Digital Marketing for an Independent Gin Distillery: A Complete Case Study

Results

Result	Detail
New website	Fully rebuilt, mobile-optimised, ecommerce-enabled and age-verified
Social following	Organic growth across Facebook and Instagram through managed content
Brand consistency	Cohesive visual identity from bottle label to digital advertising
Conversion improvement	Improved sales conversion, broader brand awareness and a stronger digital presence

Engaging content

Digital Strategy for a Craft Gin Producer: What We Did and Why

A digital strategy for a drinks brand is not a single campaign — it is a connected system of channels, assets and messages that work together. For Belfast Artisan Still, the approach was built around three pillars: design, web and social. Each element was developed to support the others.

Understanding the Customer

Before writing a single line of copy or designing a single asset, ProfileTree worked with the Belfast Artisan Still team to understand their customers. That meant looking at:

• Who was buying the gin, and why
• Where they were discovering the brand — events, stockists, word of mouth
• What seasonal patterns affected purchase behaviour (gifting at Christmas, summer consumption)
• How existing customers were engaging with the brand online

This groundwork shaped every decision that followed.

Graphic Design Within a Digital Strategy

Graphic design in a digital strategy serves a specific commercial function: it creates the first impression, communicates quality before a single word is read, and builds the visual shorthand that customers come to associate with a brand.

For Belfast Artisan Still, this meant a carefully selected colour palette reflecting the natural botanicals in the gin, typography conveying heritage and craft, and imagery that helped customers visualise flavour before they purchased. Professional, consistent visuals were essential for a brand competing in the premium spirits sector, where packaging and presentation are central to the buying decision.

Logo Design for an Independent Distillery

The Belfast Artisan Still logo needed to work across a wide range of contexts: the bottle label, social media profiles, event signage, promotional merchandise and digital advertising. ProfileTree’s designers produced a logo that was distinctive, adaptable and rooted in the brand’s Belfast identity — a signature that could carry the brand confidently across every touchpoint.

Website Design for an Alcohol Brand

Building a website for an alcohol brand requires balancing creative ambition with regulatory compliance. The Belfast Artisan Still site incorporated all required compliance features — including age verification — without letting those requirements compromise the customer experience.

The site was structured to guide visitors naturally from brand story to product pages to checkout, with product detail pages featuring tasting notes, botanicals and serving suggestions. Every decision was made with conversion in mind, not just aesthetics.

Social Media Management for Beverage Brands

Gin is a social product. The experience of drinking it — the ritual of the pour, the garnish, the occasion — translates naturally to platforms like Instagram and Facebook. ProfileTree developed a content strategy that leaned into this, creating content that customers wanted to share rather than content they scrolled past.

This included:

• Seasonal content campaigns: summer spritz recipes, autumn tasting evenings, Christmas gift sets
• User-generated content strategies encouraging tagged posts from customers
• Event coverage and live activity from tastings and trade shows
• Paid campaigns promoting product launches, limited editions and seasonal offers

The combination of organic content and targeted paid activity created a presence that worked both for brand building and direct conversion.

Seasonal and Festive Marketing

Gin has strong seasonal purchase patterns. Christmas gift sets, summer cocktail recipes and special occasion positioning all create natural content and campaign opportunities. ProfileTree built these seasonal hooks into the content calendar from the start, ensuring that high-intent buying periods were planned for rather than reacted to.

Paid Social Advertising

Organic social builds an audience. Paid social reaches beyond it. ProfileTree ran targeted advertising campaigns across Facebook and Instagram, focusing on local and regional gin enthusiasts. Campaigns were built around specific objectives — event promotion, product launches and seasonal offers — with clear measurement in place to track return on spend.