Groundworks Art Lab

Case Study

Groundworks Art Lab is a Boulder-based nonprofit creative studio offering hands-on art classes, workshops, camps, memberships, and community programming across disciplines such as ceramics, metalworking, and woodworking.

Summary

Groundworks Art Lab is a Boulder-based nonprofit creative studio offering ceramics classes, workshops, camps, memberships, Open Studio access, and experiential programming such as Date Night classes. With enrollment tied to fixed session calendars, demand naturally rises around registration windows and softens in between.

Groundworks partnered with Hawke to increase class registrations throughout the year by strengthening how the organization captured demand across paid search, organic search, and local discovery. The objective was not simply to increase traffic, but to reach more prospective students, drive more sign-ups across service lines, and create a more reliable enrollment engine beyond peak session periods.

Challenge

Groundworks had strong brand recognition, but its search presence was not fully supporting its growth goals.

Its Google Ads Grant account was largely inactive, with limited historical activity and no meaningful conversion infrastructure in place. The account was not using the full opportunity available through the nonprofit grant, and Groundworks lacked a structured paid search strategy to drive registration volume across classes, camps, workshops, and other offerings.

At the same time, organic traffic had begun to decline as new competitors gained visibility for high-intent local searches related to pottery classes, workshops, and creative experiences. The website also faced technical SEO issues affecting indexing, speed, image optimization, schema markup, and the ability of key class pages to compete in search.

Groundworks needed a coordinated strategy that could capture immediate demand through paid media, build long-term nonbranded visibility through SEO, and improve discovery among local audiences searching for activities and classes in Boulder.

Approach

Hawke developed an integrated search strategy designed to help Groundworks capture demand at every stage of the customer journey.

Paid search was positioned as the immediate acquisition channel, using the Google Ads Grant to drive registrations and test demand across class types and seasonal offerings. SEO focused on improving the technical health of the site, increasing visibility for nonbranded class-related searches, and helping Groundworks compete more effectively against local competitors.

GEO and local search optimization supported the final layer of the strategy by helping Groundworks show up for nearby prospective students searching for relevant experiences, classes, and activities in Boulder.

Together, the strategy was built to create a more balanced demand engine: paid search for scalable reach and conversions, SEO for compounding organic discovery, and local visibility for high-intent users ready to engage.

Solutions

Hawke rebuilt Groundworks’ paid search account around a full-funnel campaign structure that included brand, nonbrand prospecting, dynamic search, and Performance Max campaigns. The team implemented conversion tracking for class registrations and form submissions, expanded the keyword footprint, and introduced brand exclusions to ensure nonbrand performance could be measured accurately.

To better align with Groundworks’ seasonal business model, Hawke launched a dedicated Summer Camp campaign and created a roadmap for Date Night classes, workshops, Open Studio access, and gift-intent campaigns ahead of the holiday season. This gave Groundworks a more flexible way to promote offerings during slower inter-session periods while preparing for high-demand registration windows.

On the SEO side, Hawke addressed key technical issues in collaboration with Groundworks’ web development team. This included schema markup, image and alt-text optimization, indexing improvements, and site-speed enhancements. The team also strengthened class-page optimization to improve visibility for nonbranded searches and help Groundworks attract users who were searching for creative experiences but did not yet know the organization by name.

For GEO and local discovery, Hawke focused on improving Groundworks’ presence in local search results and Google Business Profile engagement. This helped the organization capture nearby users looking for classes, workshops, camps, and activities in Boulder.