Ready to record an awesome apartment tour that your recipients will want to watch over and over again. Let them fall in love with the apartment through video, and share it with other friends and family! Let's get started. Please read this entire article before planning how you will record your tour, as there are a few different options you may want to consider before you start recording.
Preparation
- Make sure your phone is charged and in do not disturb mode.
- Turn on all of the lights in the apartment, open curtains/blinds where appropriate, and tidy up!
- Grab a gimbal for stability or plan on holding your arms pressed to your side to avoid shaky video.
- Have a plan for what you will record - which rooms, features, details, etc.
- Optional: Grab a friend/coworker so that one of you can film and one can be on camera delivering the tour.
Get Started
Three minute limit: To keep the viewer's attention (and for some important technical reasons), your SalesMail video will need to be 3 minutes or less.
Important: Record with your phone held in landscape/horizontal orientation.
Optional, but recommended: Use the
multi-clip feature so you can record several clips that will be stitched together when your tour is complete.
1. Optional Selfie Intro: Begin with a quick intro so they can see your face and you can build trust/connection. If you will be recording an intro like this, we recommend using the Multi-Clip feature (learn about that
here) so you can record your intro and press the record button to stop that clip. Then you can use the camera button in the bottom left to change to the outer camera and then press the record button again when you are ready to start recording your next clip of the tour.
2. Entry: Start outside the unit to capture opening the front door and walking in.
2. Proceed through each room you want to show, and try to stand near a corner of each large room room (bedroom, living, kitchen) and pan slowly from one side to the other. When using multi-clip, you can also end your clip after panning from one corner and move to other corners to record clips panning from those different perspectives. Alternate panning from left-to-right and right-to-left as you record from each spot and/or room. For smaller rooms such as a closet, pan from bottom to top.
3. Bathrooms: Start outside the door and showcase the vanity while walking in, being careful not to catch your reflection in the mirror (or be prepared with a smile and a fun wave). Pan over to the shower.
4. Don't forget to showcase any special patio, view, or proximity to a special amenity.
Personalization or Reusable Favorite
In some cases, it is extremely beneficial from a relationship-building and sales advancement perspective, to record a personalized video tour and include things in your narration that are really important to your prospect (e.g. "Since you mentioned wanting to be near parking, I wanted to show you how close it is") and to address them by name.
There are other cases where you will want to record and save a reusable video that FEELS personal, but doesn't address the recipient by their name. Tips on how to make a generic video feel personal are:
Don't read from a script; just pretend like you are talking to ONE person!
Look into the camera lens as you speak and imagine it is the person you are talking to.
Be upbeat and friendly, as if you were talking to a prospect face-to-face.
Use words like “you”, “your”, and “we” instead of addressing the recipient by name. Example: “You will love this kitchen!"
Smile!
Pro tip: Record a generic tour video of every apartment/model type as they become available and save them to your library for future use. Those videos come in handy in the future when a particular model is occupied at the time but want to send a tour with the apartment empty or staged.