Patient recruitment for clinical trials has come a long way over the years, with digital advertising far exceeding the reach of traditional methods such as print media, community postings, and physician referrals. As digital platforms continue to evolve, they offer an unprecedented opportunity to reach and engage potential trial participants.
Among these platforms, social media has become a game-changer for patient recruitment companies. By enabling highly targeted advertising, social media allows researchers and sponsors to reach specific audiences with precision. Leveraging major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, patient recruitment companies can expand their reach and connect with a diverse range of potential participants, making social media ads an essential tool in today’s patient recruitment strategies.
For organizations looking to efficiently recruit patients for clinical trials, here’s how social media ads can help you meet your recruitment goals and deadlines - while remaining cost-effective.
Why Social Media Ads Are Key to Effective Patient Recruitment for Clinical Trials
Social media ads have become one of the most powerful tools for recruiting eligible patients for clinical trials. With its vast user base, wide-reaching potential, and access to robust analytical tools, social media platforms offer a significant advantage over traditional methods of patient recruitment.
In the United States, the average person spends a staggering 7 hours and 3 minutes on screens daily, with 2 hours and 14 minutes of that time spent on social media. Globally, this number is even higher, with users spending an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes on social platforms. As of early 2024, Facebook alone reached 71.3% of the U.S. population, making it one of the most effective platforms for connecting with large audiences.
Unlike traditional advertising, social media allows for a more cost-effective approach to reaching a highly targeted audience, which helps minimize wasted ad spend. With the added benefit of in-depth analytics and performance optimization, social media advertising is a powerful tool for ensuring that clinical trial campaigns are not only effective but also efficient.
Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for the Clinical Trial
Selecting the right social media platform is a critical factor in the success of patient recruitment for clinical trials. Each platform offers unique benefits and reaches different types of audiences, so it’s essential to understand which one aligns best with your recruitment goals.
The key to choosing the right platform lies in understanding your clinical trial’s target audience. Knowing who they are and where they spend their time online will guide you in selecting the most effective social media channels for your ad campaign.
Age is often a crucial eligibility criterion in clinical trials, and it can play a significant role in determining the most suitable platform for your recruitment efforts. By considering the age range of potential participants, you can tailor your campaign to the platforms where those individuals are most active.
Why Facebook Is a Strong platform for Clinical Trial Recruitment
As of 2024, Facebook has over 3 billion active monthly users, with a broad demographic spanning from 13 years old and up. This extensive user base makes Facebook an ideal platform for recruiting patients across a wide range of clinical trial eligibility criteria.
Globally, users aged 18 to 34 make up 54.1% of Facebook’s audience, and in the U.S., this age group accounts for 42.8% of the platform’s user base. However, younger users are increasingly shifting away from Facebook. The share of U.S. teens using Facebook has declined from 71% in 2014-2015 to just 33% in 2023, signaling that Facebook may become less effective for reaching a younger demographic in the future.
Despite this trend, Facebook remains the most effective social media platform for clinical trial recruitment today. Its massive user base ensures a broad reach, particularly among older age groups. In the U.S., 24% of users are aged 55 or older, and globally, 13.7% of Facebook users fall into this age category, making it an essential tool for reaching a diverse, cross-generational audience.
Instagram as a Digital Advertising Tool in Patient Recruitment
As younger generations have increasingly moved away from Facebook, Instagram has become a go-to platform for connecting with this demographic. With over 2 billion active monthly users, Instagram is particularly popular among people aged 18 to 34, who make up 62.3% of the platform’s global user base. In the U.S., this age group accounts for 54.8% of users, while those aged 55 and older represent only 13.6%, a slightly higher proportion than the global average.
While Instagram offers significant reach among younger users, it’s important to note that the platform’s user base sees a sharp decline after age 34, making it less ideal for reaching older demographics. Additionally, Instagram's emphasis on visually engaging content—especially short-form videos—can present challenges for patient recruitment campaigns. The increasing preference for short videos and interactive content among younger users has resulted in shorter attention spans, making it harder to capture and retain attention for professional purposes, such as clinical trial recruitment.
This shift in user behavior complicates efforts for patient recruitment companies, especially when trying to comply with professional standards and regulatory guidelines. Instagram’s focus on visuals and user preferences for fast-paced content means that clinical ads need to be both engaging and tailored to meet the unique challenges of the platform.
