The Airport or the Diner

Two places pour you the same cup of coffee, but for opposite reasons. You've probably been to both, and not thought about it.

Imagine this. You are at the gate with your flight boarding soon, and a coffee at the airport café costs what lunch costs anywhere else. You buy it anyway. You will never see that counter again, and the café knows it.

The airport café is a place for strangers, because almost all customers are one-time buyers. So, every cup has to carry the rent. No second visit is coming to make up for a thin sale.

Now, walk into a diner on the corner near your house. Your usual is ordered before you sit down, and your coffee gets topped up without you asking. Nobody puts the refill on your bill.

Every refill loses the diner a little money, and the diner does not mind. It is betting on you coming back.

Both work. The airport café gets paid in full by a stranger, once. The diner loses a little bit on margin, but it gets paid back every time you swing by.

Are you running an airport café, or a neighborhood diner?

Both places work. But, the place that struggles is the one that never decided which it is.

It could be pouring refills for strangers who are about to board a plane.

Or it could be squeezing every first visit like the airport, only to wait on a quiet corner for regulars who never come.

Most Ecom stores never decided either. Their marketing became one of the two by chance and habit.

Your marketing has both elements. Your café side is your ads to people who have never bought from you, where a first order has to pay for itself. Your diner side is whatever reaches your customers after that first order.

With a real diner side, you can afford to pay more to win someone new, because the second order pays it back. Without one, you are the airport whether you meant to be or not.

Now take your last good week in your ad account. Was it strangers, or was it regulars coming back?

Your ad account cannot tell you. It, most often, counts a new and returning customer the same, so nobody could see which place your store had become. Every slow month looked like an ads problem, when the ads may actually be fine.

So are you the airport or the diner? Your answer decides where your spend goes and what a new customer is worth to you.

You can be the airport or be the diner, and either one can pay the rent. The only choice that causes you problems is not making one.