Griffin Jones

Switching It Up A Little

This is no longer my business site. I will launch another site by October of 2015 for my business. Grifjones.com remains my personal website for marketing Buffalo.

How Come?

Before, my business involved working only with Buffalo area businesses. My constant promotion of Buffalo was tied in with how I promoted my business. Now, with the exception of a small few that relate to my category, my clients come from outside of Buffalo.

I have gone narrower and deeper instead of wider and shallower. Instead of doing social media for all business categories in Western New York, I now help fertility clinics across the US, Canada, and Australia to convert website and social media visitors into new patients.

123 tiny reasons I can’t slack on my career ambitions.

How Did That Happen?

I had been looking to focus on one business category for some time. I felt I needed to practice what I preach in terms of using the internet as a point of sale, and turning my marketing inbound. I debated for a while about which category to choose . I had worked with several. Did I pick one of them? Or go in completely fresh to a new one?

Then, in June 2014, I started working remotely with Buffalo IVF. This is while I was still volunteering for Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos in Bolivia. Buffalo IVF turned out to be the gateway to the path I had been searching for. I’ll explain.

Most businesses struggle with social media because their categories aren’t in sync with the reasons why people are on the platform. People don’t go on Facebook or Pinterest or Twitter to talk about banks or insurance brokers. In order for the hardware chain to increase business with social media, they need to create a lot of custom content. They basically need to launch their little own localized version of HGTV. That requires more talent, money, and vision than most local businesses will execute on.

En cambio, people spend an obnoxious amount of time on Facebook and Instagram looking at, commenting on, sharing, and posting BABY PICTURES. If a fertility center has good success rates and their doctors and staff are truly lovely people, their patients will enthusiastically promote, endorse, and recommend their practice. Baby pictures and sonogram snapshots all day.

Working with fertility clinics gave me a Minimum Viable Product to build on. With dozens to hundreds of word of mouth engagements, and the investment for infertility treatment being so high, the practice can see how it benefits business. People will down right tell them what they saw on Facebook. The delight side of the sales cycle is so well served this way, their patients will never let their friends or family go to anyone else.

Meanwhile, while building this working relationship that the practices are happy with, I can start playing with their Google Analytics and showing them how little changes to their site result in more appointment submissions and new patient form downloads. Then we can start messing around with the more advanced and tracked measures.

I intend to be the most trusted and proven person on the business side of the infertility treatment field within the next few years. I have designated myself as the person responsible for keeping the field abreast of this insanely fast changing tech and digital landscape. This will include inbound marketing, software, and things that don’t even exist today. In the meantime, I am earning that rapport by showing results with every single at-bat I am given, and then sharing what I’ve learned in an e-mail list to fertility practitioners  that will be content for the new site.

How Does Buffalo Fit Into All This?

If it weren’t for Buffalo, I wouldn’t even be an entrepreneur. I would have been an ad executive in New York or LA and I never would have went off on my own.With living in Buffalo as my primary priority, my career choices have adapted to make it work living in Buffalo.

I no longer try to convince business people to step up their game in Buffalo. Instead, all of my focus is on stepping up my own business game and being a living example of what business people are supposed to do in civic society. Forget convincing anybody.

What the Why?

My hustle is completely predicated on the why that gets me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning. I do it for my own selfish material reasons and I want to contribute socially and financially to Big Brothers and NPH. I want to improve this city that has been my passion since I was four years old.

I want my entire career success to be a giant thank you to the fertility clinics that gave me a new career, because their patients are extraordinary, grateful people who deserve the best care, attention, and empathy from their practices. I love being able to watch how I contribute to that in real time on a freaking computer screen.

And that’s what’s up.