Harnessing the Power of User-Generated Content for Ecommerce Growth

Diego Camejo is the Founder and CEO of She's Waisted, a premium shapewear and activewear brand empowering women to feel confident and beautiful in their skin. A serial entrepreneur with a diverse background in filmmaking, music production, and digital marketing, Diego is also the Founder and Creative Director of Artec Media, a digital media production company, and has built multiple ecommerce ventures with eight-figure lifetime sales. He leverages his passion for creativity and a keen eye for disruptive ideas to spearhead She’s Waisted’s accelerated growth.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Diego Camejo shares the art of scaling through user-generated content (UGC)
• Why She’s Waisted shifted its strategy to real creators and native platform content
• Building a practical ad creation blueprint with a focus on hooks and creators
• How do you create a balance between studio content and UGC?
• Diego shares insights on the evolution of ad buying on Facebook and Instagram
• The importance of creating a game plan for product messaging

In this episode…

In today's digital landscape, user-generated content (UGC) has become vital to online engagement. According to research, ads featuring UGC generate 73% more positive comments on social media platforms than traditional ads and get four times higher click-through rates. How can brands leverage this content creation approach to scale?

For creative director and ecommerce expert Diego Camejo, his company’s pivot from studio content to UGC has increased conversions and brand loyalty. However, while the authenticity of UGC has been priceless to She's Waisted’s credibility and engagement levels, Diego pinpoints a focus on creators and a problem-solution perspective as cornerstones of his brand’s UGC ads. By testing creators and hooks to find the best combination, brands can maximize creative output and ad performance. In addition, Diego provides insights on Meta Ads, emphasizing an understanding of Facebook algorithms, a shift from campaign structure to broad audience reach, and the importance of content quality over media buying knowledge. His approach to building an effective content and ads blueprint offers valuable insights for businesses looking to scale their ecommerce sales.

In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, Raphael Paulin-Daigle hosts Diego Camejo, the Founder and CEO of She's Waisted, to discuss the user-generated content strategy that’s boosted the brand’s sales within two years. Diego shares his company’s shift to real creators and native platform content, Facebook and Instagram ad strategies, and the importance of creating a game plan for product messaging.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle on LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Diego Camejo on LinkedIn | X
• She’s Waisted Website | Instagram | TikTok
• “Retention and Churn Reduction Strategies for Ecommerce Brands” with John Roman on the Minds of Ecommerce podcast

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle e-commerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Don’t miss out on our exclusive podcasts at Minds of Ecommerce.

Episode Transcript

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  0:06  

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat in a 15-minute episode, founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy, so you'll get to learn and grow your online sales. In the last episode, you heard from John Roman, the CEO of the Battlbox Group, a $30 million ecommerce subscription portfolio. Today on episode number 35. Get ready for Diego Camejo, who is the founder and CEO of She's Waisted, a premium shapewear and activewear brand that's grown a ton in the past couple of years. Today, we'll discuss how to use UGC at scale and some content strategies for meta ads. I'm your host, Raphael Paulin-Daigle, and I'm the founder of Split Base. This is Minds of Ecommerce. Now for our sponsorship message. Well, at SplitBase, my company, we help leading direct consumer brands such as Dr.Squash, Hyperice, and Amica AB test designed, built and managed high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences, we generate a combined 100 million dollars in additional revenue for our clients every single year. Our optimization program has pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most and then we help you fix it. The result? Well increase conversions AOV and of course improved marketing efficiency, if you want to scale your ecommerce brand profitably where it wants to call. So go ahead, go on split based.com today and learn how you can get the most out of your marketing spend by requesting a proposal today. Alright Diego, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Diego Camejo 01:46

Hey, Raphael, thanks so much for having me excited to be here.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 01:48

Yeah, well, I'm super excited because you know, this podcast is all about going deep and dissecting one or two growth strategies. So our listeners can get the most value right away. And obviously, there's a ton we could talk about, you've been, you know, running a very successful shapewear and active wear brand. And you are also a former filmmaker. Right. And with that background, obviously, you're a great person to talk about UGC. So before we actually talk about that, just to give the listeners a bit more context for how long have you been working on She’s Waisted?

Diego Camejo  2:24  

Now, it's been five years, five years already? And

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  2:26

what you know, what are maybe some of the highlights that you could share about She’s Waisted, wasted some of the things that you're proud of? Yeah,

Diego Camejo  2:34  

I mean, we've been able to consistently grow every year, basically, the first four years, we doubled revenue every year, which was amazing, amazing. And just being able to kind of think outside the box with the content and take what I would normally like to do, which is produced kind of super high end content, and take a step back and listen to the customer and figure out what is it they actually want, be able to kind of remove that ego from the equation. And that's been what's allowed us to have a lot of success and growth.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  3:04  

I love that. So now let's actually dive in, because I want to make sure everybody's got the chance to learn about what you've learned around content strategies, and UGC. So tell us more like, when it comes to EGC? What are some of the things that have been successful for you guys?

