DOLLY’S SWEET SENSATIONS
THE CLIENT:
DOLLY’S SWEET SENSATIONS
Dolly’s Sweet Sensations is a Wedding Cakes & Desserts Bakery located in Houston, Texas. Dolly is a Pastry Chef and Wedding Cake Designer who specializes in custom flavor profiles that are made from scratch. Her cakes and desserts are not only breathtakingly beautiful, they’re also absolutely delicious!
When I first met Dolly, she had a simple logo graphic that was designed a decade prior and was working with a friend of hers to build a Squarespace website for her business. Apparently, things were not going well for them professionally or personally, which left her feeling stressed, exhausted, and eager for a new solution.
She knew she needed to prioritize her digital presence, and that it entailed having a website, but she didn’t have much more direction outside of that.
In the time we worked together, we elevated her business and her digital presence by designing a custom brand identity, building a custom Squarespace website, creating various print collateral items, updating her social media profiles and her existing listing sites (Wedding Wire and The Knot), and managing a 6-month Google ads campaign.
Her goal was to shift the funds in her digital marketing budget from Wedding Wire, which never brought her a single lead, to Social Media Marketing and Google Ads, which was so successful that her schedule was maxed out for the entire wedding season in 2022!
Below you will find the overview of the design work we created for the DSS brand and the case study overview for her marketing efforts.
THE PROJECT:
• BRAND DESIGN
• PRINT DESIGN
• WEB DESIGN
• DIGITAL PRESENCE JUMPSTART
• DIGITAL MARKETING
BRAND PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHE AUTHENTIC
FROM DOLLY
“Kate has been amazing! She helped me develop my digital strategy, grow online, and most importantly, she stood by my side and encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone!”
CUSTOM BRAND DESIGN
The Custom Brand Experience included the following personalized, foundational, intentionally designed brand elements: a primary logo design, 2 or more secondary logo designs, pattern, texture or custom graphic, font combinations, and a color palette.
These strategically-designed visual details prioritize the brand’s unique offer(s), vision, and goals. Together they help establish the foundation required for creating marketing content and materials, managing ongoing marketing efforts, and business success in the years to come.
PRINTED COLLATERAL
The Custom Brand Experience included up to 3 print collateral designs—usually a custom business card and two marketing items such as a brochure, rack card, promotional discount card, or thank you note.
Applying brand elements to customized printed collateral is a simple way to round out a brand’s design and elevate a customer’s experience. Dolly needed new business cards, a leave-behind for a networking event she was to attend, and a sticker for her cake and dessert boxes, so that’s what we created for her.
CUSTOM SQUARESPACE WEBSITE
The Custom Web Design Experience included a one-of-a-kind Squarespace web design. By approaching web development strategically—keeping in mind the business goals, the experience of the audience or user, and basic search engine preferences—you can be sure the end result is both aesthetically pleasing and highly functional.
DIGITAL PRESENCE JUMPSTART
The Custom Brand Design Experience included a Digital Presence Jumpstart, which consists of the setup and stylizing of a Google My Business account, two social media accounts, two industry-specific listing site accounts, and a custom email signature design.
Creating a custom, brand-conscious aesthetic for these essential digital platforms, in addition to launching a new website, is a pivotal step in establishing a digital presence and brand awareness that will jumpstart any future marketing efforts.
MARKETING EFFORTS
Upon completion of the DSS brand, we immediately got started with the first stage of marketing—Brand Awareness.
We left the social media content up to Dolly, she mostly uses it as a “real-time portfolio” sharing photos and reels of her cakes and desserts that are delivered and installed at her events.
On Google, we set up an ads campaign that was intended to encourage newly engaged brides to book their cake tasting with Dolly.
Between these two efforts and the tasting scheduler on her website, Dolly was able to streamline her booking process and was quickly booked to max capacity (with both tastings and events) for the entire wedding season—for two years/seasons and counting!
