Metric Digital Singapore

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a dental corporation. We have a chain of nine dental clinics. I’m responsible for running a team that looks after the backend for all clinics, I participate in the recruitment of staff and dentists, and I’m also involved in strategy and marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Metric Digital Singapore?

I got involved with Metric around the digital marketing component. I’d used quite a few agencies before them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It started off with them analyzing my current standing in terms of SEO, SEM click-through ratios, and costs per click. They looked at the value for money we were getting out of our marketing spend.

Metric was quite methodical, looking at data from the past three years, rather than just 2–3 months, which was the case with every other provider I’d worked with.

They looked at the design aspects of all forms of SEM, from Facebook Ads to Google AdWords, and they proposed new ad copy. The first thing they did was actually to sort out our brand guidelines.

The next thing they did was to include HubSpot into our practice pathways. We’d been using an Excel spreadsheet to track where each patient had come from. With HubSpot, everything is integrated, and we know exactly where patients are coming from. We know where our marketing buck is going, and we can increase or decrease depending on the success of the marketing modalities.

They’re in the process of revamping our website at this point. They told us that the web pages we had were responsive, but they wanted to get a better SEO strategy. They proposed a new layout, and the next one month will be spent redoing the whole website.

What is the team composition?

Aravind (Agency Lead) is running the team. I also get messages from the content and SEO person, asking for specific details. I correspond with their videographer when she has an alternative suggestion. She’ll sometimes reshoot a bit, and I’ll have to check the voiceovers, scripts, and titles. Once everything is packaged, Arvind will have a look at it. I think that it’s all well-organized.

How did you come to work with Metric Digital Singapore?

To be honest, it was a hit in the dark. One of the problems I had was that I was using companies that outsourced their entire teams to multiple places in the world. I’d worked with a group based in Canada. There was nothing wrong with them, but I’d have to stay up very late to take phone calls with them.

I found Metric and had a discussion with them. The principal difference between them and the other companies is that they had a very data-driven approach. They’d tell me that a 10% increase was due to something specific.

I was using something called Databox, and I could actually see on a regular basis what was happening to our numbers, in terms of leads, both completed and lost deals. I could also listen to phone calls. It was a very good, methodical approach to top-down marketing.

How much have you invested with them?

We have 14 websites, so there’s quite a lot of work to do. For example, if a patient is looking for wisdom teeth work, we have WisdomTeeth.com. Metric is looking after our main site and all the smaller sites, in terms of both SEO and SEM. We’re spending quite a lot with them, but the cost is actually cheap, looking at all they’re doing for us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Metric in January 2020, and the project ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It was quite a shot in the dark, but it’s paying off so far. Our revenue has gone up by 20% year by year, between 2019 and 2020, ignoring the COVID-19 disturbances. We’re getting more value for each dollar we spend. Our PPC cost has gone down, and quality scores have improved. They’re saving us money, and we’re getting more leads.

We used to have a call center in 2016, but it was getting no calls, and there was no way to monitor them. We now have a three-member concierge team, and they’re very organized. They know what to look for, and they have a pipeline for how to deal with patients. Everyone’s happy. Receptionists have less work because the concierge team is there. Metric built the whole backbone of this system.

How did Metric Digital Singapore perform from a project management standpoint?

They share things with me through Google Drive, and they use Teamwork and Slack. There’s a group chat where I can talk to everyone on the team. I get surrounded by tons of emails, so I can respond to them faster on Slack. Teamwork gives me an idea as to what projects are outstanding and what the progress is.

Unfortunately, there isn’t an app that does everything, but the process is well-organized. If I want to know the progress of six sites, I can look at it myself instead of asking them. I can see regular reports on Databox, and can configure them myself. The reports are easy for me to use and make decisions with.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m working on a project to create my own patient CMS. I talked to Metric about the pain points of the software I had, which didn’t speak to HubSpot. They brainstormed on their own and came back to me with a solution.

They’ve created an API between HubSpot and the current CMS we’re using. That helped save a lot of time, in that it improved the speed at which the concierge team works. Essentially, I’ve cut down one person per month in terms of cost, so I’ll have made back the investment in three months or so.

On top of that, Metric makes a lot of suggestions on how to improve the entire patient management system. Right now, we’re looking at a 24-month project around that. We have multiple clinics, and patients need to be booked in multiple places. The current system has lots of duplicate records, and some of the GUIs aren’t very nice.

Metric has been very proactive in suggestions, and they’ve done some research, talking to patients about it. They did some groundwork and reported to me what patients liked and didn’t like. They did a cost analysis for building a new CMS, and it turns out that I’d be able to pay for a new system just with one year’s subscription to my current provider.

They’re quite versatile in their ability to talk about and provide solutions for various topics, not just SEM and SEO. They’re not a regular company. They can tailor solutions for us, which is quite impressive. I’ve worked with agencies that only knew SEM and PPC, whereas Metric knows a bit more about other stuff. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They’re very organized, and I talk to them for an hour every week to get a summary of the work they’d done. The main reason I’m so comfortable with them is that they’re very frank. There’s been nothing to do for the last two months because of COVID-19, so it’s been very easy for us to consolidate our reporting structure. Everything’s seemed to fall into place.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’m the CEO, and I’m also a doctor and business developer, so I can assess the company quite well. What lots of large companies don’t understand is that they can’t just leave it to the marketing team. The people at the top need to connect to the ones on the ground.

I have a COO and a marketing manager, but we’re all in this together, in terms of analyzing performance from previous months and giving suggestions on what needs to happen. I’m not saying that this is the best approach, but it’s worked really well for us.