Need Clinical Trial Volunteers?

How to Attract Volunteers for a Clinical Trial with Digital Marketing

As a clinical research trial company, you’re constantly on the lookout for volunteers. Whether they are suffering from a very specific condition or they are completely healthy, a wealth of human participants is essential for every clinical research trial clinic. The difficult part can be actually finding them, but not anymore. Keep reading to learn more about how to attract volunteers for a clinical trial with digital marketing and how the experts at Navazon can help you reach your goals.

Understanding Your Audience

The most important aspect of attracting volunteers for a clinical trial with digital marketing is understanding your audience. As you know, each and every clinical study is completely different. Honing in on the correct target audience, finding them, then marketing them is how you will achieve results.

For example, an Alzheimer’s study isn’t going to be marketing to people with Alzheimer’s. It’s going to be marketing to their children, caretakers, and other loved ones. However, an eczema clinical study can more easily directly market people who are suffering from eczema.

Many clinical research studies require completely healthy people who are not suffering from any condition. In order to target these people, you will want to market to people who are interested in advancing science, earning extra cash, and making a difference in the world of medicine. A clinical trial volunteer who is only in it for the cash might not be the best participant; you want to make sure you’re finding quality leads, just like with any other business.

Empathy Mapping

The best way to find your target audience for each of your clinical research trials is through empathy mapping. Since each of your clinical research trials is so different from the other, it is important to keep this process new and fresh for each of them in order to attract quality volunteers.

Through empathy mapping, we answer the following questions:

• Who is most likely to sign up as a volunteer? Going back to the example of the Alzheimer’s study, the people most likely to sign up for a clinical research study would be the loved ones and caretakers rather than the person who has Alzheimer’s.
• Where do we find them? You may find someone willing to participate in an Alzheimer’s clinical trial who is Googling treatment methods, researching types of medications, frequenting Alheimer’s blogs, being a member of online support groups, and much more.
• How do we speak to them? Someone who is most willing to volunteer as a participant in an Alzheimer’s clinical study, as a loved one or caretaker, needs to be spoken to in a caring way. Since doing this clinical trial for a loved one will come from a place of caring and support, the language should reflect that. Alternatively, someone who is suffering from COVID would need to be spoken to in a more urgent, serious manner.

Paid Advertising

Now that you’ve narrowed down who your target audience is, where to find them, and how to speak to them, it’s time to reach them. The best and most effective, but not the only, way to do this is through paid advertising. There are endless ways to take advantage of paid advertising to attract volunteers for a clinical trial, but some of the most effective include social media, search ads, and video ads.

Social Media

Social media is essential when it comes to attracting quality volunteers for a clinical research trial. At its core, people who are most likely to sign up for a clinical research trial are tech-savvy, have done research already, and are willing to learn more. These are the same characteristics as avid social media users, so it is vital to include social media advertising in your digital marketing plan.

Some tips include:

• Know which platform to use. Different types of people use different types of social media. The loved ones of Alzheimer’s sufferers are likely more active on Facebook and Instagram. However, if you are looking for a younger crowd, TikTok or Twitter might be a better place to advertise and focus your content.
• Content must be informative. As you know, volunteers have a ton of questions and concerns when they are contemplating signing up for a clinical research trial. That is why you want to make sure that your social media posts, content, and ads are as informative as possible to answer these questions and fears upfront.
• Engage. People want to know their health is in good hands when signing up for a clinical research trial. One of the best ways to do this is by providing excellent customer service throughout your entire process, including on social media. By being active, answering questions, and being responsive in your direct message section, people will be more likely to place their trust in you.

Search Ads

Another one of the most important places to focus your spending is on Google and Bing. People who are most likely to sign up for a clinical research trial are people who want to try something new. This means they have already done their research, tried various treatments and medications, and understand their condition very well. One of the ways they achieve this level of knowledge is by doing their research on the internet, which means they spend a lot of time on Google or Bing.

Search campaigns are a great way to find volunteers for a clinical research trial. At the very least, it is important to make sure that you create ads that target keywords such as “clinical trial for [medical condition],” “how to sign up for a clinical trial,” or “clinical trials in my area.”

