Pneuma Media

At Pneuma Media, we're helping independent businesses modernize the way they get found. Pneuma is a team made up of experienced SEO, PPC, and design professionals. We make it easy for your next customer to find you when they need you the most.

VP of Marketing

Stacking Slabs

Stacking Slabs is a media platform that serves the sports card collector. Stacking Slabs delivers consistent episodes through audio and video formats on a weekly basis. Also, Stacking Slabs partners with industry leading companies to extend their reach and connect with collectors in the hobby.

Owner and Head Creator

The Juice

•Developing The Juice brand through content and collaboration from scratch
•Building a community of marketers, CEOs, and founders for content collaborations and future sales opportunities 
•Designing messaging, positioning, and go-to-market story 
•Creating a digital content marketing strategy that amounts to 500 articles, 260 podcast episodes of Modern Day Marketer, 13 digital events, and 2 “State of” reports using proprietary data 
•Developing a content distribution strategy to make sure content efforts got in front of the right people at the right time
•Assisting in the growth of 25,000 new members on The Juice

Revenue Collective

Member

Dyknow

VP, Marketing

RICS Software

• Leading the Sales team in developing an outbound strategy and new business growth 
• Leading the Marketing team with a focus on demand generation, content, graphics and design, and communications strategy 
• Aligning marketing and sales by driving the strategy for quarterly marketing campaigns to build awareness and new customer acquisition 
• Developing a Client Marketing strategy to build and develop advocacy 
• Creation of Account-Based Marketing program that focuses on pipeline velocity
• Developing a conversational marketing strategy that drives engagement and growth

VP, Go-to-Market

Geofeedia

•Driving inbound strategy for a multi-vertical focused start up
•Managing a team of outbound marketers that are focused on gaining net new logos 
•Developing best in class partner programs that drive pipeline for sales 
•Partnering with sales to develop the vehicles they need for customer acquisition

Manager, Demand Generation

salesforce.com

•Working cross-functionally with creative, product marketing, and channel marketing owners to drive marketing campaigns that contribute pipeline for the business
•Partnering with Field Marketing to create compelling events that feature social product line and provide strategic followup 
•Coordinating marketing materials for product launches 
•Creating strategic prospecting materials, nurture tracks, and other demand generation focused offers to provide BDRs a reason to call 
•Working with customers to generate branded content tracks, webinars, and other relevant go-to-market materials

Manager, Marketing Campaigns

ExactTarget

Regional Alliances Manager

Outbound Marketing

Family and Social Services Adminstration

Communications and Marketing Program Director

VP of Marketing: The Juice | Host of Modern Day Marketer | Host of Stacking Slabs Podcast for Sports Card Collectors

I've spent 14 years in the B2B saas industry in various marketing functional and leadership roles. I wake up every day thinking about messaging and positioning, sales alignment, demand generation, and content creation. I am highly focused on building out go-to-market strategies that elevate the organization's brand and sales pipeline. I am results driven and believe it's all about bringing in the right people.

I’m pumped to announce that I’ve joined Pneuma Media as their VP of Marketing!

I had my first call with David W. Riggs a little over a month ago. He’s an ambitious entrepreneur who has transformed Pneuma from idea to scaling business over the last 3+ years. 

Here’s what I learned about Pneuma during that first conversation: 

1. The business is boot strapped and continues to grow YoY during a time where most companies are retracting 

2. The volume of passion and energy to provide a premium service and experience to Pneuma’s customers is undeniable 

3. The brand has reached the point where consistent messaging, positioning, and content will help elevate the company to the next level 

Pnuema is passionate about growing companies that grow communities. The team is full of incredibly talented people who help independent businesses get found through modern SEO, PPC, and design strategies.   

I’m passionate about working with teams who run to the problem and do whatever they can to make their customers look like heroes. That’s why Pneuma is a great fit for me.

The extra bonus points were Pneuma’s ties to Indiana. Pneuma will be opening up an office in Fishers in the next few months. In the meantime, I’ll be helping craft the story and create a content strategy that connects with our next customer. 

I appreciate everyone reading this post who traded messages with me, hopped on a Zoom, or advocated for my work to others. Your support was the catalyst for this post. 

Go Pneuma Go! 🚀

Brett McGrath

Work for brands who give you the keys to starting a podcast in your first month.

It shouldn’t be about starting a podcast because everyone’s doing it.

It should always be about starting a podcast because there’s intention behind it.

The side effects of going through the process to start a podcast in your first 30 days will help any marketer gain credibility with your peers and jump levels professionally.

Here’s what starting a podcast can do:

1. Help you communicate the story that your new company wants to be telling

2. Make your existing customers look like heroes

3. Give you a vehicle to host future customers or existing pipeline

4. Humanize your brand by highlighting your people

5. Streamline all of the other content that you want to be building

I’ve been heads down working on Pneuma Media's new podcast called 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 with David W. Riggs that will be dropping in the next few weeks. It’s a podcast for business owners who aren’t just looking to create demand, but also capture demand with modern strategies.

