HOW to BOOST Your Direct Bookings in 2022 (5 TIPS FOR BEGINNERS)

Hello, everybody at Team Guesty. My name is Mark Simpson. I'm the founder of a company called Boostleague. And in 2016, I started to help hosts just like you with the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, the confidence on how you can increase your direct bookings. And Guesty came to me and asked me for my five top tips on how you can go and increase your direct bookings today. So what I want to do in this very short video, which is part of this blog piece, is I want to give you some really actionable pieces of advice that you can do right now. So this is going to not include, let's get over what it's not going to include. It's not going to include Facebook marketing, it's not going to include Google marketing. It's not going to involve you spending any money on any of the social media platforms in any way, shape or form. Everything that I'm going to give you is something that you can do right now, but most importantly, importantly, it's something that's not going to cost you any money to do so. So let's start with reviews. If you want to get more visibility and to build a brand, then you are going to need to get reviews. And I don't mean just get reviews on Airbnb, as in get reviews on Google. Google Business Listing, which is free, is a very effective tool in getting your business visible online and on the search engines. Very soon, Google is going to change Google Business Listing to Google Vacation Rental and you will be able to have access to that as a, as a hospitality owner, somebody's part of Guesty, and it's free. I would start to get people to review you on Google as soon as possible. As soon as you've got the ability to have access to Google Vacation Rental. Why? If somebody comes into your local area and types in recommended rental company or recommended property management company, for example, your reviews will be on the Google Business Listing. So it's not hiding on Airbnb, it's on the Google Business Listing on your Google Vacation site. And that means that the more you get, the more visible you'll become in that map pack. So that's when you're first on Google, you're looking at the Google search results, you'll see that map. The more active and more visible you are in there, the better. Once you've got reviews, you're going to want to shout out about it. Now, when you want to shout out about it, what may you use? You may use your social media tool, you may Use X, Y or Z. But as I've said, I don't want you to have to rely on social media, just like I don't want you to have to rely on Airbnb. So what you're going to do is you're going to create an email list. Now, there are free softwares out there such as Mailchimp, which you can get started on. Mailchimp is free. Up to 2,000 subscribers, 2,000 email lists on their system. So if you've got nobody to email at the moment, this is a great place to start. So you've got an email list. Now, how do you go and get people on that list? Well, number one, a very simple and effective way is to pop a little sign up in your units, pop your little sign up in the properties or the units, houses, whatever you have, and just say, would you like to keep in touch? Go to this link. You can either put a QR code that can scan with their phone or they just put a link on where they need to go to to join an email list if they can keep in touch for the latest news, offers, vouchers, things that are going on, events in the area. Very effective. It's free to do. And again, by putting it in your property. I always like to do a laminate and I would get a fridge magnet, put it on there, Put a sign on the back of the front door. So where there's a lot of traffic, people come in and out the door all the time by putting on the back, they're nosy, they're on holiday, they'll see that and they're more likely to act. One of the really cool things that I like to do, a little hack, so to speak, is that with the copy and the message that we do. The message says, would you like access to our top five favorite secret things to do in insert your town name. If so, scan this QR code, pop in your email and we'll send it to you straight away. You can do that automatically through automation on mailchimp and it costs nothing. And it's so effective in to get in email addresses onto your system. So we have done reviews and we have also mentioned Google and we've done email marketing. Okay, so how else can you get dairy bookings? Well, let me give you a tip right now. It's the power of referrals is the power of do you know anyone? Those four little words are going to transform your business today. Now, do you know anyone can work in a couple of different variables. Let's just assume Right now that you are a management company and you are looking to grow your portfolio. Say that you've got five units and you want it to get to 10, how are you going to go from five to 10? One of the best things that you can do is pick up your phone right now. Let's assume that you've got five different landlords, that you. Or five different co hosting or five, five different people that these properties, either they're your properties or you hire them, rent them off someone, it's totally up to you. But let's just assume right now through this little story that we're spinning that you