It is no secret that patient recruitment statistics look grim: 11% of studies can’t enroll one single patient; 48% of trials under-enroll and 80% of trials are delayed because of recruitment difficulties.
On top, general patient enrollment rates fell from 75% in 2000 to 59% in 2006, with a 21% drop in retention as well.
It seems that tradition recruitment ways, like Magazines Ads, Radio Ads, TV Ads, or Newspaper Ads doesn’t seem to work properly anymore. And apart from being unrewarding, these forms are also often time-consuming and costly.
87% of Americans use the internet. As regards the different age groups, the 18-29 year olds are the strongest group, while it is not surprising that the 65+ age group is the weakest. Nevertheless, also 64% of the 65+ year olds use regularly the internet. And, Facebook reported that the baby boomer generation is the fastest growing group on the platform, while younger generations abandon the social network.
How to use Social Media to your benefit?
There are two strategies to use Social Media to your advantage:
Build out your social media presence
Here, you can create a fan page for your organisation, or even for your trials. To do this, put yourself in the patients shoes and think about what is interesting for them and what is not.
Run ads on social media
To help the recruitment process, you can also run ads on social media. Of course, you need to consider the Social Media’s advertising guidelines and rules. Nevertheless, social media ads will help you to get the word out about your study and create buzz around our research field. Pay attention to the Visual you are using, as well as the text of the advert.
CitrusLabs has with its sub-brand MindMate a large social media presence. Nevertheless, in order to to pre-match patients from our database to your trial, CitrusLabs is putting trust on our internal dataset to find the perfect candidates for your trial.
Are you interested in learning more how CitrusLabs can help you fill up your study? Get in touch.
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