Going through this process has given me a fast pass to understand the audience we serve, their problems, and how we can address them through conversations.

Starting a podcast from the jump beats throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Your show becomes your brand’s Bat Signal.

It’s how you separate.

We live in a world where everyone is an expert. 

Seriously, there’s hot take, podcast, course, video, eBook, download, Slack group, community, chat, and the list goes on for every discipline under the sun. 

There’s so much information flooding our feeds and most of the time it’s not for us. 

We're overwhelmed by the options. It's easier to just tune out. 

Because information overload isn’t going away, one of the most important skills marketers can possess in 2024 and beyond is the ability to curate. 

A+ curators help cut through the noise for their audience. 

It’s doing things like: 

1. Making your newsletter not just about your content, but sharing content from your peers 

2. Highlighting the thoughts, ideas, and voices of your customers and customer’s customer in everything you do 

3. Facilitating the voices of subject matter experts inside your company to help answer questions for the people you’re trying to reach 

I’m still getting up to speed at Pneuma Media and had a chat today with one of our SEO experts Robert Garcia about the power of turning your teammates into industry stars. 

It’s not about your logo. It’s about your people. 

It's about your next customer knowing how your people think even before taking their first call with you. 

You don’t need to stop creating. 

You just need to spend more time curating. 

P.S. Shout out Nick Bennett and Mark Kilens for preaching people-first. It works when you go all-in.

It can be painful to drive change as a new or recently promoted marketer. 

We’re ambitious and want to make an immediate impact that elevates the brand, but it can be a struggle with where to start. 

I’m going through this experience now as I’m getting ramped as "the new marketing guy" at Pneuma Media.

Here’s the 3 most important things I’m doing in my first 2 weeks to overcome the struggle: 

1. Do more listening than talking: I spent the first 2 days in a conference room drinking from a firehose. The most effective marketers I’ve ever worked with are masters at documentation. It’s nearly impossible to take your brand to the next stage if you have no understanding of where the brand sits in the hearts and minds of its most important stakeholders. 

2. Understand all business functions: It’s really important to not only understand what’s going on in marketing, but most importantly what’s happening in other areas of the business. It’s getting in the weeds and understanding things like the customer onboarding process. It’s listening to sales recordings to understand positioning. It’s figuring out how shit gets done. The best marketers have a desire to understand how cross-functional teams work and how they can use that to build the brand. 

3. Over communicate internally: Decide, document, and distribute your thoughts to team members in real-time. It’s important to get integrated in existing internal communication channels and identify opportunities where marketing updates can be streamlined. 

But we’re also supposed to be shipping, right? 

Yes, I’m working on website messaging, crafting a story, and launching our new show, but don’t forget the foundational stuff. 

It’s a balancing act. It feels uncomfortable. It should feel like flying a plane while changing the engine at the same time. 

Allowing for the foundational stuff will help open your eyes to the most impactful opportunities ahead. 

It’s all a lot and doesn’t happen overnight. 

I’m just happy that David W. Riggs likes to drink as much coffee as me. ☕

Make it a priority to include your CEO in your content strategy. 

It shouldn’t be intimidating. It should be validating.

One of the biggest reasons content fails is because the right people aren’t involved in the strategy early and often. You’re not including your boss or boss’ boss to gain approval on the content that you’re shipping.  You’re including your CEO to get them bought into your vision and open the door to feature his/her thoughts where it makes sense. 

Great creators are great facilitators of their CEO’s thoughts, ideas, and vision. 

Some of the ways to get your CEO involved are stupid simple and can help transform your content strategy from good to great. 

It’s doing things like: 

1. Not just sharing what you’re creating before it ships, but asking for feedback 

2. Grabbing 30 min every other week to interview your CEO on topics that might resonate with your audience 

3. Position your CEO as your content’s ambassador, but also get him/her to share your work on apps like this and offer context 

I recorded the first episode of 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 with Pneuma Media's CEO David W. Riggs last week. Our new podcast drops soon and has been a culmination of hours of 1:1 conversations between us over topics that matter most to our customers. It just took one recording to validate the content strategy and get on the same page for where we’re going next. 

Your work can be the vehicle for your CEOs vision for where your company goes next. 

Don’t keep your content strategy siloed. 

Involve the people who sign your paycheck. 

It will take your work to the next level.

It’s a freakin’ struggle to move from awareness to conversion. 

I’ve made all of the mistakes.

I’m on the All-Marketing First Team of getting people interested, but have also lost my spot on the bench because I’ve struggled with converting that interest to revenue. 