are a management company. You've got five different properties with five different landlords. You're going to message the landlord, you can either call them, text them, voice note, whatever you want to do and you're going to start it off with do you know anyone, do you know anyone who is like you and would like someone like me to rent their property from you? Do you know anyone who wants to look at a co hosting model? Do you know anyone? By asking that question, it's getting them thinking and if they reply back to you and say you send it to 5 people, say 3 people Reply back to you saying yes, sure Mark, here's the contact details. Fantastic. You've got three warm leads and the difference between this lead compared to any other person that you may have contacted is that it's on a recommendation. You can go to said new person and say John recommended that I got in contact with you. By the way, I'm currently looking after his property. We've got people coming to stay and we've really helped him bring in X amount of revenue or X, Y and Z and we're looking to expand our portfolio. We've got lots of people requesting to come and stay overs but we need more places to stay. Would you be interested in having a conversation? That's that side. Let's move in to the last 2, 4 and 5. How can you get direct bookings? Well, the main thing that what you need to do is you need to, to have a website and not only any website, a good website, a WordPress website. 61% of the world's entire websites is done on WordPress. Now you may have a free website or you may have a WIX website website or you may have a Squarespace website. If you've got a free Website Get a WordPress one. If you've got a Wix one, get a WordPress one. If you've Got a Squarespace one get a WordPress. Why WordPress? Well, Google favors it more than any of us website content generating platform out there. And the other reason as well is that with WordPress website you've got more power, more functionality and you can do more. This is why with boostie we've got 700 plus clients and we've built every single one of our websites on WordPress. We build it to be mobile first because we know that your future potential guests aren't searching on a computer, they're searching on a phone or a tablet. But we also as well make sure your websites run super quick. So if you have a website, go to Google page checker and go and see how quick it takes for your website to load. If it takes more than three seconds to load, it's irrelevant. Your website needs to load quick. We're in a generation now of Amazon prime, of Uber and all the things that are done at an instant and if it's your website's not loading instantly and people aren't sticking around to check it out. The final thing is what you need to do is that you need to use social media now. You need to use social media and I mentioned right at the very start I wasn't going to get you to pay. Well this is not pay, this is a free option. You're going to document over create. Document over create. What do I mean by that? So you're going to basically use social media to document the day to day of your business, the team, what is to do in the area, what you enjoy doing, what your guests enjoy doing and every now and again you're going to sprinkle in a little bit of sales. So this is our property, we've got a last minute offer, this is our properties, this is what we do, this is how you can go and book of us. If you're social over selling and you give people a behind the scenes peek at what it is to run your business, whether that's through videos, through written word, whether it's through X, Y or Z, TikTok dances, reels, you name it. Whatever you do, peel the curtain back, be honest, be open, share about your business, tell them why you got into hospitality. If you do that on social media then you will get more traction, you'll get more visibility, you'll get more, you'll get more people wanting to come back to your social medias and in turn you will become the go to. So when a friend or a colleague or a family member says I'm going to go and visit, insert your town name where do you recommend I go to stay? Because you're top of mind doing the social media posts. They'll go go check out them Now. I'm not saying with these five tips that you need to do every single one of them. What I would recommend is just get started. Started with one. Once you've got one done and you've got really good at one, then go add two and three and four, five. But those are the core five key things. If you're stuck, you're overwhelmed, just do one. If you want to do one, do the do you know anyone right now? And send me a message and let me know how you got on. Instagram is@boostly UK. Email markooster.co.uk thank you so much for guesty for inviting me into the blog so I could do this. I hope you've enjoyed this video. And as always, please be proactive, don't be reactive, be awesome. Let's go get some direct bookings. If you want to find out more about me, let's start the journey boostly.co.uk or if you prefer YouTube. I've got a YouTube channel and a daily podcast. Go check it out. Thank you so much. Speak soon.

Having a blast Gonna get it on the Boostly podcast Boost Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee Cause it's so hard and the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.