When selecting the right media mix to support your digital recruitment campaign, there is a wide array of channels and tactics to choose from. While clinical research campaigns are often slower to adopt emerging tactics, it’s important to engage patients in unique ways to ensure your study stands out in the competitive landscape and ultimately closes enrollment on time.
So, how do you balance the need for innovation with the need for stability and – critically – ensure compliance and patient privacy remain paramount? Eric Christophersen, Continuum Clinical VP of Integrated Media, recommends a digital ad budget be broken down into a 70-20-10 ratio. In this breakdown, 70% of a media budget is allocated to proven, predictable methods (think paid search and social), 20% is allocated to tactics that, while still new, provide scalable opportunities and have showed some promise during use in previous campaigns (such as Instagram story ads), and 10% is allocated to emerging tactics that have little data to support them, but are worth considering in an effort to stay ahead of the curve.
As the options for allocating that 10% continue to expand, a strategic recruitment partner will ensure you’re not pursuing innovation for innovation’s sake, but instead making calculated decisions that balance opportunity and consider the risks associated with each tactic.
Five Emerging Ad Types for Patient Recruitment and Their Risk-Opportunity Analysis
1. Retargeting + Customized Ads
These ads can be an effective way to reengage users who have been to your website or have seen your ads, but didn’t take the action you hoped for (i.e., completed the prescreener). Customized ads are attractive because of how directly they speak to the target audience.
Risk: Targeting patients with a condition-specific clinical trial ad based on their online behavior elsewhere (for example, showing an eczema trial ad to a patient who recently searched WebMD for eczema) may feel to the patient like an invasion of their privacy, and may ultimately deter them from participating in a clinical trial.
Opportunity: Save customized and retargeted ads for after a patient has engaged with the study website to stay top of mind for patients who have already been exposed to your clinical trial. Once they’ve visited your website, you can serve them ads with different reasons why they may benefit from your study to try and get them to reconsider. Retargeting can also optimize your ad spend if you use it to stop showing ads to those who have already engaged with your site, but have not qualified or have already successfully opted-in to your trial.
2. Geofencing
This is a practice that creates a virtual “fence” around a location, then delivers targeted messages within that location.
Risk: Although reaching patients with geofenced ads (such as around hospitals and treatment centers) doesn’t violate HIPAA, it may make patients uncomfortable about their level of privacy when receiving treatment. In addition, if the ads are served to patients after they leave the geofenced location, it could violate the privacy laws that exist in the state where the facility is located.
Opportunity: Creating virtual boundaries around advocacy events, where patients are openly engaging with a community specific to an indication or therapeutic area, could be a valuable use of budget. For example, a geofence around a fundraising event for Lupus, where participants are likely directly impacted by the disease, allows you to target the right patient population while they are actively engaged with condition-specific content.
3. Short Form Videos
Quick video ads (lasting between five and 10 seconds) are effective for combatting short attention spans. These are frequently seen on streaming platforms like YouTube.
Risk: Five or 10 seconds is not enough time to responsibly educate patients about a clinical trial, so developing an ad for use as a patient’s initial exposure to your clinical trial is not a good use of budget.
Opportunity: Short form videos are better used as a reminder to someone who has already engaged with a trial via the study website. In these instances, a video may be what’s needed to remind patients to return to your website and complete the prescreener. Short videos may also be useful for condition awareness, where the goal of the video is not to explain a clinical trial but to increase patient or HCP engagement with indication-specific content.
4. Podcasts
Podcasts present the opportunity to run audio ads targeting a narrower audience than what is provided by traditional radio. Ads are often read by the podcast’s host, which can create a sense of implied endorsement and provides a more seamless integration into the program.
Risk: Relying on a host to read an audio script verbatim is a big risk, since the script will have been IRB-approved in advance and any deviation from approved language creates a compliance issue. Another potential concern is the host’s personal history. Choosing the right host to promote your ad requires a rigorous background check to ensure their personal life won’t interfere with the message, or otherwise cause controversy for your trial.
Opportunity: It is better to record promotions in advance to avoid compliance issues. In addition, if ads are pre-recorded, you can maximize their use by having them inserted into smaller podcasts that don’t have a broad reach. This works best when you select a popular host with a large following to record the ad, and then cross-promote it with smaller programs that have a similar audience demographic.
5. Social Lenses/Frames
Used on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, frames give an audience the opportunity to “try on” a product or experience by adding it to a photo such as a profile picture. These are also commonly seen as borders or graphic overlays that can be used on profile pictures to show alliance with a cause or event.
Risk: These must be used strategically in order to resonate with the audience. Using a frame to promote a specific study will likely generate a low level of awareness, since the audience won’t be able to quickly and easily identify what indication the study is targeting.
Opportunity: Creating a lens to promote a study may be too narrow to optimize the results for this ad type. However, lenses may work successfully for condition awareness (for example, a frame that says “I support PPD research”). This will give the audience a clear idea of what the ad is targeting, while presenting an opportunity to learn more about the study.
Prioritizing innovation in digital patient recruitment campaigns is critical for sponsors – it helps a campaign stand out among the crowded digital landscape and provides key learnings that can be used to optimize future campaigns. But, understanding the risks associated with emerging ad types is critical to successful implementation. Continuum believes that allocating 10% of a media budget to exploring these new opportunities is worthwhile on certain trials, and we always ensure we understand both the potential risks and possible rewards of new tactics.
To learn more about our world-class integrated media team, or to see what emerging digital trends might work to set your clinical trial recruitment campaign apart, contact us today.