Some of the things that have kept growth stagnant were: 

1. Too much emphasis on technology  
2. Too much much automation 
3. Not enough personalization 

Thankfully, the last 3 weeks at Pneuma reminded me that we’re living in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲.

Your next customer values access and convenience. 

The easiest way for your next customer to find you is for you to answer their questions when they search the problems that your business solves. 

You can’t automate being found. 

Overspending on some kind of SEO tech won’t save you either. 

It’s about having the right subject matter experts internally or working with really smart people in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 to help get you there. 

Are you great at creating demand, but struggling to capture it? 

I wrote an article about my experience moving from a 14 year career working for technology companies to now supporting a people-led professional services agency. 

Punchline: I better understand how to not just get seen, but start conversations in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲.

pneumallc.co • 4 min read

The Search Economy: More People and Less Technology  - Pneuma Media

Content that’s specific is the content that cuts through the noise. 

But, being disciplined to specificity is one of the greatest challenges for any creator. 

When you write specifically and consistently for your intended audience you eliminate any doubt that you’re for someone. 

The problem is that it’s really easy to get distracted by bad fit prospects, trends, and other growth opportunities that can result in a more general message. 

When you start trying to be for everyone you quickly become for no one. 

I’ve learned that some of the best ways to stay specific are: 

1. Interviewing your strongest customers for content opportunities regularly

2. Sitting with sales and review the inbound traffic that actually converted to pipeline 

3. Consistently reviewing your content while putting yourself in your reader’s shoes 

Your content takes time to grow an audience. 

The first step is making the connection. 

It starts with being specific.

Struggling to get your boss or boss’ boss invested in the long term success of your brand’s content? 

There’s a point in almost every marketer’s career where you face heat from your leadership. 

There’s a slew of other internal and external factors for why the results aren't great right now, but at this moment the spotlight is being placed on the performance of your content. 

This situation sucks to manage. 

How do you know you’re at that point? 

- You’re on the defensive having to justify each piece of content you produce

- You’re suddenly getting asked to attribute each piece of content with new pipeline created 

- You’re being asked to create more product focused content and told, “just use more product screenshots”.

Luckily, this is a normal spot to be in and you’ll get better as a marketer managing through it. 

The most valuable lesson that I’ve learned for not only getting people on board with your content strategy, but also keeping them there is to obsess over your internal marketing strategy. 

It’s doing things like: 

1. Sharing your work with key stakeholders and asking for feedback before it gets shipped 

2. Using tools like Slack to over communicate the “why” behind your content 

3. Making it stupid simple for people to use your work to amplify the brand 

4. Curating the thoughts and beliefs of the people you work with to humanize your content 

If you spend a small piece of your week planning your internal marketing strategy you’ll instantly put your content on offense. 

This plan still requires results. 

But, the shelf life of your program gets extended when your team has an understanding of where you’re going.

SEO has always been a blindspot for me in my career. 

My time has always been consumed by writing articles, recording podcasts, and running campaigns. I always pushed the "learn more about SEO" task to the bottom of my list. I felt like a college kid cramming for finals every time I started reading content on SEO and would always just fall asleep from the mental exhaustion. 

That's why I've always outsourced SEO work to the experts. 

Marketing is overloaded with disciplines and it's nearly impossible to be an expert at all of them. The marriage between excellent content and SEO is a beautiful thing, but can be a struggle to get us there. 

SEO isn't just an emerging category either. 

SEO is an entire category. 

There are hundreds of SaaS solutions that help with SEO. 

There are thousands of agencies who promise to get you ranking on Page 1. 

I'm investigating the SEO space as I get up-to-speed Pneuma and curious to learn from you. 

What does a winning SEO and content partnership look like to you?

If you’ve just been promoted, stepping into a new marketing role, or picked up a new client you want to get quick wins. 

But, it’s all about building the infrastructure to run the program to create the biggest impact long term. 

The balance of these two worlds can be overwhelming. 

You're researching, listening, and documenting, but also want to put some quick points on the board. 

Feeling stuck in between these two realities sucks and can cause you to feel stagnant. 

Unfortunately, there’s no one size fits all approach that’s going to help you breakthrough. 

But, I’m finding that starting with the company’s story construction can help set the stage for your long-term work and also get you some quick wins. 

Think about it as the secret weapon you're going to give your sales team that builds a connection with their next customer before they even talk about your product or service. 

Starting with the story will: 

1. Guide the messaging and positioning on your most important digital properties 

2. Serve as the catalyst for the way you want to design your content strategy 

3. Allow you to gather feedback and build relationships with cross-functional teams 

4. Connect you with customers and future customers for feedback 

5. Give you a product to own and evolve as the company grows 

I’m almost 2 weeks into my new gig and starting with the story has been the easiest way for me to get an understanding of the business. 

The story can be the strategy if you treat it as such. 

Excited to share the story and where I’m at next week.

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