You’ll also want to make sure you have display campaigns. The Google Display Network is where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. Display campaigns can reach people worldwide across 35 million websites and apps and on Google-owned properties (YouTube and Gmail). This allows you to expand your reach beyond just Google Search. Display campaigns use machine learning solutions across targeting, bidding, and formats to reach a new or existing audience. This can help your campaign deliver the best campaign results. Some of these places may include websites relevant to your clinical trial or to your target audience.

Video Ads

Video production is very important to any digital marketing campaign, especially one that requires you to instill trust and expertise in your audience. Showing your clinic and making people feel comfortable is important, and you can use them to advertise throughout the internet. Some of the places you can use video ads include:

• Social media advertising
• Social media posts, not paid
• Search ads
• Commercials for TV and streaming
• YouTube advertising

Video production is one of the most effective forms of advertising and allows you to provide your target audience with informative, valuable content. Some examples of content you can use for video advertising include:

• A tour of your facility and employees
• An informative video about the clinical research trials process
• A video that highlights the benefits of becoming a participant and the impact that participants have
• Videos with imagery and language that the condition sufferers can relate to

Make Signing Up as Easy as Possible

In order to attract new volunteers for a clinical research trial, you want to make sure that the signup process is as simple and easy as possible, and make sure you reiterate how easy the process is. If you hook a lead on the line, but then they run into a 404 wall, a large form to fill out, or complicated instructions, you’ve just lost your fish.

The best way to get people to sign up is through a simplified process. This includes offering them a very short form to fill out (no more than 4-5 fields!), a toll-free number to call, and a one-click submission.

Then, make the rest of the process very clear so that prospective volunteers know what to expect next. If they need to come in for a medical exam, go over the informed consent form, or otherwise visit your clinic before they are selected as a participant, make sure they know this.

Visually, the best way to do this is by breaking down your sign-up process into three simple steps:

• Step 1: Provide us with your contact information
• Step 2: See if you’re eligible for the trial
• Step 3: Participate in the clinical trial

While step 2 may involve multiple steps, such as speaking with clinicians, coming in for a medical exam, or signing the informed consent form, it still becomes part of the streamlined process of eligibility.

Using Multiple Channels

Using multiple channels is essential for finding new clinical trial volunteers. You don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket, so make sure you’re in as many places as possible for your target audience to find you.

While making the sign-up process as simple and easy as possible, you will also want to make sure that these forms are easy to track. This way, you will know where to better focus your efforts and what channels you could possibly ditch if they’re not producing leads.

For example, if you are using the same call to action link in your email marketing, social media, and paid ads, you want to know which volunteers came from where. If you are not getting any leads at all from your paid ads, then you know that it’s time to reevaluate those. If you don’t have tracking enabled, you will be wasting money on those ads and not even know it.

Get More Clinical Trial Volunteers with Navazon Digital

Getting more quality clinical trial volunteers through digital marketing is a process that requires knowledge and expertise. At Navazon, we focus not only on getting people to sign up for a study but also on building your in-house database with willing volunteers. If your healthy volunteer isn’t a right fit for one clinical research trial, they may be perfect for the next one coming down the pipeline.

Navazon helps clinical research trial companies recruit qualified study volunteers to participate in their clinical trials. Over the past ten years, we have helped clinical research companies reach their recruitment goals and expand their in-house database of volunteers. We work with companies of all sizes across the United States and can devise a marketing strategy that works for your company.

Navazon will:

• Meet or exceed your enrolment goals
• Build your database of willing study participants
• Screen subjects on day one of site activation

We are content creators who listen to our clients so that we can formulate ideas and strategies based on your unique goals and philosophies. Thinking through those goals with our analytics-based approach, we study not only your tendencies but those of your competition and the market as a whole.

Equipped with this knowledge, we develop a powerful plan, test it and then roll it out on a modest scale. Once we arrive at the winning formula, we can scale up rapidly to meet even the most optimistic growth projections.

Navazon does not believe in “one size fits all.” Every part of the marketing plan is customized to address your niche and positioning strategy. It’s how we excel.

Schedule a free consultation with us now! Visit us at navazondigital.com for more information.