
Suwanee Clayworks
Brand Refresh, Squarespace 7.1 Website w/ E-commerce, Marketing Strategy
and Execution
Growing Brand Awareness and Community for a Pottery & Ceramic Arts Studio
Suwanee Clayworks is a thriving community of artists–both amateur and professional–who enjoy getting their hands dirty and creating with clay. The studio is a young enterprise, founded in early 2024. The owners, Jeff Dyer and Marissa Hudson, set out to create an environment where people could enjoy discovering their creativity through pottery and ceramics. When the studio launched, they commissioned a local creative agency to develop a website, but the final product did not live up to their expectations for aesthetics or functionality.
On top of that, the staff was stretched thin with simply operating the studio and leading classes and workshops. As a result, they haven’t had time to focus adequately on the marketing side of the business. Jeff and Marissa needed help to keep the community around the studio growing, while also streamlining the process for people to sign up for courses and workshops.
A Digital-First Strategy for Brand Growth and Momentum
In order to more fully engage the studio’s current community we immediately started a more frequent posting regimen on social media. The results were immediate. The studio receives a monthly detailed report on digital marketing efforts, including engagement, reach, and website traffic. We then proceeded to update the studio’s brand design with improved typography and an expanded color palette. A concise brand board provides typography, color, and image guidance that sets a tone of “Pottery is fun! You can do this; we’ll teach you how.”
We decided to build the new website in Squarespace, a platform that provides simplicity and an “all-in-one” approach to the site, e-commerce, and SEO. Improved accessibility was a major goal: all content and background combinations met WCAG AA standard for contrast, and all images received alt-text to improve both SEO and screen reader compatibility.
Setting up the e-commerce section of the website provided a number of additional benefits for the studio and its patrons. First, the signup system for classes became much simpler. Second, having the classes listed in an online store allowed us to really work on local SEO. Since pottery studios are very local, drawing their patrons for the surrounding community, having a local SEO strategy allows us to work on boosting the studio’s page placement in Google search results for terms like “pottery classes near me.”
As the studio has seen success from these efforts, we’re expanding our digital-first approach into other marketing approaches, including increased visibility at local art festivals and planned media relations activities to promote the studio’s expansion.
"People noticed as soon as Alex took over our digital marketing. Our engagement and reach have gone up, and our new website is a great platform for us to continue to grow our community online. We highly recommend Alex and The Tracy Agency for your marketing, branding, and web design needs!”
- Marissa Hudson Loose, Artist in Residence & Program Director
Ready to Get Started?
Contact me to find out how an integrated digital-first marketing plan can help grow your small business