Overview
Structured local business listings management across dozens of locations, plus a channel-by-channel customer journey map, for a Nordic gym chain's Norwegian operation.
Who This Is For
Multi-location consumer brands, such as fitness chains, retail networks and service franchises, that need people to find the right local site. This case is most useful if:
- you run dozens of locations, possibly under more than one brand
- addresses, opening hours and photos drift out of date across search and maps
- paid, owned and in-location channels are planned separately
- marketing lacks a shared view of how prospects become customers and stay
The Challenge
The client ran dozens of gyms across Norway under two merged brands. Every centre needed accurate, consistent local information (address, hours, categories, photography) so members and prospects could find the right one in local search and maps.
Marketing also lacked a shared view of the journey from first awareness to paying member, and on to staying engaged, across paid, owned and in-centre channels. Both were maintenance problems, not one-off projects.
Our Approach
The team now behind ECM.DEV worked within Making Waves' team on the account over several years.
- Audience, SEO and content analysis: the foundation, showing which channels and content earned attention, and where.
- Local listings management: a recurring maintenance system for close to 60 locations across Norway, keeping verified addresses, opening hours, categories, photography and tagged website links current in quarterly update cycles.
- Customer journey mapping: a channel-by-channel map from awareness and retargeting through consideration and conversion to 30/60/90-day onboarding, plotting paid media (TV, social, video, audio) against owned channels (app, website, in-centre) at each stage.
- Funnel reporting and opportunity dashboards: regional membership-funnel reporting built on the same journey structure, giving an ongoing view of acquisition and retention.
Impact
Close to 60 locations, findable and accurate. Local listings stayed consistent across the estate, without location-by-location guesswork.
One journey model for every channel. Paid media, owned channels and the in-centre experience were planned around the same customer stages.
Reporting that stayed live. Funnel dashboards built on the journey structure gave the account a continuing view of acquisition and retention, not a one-off deliverable.
Business listings look like admin. For a chain whose customers choose by location, they are the front door, and they go out of date unless someone maintains them.
Delivered while employed at Making Waves (later NoA Ignite), as part of the team working on the client's Norwegian account. Any public information referenced here is used for identification and does not imply endorsement.
Topics
Delivered Norwegian-to-English translation and QA review of SpareBank 1 Markets' website content, covering their research, corporate finance and capital markets service lines.
Built a data-driven content and channel strategy for Econa, Norway's professional association for economists and business graduates, building on an already-delivered website redesign to reduce member churn.
Built a CRM-connected advertising sales platform for a leading Nordic digital marketplace. Connected audience data, targeting options, advertising formats, pricing and sales contacts into a single self-service portal for advertisers and media agencies, replacing a fragmented sales experience with a repeatable path from research to qualified inquiry.
The Content Infrastructure Imperative
Why AI Amplifies Every Flaw in Your Content Operating System
Dries Buytaert: The cost of running multiple CMS platforms
Dries Buytaert argues that running multiple CMS platforms creates hidden operational costs through duplicated integrations, security policies, expertise, and governance. He proposes standardizing on Drupal while using different operating models—SaaS (Acquia Source) for speed and PaaS (Acquia Cloud) for control—to preserve flexibility while reducing fragmentation.
Content-to-Pipeline Check
See how far your content connects to sales, and how much of what sales learns comes back.