Transcription
If you go to a restaurant and have a flawless experience, I mean flawless, the statistical likelihood of you coming back to that restaurant is about 42%.
If you do come back and have a second flawless experience, your statistical likelihood of coming back a third time is still under 50%, about 47%. But if you come back a third time, the statistical likelihood of a fourth visit is 72%.
Where restaurant tours blow it is they market to one visit. I mark it to three visits. So here's what happens when you come to our restaurant. We ask you if you've been here before. If you say no, we put a red cocktail napkin down. Everybody else has a white napkin. You got a red napkin. You say, "Why do I have a red napkin?" Well, cuz you're a new customer. We want to make sure we welcome you. Oh, that feels pretty good.
Manager must come up, introduce himself. Now, we'll send you a postcard that says you can get a free rib dinner at my restaurant any day of the week. Nobody with you. No restrictions at all. So, you come to my restaurant, you put the red napkin down, you give me the card for the free rib dinner, you have your free rib dinner. Other people spend $1,000 on media to get a customer to come to their bar. Cost me $4 in a rib dinner.
So, at the end of the rib dinner, just as it's ending, the manager comes up to the table, says, "Hey, how was your ribs?" "Oh, man, they were [ __ ] delicious." Goes, "Oh, you got to try our chicken." He writes on the back of a business card, "5 odd dollars off chicken. Gives it to you." Now, the manager is your buddy. It's handwritten. You come back with the business card for the $5 off chicken, which I'm breaking even on now, so there's no expense on this one.
You put the card down on the table. Everybody knows it's your second visit. You get the chicken dinner, all that. At the end of the meal, the manager comes over and says, "How was?" He goes, "Great. You full. Oh, I'm stopped. You got to come back and try my cheesecake." And he writes it on the back of the card, "Free piece of cheesecake. I get you back for the third visit. I got a 72% likelihood of another vision."
And here's the trick in media. And I hate to say this on a media platform, but the typical restaurant in a market like New York, if you advertise and then look at how many new customers you get, your acquisition cost can be almost $1,200 for every [ __ ] customer you get. It cost me $4 for a rib dinner, a dollar for the postcard and a free piece of cheesecake. The chicken was a wash, so it cost me about $8 to get a new customer. Cost somebody else over a thousand. That's the way you market a restaurant. Isn't that like mindblowing?