YouTube: A Valuable Tool for Broad Patient Recruitment Audiences
YouTube ranks as the second most-used social media platform in the U.S., with users spending an average of 48.7 minutes per day on the platform, just behind TikTok. It also boasts the highest user penetration of any social app in the U.S. at 74%, surpassing Facebook, which has a penetration rate of 64%. This widespread usage makes YouTube a powerful tool for patient recruitment campaigns targeting large, diverse audiences.
However, there are some important limitations to consider when using YouTube for clinical trial ads. Video ads on YouTube are subject to regulatory guidelines, meaning they need to meet certain requirements for compliance. On the other hand, display ads—typically images shown alongside videos—are not regulated to the same extent, making them an effective alternative for patient recruitment campaigns.
While short-form content has gained popularity on the platform, YouTube has traditionally been known for its focus on longer-form videos. This unique format offers an opportunity for display ads to run alongside videos, giving users more time to notice and interact with the ads, increasing the chances of engagement with your clinical trial recruitment materials.
The Rise of TikTok and Its Use Case for Clinical Trial Advertising
Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has rapidly emerged as a dominant force in the social media world, focusing on short-form video content. Today, TikTok has over 1.5 billion monthly active users, making it the fifth most popular social media platform globally.
In the U.S., TikTok is the second-largest social media platform with 120.5 million active users as of 2024, just behind Indonesia’s 157.6 million users. This vast user base makes TikTok a valuable tool for reaching a large number of potential participants for clinical trials.
When it comes to screen time, TikTok ranks number one in the U.S., with users spending an average of 53.8 minutes per day on the platform. This provides an extensive opportunity to engage highly active users, particularly from younger demographics.
TikTok’s user base is predominantly made up of younger individuals, with 18–24-year-olds spending an average of 76 minutes daily on the app. Users aged 25-34 spend around 50 minutes, while those 65 and older spend approximately 29 minutes per day on the platform.
While TikTok’s fast-paced, visually engaging environment presents challenges for patient recruitment, it also provides a significant opportunity to capture the attention of younger individuals. To effectively reach this audience, it’s essential that clinical trial ads are visually captivating, highlighting the clinical trial's condition or disease focus and location. While TikTok may not be ideal for engaging a diverse group, it is an excellent platform for reaching younger patients and supplementing broader patient recruitment campaigns, particularly when the trial’s eligibility criteria align with this demographic.
X (Formerly Twitter) as a Marketing Channel for Patient Recruitment
Although X, formerly known as Twitter, ranks as the 12th largest social media platform globally by user base, it has carved out a significant presence in terms of user engagement. In the U.S., the average user spends 34.1 minutes per day on the platform making it the third most used platform based on screen time, offering patient recruitment companies a valuable opportunity to reach an active and engaged audience.
X allows advertisers to target specific audiences using Promoted Ads, focusing on demographics, interests, keywords, and even conversations happening on the platform. This makes it an excellent tool for reaching users discussing health topics, medical conditions, and other relevant interests that align with clinical trials.
Unlike more visually-driven platforms like Instagram or TikTok, X emphasizes text-based posts. This makes it particularly effective for advertising more serious subjects, such as patient recruitment for clinical trials, where clear, concise communication is key.
Targeting the Right Audience for the Clinical Trial
All the platforms mentioned provide companies with advanced analytical tools that allow them to create highly targeted audiences based on factors such as age, location, interests, and behaviors. By refining the audience to align with the clinical trial’s eligibility criteria, these tools ensure that the advertising campaign reaches individuals more likely to qualify for the trial.
Additionally, these platforms offer the ability to create ‘lookalike audiences', a powerful feature once initial participants have been enrolled. Lookalike audiences help companies identify and target individuals who share similar characteristics to existing participants, expanding the pool of potential candidates for the clinical trial.
Using Retargeting for Clinical Trial Ads
Unlike Google’s display ads, which are subject to strict regulations on sensitive health content, most social media platforms allow patient recruitment companies to leverage retargeting tools for clinical trial ads.
Retargeting ads offer a powerful way to re-engage users who have previously shown interest in your ads but didn’t sign up for the trial. For example, individuals who visited a landing page but didn’t complete the sign-up process are prime candidates for retargeting. Since they’ve already interacted with the ad, they are considered higher-quality leads.
Studies show that retargeting ads are 70% more likely to convert users compared to those who have never interacted with the company before. This increased conversion potential makes retargeting ads a crucial tool for enhancing the success of clinical trial recruitment campaigns.
Organic Advertising for Clinical Trial Opportunities
Organic advertising involves sharing content on social media platforms without paying for ads. In the context of patient recruitment, organic posts provide an opportunity to engage with your followers, informing them about the chance to participate in a clinical trial or encouraging them to share the opportunity with others who might be eligible.
