Clinical Trial Recruitment

New Relief for Knee Pain: A Clinical Trial Recruitment Campaign

Millions of people live with knee pain so severe it affects their job or prevents them from doing the things they love, and they have not been able to alleviate their pain through surgery or other therapies. Active Implants developed the NUsurface Meniscus Implant, the first “artificial meniscus” that was evaluated in two clinical trials as a treatment option to help reduce knee pain from a damaged or deteriorated meniscus. M+ led a nearly three-year integrated marketing and public relations campaign to increase self-referrals to 21 clinical trial sites nationwide.

Leveraging the Firsts Our campaign strategy leveraged the “firsts” – the NUsurface Meniscus Implant as the first “artificial meniscus” and first-in-market patients to receive the implant. We used an awareness-building and click-generating integrated strategy that included paid, earned, shared and owned (PESO) tactics:

• Paid: Paid tactics helped us further leverage all our results and spread the word through geo- and interest-targeted campaigns on Facebook, Taboola and Outbrain. These campaigns were optimized for calls and clicks to the clinical trial screening center. We also used sponsored approaches including TV integrations on local TV stations, newspaper sponsored content in top dailies, and mat releases.
• Earned: Earned approaches included providing clinical trial sites with a comprehensive toolkit and conducting multi-pronged media relations in each market.
• Shared: Shared content included media stories, blog posts, sponsored articles and television integrations posted on multiple branded and nonbranded social media channels that we created.
• Owned: Owned tactics focused on a website update to better showcase the clinical trials and the “Knee Pain News” Active Implants blog optimized for SEO.

A Success in Driving Calls and Clicks

Our digital and public relations efforts contributed to more than 80 percent of the total patients screened. The client consistently credited our integrated strategy as highly effective in driving calls to the clinical trial sites, calls and clicks to the toll-free number and websites, and ultimately enrollment in the clinical trials.

Results by the Numbers:

Key Success Factors:

• Impactful patient storytelling was a vital component of this campaign – each patient had lived an active lifestyle and was able to return to activities post-surgery. Given the response to our campaign, patient stories also clearly resonated with our targeted patients.
• Highlighting patient stories in multiple media was an important first step, but how we leveraged them through our PESO approach drove results exponentially.