Background
Surf Donuts was founded in April 2019 by childhood friends John Ciluffo and Raymond Bader. After many successful years in the food industry, the 2 decided to put their passion for donuts into opening the Babylon Village, NY shop. Surf Donuts is a family owned and operated business. On any given day you will find either owner’s children, spouse, siblings, nieces, or nephews working behind the counter.
Business Challenge
When Surf Donuts opened their doors, they didn’t have a website or any social media profiles. They set up social media accounts but didn’t know how to properly manage them or what content to post. Although they were experts in making mouthwatering donuts, John and Ray soon realized they needed help with building a digital and social media presence to stay competitive in their market. With a new competitor set to open in the same small town a few months later, Surf Donuts needed to get market share and brand recognition right away.
In addition to making their signature donuts, Surf Donuts also offers custom donuts for birthdays, weddings, communions, corporate events, and more. Without a website, email address, or social media presence, they were relying on word of mouth to spread the word about their custom donuts. Orders were being placed solely in person or over the phone.
Results
Babylon Solutions immediately did a competitive analysis for Surf Donuts and took over their social media accounts. We used data gathered to map out a posting schedule with content that would drive up engagement and increase their audience. Within the first two months of taking over their Instagram account, we have seen an increase of over 1200% in reach, over 900% in followers, and over 1200% in engagements. On Facebook, total impressions went from 500 to 42,000 in the first month which have led to hundreds of custom orders. Even we were surprised at the number of individuals reaching out for custom and catering orders via Facebook messenger and Instagram direct messages.
In addition to the social media presence, Babylon Solutions began developing a customized website for Surf Donuts. We discovered that the vanity domain that Surf Donuts wanted was unfortunately already taken. Babylon Solutions was successfully able to negotiate and acquire the vanity domain “surfdonuts.com” at a very low price. Additionally, we created a form for submitting orders on the site that would go to the new email address which we set up for Surf Donuts.