Meta Ads Recruit Families for Innovative Pre-conception Clinical Trial
HeLTI Canada — the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative
Developed in partnership with the World Health Organization, HeLTI Canada is one of four harmonized worldwide studies focused on developing evidence-based care for families. HeLTI aims to provide technology-based care that prevents the development of obesity and chronic diseases, beginning in pre-conception and continuing through pregnancy, postnatal, and early childhood.
The Goal
HeLTI Canada began recruiting in January of 2021. Recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic proved difficult, and progress was slow. HeLTI’s Alberta site contacted Marketing Martian after hearing of our experience with clinical trial recruitment. While they had run some recruitment efforts through Facebook, HeLTI was looking for an experienced team to help them reach their goal of recruiting 5,300 families across Canada.
The challenge for HeLTI was recruiting families who were planning to have a baby but were not already pregnant. Given that roughly 46% of pregnancies in Canada are unplanned, we needed to use language relevant to those who were actively planning a future pregnancy.
The Approach
Our team worked closely with the Alberta site to review what type of individuals they were looking for. We advised running a three-month campaign on the Meta ads platform, with placements on Facebook and Instagram. We developed multiple sets of messaging to test with our audience, which included Albertans between the ages of 18 and 45.
Many clinical trials approach recruitment messaging by asking questions to find people who fit specific inclusion criteria. Phrases like “Are you between the ages of X and Y with health condition Z?” are often rejected by Meta, because asking direct questions about someone’s personal health is against their Personal Attributes Advertising policy.
We worked extensively with the HeLTI team to develop multiple messages that met Facebook and Instagram's advertising criteria.
Rather than asking individuals questions about themselves, we instead made it clear who we were looking for with phrases like “We’re looking for people considering having a child and not currently pregnant,” and “People thinking about having a baby in the next 3 years can receive gift cards for completing our surveys.” We wrote many variations of supporting ad content to test on Meta to ensure we could find messaging that worked to deliver leads.
Advertisements used in the HeLTI Facebook Advertising Campaign.
Did you know HeLTI Canada is the first preconception trial in Canada and one of the largest in the world?
The Results
In the first month, the campaign brought in 788 website visitors. 265 of these individuals were interested enough in the study to complete the application form. Of those applicants, 200 were eligible to be recruited. These numbers far exceeded what had been generated by previous recruitment efforts. After continued success with the Alberta site, the HeLTI team decided to roll this strategy out across Canada.
8k+
applicants from ads in first 13 months
79.5%
eligible applicants
In the first 13 months, Facebook ads received 8,480 form applications, and 79.5% of applicants were eligible to participate.
Marketing Martian helped us recruit over 7000 women and their partners across Canada for our large preconception trial - HeLTI Canada. They were very responsive to us and our needs and highly committed to make our recruitment campaign successful. They have outstanding attention to detail and the meticulous monthly reports helped guide our social media campaign. We could not have successfully recruited our trial participants without them. I highly recommend them for any social media needs. It is also noteworthy that Sarah Marsh and her team are very professional and fantastic people to work with. Our whole experience has been highly positive.
-Cindy-Lee Dennis, PhD, FCAHS | Principal Investigator, HeLTI Canada
Above + Beyond
Recruitment for the study has been at a record pace ever since the campaign launch. The HeLTI team has had to hire more staff to keep up with recruitment. After just over one year of running ads with Marketing Martian (March 1, 2023–April 30, 2024), the HeLTI study went from being behind in its recruitment goals to nearly completing the initial recruitment process. This study will follow all families recruited for up to 8 years.