Digital Advertising: Targeting the Right Audience for Your Study
If you’ve been following along with our past blogs, you have gained insight into:
Let’s take one step back and talk about digital advertising, one of many outreach efforts you should use to raise awareness about your clinical trial.
Step One:
Confirm your target audience. This is the same audience you outlined when you started branding your trial, creating your recruitment materials, and building your website. But now it’s time to think about your target audience and how you will reach them through digital advertising.
Ask yourself these questions to confirm your basic demographic information:
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• What age range, gender(s), and race or ethnicities should I target?
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• Where are these patients located geographically? (perhaps near each site enrolling for the study)
Step Two:
Build on that information and ask yourself a few more questions:
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• Where is my audience looking online for information related to their condition?
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• What keywords are patients using when searching for this information?
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• Are they joining any Facebook support groups?
Step Three: Plan and Place Your Digital Advertising
To make sure you are not getting wasted clicks or impressions, one necessary step is to make sure you are setting your ads up to target the right audience. Use all of the information you gathered during the previous steps to make informed decisions on who to show your ads to. There are a lot of people using these platforms, but only a select group will be right for your study.
Social Media Advertising
When you’re planning advertising for social media, target by both the demographic information you outlined and the interests of your patient population (like the support groups, for example).
Google Ads
Use Keyword Planner to identify the top keywords your audience is using when they search. Remember, your ads are showing up for patients exactly when they are searching for information related to the medical condition that qualifies them for your study.
For both Facebook and Google Ads, you’ll want to include a strong call to action (CTA) - something that will motivate the patient to click through and either learn more about your study or fill out your pre-screener.
And one more important thing to do: optimize your ads. Don’t just place all of your ads and let your budget run through each day. Check back in to see how your ads are performing and make adjustments if you feel changes need to be made. Digital advertising (and all marketing and advertising, really) is about testing, making changes, and then testing some more.
Ready to start a digital advertising campaign for your clinical trial?
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