Recruit More Patients to Your Clinical Trial with the Right Copy

July 11, 2018

No matter how important a clinical trial is, the way it’s conveyed to potential patients and their caregivers matters. Use compelling and consistent copy to drive patient recruitment from digital ads to intake form.

Medical marketers talk a lot about the importance of SEO, search, and social ads when it comes to recruiting patients, but the messaging behind this content often gets overlooked. To create an engaging and user-friendly experience for patients, it’s important to build a cohesive and well-written narrative.

From the first ad to the patient enrollment form, digital copy should be clear and consistent. Here are four ways clinical trials can create concise, relevant messaging that leads to higher traffic and increased patient conversion:

1. Focus on the target audience

The first step in building an effective patient recruitment campaign is to determine the target audience. This audience could be the patients themselves or patients’ caregivers, depending on the condition your clinical trial treats. In many cases, trials will be creating separate campaigns for both audiences.

Trials should then ask essential questions like: how old is the audience? What is their average income? How do they perceive their condition or the condition of those they care for? The answers will impact the tone and focus of the copy. It’s important to use terminology that the audience will understand, which generally means avoiding specialized medical jargon.

2. Address patients’ pain points

Strong messaging names and responds to the pain points of its target audience. In the case of clinical trials, that pain could be figurative or literal.

What are potential patients or caregivers looking for in a treatment plan or clinical trial? Do they need a pain management strategy? A way to increase mobility? Fewer side effects than their current medication? A life-saving treatment? A trial’s messaging, from ad copy to the landing page, should be framed in terms of that pain point.

Once sponsors identify these problems, they can position their clinical trial as a viable solution. When focusing on pain points, compelling copy offers real solutions to the audience’s concerns instead of simply trying to squeeze in as many keywords as possible.

3. Zero in on campaign goals

Ads, landing pages, and enrollment forms should all work together to drive audiences toward conversion – that is, actually becoming patients. In order to successfully attract potential participants, it’s important to figure out the specific goal of a particular campaign, especially since it’s impossible to fully vet a patient from an online form. Is it to have patients submit an initial intake? Sign up for email updates? Request more information?

Once this goal is determined, messaging should direct patients toward it with clear and informative copy. To reduce bounce rates and keep audiences engaged, landing pages should be accessible and visually appealing. Large blocks of text tend to overwhelm and distract users, so marketers may want to intersperse copy with images. It’s also useful to include calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout the content and at the bottom of the page so that patients’ next steps are clear.

4. Determine the best strategy through A/B testing

Don’t settle for one version of your copy. Trials can test different messages, styles, and tones through A/B testing, which offers two (or more) versions of the same content to audiences and then reports which one performed better. A/B tests have the potential to measure traffic, clicks, and/or conversions (among other things) and help identify which messaging is most appealing to a particular audience.

A/B testing can determine the effectiveness of nearly any type of content such as post titles, email subject lines, or website design. When conducting an A/B test, it’s important to modify only one or two elements so that the results can pinpoint which part caused the change in performance.

By focusing on the quality of content and not just the frequency of SEO keywords, clinical trials can enhance the patient experience and drive conversions. Everything from ads to blog posts to landing pages is an opportunity to connect with audiences and address their concerns. Trials that embrace this fact are likely to see a marked increased in patient enrollment – as well as patient satisfaction.