The Social Media Recruitment Playbook for Research Sites

Social advertising is the most scalable recruitment channel available to sites, and the easiest to do badly. The platforms will happily spend your budget either way.

Before the first ad

Confirm IRB approval covers everything — the ad creative, the landing page, and the pre-screener. Comment-reply templates too, if you'll engage.

Know your health-advertising constraints. Ad platforms restrict targeting on health conditions and sensitive categories, and their policies shift regularly. Build campaigns around interest and demographic proxies, geography, and creative that self-selects the audience ("Living with plaque psoriasis?") rather than prohibited targeting.

Structuring campaigns that qualify themselves

Lead with the condition, not the study. Creative that names the condition and the frustration ("Still getting migraines despite treatment?") attracts the population and repels everyone else — the cheapest pre-screening you'll ever get.

Send clicks to a pre-screener, not a phone number. A 5–8 question screener with instant "you may qualify" routing filters at scale and captures the lead even at 11pm — which is when a surprising share of health browsing happens.

Geo-fence honestly. A lead 90 minutes away rarely becomes a completer. Tight radius targeting costs a little reach and saves a lot of coordinator time.

Manage it like a funnel, not a faucet

Review weekly: cost per lead by creative, pre-screen pass rate by campaign, and — the number that decides everything — cost per scheduled screening by source. Kill creatives whose leads never pass screening regardless of their click prices. Refresh winning creative before fatigue sets in; performance decays in weeks, not months.

And answer fast. Social leads are the most perishable of any channel — the same-hour text acknowledgment isn't optional here. A site that can't respond quickly shouldn't buy fast leads; the arbitrage only works end-to-end.