Diego Camejo  3:23  

Yeah, absolutely. I think I'll kind of want to frame the conversation, like this story of when I started the business, because when I first started, I came as a filmmaker, and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna produce everything, I'm gonna have like a huge leg up on the competition, because I can produce really high quality videos, I have all the gear, all the camera equipment, the lighting. And so I did just that the company was successful. Initially, we started off, and we were profitable, basically, since the first week. And then things started not going so well. And we were producing content, what's going on? And to a point where we almost thought the business was I almost have the business, we're not going to be viable, we're not gonna be able to make it through this now, like, what do I do? So I started looking at our reviews, and what our customers were saying, what's the product, what's going on. And then I saw a customer’s positive video of her using one of our products. And I was like, Hey, can I use this as an ad, and it was like, the lowest quality, you know, like, video, it's like, not professional at all. Just like someone talking on camera, I put it on the meta ads, this was in 2018 or 2019. And immediately that ad just took off. Like, went crazy, better than anything we had ever produced all the effort, time and energy editing, and that like one ad, kind of like almost double the business. So that kind of changed the strategy completely to Okay, we have to have like real creators and a lot of people talking about this in a way that's very native to the platform. And you know, that's personable. So yeah, that's kind of like how this all started. And then from there, it's really just what's worked is really working with creators on a deeper level and understanding kind of like laying out you know, whichever product you're promoting or trying to advertise is really what or the desires, what are like the different things that might hook somebody. And so really working with hooks is like been huge as as of late. So the first three seconds are everything in and out, of course, we've seen ads where our Creator sends us a video, we re-edited it, and haven't changed the first three seconds, and it goes from losing ad to being one of our top performing ads. Because it's unbelievable. Yeah, for the first three seconds, just changing the messaging, sometimes it's not even the messaging, it's just what the creators are doing. It's like writing something, sometimes it's as simple as, like, they're, they're putting the phone down, and they start talking, you know what I mean? Like something like that, or you're really calling out like this specific solution, or prop you're agitating the problem that a customer might have, and then you're presenting the solution. But how you present the problem is very important, right? Whether it's visual, whether it's a transformation. So there's kind of a lot of ways that you can play with it.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  5:54  

Is there a structure to that UGC? Content, it sounds like you guys, you know, are able to edit some of these cons, some of these videos, and you know, what might perform better than others? And obviously, sometimes I'm sure you might be wrong, right. That's why testing is so important. But you know, obviously opening with a hook or something that grabs the attention is kind of the first part. But then is there a kind of an order that you prefer for what comes next? Yeah,

Diego Camejo  6:20

so there's, there's kind of a structure, it really depends on I guess the product, but you definitely want to structure things from a problem-solution perspective. So, the hook is basically presenting the problem, then you want to agitate it. So and then kind of show how alternatives may not solve that, or what alternatives you may have used. And then lastly, present your product. And then you know, then you want to like then you want to start showing the different features like why is this better than somebody else's product? What do we do differently, and then just kind of like, lay out and then at the end, you just do the call to action to actually go purchase or you present the offer? It's interesting because a lot of it is just that it's the then part of it is kind of straightforward, is what most people do is present. No, this is what the product does, this is what we do and that's all done well. But it's usually the hook. That is where I think a lot of companies are people who don't do that, as testing as a good job that will literally test like 20 hooks, like on one product and different books. Yeah, literally. Yeah. It's crazy the difference.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  7:29  

It's interesting, what you mentioned, right? Problem agitation is solved when it comes to the recipe for ads. I mean, that is the very copy, like a very classic copywriting formula, right, the PS framework. And I mean, it's been proven it works. And I think sometimes people approach ads and try to reinvent the wheel. But those old school copywriting formulas that've been around forever, are sometimes the solution to our modern day problems.

Diego Camejo  7:52  

No, absolutely. It's true. At the core of it, it's actually very simple. It's very psychology driven. But I think where it becomes challenging is understanding who your client is, right? Like really having that insight that data? How are they talking? What are their problems? So there's a lot more, I guess, research that you have to do, I mean, reading reviews, reading, how people are responding to your ads on comments, and to understand who is buying this and making sure that also the creator or whoever the model is, and that is relating to people because that's also been something that we've went one strategy that we've done a lot is like we not only do we test hooks, but we are very aggressive and testing creators. So we're not just finding one Creator and testing 20 hooks, we're testing like, hundreds of creators, because wow, you'd be surprised the perception of a different creator model can be massive and implication of conversion. So that's kind of what we do. First, I guess the first thing is test a ton of creators, see who resonates the best with your audience or your product, and then later create a more DB deeper like relationship with them and get into the weeds of actual, you know, structures in terms of how the ad is

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  9:02  

got it. So I'm guessing and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're gonna, you know, cast a very wide net of a lot of creators, just like you would with a bunch of different creatives, then you'll narrow down what works best. And then obviously the top creators, the ones that have the best ads, you're gonna keep reinvesting in a bit more. If that's how you're going to decide you have like that at 20. At the end of the day, correct?

