Suwanee Clayworks

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 functionality. Even worse, it didn’t fit well with their brand ethos.

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.

Brand Keywords

Community, Irreverent, Cozy, Creative

Specific Needs

An audit of the studio’s social media and website revealed a number of areas of significant improvement.

1. Brand Identity: The selected brand font, Brewisten, seemed like an odd choice, falling somewhere between a hand-drawn font style and a crafted font. The color palette, drawn exclusively from browns and neutrals, was lacking in both depth and versatility.

2. Website Design & Performance: The original website had few images. Colors were arranged in a way that hindered accessibility, falling far below the the WCAG AA standard for contrast. The few images in the site were not optimized and load times were very slow.

3. Online Store: There wasn’t one. Participants were forced to register for courses and workshops through a registration form. Many found this difficult to navigate.

4. Social Media: Social media posting was sporadic and lacked strategy. The staff was stretched thin and did not have the bandwidth to do analytic work.

5. SEO: SEO was minimal and there was not a way to analyze traffic to refine it further.

It was quite a list!

Setting up for Digital Marketing

The first task was getting social media on a better footing. I immediately started a more frequent posting regimen focused on Instagram first and Facebook second. The results were immediate. The studio receives a monthly detailed report on digital marketing efforts, including engagement, reach, and website traffic.

Brand Revision

I updated the studio’s brand design with a new brand font (Asap) and a broader color palette that also had more depth. Image guidance pointed to having more pictures of people engaged in pottery activities, with finished products also getting more attention. The overall tone would be one of “Pottery is fun! You can do this; we’ll teach you how.” In addition to the earthy brown used in the logo (which remained to reduce expenses for redecorating the studio), I added a comforting green based on one of the studio’s custom glaze color mixes. Other additions included a deep chocolate brown that became the wordmark color, warm and cool neutrals, and a secondary palette also based on custom glaze mixes.

Custom Website Build

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.

Results

Since beginning the digital marketing campaign in November, engagement is overall up across both Facebook and Instagram. Overall, Facebook and Instagram reach and engagement have increased, as well as valuable clicks to the studio’s profiles on those platforms. And the studio is thrilled that they have a new, easy-to-navigate website that will allow them to sell tickets to courses and workshops