Arianna Mae Studios
Based in Maple Ridge, BC
strategic brand makeover
Custom Squarespace Website
Ready to feel confident & aligned in your creative business?
How Arianna Ervin grew her music studio with a strategic website that attracts perfect-fit clients
client stories
“I loved that working with Samara was so much more than building a nice website for my business. It’s really streamlined my process and made it easy for clients to decide if my studio is for them or not. Now I would say about 90% to 95% of the people who end up booking a call with me are ideal clients.”
– Arianna Ervin, private music teacher and founder of Arianna Mae Studios
Q. Arianna, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you’re so passionate about your work?
Sure! I am a private music teacher and I run a studio called Arianna Mae Studios. I teach voice and piano to students of all ages and all levels. Beginner piano is something that I'm super passionate about—those six, seven, and eight year olds, I absolutely love. I also enjoy working on contemporary and pop repertoire and musical theatre with my singers.
Q. Take us back to the day when you first realised that you wanted support with your website and brand. What was happening?
I’d relocated to the West Coast and started up my studio in the middle of the pandemic. Right after the first year of my business, I finally felt like I'd gotten things rolling, but I needed to streamline my onboarding process because I was getting a lot more inquiries. I was also starting to look at branding the studio and the things that make myself and my business unique.
I really wanted to establish myself here and make the studio the best it could be.
I did DIY my site for a year, but it just wasn’t my area of expertise—and I didn’t want to put in those hours to become an expert. Plus, I knew it would save me time and money in the long-term to outsource it.
It just so happened that Samara was the perfect person to do that.
We had sung together in our university choir and I had seen some of her design work. I knew that her taste and her style were very well suited to what I was looking for—to showcase the studio and create the feeling I want customers to feel when they go to my website.
I've made mistakes in the past as an artist with investing substantial amounts of money into creative partners where the collaboration did not go as planned. It was so nice to work with someone I already had a connection to and whose portfolio I felt an immediate connection with!
Q. How did Samara help you brand your studio and discover the things that make you unique?
I loved that working with Samara was about so much more than building a nice website for my business.
I left our initial meeting with the important realisation that what I do is valuable, and that the services I offer are awesome and important—all things I had struggled to feel with honesty since I founded my business last year. I knew it deep down, but I didn't know how to show it to others.
I usually have a hard time talking about myself, but Samara helped me write my about page in a way that didn’t feel like I was bragging about my accomplishments. It’s a really nice snapshot of what I do, my approach to teaching, and the things that make me good at my job.
She makes it really easy to get excited about writing copy instead of dreading it.
Q. That’s so inspiring! How did you feel when you saw your finished site for the first time?
It was a sigh of relief, like, “YES! This is exactly what I was hoping for.”
The homepage is so good! I love the welcoming feeling of it all. And I love the colours that we came up with. It’s been so easy to take my colour palette and fonts and make all of my social media the same branding.
My studio's motto is 'Let's bring out the Artist in you' and I really felt like Samara was able to beautifully showcase the Artist in me on the website and inspire that feeling in potential customers who will be coming to my site for the first time.
Q. It’s been a year since your new website debuted. How has your business changed since then?
I have to admit I was not mentally prepared for having my business boom so quickly after the new site debuted, which is a great problem to have I guess! I usually have between 45 and 50 students, and I’m still getting two to three inquiries a month.
The website takes clients through such a clear journey, and they know that if they want to get in touch with me, they have to book a discovery call.
It’s really streamlined my process and made it easy for clients to decide just from my website if it is for them or not—which saves me a lot of time and also means that almost all the clients that come my way end up signing up for lessons or getting on the waitlist, which is awesome.
Q. In your experience, what were the top benefits of working with Samara?
- I have a website that feels really and truly authentically me.
- She helped me pinpoint a niche market and the clients that I work the best with.
- The website gives clients an easy, streamlined process to be able to inquire and ask about lessons, while also keeping everything streamlined on my end. So very efficient!
- It also gives clients a nice feeling of what the culture is like in my studio and the kind of work that I do.