Diego Camejo  9:23  

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Yeah. And do

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  9:26  

you only do Creator content? Or do you also do some of the studio stuff and how do you balance that out?

Diego Camejo  9:33  

Yeah, absolutely. So because in the past, we had done the studio stuff, and it didn't really quite work as well for us. We just did kind of influencer, UGC style content where we had a creator shoot for us everything. Yeah. And we did that for several years. And we're able to scale that very successfully. Inherently there's, it's sometimes challenging because if you want to test a lot of different hooks quickly, not only does it get expensive, but it's hard to communicate with a creator to do that. And so knows that I understand what you're saying. And if you're not physically there. So now what we do is we do both. And we do build, like, you know, ads like in house. But it's funny because I have all this production equipment, but I'm shooting on an iPhone. Right, which feels so weird coming from like a filmmaker's background. But yeah, we're basically creating content that's scripted, that's, that's an ad ourselves producing, we have a team of people that, you know, work on it. And they but it looks like a UGC ad. But, and that's been very successful for us, because we've been able to take the testing of upgrades to another level. So to give you an example, on average, likes are a good hook rate for us, like an influencer is like 30%, which is the first 30 seconds someone keeps watching it right. For an ad producing house, we've been able to hit up to 60%, which, you know, has massive implications for Roe, as you know, click through rates are much higher. So it really makes a big difference. So if you're not testing your hugs, like you're leaving money on the table, for sure. Right.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  11:01

And then I'm sure some people are listening here. Well, hey, if you're getting great, that's double with your studio content, why are you so still bullish? And well, why are you so excited about UGC content? Right? Ultimately, is it just that they still perform better? Or you manage to get some UGC ads that do perform more than 60%? How do you look at those ultimately? Yeah, I

Diego Camejo  11:23  

I think that's a good question. It really comes down to creative output. So when you're working, it's harder to scale, like you need hundreds, I think a lot of a lot of people don't realize how much quantity of content you actually need to scale a brand. Like, it's not just five good ads, or 10. Good ads, yeah, that can get you somewhere. But especially for a brand like ours, we have 1000s skews of hundreds of products, it's a lot more challenging, not just one product that we're scaling. So a lot of different types of people buy our products, at different size ranges. So in order for us to advertise to the whole market, you need hundreds of creatives, and even to be refreshed every month. So we produce hundreds of graders a month. And what that allows us to do as well, as you know, we're not going to build a car with every idea. And there's also that kind of, like no trade of personality that a creator might be able to capture on their own that might not come across in even a produced thing. So there's a lot of that kind of organic content, even if we have people that we just give to there are customers that just review a video. And it's just sometimes it's performed better than all the thoughtful things that we do for an ad. So there's a place for both because the way that media buying has changed now is that the creative, the creative, is what creates the audience. And so if you want to scale, it's no longer about lookalikes or retargeting, or all these things, it's about having creatives that speak to each demographic kind of like micro pocket. So like, literally, if you have a crater that's a size large on your ad, most people that buy from an ad are going to be a size large. So if you want to have people buy, and it sounds very obvious, but like, you know, you have to have someone that would be representative size, small, XL, three XL, we have a huge size range. So just with that different ethnicities, you know, our shaper comes in many different colors for different skin tones. So that's where a lot of the diversity and creator is very important for us. So it's kind of different personas.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  13:17  

I'm actually curious, like, how do you manage all these creators? Because it sounds obvious, hey, if you're gonna have to manage hundreds, and you have to manage client content for all these people, what's the trick?

Diego Camejo  13:31  

Well, that's always a challenge. It's hard. It takes a lot of work. But we do have, like, we have gifting programs through like tick tock, which helps, but we leverage tools like grin, which are very, very useful like a CRM, just to manage everything. So that's kind of like our bread and butter is using grin. And then also, one, one platform that's actually been very helpful is called incense. They're very good at sourcing UGC. So it's quick, like, if you just need a bunch of video content, you just post the campaign on there, you'll get a lot of people to apply, and make it very easy to connect you with creators. And a lot of this is like, you know, the transition from like actual influencer engagements where you have them posted everything to like, we're just producing content that we're using as ads, right. So a lot of ways you can get cheaper rates that way as well versus a post.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  14:21

Amazing. Obviously, you've been experimenting with those for about five years. I know it's mostly on meta platforms, Instagram and Facebook. Is there anything else that you've discovered through meta and Facebook that, you know, has been very successful for you guys that you want to share?

