Successful Empathy-Driven Digital Marketing | Robert Garcia from Pneuma

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us out on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let us talk about today’s guest. We have Robert from Pnuema, senior SEO and PPC strategist there with them. How are you doing today, Robert?

Robert Garcia: How’s it going? Great to be here.

Ernesto: Great to have you on, someone with your expertise in the SEO and digital marketing world. It’s awesome to have you here.

Robert: No problem.

Ernesto: Awesome. Yeah, great. Likewise. Well, let’s kick it off, right? I’m sure our listeners are tuning in wondering what Pnuema is all about. So, Robert, in your own words, tell us a little bit more.

Robert: Pnuema’s a digital marketing agency. That’s as simple as I can put it. But we’re a lot more than that. We really are trying to partner with our companies, our clients, and our customers to be more than just providing one service and off we go. We are there to answer their questions, to lead them by the hand into new territory of marketing, such as not only just SEO, but also paid media, PPC, and social media marketing. We’re there for them, and we’ve grown the company to be able to handle those necessities. And it’s not just corporate necessities. There are necessities on a very human level. Companies don’t know how to do something and they need to reach out and ask somebody questions. We’re there to answer the questions.

Ernesto: All right, that’s awesome to hear. So then, so that way our listeners can get a good understanding of Pnuema, Robert, what would you say is that key problem that you guys like to solve for clients?

Robert: What we’re trying to do is be an advocate for our clients in the digital space. We’re trying to solve the problem of getting their message from inside their office to where their customer is and having that message be available for the customer to find. That can take a whole bunch of different ways. It’s either SEO, some kind of online marketing, PPC, paid marketing, website creation, landing page creation, TikTok help, you name it, and we have a pathway for that customer to make it there.

Ernesto: Okay, interesting. Nice, good to hear that. So is there a certain vertical that you guys, is there an ideal ICP that you guys like to go for right now?

Robert: No. I’ll tell you what. We have customers from all over in every kind of field and in every kind of size. So we take care of small mom and pop SMEs all the way up to multi-million dollar companies. The art of marketing doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to stay with one type of vertical. And it’s great when you do and you understand that. But right now, we’re open to helping any company that needs any kind of assistance getting their message across online.

Ernesto: Awesome to hear that. So I mean, say I do, you know, I’m looking for some SEO work or some paid PPC. How would somebody usually find out about Pnuema? Is there a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Robert: Sure. Our top line acquisition channel is our references. Our customers are our biggest source of referral information, and our involvement in the business communities that they’re a part of also brings us our top line of inbound leads, inbound business, you name it. Our references get us there. Our customers are our best advertisers. They belong to communities. They spread the word about what Pnuema is available to do, what Pnuema is talented at doing, and it just spreads like wildfire because they’re amongst the people that have that first base need. You know, everybody’s answering each other’s questions. What did you do to get SEO? What did you do to improve your PPC? And eventually, one of our customers comes along and says, I trusted Pnuema and they got me where I needed to be.

Ernesto: Awesome to hear that. I think that’s one of the best ways to get people in, right? It’s kind of like the doors are pretty open.

Robert: There’s nothing better than a good referral because the person that’s hearing the referral, there is no barrier of trust. They’re talking to a friend of theirs who is telling them, I have the answer for you and it’s this other person. 90% of the friction is gone because you’ve improved the business for somebody that now they are pushing that message for you.

Ernesto: Exactly. Awesome to hear that from you guys. So that way our listeners who are tuned in could go ahead and visit you. They could always check you out at Pnuema. And that’s with P-N-E-U-M-A-L-L-C dot C-O. What role does a website then play for client acquisition?

Robert: Our website is there to show, you know, one of the best things that we do on our website is we lead with a video from our founder, David Riggs. David is very, I guess the word is intimate, human. He explains in a very human level-headed methodology what we do. His face is there to talk to the customer as soon as they hit our website. So our website does what many other websites do, which tells you our wins, it tells you what we’re thinking. We have a blog section, it tells you our capabilities. But I think that’s one of the biggest advantages our website has is our founder is front and center talking to you in a very personal, down-to-earth way of how we help you.

Ernesto: Okay, awesome. Great to hear that. So is there any tools or tips or methods that you would recommend to our listeners, Robert, as far as some website lead generation?

