Picture this:
It’s Saturday afternoon.
You’re in the car, driving around aimlessly looking for somewhere to stuff your maw with American classics like pizza, tacos or Impossible Burgers.
The kids are in the back seat screaming. It’s lunch time and little Timmy’s yanking Penelope’s pigtails like the cord on a leafblower.
HUNGRY.
The mutiny has begun.
Don’t have kids? Well this day just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?
Now you’re hungry and you’re hallucinating.
Anyway…
You crank up the Limp Bizkit to drown out Timmy and Penelope’s title bout in the backseat.
And there you see it…
Like a shining beacon on a stormy shore…
Your lord and savior…
A strip mall.
And inside the strip mall?
Two nearly identical pizza joints.
Mario’s on the left.
On the right?
Luigi’s.
…
Which one do you pick?
…
Now, let me stop you really quick. This isn’t one of those dumb personality quizzes where I help you unearth which Mario Bro you are.
This isn’t a joke.
OK?
Mario’s parking lot is packed to the gills. Barely any spots left. Looks like every Little League team in the county rolled in at the same time to stomp on turtles and eat mushrooms.
Luigi?
LUIGI!
He ain’t doing so well.
Parking lot’s a ghost town. Only two cars…one belongs to the owner, and the other belongs to some family who couldn’t find space at Mario’s.
I don’t even have to ask—you already know EXACTLY which pizza place you’re taking the imaginary kids to.
But…why?
Could be a million reasons why Luigi’s is empty and Mario’s is Princess Peach’d to the suspender buttons.
Maybe Luigi just opened shop and had a bad launch.
Maybe Luigi just repainted all the lines on his parking spots.
Maybe Mario just unleashed the holy fire of a blue shell on Luigi, and Green Stache hasn’t recovered yet.
Who knows?
Notice neither of these reasons have anything to do with the food, the price, the ambiance (look at you with your fancy French vocabulary.)
You know…the main reasons you’d want to eat there.
You just made a snap decision to take “the kids” to Mario’s, because everyone else is doing it.
And that’s fine. You aren’t some high-IQ smarty pants if you said “I’d rather go to Luigi’s.”
Everybody picked Mario.
There’s nothing insightful about this.
Full parking lot? Must be a reason.
Empty parking lot? Must be a reason.
So…
What can we learn from Mario?
Easy:
- Your “cars in the parking lot” are your reviews.
- Bad reviews are worse than empty spots—they’re empty spots with an overturned rusty shopping cart and is that a needle?
- Good reviews are full spots.
- How to get more good reviews and fewer (less?) bad reviews?
- Tune in tomorrow.
Or, if you’re impatient…
Click the link below, and let’s chat about “retention marketing.”
(That’s a trendy term, isn’t it?)
Just one of the ways I help businesses stay full, fat and happy.
Oh yeah, the link:
The “Waluigi” of marketers,
Nick