One of the key advantages of organic advertising is that it comes at no cost and typically requires fewer resources. Content from paid advertising campaigns, patient stories on your website, or blog posts can easily be repurposed for organic marketing.
However, a downside of organic advertising is that posts generally have a short lifespan in users' feeds. This is particularly true for clinical trial posts, which often receive less engagement than other content and are quickly buried under new posts.
Despite this limitation, organic advertising remains a valuable tool for low-cost engagement and helps establish authority and trust in the patient recruitment industry.
Reducing Friction for Patients in the Pre-Screening Process
Participating in clinical trials has never been easier for patients, thanks to advancements in the recruitment process. However, when the process is complicated or inconvenient, consumers are less likely to sign up. This highlights the importance of reducing friction in the recruitment journey to increase patient participation.
The pre-screening process, particularly questionnaires, plays a crucial role in identifying eligible patients for clinical trials. To improve this process, it's vital that questionnaires are easy and convenient for potential participants to complete.
One effective strategy is to link directly to these forms from the advertising material, allowing patients to fill them out digitally from the comfort of their own home. This approach minimizes barriers to participation and results in a higher conversion rate.
Monitoring Advertising Performance and Optimizing Continuously
Social media platforms are continually evolving to keep up with the fast-paced shifts in consumer behavior and preferences. For patient recruitment companies, staying ahead of these changes is crucial to ensuring advertising campaigns perform at their best.
The platforms we've discussed provide valuable insights into advertising performance, allowing companies to fine-tune their strategies for maximum impact. Since consumer behavior can be unpredictable, it’s essential for companies to regularly optimize their clinical trial ads to better connect with potential patients and ensure campaigns remain cost-effective.
Supplement Social Media Advertising with Other Forms of Advertising
While social media ads offer a broad reach, its full potential is realized when combined with other advertising strategies. By integrating social media ads with digital tools like display ads on websites and search engine marketing, patient recruitment companies can ensure a more comprehensive approach that maximizes visibility.
In addition, traditional advertising methods—such as partnerships, print media, physician referrals, PR, and community boards—can further boost the reach and credibility of clinical trial recruitment efforts.
This multi-channel strategy not only broadens the campaign's reach but also builds trust through various touchpoints, ultimately increasing the likelihood of patient participation in clinical trials.
Ensuring Compliance with Regulations for Clinical Trials
While social media advertising offers broad reach, it comes with strict regulations that ensure compliance with ethical advertising practices and protect patient rights.
Staying up to date with the latest regulatory changes and each platform's advertising policies is crucial for patient recruitment companies. All major social media platforms have specific guidelines for health-related content.
A common restriction across platforms is the prohibition on targeting users under 18 and using personal health information or medical history for ad targeting. These rules are in line with privacy laws such as HIPAA in the US, which protects patient health information, and GDPR in Europe, which safeguards sensitive personal data.
In addition to these restrictions, clinical trial ads must be accurate and free from misleading or unverifiable claims. Transparency and honesty are key, especially when advertising clinical trials.
This is illustrated by platforms, such as Meta, typically prohibiting use of direct language such as "you" in clinical trial ads, like "Are you living with X condition?" This ensures ads don’t imply personal knowledge of a user’s health, which would violate privacy laws. Instead, patient recruitment companies should use neutral, informative language that addresses a broader audience. For example: "Learn more about clinical trials for individuals with X condition." This approach ensures compliance with privacy regulations while maintaining ethical standards in recruitment efforts.
Learn more about how patient recruitment companies navigate regulatory challenges
Finale Thoughts on Social Media in Patient Recruitment
Social media ads have made targeting highly specific audiences more accessible, making it highly effective in today’s digital environment where people spend a lot of their time online on social media platforms.
With a wide range of social media platforms available, each offering its own unique strengths, the opportunities for using social media advertising in patient recruitment are extensive.
By using social media ads as part of a broader digital advertising campaign, patient recruitment companies can cost-effectively reach a lot of potential participants that are more likely to meet the eligibility requirements of the clinical trial. But navigating the ever-changing world of social media advertising can be a complex task.
Patiro specializes in precisely this and collaborates with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, assisting them in recruiting eligible patients for clinical trials globally.
With more than 10 years of experience in the industry, Patiro has helped enroll patients in more than 44 countries and covered more than 2,000 diseases, including rare diseases, oncology, CNS, psychiatry, pediatrics, and a lot more.
Schedule a demo today to learn more about how we can help you.
