You are here

home  ›  events  ›  some club - clinical study recruitment

Clinical Study Participant Recruitment Using Social Media

So you’ve worked really hard, discovered something amazing, completed all of your ethics approvals and governance procedures... now, you’re ready to advertise on Facebook to recruit participants. It looks easy, right? 

Where do you find a licensed photo to meet protocol? How do you design an ad that meets the 20% text grid rule? How do you define and find your audience? Why aren’t the likes and shares converting to participants? 

We will look at these and any other questions you have about clinical trial recruitment in this 2 hour workshop and discussion. 

  • 30% OF CLINICAL TRIAL TIME IS SPENT ON PATIENT RECRUITMENT AND ENROLLMENT.

  • 37% OF ALL SITES IN A GIVEN TRIAL FAIL TO MEET THEIR ENROLLMENT TARGETS

  • 10% OF SITES NEVER ENROLL A SINGLE PATIENT

*IMPACT REPORT, Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, Vol. 15, 
No. 1, Tufts University, 2013

How Your Comms & Marketing Team Can Help

Recruitment for clinical studies and trials can be a challenging task, and often studies fall over due to a lack of participants within the allocated time. Our comms & marketing team are often asked to share a recruitment post on social media, generally Facebook, which aims to generate enquiries from relevant audiences.

These posts are often confusing, disconnected, uninformative and generally do nothing to endear the participant to the study. The results, not surprisingly, are poor so the incorrect conclusion is drawn that this isn't an effective method for recruitment. 

In this session, we will look at the importance of comms & marketing engagement at the beginning of the ethics application rather than after ethics approval which can mean an unnecessary duplication of work or completely missing the target audience.

Regularly, researchers will try to achieve multiple and conflicting goals using a single ad with its competing goals cancelling out the key messaging. We can work with TRI researchers to better understand their audience before embarking on a recruitment campaign.

We will look at some of the specifics of posting an ad to Facebook and we'll discuss your questions and experiences so we can work together to improve the results of these campaigns. 

> More about the Social Media Club

> Would you like to receive a calendar invite with the rest of the sessions for the year? Please email [email protected] and we'll include you in the Outlook meeting.

 
 

WIN A PROMOTIONAL PACK

For those who are in the process of recruiting, we will have 2 'promo pack' prizes to give away on the day which will include:

  • 1 hour private consultation with TRI Comms & Marketing team
     
  • 2 x stock images to promote your study
     
  • 2 x Facebook advertisements  to promote your study (PNG files, less than 20% text for FB grid rules)
     
  • 1 x 'study' page on the TRI website
     
  • Post to the TRI Facebook page tagging your institute
     
  • $50 paid Facebook advertising

The prizes will be awarded to the attendees with the best question, campaign idea or discussion topic. 

If you'd like to submit a question for discussion, or would like to present your experiences during the session, please email us ([email protected]) or join in the conversation on the day.