The Problem
WCG’s Patient Recruitment Business's value proposition was misaligned to the market’s needs and struggling to differentiate itself in an oversaturated patient recruitment industry.
The Goal
To uncover the true need within the market and reposition our core business and value proposition to solve for that problem. With this, we aimed to spread our presence further across top-10 pharma, and increase revenue by 20% in next fiscal year.
Key Insights
Market research revealed that understaffed sites and sites without a strategy—not a lack of available patients—were the core problems causing poor patient enrollment. Not a lack of available patients. This became the basis for our repositioning.
We found that being a labeled “Patient Recruitment” company consistently carried a negative connotation among pharma and biotech executives. The belief being that patient recruitment advertising “isn’t worth the cost.”
Moving away from “Patient Recruitment” and into the concept of a “Site Augmentation” company that could increase the efficiency of sites and ease the burdens of under resourced sites played very well in market testing.
The Plan
It was obvious that the market was starved for a true strategic solution for struggling sites. With this, we repositioned ourselves as a full-service “Site Augmentation” solution that provides both a comprehensive site support strategy, as well as the expert nursing support to manage and execute that strategy.
Through this solution, we believed our model would go far beyond the capabilities of typical Patient Recruitment and Staffing companies by optimizing site efficiency, increasing patient enrollment, retaining patients throughout the study, and improving overall data quality.
The Execution
We built and launched a year long, multi-channel campaign to reintroduce our business across top-25 pharma accounts including:
New solution landing page to reflect new positioning, messaging, and services
Newly created case studies, white papers, sell sheets to accurately reflect updated messaging and metrics and support lead generation
Production of “insight series” short-form marketing videos to help tell our new value story
Sponsored speaking sessions at industry events including SCOPE, DIA, and MAGI
Account-based initiatives across WCG’s key clients
Educational Webinar series featuring WCG Subject Matter Experts and clients from both the research site and pharmaceutical sides who experienced success with the solution
The Results
The market repositioning, new materials and subsequent campaign were a rousing success.
Revenue increased by a total of 83% after the repositioning—from 63.7M in 2020 to 114.9M in 2021
WCG Site Augmentation was awarded the global site support and recruitment business for the most prominent project “warp speed” vaccine trial.
Was touted as “the most import business decision WCG has made in the last 10 years” by then Founder and then CEO Don Deieso.
