Meta Ads Surpass Recruitment Goals for Pre-conception Health Study
Healthy for my Baby Project (En santé pour bébé): a study evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention to improve diet and other lifestyle characteristics of women who are overweight or obese and in the preconception period.
The Challenge
The "Healthy for my Baby" (En santé pour bébé) study faced a significant hurdle in recruiting a very specific demographic for a clinical trial evaluating diet and lifestyle interventions. The team was looking to recruit French-speaking women in Quebec, aged 18-40, who were overweight or obese and planning to conceive within the next 12 months. Historically, this preconception group has been extremely difficult to reach through traditional clinical settings. The project required a digital strategy that could not only identify these individuals but also manage application volume to match the research team's capacity.
Our Approach
We developed a comprehensive recruitment strategy using paid social media advertising on Facebook and Instagram.
Targeted Messaging: We used photography-based creative that specifically addressed the audience’s goals: those looking to conceive and interested in improving their health.
Optimized Landing Page: Ads directed potential participants to a custom Squarespace landing page that provided study details and led interested applicants to a pre-screening form to determine eligibility.
Adaptive Campaign Management: Because the initial response rate was high, our team used a "stop-and-start" approach and eventually reduced the budget to manage application volume, ensuring the client's team wasn't overwhelmed by the volume of leads.
Materials used in the En santé pour bébé campaign.
Cost-Effective: The research team noted that our strategy was cost-saving, achieving results in a difficult field where other teams had previously struggled.
Stellar Results
The campaign was an overwhelming success, meeting its recruitment goals in just five months.
Recruitment Success: We successfully recruited 44 participants, surpassing the initial goal of 35-40 women.
High Engagement: The ads generated 321.1K impressions and 10.2K total clicks, with a click-through rate of 2.64%.
Lead Generation: The campaign drove 1,355 website leads (people who opened the application form), resulting in 282 completed form submissions.
Conversion Efficiency: About 3% of all website visitors were successfully recruited into the study.
Cost Effectiveness: The research team noted that the strategy was "cost-saving," achieving results in a difficult field where other teams had previously struggled.
282
completed form submissions
44
The team efficiently designed a personalized advertising strategy for recruitment in our research project including a website and ads distributed on Instagram and Facebook. They successfully took on the challenge of advertising to a francophone audience in Quebec. They provided all the material required for ethics approval which made the process easy and smooth. The campaign was very successful and generated more leads than required to complete recruitment. They were also very mindful of our budget and managed the ad volume responsibly to respect it. Big shout out to Sarah and Tim for their ongoing support. 10/10 would recommend their services!
-Isabelle Hardy, MD, MSc, FRCSC
recruited applicants