Inspiration

TheHomes: "In an era where reliance on ads alone is tough… video marketing is a powerful ally."

TheHomes is a commerce service that mainly sells household goods and idea products. It's a decade-old service featuring essential items for living, covering everything from distribution to direct sales.

Over the past few years, as the efficiency of advertising has fallen, TheHomes has been continually seeking new strategies. They took an interest in content marketing through Instagram Reels, but producing videos was an uphill battle due to the nature of small businesses.

However, after meeting VideoStew, TheHomes could establish a Reels-centric video marketing process. Let's take a detailed look at TheHomes' marketing strategies, and how they utilize VideoStew. All this through the words of CEO Wi Seon-bok.

We Needed Something to Replace Paid Marketing

There was a time when focusing on marketing was unnecessary as spending on Facebook ads directly resulted in good returns (ROAS). However, the face of the market has drastically changed over the past few years. The conclusion was clear that running an online store solely on advertisements is challenging. Still, it wasn't a decision made overnight.

With Apple and Google imposing restrictions on personal information tracking, the effectiveness of conventional targeted ads fell apart, making it imperative for us to find a new route.

Sticking to the Fundamentals of Marketing

Upon consulting with veterans in the industry and studying, we came to the conclusion to stick to the fundamentals of marketing. We decided that the root problem was a lack of customer base, which was affecting conversions. Although it sounds theoretical, we decided to refine our marketing strategy by adhering to the marketing funnel and enhancing customer engagement. However, even with a plan in place, getting started was always daunting due to a lack of resources.

We view Instagram as our core channel. Thanks to the nature of Reels, we have good reach and can generate solid customer engagement. Due to Instagram's characteristics, when we put our products in informative content, there are many instances of people inquiring about the product in the comments.

Although we are not solely focusing on content for conversion at present, we plan to do so in the future through product introductions or reviews. We also hope to connect with Instagram’s shop feature.

The Productivity of Reels Production Has Increased Fivefold

We used to use Premiere to create Reels content. However, editing was highly time-consuming, and filming was no less exhausting. This made it impossible for us to stick to our internal target of one post per day. If an hour was spent on filming, 2 to 3 hours would go into editing, which proved to be quite burdensome.

But after introducing VideoStew, editing time was reduced to an average of 30 minutes - that's about a fifth of the time we used to spend on production. One of the greatest features of VideoStew is that you prepare a text script and embed relevant videos into it, rather than squeezing in your narration into pre-existing footage.

Also, since we have set a template standard, duplicating and reusing it takes minimal time out of our design process. With this, we now even have the space to consider posting twice a day.

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We See the Potential in Short-Form Videos

As we continue to work on Reels, we are considering expanding to YouTube Shorts and TikTok as well. After all, they all share similar formats, and this type of informative content is welcomed everywhere. Plus, Naver and Daum also have short-form platforms, shedding light on the possibility of expanding our operations.

Especially since all these short-form platforms expose content regardless of the number of subscribers, it helps us gain visibility and garner high-quality followers in proportion to our follower count. After all, any follower engaged with life hack tips can become an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead).

For VideoStew, It's Beneficial to Use It Script-Centrically

If I were to give a tip for those just start using VideoStew, it would be to always prepare the full content (script) before starting. This is where VideoStew's strength shines the most.

We currently use AI voice. Once the narration is prepared in TTV mode, trimming videos for inclusion becomes easy. Trying to do things the other way around, inserting audio to pre-existing footage is time-consuming.

We will continue to build results by focussing on short-form content using VideoStew. We look forward to your continued support and hope to see more convenient features added!