Since the advent of the lockdown forced by the coronavirus pandemic, the majority of clinical trials around the world have been paused, awaiting procedural revisions and the resumption of life without ‘social distancing’.
While this may not put them officially into the ‘rescue’ category, effectively the end result is that trials that were recruiting have been unable to hit their targets. Though this is hardly as unusual an occurrence as it should be in the world of clinical trials, it does mean that the people running the trials should probably now view them as being at the stage where they need rescuing.
In my experience, using Facebook Ads to kickstart a patient recruitment campaign can be extremely valuable when it comes to getting a trial out of rescue and back on track.
Now, I’m aware of the saying that ‘to a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. (Meaning that if you have a particular tool at your disposal, you will always see a problem from the perspective of it being able to be solved with that tool). However, my route to focusing on Facebook Ads as a means of recruiting patients has seen me involved with campaigns that have used many other methods – press ads, radio ads, liaison with doctors, Google ads etc. The reason I choose to primarily focus on Facebook Ads is that they are the most effective method I’ve ever come across for attracting patients in large numbers, quickly.
If you combine this experience with the fact that people are spending more time on social media than ever before, it certainly indicates that using Facebook to recruit patients will be of great value to anyone who is approaching a recruitment deadline and still has many participant places yet to fill. (Which would certainly qualify as one definition of a trial being in rescue).
On top of this, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a lot of media attention on the possibility of finding a cure / vaccine through clinical research. Which means there is now a readymade audience of people who are predisposed to believing in the concept of clinical trials. Giving us a greater opportunity than ever before to promote the idea of participating in trials to a receptive audience.
With over 1.7 billion people logging in to Facebook on a daily basis – and over 2.6 billion people actively using the platform at least once a month – there’s no shortage of people to target with your message. And one of the most useful features of Facebook Ads for the purpose of promoting trials is that they are shareable. Meaning that even if a person with the specific condition you’re looking for isn’t actively using Facebook themselves, they will almost certainly know someone who is – leading to the message about the trial being able to be promoted even to people who aren’t on Facebook at the time the Ads are shown.
And if you want to make it as easy as possible for potential trial participants to register their interest, you can use Facebook Lead Ads – that pre-populate a form with contact details within the Facebook system itself. Which leads to quick and easy ‘one click’ expressions of interest without having to leave the platform. (More on the use of Facebook Lead Ads).
Of course, you also need a swift and effective means of following up the registrations. Leaving your follow up calls for days – and even weeks in some cases I’ve seen – is a sure-fire way to lose impetus and decrease the number of registrations that convert into consenting trial patients.
But if you can manage this aspect well – for instance by using a call centre or your own team – Facebook Ads are quite definitely the quickest and most effective way to take a trial out of rescue and get it back on track for recruitment success.
Facebook Ads Service for Clinical Trial Rescue
If you want to see how I can help get your trial out of rescue by recruiting your desired number of patients using Facebook Ads – get in touch for a quick chat about the possibilities.