Case Study
Marlo Studios
Industry: Digital Products · Size: Small · Location: United Kingdom and Japan
Marlo Studios is a creative design studio and digital marketplace founded by sisters Freya and Jasmine Smith, selling mockups, branding templates and colour guides to designers around the world.
When the brand started working with HAI Digital, it had almost no presence in Google search. Over a 3-month Search Sprint, an authority-led organic search strategy turned that near-silence into sustained, compounding visibility.
With HAI Digital, Marlo Studios:
- Saw a measurable rise in ecommerce sales across digital products
- Grew from a near-zero base to over 260,000 Google search impressions
- Earned more than 4,500 organic clicks and lifted average position from 15.6 to 9.4
- Published 24 branded articles, with six now outranking the homepage on visibility
- Regular visibility within Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, and ChatGPT
- Raised technical SEO site health from 82% to 91% using Semrush
A Design Studio with No Search Footprint
Founded by sisters Freya and Jasmine Smith, Marlo Studios sits at an unusual intersection: half creative studio and half digital market.
Freya leads visual identity, Jasmine leads social and content, and together they sell digital products such as the Brand Identity Guidelines 2.0 template, the Taste Test mockup bundle and The Matcha Edit.
The studio had a distinctive brand and a loyal following. What it did not have was organic search visibility. Like many design studios, its blog sat empty, and the digital products that could have been discovered through Google were effectively invisible. Jasmine recognised the pattern was common across the industry.
"A lot of the brand studios I follow only have around 10 blog posts, and update maybe once a quarter," Jasmine Smith, Co-founder of Marlo Studios, explained.
For an ecommerce brand whose products solve real problems for designers, that idle journal represented a significant amount of untapped search potential.
What Marlo Studios Needed from Organic Search
The opportunity was clear: turn the founders' genuine design expertise into something Google could find, understand and rank.
That meant building authority around the exact products Marlo Studios sells, rather than chasing generic traffic, and doing so in a voice that matched the studio's aesthetic.
HAI Digital's Search Sprint is a focused 3-month engagement built for exactly this.
Working in partnership with Freya and Jasmine, the goal was never to replace their creative direction but to amplify it, taking the knowledge already inside the studio and structuring it into content that earns visibility.
How HAI Digital Built Authority Around Marlo's Digital Products
The first deliverable was an authority-led SEO strategy built on Google's EAT framework, prioritising the experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. The aim was specific: make Marlo Studios a go-to source for digital design products.
From that strategy came 24 branded articles on the Marlo Mag journal, deliberately mixing unbranded topics such as brand typography with branded angles such as how Marlo Studios approaches mockups.
Getting the tone of voice right for Marlo Studios was essential.
The sisters have a precise aesthetic, and the content had to sound unmistakably like Marlo Studios while still performing in search. That custom approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all template, is what allowed the articles to feel native to the brand.
Alongside the content, HAI Digital ran technical SEO across the site, lifting Semrush site health from 82% to 91% by fixing meta descriptions and other errors.
Article spirals then repurposed each piece into formats such as Instagram carousels, extending the reach of every article written on social media.
Letting the Data Lead the Content
Some of the strongest results came from topics the founders might not have chosen, but were guided by the strategy HAI Digital put together built around their digital products.
When HAI Digital's research suggested an article on brand archetypes, Jasmine was initially hesitant since it used older terminology. However, the piece went ahead, and that article became the top performer during the sprint and top-five performer all-time.
The same topical strategy shaped Food Marketing in 2025: Rhode, Skims and Jacquemus, an article grounded in real-world campaign research, including a Skims campaign Jasmine had not even been aware of.
This is where HAI Digital's expertise augments rather than replaces a client's: the founders bring the design authority, and the strategy surfaces the topics and angles that turn that authority into discoverable, ranking content.
Driving Measurable Impact for Marlo Studios
The compounding effect has been striking. From a base of essentially zero, Marlo Studios now generates over 260,000 Google search impressions and more than 4,500 organic clicks, with average position improving from 15.6 to 9.4 as the content matured.
Six journal articles now outrank the homepage on visibility: Exclusion Zone in Logo Design, Brand Tone of Voice, Logo Misuse, Brand Archetypes, Secondary Logo, and the food marketing feature on Rhode, Skims and Jacquemus. The brand's own expertise, not just its name, is now its biggest search asset.
That visibility translated into sales. Jasmine noted a clear lift in digital product purchases through the sprint: "Last week I've seen people buy the brand designer kit, the brand identity package and also the matcha mockups," she said.
Transitioning From Marlo Studios to Marlo's Matcha
The sprint for Marlo Studios built a foundation of trust that carries forward. So much so that Freya and Jasmine chose to keep the partnership going into their next venture.
When they launched their new matcha brand, Marlo's Matcha, they brought HAI Digital in from day one, applying the same authority-led search approach to a brand-new ecommerce business right from launch.
Explore What Search Could Do for Your Brand
If your brand has real expertise but doesn’t have a search strategy, have inconsistent traffic, or products that simply are not being found in search, you are not alone.
Many ecommerce brands sit on untapped search potential without a strategy to unlock it. HAI Digital offers a free search strategy for qualifying brands like Marlo Studios.