A Look Inside the Boutique Enrollment Agency Sponsors Are Clamoring to Work With
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- The boutique biotech company currently outperforming and over-delivering for clinical trial recruitment is comprised of a team not native to biotech.
- Clinical Enrollment’s approach to social-first, behaviorally driven content targeting was honed in the lifestyle space, but has translated so well for drug sponsors that they have consistently met every benchmark and clinical trial milestone since their creation.
- The demand for the agency’s services has been so great that the team has had to grow to meet the 400% increase in new client work.
- Founder Bryan Manning, born with a rare disease himself, is deeply invested in ensuring that potentially life-changing drugs are able to reach patients since a clinical trial that might’ve made important breakthroughs for his condition failed because it could not find enough patients.
- Two key areas of success for Clinical Enrollment, which boasts successes in the oncology, gene therapy and cognitive therapy areas, have been in late-trial turnaround recruitment and speed to market.
If you work in the world of drug sponsorship, chances are you’ve heard the rumblings about a new(ish) boutique agency putting up numbers so consistent and big that they’re not just meeting recruitment benchmarks, they’re obliterating them. The rise of this once under-the-radar collective of digital heavy hitters and veteran creatives would make for the underdog story of the year, except that to be considered an underdog, one needs to be at a perceived or real disadvantage, and Clinical Enrollment most definitely is not, except for one important fact: they come from outside of biotech.
Helmed by Bryan Manning, who boasts a proven track record in the digital content marketing landscape as co-founder of one of the fastest-growing cause-based companies in the country, CE may technically have been considered biotech outsiders, but they’re far from outlaws. Utilizing an approach that was carefully honed while working in e-commerce and social media, Manning’s agency had been operating almost entirely via word of mouth from satisfied sponsors — no easy feat for the non-biotech crowd. Yet with no shortage of successful study recruitment stories under their belt, clients couldn’t keep from gushing about their clinical trial successes. Industry coverage inevitably followed, and now the secret seems to be out.
“At the beginning, we were managing the workflow and relationships at a deliberate pace, because in total honesty, those early clients took a leap of faith that we could do what we said we would do. But now that we’re past the testing ground stage and have some higher profile wins, word of mouth has picked up even more and we’ve seen a 400% increase in new client work. Four hundred percent! So I think it’s safe to say the cat’s out of the bag,” says Manning.
But keeping up with the demand so as not to cause a bottleneck isn’t just crucial, it’s personal for this Founder, so Clinical Enrollment has made some key hires to aid in scaling to meet growth. Born with a rare genetic eye disease called Stargardt’s, Manning understands the importance of giving patients access to potentially life-changing scientific discoveries. Upon learning that a clinical trial that could have cured his retinal eye disease failed because it couldn’t recruit enough patients, Manning found that reality unacceptable — and he knew that his skill set may prove invaluable to an industry that couldn’t seem to get past its study enrollment hurdles.
While Clinical Enrollment’s content messaging and targeting strategy isn’t native to biotech, that doesn’t mean it’s haphazard. It’s the result of careful learnings tested out in a more lifestyle landscape, but it mimics audience behaviors and attitudes so well that it has translated seamlessly and outperformed for clients.
“How do we measure a successful trial partnership? Well, every treatment area is unique, but we benchmark ourselves against the sponsor’s number one recruitment engine — the clinical sites themselves — and so far we have outperformed the sites in each and every trial,” says Manning.
Two areas that solidify that this fresh set of eyes wasn’t just a fluke are areas where drug sponsors typically stall out or struggle the most: speed to market, and late-trial turnaround recruitment. In an industry where it’s imperative to not just have a potentially effective drug, but to get it to market faster than others in the space, Clinical Enrollment understands that hitting approvals leaves no room for errors caused by a lack of participant numbers or screen fail rates. Additionally, clients have approached Manning’s team as much as ⅔ of the way into a study, when trials have a tendency to stumble, and CE has been able to jumpstart recruitment and bring clients over the finish line. They also keep diversity and a changing regulatory landscape top of mind, and now have proven wins in areas like cognitive therapy, oncology, and gene therapy.
“We come from a world where there may be 250,000 to one million running ads being served up to audiences, and cutting through the noise is more about volume than nuance,” says Manning. “But in the world of oncology, for instance, we may see only 30 ads on Facebook, and we’re 25 of them. Even still, it matters what users see, what you say, and how you say it.”
The difference, as CE has found it, is that their content sits squarely in the sweet spot for patients who are dealing with conditions, on the internet looking for help, and want to feel a more hopeful, personal connection with what they find. And for even the most seasoned biotech crowd skeptical of outside approaches, and especially the clients on Clinical Enrollment’s roster, these successes are enough to make a believer out of them.
Learn more about Clinical Enrollment’s approach here.
