspective we’d be looking to use imagery that was attractive and welcoming – so shock or scare tactics should probably be jettisoned anyway).
Behavioural Targeting – Facebook’s Killer App
Since Facebook came along with its super sophisticated targeting capabilities, Google was forced to ‘up its game’ in order to try and compete at the same level. I personally don’t believe it has managed to do enough in this regard – which is why I focus on Facebook Ads for generating clinical trial patient registrations, rather than using Google.
The core of this advanced level of targeting is Facebook’s focus on Interest Targeting. This is effectively a form of Behavioural Targeting – where you display your ads to people who have expressed an interest in particular topics through their online behaviour. (In the case of Facebook, this is determined based on websites they have visited plus using Facebook’s own enormous internal dataset relating to Facebook Page Likes, Comments, Shares etc).
For the purposes of targeting a relevant audience for clinical trials, we can use the Interest Targeting function to show our ads to people who have expressed an interest in things such as the Associations / Societies / Charities that are related to the specific condition we’re recruiting for. Plus it would be worth employing some lateral thinking here to come up with other relevant Interests for your target audience – especially as not every condition will have relevant Interests within Facebook that we can use. (There are various tools you can use to help with this process, such as ConnectAudience from https://connectio.io).
On top of this condition-specific targeting, there is also a ‘Clinical trial’ Interest within Facebook – so if we combine the 2 sets of Interests in the correct manner we can be sure to be targeting a highly relevant audience for the particular trial we’re recruiting for.
Retargeting in the Healthcare Sector
Google has taken the decision to disallow remarketing of healthcare adverts. While Facebook hasn’t (yet) followed suit, the area is grey enough to warrant some caution when attempting to make use of Retargeting to show your message to an audience on Facebook. (Retargeting is the facility to show your ads to people who have previously visited your website and / or are connected with you on Facebook).
Something else to bear in mind if you deal with healthcare marketing in the USA – while Facebook doesn’t ban the use of Retargeting, there is a law known as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), subsequently supplemented with the HITECH Act (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health), which puts additional onus on the advertiser to ensure there is nothing ‘identifiable’ about the health status of a viewer when they see the advert.
Effectively this issue would be covered by Facebook’s own regulations regarding what you can say in an ad, but there are some consultants who advise against using Retargeting through Facebook at all in the healthcare sector – especially in the USA, which has a notoriously litigious culture.
My own recommendation is to ensure any of your Retargeting efforts are focused on showing fairly generic adverts, in order that you don’t fall foul of any potential accusation of using the Retargeting function in a manner which would identify individuals and their health issues. (Meaning you wouldn’t adopt the same strategy that is successful for non-healthcare Retargeting campaigns, where your ‘follow up’ ads might highlight the specific product or service they’d visited on your site by way of reminding them to perform your desired action).
Disallowed Ads – Reviews and Appeals
Of course, despite all our best efforts, Facebook is well-known for disallowing adverts, seemingly on a whim with no particular rhyme or reason for why they might have done so. When this happens – which it inevitably will – you need to know how best to go through the appeals procedures to get the ads re-reviewed and (hopefully) approved for going live as a result.
With over £2 million of ad spend managed over the last few years, it’s easy enough for me to get in touch with the support team at Facebook and ask them to re-review my clients’ ads in a timely fashion. With this level of experience, my best tip for achieving a satisfactory resolution to your issue – outside of sticking within the parameters already outlined – is to contact Facebook support via their Chat facility, rather than simply using their online appeal form.
Not everyone gets access to chat support, but it’s by far the quickest and most effective means of getting things sorted out swiftly. If your account qualifies, you’ll see a Chat button when you scroll down the /business/help page when you’re logged in. (You can access this page by clicking the ‘?’ link at the top right of the Facebook Business Manager* dashboard screen, then scrolling to the bottom of that pop out page and clicking the ‘Still need help?’ button).
The support team aren’t looking at the same screen as you, so you’ll need to give them as much detail as possible – such as Account ID, Campaign Name, Ad Set name etc, plus clearly define the problem you’re having in order to stand the best chance of getting a positive response.
(* I’ll assume you are using the Facebook Business Manager rather than having a simple Ad Account login. If you aren’t – you really should be!).
Patient Recruitment Service for Clinical Trials
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