Diego Camejo  14:38  

Yeah, I mean, overall, I think this is just the trend or the shift in the industry. Whereas before, you know, it was really much about campaign structure. Having the right audiences look alikes, retargeting and now it's kind of just, it's changed completely, you know, now, it's just a broad, broad audience. You know, the new ACA campaigns campaigns, where it's literally you could have just one campaign where you don't have to bid caps, you just have just the budget, that's the only thing you can change. And I think it's an incredible thing because it's almost like a meritocracy now in concept because it didn't matter. Like, it's a lot easier to have a piece that hits, you don't have to have all the knowledge of media buying. Some media buying is now super easy. The hard part is the content. So now we actually focus on what matters is what is our message? How are we resonating with consumers? And how can we, you know, broaden the actual reach of, of who we're reaching based on? You know, what the videos are saying? Or who's who's who's saying it? That's such

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  15:32  

a good way to put it, because I didn't think of it that way. But you're right now the Facebook algorithm and all of that, right, it does a lot of the heavy lifting. And it's all about content and numbers game at that point. It

Diego Camejo  15:43  

And it's it's I think it's a hard thing for a lot of media buyers, because I was always in the nitty gritty, figuring out campaigns, and it really used to work. But now we kind of just had to put our faith to Zuckerberg and be like, hey, you know, let the algorithm do its thing and trust the algorithm, you know, because it really does, does work. It's it's, it's I would almost say like ad buying now is like, it's almost like posting organically, your you're you gotta give it an opportunity for the creative to work, right? You make sure that it's in a campaign that I can get some money. And if it hits, if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's kind of like posting on your page. Obviously, it's backed by, by, you know, by budget, but that's kind of how it's working these days. Totally.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  16:21  

Now, Diego, you guys have been working on your strategy for the past five years. So obviously, it's matured over time. But if you had to do something, you know, if you were to start all over again, and had to do one thing differently, what would that be? It's

Diego Camejo  16:33

good question. I think I would have? Well, first of all, I would have started using UGC content from the very beginning. But I think the biggest thing is, it is really being organized. And understand, one of the mistakes that I made at some point was, Oh, my God, UGC is working, I'm just gonna get like hundreds of creators to create content for me. And then I went through a phase where none of the creatives like hit, and so I was spending all this money producing having creators produce content, and it wasn't that great, I was just almost like quantity over quality, there's a place for both, you know, you have to be able to scale in a place where the creative is still, you know, very high quality, in terms of like, the converges necessarily in terms of production value. So what I would say is, is really First, understand who your customer is, and make a game plan as to what the script is for your product. I would kind of like, really kind of list out what are the desires of my customer? What are their problems, like, really make an organized plan, and then figure out how you can communicate that, and maybe 510 different ways, and make sure that you like, deliberately test that.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  17:39  

That's phenomenal advice. Now, we're close to time. So obviously, one thing that I love, I told you like this, this, this goes really fast. It was quick, but I'd love to know, right? Obviously, since you've been in the space for a while, what are brands, people, entrepreneurs that you look up to? Who are people that are brands that you think are doing things really well? And that inspires you? What do you do on a day to day basis?

Diego Camejo  18:06  

Wow, that's a hard question. I don't know if I have a specific answer for you in terms of an individual or brand. But you know, I'm kind of always looking at what everyone's doing. And then just see whether its competitors, big or small. In my space and other spaces. And you know, we're always kind of looking at and seeing as we use this app called foreplay, and we can like save as and save kind of what's for games? And yeah, it's a great tool. So I don't have that. So if someone's specific in mind, but kind of just always years open, looking at what's working, what's not working, and kind of finding ideas and inspiration to try and implement it. Awesome.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  18:46

Now, if people want to learn more about you about She's Waisted, right? Where should they go?

Diego Camejo  18:52  

Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to our website, sheswaisted.com, or our Instagram @sheswaisted and by the way, it's spelled WAISTED.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  19:01  

Was gonna say, if you didn't say

Diego Camejo  19:05

and, or TikTok. @sheswaistedco. So that's where you can connect with us and see what we're up to. Yeah, we have lots of content being posted and tons of fun giveaways and live streams going on. So come check us out.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  19:21

Awesome. We've been talking to Diego Camejo, who's the CEO of She's Waisted, phenomenal brand, and obviously, a phenomenal entrepreneur, as I'm sure you've heard. Diego, thank you so much for being here.

Diego Camejo  19:31  

Thank you so much.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  19:37  

All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in. Now, if you like what you've heard, and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. And well bonus points if you also leave a review in the iTunes Store or wherever you're listening to this. Now if you're working on an ecommerce store that does over a million dollars in revenue and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages. Well, I've got some good news because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that. Go to splitbase.com to learn more, or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions or comments, tweet me @Rpaulindaigle and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.

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