SEO Retainer Results: A Six-Month Case Study
Most businesses that invest in SEO want to know one thing: will it actually work? This case study answers that question with real data from a six-month SEO Boost Retainer delivered by ProfileTree, a...
Table of Contents
Our Approach
Building a Digital Foundation for a Craft Drinks Brand
ProfileTree’s starting point with Belfast Artisan Still was a full audit of the brand’s digital position. The website needed a complete rebuild. Social media accounts had untapped potential. The brand’s visual identity was strong offline but inconsistent online.
From that audit, a clear plan emerged: build a website worthy of the product, create a social media presence that reflected the brand’s personality, and develop visual assets that could carry the brand across every digital channel.
Website Design and Development
The new Belfast Artisan Still website was built from scratch by ProfileTree’s UX design and development team. Every decision was made to serve both the brand and the customer.
Key objectives included:
- Showcasing the craft — the distillation process, ingredients and the story behind the gin
- Enabling ecommerce — a secure, straightforward platform for direct gin sales
- Meeting compliance — age verification features integrated to satisfy alcohol regulations
- Mobile usability — full responsiveness across all devices and screen sizes
The result was a site that worked as a genuine commercial asset, not just a digital brochure.
Brand Design and Label Creation
For a product in the premium drinks market, visual quality is non-negotiable. ProfileTree’s design team developed a label for Belfast Artisan Still that reflected the quality of what was inside the bottle: fine line detail, considered colour use and typography that communicated heritage and craft.
That same visual language was then extended across all digital assets, creating consistency between the physical product and everything customers saw online.
Social Media Management
ProfileTree took over social media management across Facebook and Instagram, developing a content strategy built around the brand’s core values: community, quality and the Belfast identity.
Activity included:
- New profile and cover imagery across platforms
- Planned advertising campaigns targeting local and regional gin enthusiasts
- Bar outreach campaigns to support stockist relationships
- Competitions and giveaways designed to grow organic following
Each piece of content was planned and produced to reinforce the brand’s positioning rather than simply filling a content calendar.
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
A strong, user-friendly and visually engaging website, built by a dedicated team of developers and web designers.
An enhanced and organically-grown social media following, thanks to engaging content and effective management.
Improved sales conversion, brand awareness and digital presence for our client.
Digital strategy – what to consider for a successful one?
A digital strategy is an umbrella term, as so many different methods of digital marketing work together in order to create a successful and streamlined plan. For Belfast Artisan Still, we implemented a multi-pronged approach, recognising that it takes more than one channel to make a lasting impact in a competitive sector like premium spirits.
Our strategic thinking included:
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Understanding customer demographics and purchase behaviour.
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Identifying seasonal peaks in demand for gin products.
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Integrating online and offline marketing activities to maximise reach.
Every element of the campaign — from the website structure to the content calendar — was designed to reinforce the brand’s positioning and encourage long-term loyalty.
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.