Robert: I think, and a lot of times people ask me, what tools do you recommend, what apps you recommend, and things like that. There are two tools which are the most important in marketing, SEO, PPC, digital marketing across the board. It is your mind and your heart. And what I mean by those things is your mind includes things like your experience, your skills, things that you’ve built up over the years. They are your first tool in thinking anything out. Don’t rely on an app, don’t rely on AI. First, put your mind to work. How do you think something should go? And your heart, and what I mean by heart, and I’m not trying to be very spiritual, but I mean by your heart is your empathy, your feelings, your thoughts. Put yourself in the shoes of the person who you’re trying to reach. So for example, and the biggest example we do, and always in SEO is Nike shoes or tools, just think there for a second. What have you seen work in the past? How have you seen your topic expressed online? And then put yourself in the shoes of the person who needs it. Whether it’s look, blue Nike shoes, size nine, those words to our mind, there’s a lot of intent behind it. There’s a commitment to maybe buy to the person who’s typing that in, it means completely different. The blue Nike tennis shoes to a mom in Tallahassee are much different than blue Nike tennis shoes to a cop in Utah or to a plumber in New Jersey. They mean different things, even though we’re all putting in the same words. So use your empathy. Think as the person who is needing this product or needing information on it, what would you want? So what would you want is the best set of beginning data that you’re going to have, and then you build it from there past that. Man, Excel is the bomb. Excel has always been there for us to help organize our data. You can go past it. So obviously there’s a lot of data tools out there to help you. But start with Excel, start with words, start with text, write things down, then look for the tools that you need to accomplish your goal. Don’t look for tools before you even know what your goal is.

Ernesto: Definitely important. Awesome to hear that. Next up then. So then, I mean, it sounds like you have a full plate there on your hand, Robert. But how do you stay up to date with all the trends in the marketing world as far as some news strategies? Is there a preferred channel that you like to go with?

Robert: You know, there’s the old tried and true, old school, and they’re not old. They’ve always been around and they reinvented sales all the time. Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Roundtable. They’re always good places to go to first thing in the morning to learn what’s the latest thing in the news. And then what I want is to find conversations. So conversations happen on Twitter, on Reddit, on Hacker News, on Web Pro News, on any forum you can find out there. Look for the conversations. People share things all the time, and sometimes you get information quicker than the regular journalistic routes. I also say, try to build your own. Aleyda Solis with her SEO FOMO newsletter. Thank God for Aleyda. I pay attention to everything she says. She is a great voice of knowledge, and she is a blessing that she gives us to us every week. That’s a lot of work to put out that newsletter. And now she’s created a community, the SEO FOMO community. There’s a forum, she’s involved all over the place. Great place to go to. There’s some SEOs and advertisers that, and I call them advertisers, but the digital marketers out there that I really pay attention to. Ann Smarty, always a good source of information. The guys from Seer Interactive, awesome. Always good. Will Reynolds is a fantastic source of information and there’s a ton of people out there. And if I’m missing out on people, it’s because every single day you’re inundated with great new information. You just don’t have to know how to compact it all and make it useful for yourself.

Ernesto: Definitely would agree. Awesome to hear that. Well, then let’s jump into our next section here, Robert, which is our rapid-fire question rounds. Are you ready for them?

Robert: I’ll do my best. I’m a slow guy, but we’ll do our best.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great, great. First off then, Robert, is what is the last book that you read?

Robert: The Art of War by Sun Tzu. You never read it. And people, when they hear me say, read The Art of War, it is not about war. It’s about marketing, it’s about sales, it’s about relationships. It’s about so much everything, right? Yeah, it’s about so much, but I recommend anybody to read it, definitely.

Ernesto: All right, great read there. Next up then is what is one single thing that the company is focused on at the moment the most?

Robert: We’re building up our PPC department and product line. We’re delving deep into it. We’re trying to make it the best that we can for our clients and the best that we can for those clients who are looking for us. I come with over 20 years of experience of being online. I’ve done everything from pure SEO to paying for traffic, for paying for advert, doing advertising. So it’s really to build it up fresh with a fresh thought. What we’re trying to do is combine everything that has to do with SEO and our PPC. We’re trying to show our customers that the information from SEO informs our PPC and the wins that we get from PPC inform what we should be doing in SEO. So that’s really important, and that’s why we’re building it up. The PPC business first, starting from the SEO mindset, but with very talented people helping us manage the PPC side.

