The Book Direct Playbook - 2 Month Update

Welcome back to the Boostly podcast. My name is Mark Simpson. I give hosts just like you the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, the confidence to go and get those lovely direct bookings. And today I wanted to give you a book update two months on from the release of the book Direct Playbook. And I've got some amazing little stats and things to share with you. So if you haven't picked it up and if you're watching on the video I'm holding up on the screen, it's called the book Direct Playbook, written by myself, edited by the amazing Neely Khan. It's available on Amazon right now. You can go get it on the Kindle, the print and the Audible. And the whole goal of the book was to make sure that when somebody, a host or a property manager or someone who's looking to get into this hospitality game is on Amazon and looking for inspiration, I wanted to make sure that the book Direct Movement, the book Direct Message, was above all, all of the Airbnb books, because there's some amazing Airbnb books, but there isn't any books in the top of the charts that talk about direct bookings. So I wanted to make sure that it is always there. And we achieved that. The first goal was to make sure that we could get to the number one spot in the hospitality section. To get top of the hospitality section, you only needed to sell a couple of books, to be honest, because it is a very niche category. It got there within less than 30 minutes, which was unreal. And then the next goal was the bed and breakfast category. It was much more competitive. There's a lot of really good books in there. Again, not always for hosts. It's also for guests who are looking for bed and breakfast. So again, re educating the guests. It got top of there. And then what happened next, I didn't really expect. So that the way that Amazon works, you've got the books category, which will literally have every single genre in their fiction, non fiction. You know, you've got your likes of your Harry Potter's, all of those. Name your favorite book, it is in there. Okay? I was never gonna rank there. The closest I got to breaking in was I got to 1010, which is insane if you think about it. But 1010 we managed to get into there, but then you've got subcategory. So then it goes fiction, non fiction. Then you've got the business. Okay, so business is then broken down and you've got entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship. You've got the likes of Stephen Bartlett, you know you've got Tim Ferriss, Mike Michalowicz, Simon Sinek, amazing people. The book managed to get within a few hours to the top of those charts. Not just in hot releases but the top of those charts which again, this is starting to get a little bit crazy. This is when I'm starting to get messages from people, when I'm getting messages from people, other authors, people have released books who know Amazon well. That's when I know it's starting to get crazy. And then they went one step further. The the business category which is so hard to rank him, he got into the top three of that. I think at the peak it was top two. And again I was, I was looking at the chart and I could see Donald Miller, I could see Simon Sinek again. These are people that me personally, they're on my audible, they're in my Amazon wish list that are books that I've devoured over the years and my little book, the book Direct Playbook was sat in amongst them. And again it is all down to the community. So if you purchased a book, if you left a review, I just want to thank you so much.

I want to take a quick break from today's show to talk about something.

That'S been on my mind for a while now and why it's important that.

Everybody acts on this as soon as possible. In 2016, Joe Gebbia, who is the co founder of Airbnb, spoke on a TED Talk stage about how Airbnb designs for trust. As a company they their main focus on the early years of their growth was trust. They had to convince both guests and hosts to be on their platform. Now they are one of the biggest OTA providers in the world and they have based everything on trust. The core focus for every host and property manager who wants to increase their direct bookings this year should be on trust. When you try and take a guest off the OTAs, the trust is reduced. If you can make a future potential guest trust to book with you directly, they you were going to come out the end of this year winning. The question is how do you build that trust? IPRAC is a globally recognized accreditation and certification service operating with thousands of members around the globe, including some of the biggest brands. When IPRAC reached out and said they wanted to partner with Boostly, it was a no brainer. I asked if they could offer something never been done before for the community. They were kind enough to go away and think of an amazing offer and.

And here's what I've got for you today.

When you go to I prac.com you can see they've got yearly memberships. An average membership is around about 200 pounds, which is $250 a year. They have said that for every Boostly member that wants to sign up to IPRAC, they will get two years for the price of one. That works out at just under $10 a month, which is a bargain. To get this offer, you have to email in. So you're going to email sandra-prac.com I'll spell that for you. S A N d r a at I p r a c dot com when you email, make sure you include the code Boostly 2022.

I just want to say thank you.

To Chris Marn of IPRAC for making this happen. Please make sure that you reach out to IPRAC directly and get the trust factor back into your business.

Now let's get back on with the show. And now a couple of weeks later, as this has all died down, the goal is to keep it there because any book can get up to the charts, but then it'll just slowly disappear and vanish. But right now the book is steadily maintaining to be at the top of the charts. Right now we're ranking in the real estate category, which is really good, which again is really competitive. But again, to have the book Direct Book, and amongst them, anybody who's looking to get into the world of shots, day, accommodation, hospitality, etc. The book is there. But most importantly, those are already established and are looking. The book is there. So the book Direct Movement, the book Direct Message is present and visible and all to see. So if you haven't yet picked up a copy, please do so. Head over to Amazon. Just type in the book Direct Playbook, Mark Simpson. It will come up. You can get it in audible, like I say, you can get it in print or Kindle. It's totally up to you, whatever you prefer. And again, please go leave a review if you've already picked up, you haven't done so yet. My favorite thing since releasing the book, for anybody that has read it, you'll know that I've made it very interactive. So what do I mean by that is that I encourage loads of people to reach out to me via Instagram and share with me their business story, their customer avatar. It's so amazing. Every single day, literally every day, I get at least one message, somebody sending me a message saying, I reading the book, this is my customer avatar, or they're sending me a couple of messages. And that has been lovely. So for all of you that have reached out to me. Amazing. The more popular this gets, it's going to be a lot longer for me to reply, but I promise I will reply and respond to everybody, whether it's Instagram or email. Super quick update. Thank you so much to the whole community team Boostly. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Let's keep going. Let's keep sharing the word, spreading the word. And yeah, that's all from me today. Thank you so much to the sponsor. Thank you so much to everybody for tuning in. And I'll be back again very soon for another episode of the Boostly podcast. Trying to make sure that you can increase your direct bookings, cut down on the over reliance on the OTAs. So let's be proactive, let's not be reactive. Let's go get some direct bookings.