In this video Shaun Whynacht introduces a "footprint" metaphor to reframe how marketers think about the prospect journey. He argues that while creating blogs, videos, and social posts is valuable, businesses must first decide the exact, simple action they want a prospect to take—their first "footprint" in the sales process. He calls this the initial conversion step, such as an assessment, quiz, scorecard, free quote, or trial, depending on the industry. Whynacht stresses that without a clear first step, prospects won’t progress, likening it to teaching a toddler to walk. He advises embedding a consistent call‑to‑action (CTA) for that step across every piece of content—blogs, podcasts, videos, ads, and social media. As an example, his marketing agency uses a "Foundational Marketing Assessment" as the lead magnet and repeatedly prompts viewers to fill it out and schedule a call. The core takeaway is to simplify the prospect journey to one clear, repeatable first action and ensure all marketing assets drive toward that footprint.
Chapters
I wanna pose an idea to you, a thought to get you to think about the journey your prospects go on a bit differently. You've probably been doing marketing in your business. You've been doing social media posts, maybe with a strategy or without. You're just putting out content. You're writing blogs, possibly you're doing videos. And if you are, I commend you for that because that content is important. But the other important part is to think about your prospects. Think about where you want them to go. And if as far as you've gotten is I want them to come to me, well, I mean, you've got some hunger, that's great. That is something to work with. But today in this video, I'm going to talk about a different type of thought process. And this came to me today when I was thinking about explaining to a client who asked me the question of what should we be working on. And this is just— it just popped in my head. And I thought, you know what, this is a video I need to share with you. I I need to get it out, and that's why I'm creating this for you. So I created some artwork. I'm not an artist, but I drew something here. I'm gonna show it to you right now and see if you can guess what it is. Footprint. It's a footprint. That's what I wanna talk about. You can do all the content you want. You can create blogs, you can create videos, you can create, you know, posts on your social media. But if you don't know where your prospects are to make their first footprint in your journey, what is the first step that you want them to do? It's very hard to build your marketing process around that. I've done a blog post about funnels and journeys, and while some people don't like the word funnels, the reality is that it's a necessity to business and marketing is to have that type of process. But What can you simplify in your process, in your, in your, your whole sales journey? What is that one thing that you will drive everybody to? You know, for a lot of financial professionals, it's a, it's an evaluation, it's an assessment, it's a quiz, a scorecard, whatever you want to call it. You know, for other people, you know, for us as a, as a marketing company, you know, it is a foundational marketing assessment. It is asking a lot of key questions to get people thinking and for us to be able to have that information to make the best recommendation. You know, maybe for you, it's a, it's a free quote or free trial or free estimate if you're in a different type of service business. But whatever that is, you need to identify what that first step is. They're never going to make it to the end unless they know what's the first step, then what's the next step, right? Just like teaching a toddler to walk, they need to get over that fear of taking the step, they need to understand what's next. And they need to just step step and step, and you need to think about that in your business. So my challenge to you today watching this video is to think about that. What is that first step of commitment? It could be as easy as just, you know, filling out a contact form on your website if that's the journey that you want to have people to go to. But the key is going to be that you need to drive people to that in every bit of content that you do. Have that in your blogs, have that call to action in your podcast, mention it in your videos. That's what you need to do. Don't say, hey, just go to my website and poke around because they're never gonna take action. They don't know what you want them to do. If it is a fundamental foundational element for us, foundational marketing assessment. So if you are at a point where you are struggling in your business with marketing, and you want the guidance of somebody who can help you, then I urge you to go to our website and click on the big button for the foundational marketing assessment. Fill that out, and then we'll schedule a call to go through that with you. Right? See what I did there? I talked about our, our asset and our element that we created. I would do it in a blog post. I would do it in a, in a podcast. I would do it in a video, right? I would do it in ads. I would do it in social media posts because that right there is the first footprint in the sand that I want people to take. What footprint do you want your clients to take?