Ernesto: Perfect. Awesome. Great, great, great to hear that from you guys. So then, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Robert: Oh, wow. If there’s no boundary, I want some kind of technology to tell me how to read minds. We’ve been building, and not just read minds, because, you know, I get all the secrets. We’ve been building things like Personas, marketing groups, characters. When we do marketing, we try to figure out how the person we’re trying to reach would think about something. Well, I want to build that Persona and have it match 10,000 people, and now I know exactly how they think, you know? But I want the truth, so I want to read. If somebody could figure that out, life would be so much better. But until that time, we have to do it ourselves.

Ernesto: Definitely. Awesome. Awesome. I mean, you know, I was going to mention with Elon Musk and that, you know, chim going in the mine, you never know. We might be, you never know.

Robert: I know I ain’t putting one in my head, but you never know.

Ernesto: Never know. Yep. Awesome. So if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, Robert, what would that be?

Robert: Clicking the button. So we all, look, clicking the button. We all have tasks all day, and we got to report to whatever kind of tool we’re using. We got to tell them, I’m done with this, I’m done with that. I finished this, but often I’m moving way ahead of the tool, so I forget to click those buttons and tell me I was done. So that is actually a really big challenge. There’s plenty of people who do that. Tasks get left behind in every kind of task management software I’ve ever seen, and sooner or later, somebody’s got to clean it up. So my biggest challenge is clicking those buttons to say that something’s done. You know, the other part of it is the front end is how do you organize a sprint correctly? How do you organize the tasks in succession so that they make sense? So the end result is what you want done, you know, so that’s always a challenge as well. You know, that first logistical thought process of just getting all those tasks together so that you know exactly what’s gonna happen. That doesn’t mean we don’t know, you know, I know we all know the job at hand. We know what we got to finish it, and we do. We just gotta remember to click the buttons and I forget that all the time.

Ernesto: Definitely. I would agree. I mean, you actually write the buttons. I was like, all right, well, what do you mean, right?

Robert: What’s this guy meaning?

Ernesto: But I would totally agree with that. Yep.

Robert: Awesome.

Ernesto: And lastly, Robert, then, I mean, you have a lot of experience already in the marketing world, but what is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Robert: I would learn about David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach as early as possible. So I’ve often said that the history, the digital marketing history, has been the wild, wild west for a long time. But if you notice, it’s making a very turn to very traditional marketing, not going to say rules, but marketing patterns that we’ve seen many times before. We’re using all of the terms that the famous admin, like the Mad Men show, from 40 years ago, used KPI’s, MMRs, average value per customer, all those terms. They’ve been using them for years. So two of the most famous people that come out from that super admin era were a guy named David Ogilvy and another guy named Bill Bernbach. David Ogilvy was all about the data. He sold the first Rolls Royce in advertising in the United States. They came to him to say, we need a way to sell Rolls Royce here. And he did an amazing thing. He and his team sat with the Rolls Royce for three days, measuring, looking up, looking down, turning on the car, turning off the car, driving the car, and they came up with probably the coolest sell line I’ve ever heard in my life. After all that data, they said, at 60, the loudest thing in a Rolls Royce is the clock. Boom. It’s a thing of beauty because that’s what the person wants, and then they knew their customer, they knew it inside out. They created long-form advertising and stuff like that. Really great mind as far as data. Bill Bernbach, he believed in data, but his main thing was, and this was his saying, let’s make good art, good writing, good layout, good selling. So it was that part that reminded people that we are visual and we are auditory and we smell and we read. So the data and the artist, those two things are a perfect match of information for a digital marketer today. And I wish I had started early learning about those two guys.

Ernesto: That was some great advice there, not just for yourself, like you mentioned, but for all our listeners as well. And we are coming to the end of the show here, Robert, for today. But before we do end, I do want to give you the last word. So, say someone forgets everything about the interview today. What is that one thing they should remember about your company?

Robert: We click the buttons. No. So the one thing is, it’s in our name. Pnuema means the breath of life. We believe in a very holistic relationship, not only with our customers, but our prospective customers. Those who are looking can we hire you? Yeah, sure. But we can answer your questions first. We believe in sharing knowledge. We believe in helping people and not creating an invoice. We also help our clients from beginning to end in anything they ask us, and we lead them the right way. So it’s in our name: the breath of life. We believe in it. We believe in a partnership with our clients.

Ernesto: Definitely important. Love that which you mentioned. Right. The partnership with clients. That’s why you have those many referrals. Awesome to hear from you, Robert. And well, Robert, it’s been a pleasure to have had you on with us today. I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in, and we’ll look forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Robert.

Robert: You got it. Bye.