Patient recruitment online: 3 ways to quickly boost your trial's visibility

Can eligible patients easily spot your study on the web? If not, you’re missing a big opportunity to speed up patient recruitment. Here are three things you can do today to instantly increase traffic to your recruitment pages.

1. Advertise on search engines

A patient recruitment campaign on Google, Yahoo or Bing can be set up and launched in hours. What’s more, search engine advertising brings other benefits, too:
•    Your ad is only seen by people searching for relevant words – which you select.
•    You only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
•    You bid on how much you’re prepared to pay for each click.
•    You precisely control your daily budget.
•    You ensure your ad is only seen by people in a specific geographic area (e.g. a suburb, city or state).
•    You can stop advertising instantly - at any time.

2. Advertise on Facebook

Just like advertising on Google or Yahoo, a patient recruitment campaign on Facebook can be set up almost instantly. The main difference is that instead of targeting keywords, you target people by medical condition, age and location. In other words, only people who broadly match your eligibility criteria will see your ad. Other benefits include:
•    You set a daily budget.
•    You can change your daily spend instantly.
•    You can stop advertising instantly - at any time.
•    You decide whether to pay every time someone clicks on your ad – or every time they see it.
•    You bid on how much you’re prepared to pay per click - or every time someone sees your ad.

3. Advertise on a patient recruitment directory

Promoting your study on a directory gives you immediate access to the patients you’re targeting. Different directories offer different services.

For example, some simply host content that you've created - and then email this information to their database of patients. Meanwhile, others - including us - create bespoke information about your study. And then promote it via search engines and Facebook.

How do you boost your clinical trials' visibility on the web?