In the wake of my recent post on LinkedIn about the last 1.5 years of my life, which have been an extremely tough rollercoaster ride, I thought it was appropriate to share a little about the project I have dedicated my energy to. Not least because many have asked if I am done with marketing and the digital industry.
I am by no means finished with that – nor with writing blog posts, creating podcasts, and sharing my thoughts within a field that has meant a great deal to me over the last 15 years.
One of my best friends, Ivar, who is one of Denmark’s leading osteopaths, has been a decisive factor in my rebuilding after I fell into a depression.
It therefore felt natural to get involved in his and Jens’s company, Aarhus Osteopati, to have a purpose to get up for every day. I took on the role of interim CMO and contributed to building, structuring, marketing, and organizing Aarhus Osteopati. The company, which started about eight years ago, has grown from being a small clinic in Aarhus to now having more than 15 locations nationwide (despite the local name) and nearly 100 employees.
What is osteopathy?
I felt it was relevant to write a small piece about osteopathy for those who do not really know what it is. Osteopathy is a holistic treatment method that focuses on optimizing the body’s ability to heal itself. By using gentle treatment techniques, osteopathy aims to restore the body’s natural balance and promote healing. T
his approach can be applied to relieve various conditions such as back and neck pain, sports injuries, and digestive problems. Osteopathy views the body and its systems as an interconnected unit and seeks to strengthen both physical and emotional health.
As a complementary treatment choice, it can be used in combination with conventional medicine. Among other things, it has helped me understand my nervous system and why I have been under so much mental pressure over the last year and a half.
It should be mentioned that I naturally received permission from Ivar and Jens to share the following.
Key insights
Structure, processes and delegation
When I first joined, there was neither structure, project management, nor established processes. With a team of 100 employees, things can quickly become chaotic without these elements, which they also did at the beginning. My experience has taught me that you must force yourself into the structure until the structure carries you.
In the beginning, I had to get us all to use Trello to document ideas, projects, and processes. It took about six months before everyone was able to work independently through Trello’s structure. Today, I cannot imagine how the company could exist without it. In addition, after some research, I decided to set up a customer support system so we could eliminate the many different logins and ensure that all inquiries could be handled in one place.
Here is an example of my board structure in Trello, which I have used for 5–6 years now:
I always use “Ideas,” “To-do,” “Doing,” “Done,” and “Projects / On-going.”
The idea is to move “cards / tasks” between the different boards.
New website built from scratch
With a large amount of traffic, it is not the ideal SEO scenario to change platforms and build a new website. Mistakes can easily be made with major consequences.
We spent seven months building a new website from scratch in WordPress, where we manually moved every single page – text by text, page by page. In collaboration with Mads Lundholm, we created over 100 checkpoints for SEO, tracking, and optimization during the transition.
I have rarely experienced something that went so smoothly, which I learned from previous mistakes – good planning is the greatest gift you can give yourself when it comes to SEO. It should also be mentioned that we switched booking systems at the same time.
We continue to learn, especially thanks to the new tracking tools we have installed, including Mouseflow and soon VWO. The website is updated weekly based on performance data from these tools.
Read also about all the tools I normally use or have used within marketing.
Other things we did:
- Manually extracted all URLs via Search Console & Screaming Frog.
- Set up the site in Morningscore (I love that tool) to constantly check for errors.
- Set up alerts for 404 pages in case we missed redirects.
- Ensured the sitemap was set up correctly.
- Manually checked all pages in Google using “site:”.
- Luckily, I had set up GA4 a long time ago, so we now have over one year of data to compare with, as Universal Analytics is being phased out.
- Extracted all customer inquiries and created an FAQ based on the most common questions, which has already reduced inquiries.
- Created a Google Form survey integrated directly into Trello via Zapier, so all employees could automatically send feedback. With 100 employees, you quickly get invaluable feedback that can be prioritized based on time, resources, and outcomes.
- Before starting design, I spent a lot of time in Balsamiq and created mockups inspired by my favorite sites.
Data, data, data
I can honestly say I have never tracked so many different data points for a company before, not even in e-commerce. From brand searches to weather data, labor market statistics, and business metrics – you name it. About a year ago, I created a sheet with goals covering more than 150 parameters – everything from number of bookings, revenue, social media performance, web performance, and more. We have now reached 125 of these goals, and they were by no means modest.
Here are some of the goals I can share:
- Facebook followers: from 10,000 to 78,000
- Instagram followers: from 0 to 15,000
- Email subscribers: from 3,000 to over 50,000+
- Traffic growth: 25% year-over-year
- Growth in number of bookings: 35% year-over-year
- Brand searches: 25% year-over-year
The interesting part about this type of business is that there are no standard systems to track these data points, unlike in e-commerce with Shopify. Therefore, I had to customize Google Sheets, Dashboards (Dashthis), and Looker Studio.
On one hand, it is demanding because you have to create your own data overview, but on the other hand, it gives freedom to track exactly the data you find relevant for the specific business.
Marketing strategy
From a marketing perspective, it has also been a fun challenge. I still stick to my principle that 70% of the effort should focus on things you know work – in Denmark, this often means Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, and email marketing – while the last 30% should be creative and innovative initiatives, where only imagination sets the limits.
Read also my guide to 100 digital tips and tricks for any business.
Communication
Effective communication is key to success, especially when different industries meet. This is not e-commerce, an app, or a SaaS tool. These are physical clinics with people, opinions, and clients. You must have great respect for this because it is not an industry that is fully digitized – it is only happening now. It takes time. Therefore, I sometimes had to step back and spend time on teaching, explaining, and guiding. Again, Trello has been the key to structuring this part.
Video guides
Loom.com has been a huge help. I have probably made more than 50 training videos in Loom, integrated with Trello, so the employee responsible for a task can see exactly how it should be done. This has drastically reduced email communication. Most people grasp the content of a video immediately – if not, they can rewatch it. This has been the key to delegation and scaling.
Future and AI
Another thing that has been very important to me alongside improving my mental health is diving into AI and artificial intelligence. It has therefore been natural to incorporate this into AAO as well. We use it in more and more processes and experience efficiency improving every month without losing quality or closeness.
In addition, I have also written my own experiences with ChatGPT and what opportunities it can create from a marketing perspective.
Gratitude
A big thank you to Ivar and Jens for giving me the opportunity to be part of something amazing, giving me something to get up for every day, not least when I wanted it the least – and thanks to our partners, including Marie from Geniads, Mads Lundholm (bad ass developer), Mads Bruun, Søren Skriver, Kristian Scharling & Laura Kristiansen.
It has also been great to experience that there are good people to do business with. As an entrepreneur for 15 years, I have unfortunately often seen the opposite. At AAO, I experience willingness to listen, learn, and most importantly: be good people who truly have a dream of helping others.
Now, I may be a little biased, but osteopathy really helped me. There are many roads to Rome – especially when you are struggling. If you are facing challenges, mental or physical, a visit to AAO certainly cannot hurt, in my opinion. For me, it was osteopathy combined with conversations with my psychologist, doctor, and close friends that made the difference – and most importantly, kept me afloat.
What the future brings, I am still curious about – whether it will be as CMO, founder, partner, or something completely different – time will tell. If you have a project where you believe I would be the right partner, you are always welcome to reach out, either via LinkedIn, this website, or [email protected].
Thank you for reading – and take care of yourself, something I forgot for a while.
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