Social Commerce Secrets: Inside Saalt’s TikTok Shop Strategy for $10M+ Growth | EP. #206

Cherie Hoeger 00:02
Yeah, we really started omni channel from the get go. People originally thought, okay, that's maybe writing out your strategies too much, and it's funny, because now it's the go to like everybody needs to be omnichannel.

Narrator 00:12
Narrator 00:12 Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I'm your host. Andrew Mapp, owner and founder of blue tusker, from groundbreaking industry updates to success stories and strategies. Get to know the ins and outs of the e Commerce Industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it.

Andrew Maff 00:27
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the E comm show. I am your host, as usual, Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by the amazing Cherie Hoeger, who is the founder, CEO over at Saalt. Cherie, how you doing? Ready for good show?

Cherie Hoeger 00:39
Doing great. Yeah. Excited to be here!

Andrew Maff 00:42
Super excited to have you on the show. Your background is crazy. You gave us a little bit of insight into some stuff. I'm very excited to talk about. This is going to be a great one. I always like to kind of get into this stuff relatively stereotypically, just to kind of set the tone and give you the floor. Just tell us a little bit about like yourself, how you got started with salt, and then we're gonna take it from there.

Cherie Hoeger 01:00
Yeah. So we started with Saalt in 2018 so we're about seven years old, so consider ourselves really a teenage company. And you know, before that, I had been a technical writer, I've done some Ecommerce ventures, you know, importing items from Brazil and selling them online. And we really got, well, I say we, because it's my husband and who is my co-founder. And we really got started because I was having a conversation with his aunt in Venezuela, and my mom's from Argentina, so we both come from Latin heritage. And she was describing how difficult the situation was there. She wasn't able to obtain any personal care items on store shelves. And that's when I looked into reusable options for personal care, and was introduced to period cups and underwear for the first time. And thought, you know, how come I'm a grown woman? I was in my 30s at that time, and never seen these products before. And I thought, Where have these been my whole life? And I tried them, and was just blown away that they were healthier for my body, that they're better for the environment. They were higher performing. I would forget that I was on my period. And I thought, okay, these not only need to go to my family Venezuela, but this really needs to get out to the mainstream consumer. I wanted to introduce it to my family and friends, and that was how we started salt. That was the idea. We wanted to create products that would be adopted by the mainstream, US consumer, and create a brand that also felt very approachable, and that felt like, kind of like your best friend's older sister, in his voice and tone, somebody that's approachable, that you can speak to.

Andrew Maff 02:26
So at that time, did you think because there were products on the market, as you mentioned, but like, not a lot of people knew about them. Do you think it was like, a messaging problem, or, like, Why do you think that originally, it just never took off?

Cherie Hoeger 02:39
Yeah, we were very deliberate about how we created our brand from the get go. So we saw two extremes in the marketplace. At the time. There were a lot of brands that would rely on, like, pinks and purples and flowers, you know, women twirling in white dresses, and this was feminine hygiene, and this was a feminine hygiene aisle. It was like, hot pink, right? And then you had these newer brands that kind of relied on, like blood and body parts for shock value. And we were saying nobody was talking to that middle mainstream consumer. And so we really positioned our brand to cater to me, the educated woman, you know, I have five daughters. I wanted them to just see something that was elevated. I'm very sustainably minded, and, you know, I wanted to see something different. My favorite color is blue. And so we made sure that our packaging and everything was a little bit more neutral and also reflected the natural landscape, because periods are a natural cycle. So it really resonated with consumers. And then we also were very deliberate in our voice and our brand voice, and that's why I mentioned the best friend's older sister. We wanted to be down to earth. We wanted to be in the know, but also savvy. And when your girl, you don't want to talk to necessarily, your mom, because you know, she's ancient at the time, and then your peers, well, you might be getting your period before your peers, but that best friend's older sister, you know, now, she's cool, she's savvy, she's someone you can rely on. And so that's kind of how we positioned our voice and actually gave it a name.

Andrew Maff 03:53
Gotcha, okay. And it's, it's a, you know, it never ceases to amaze me. It's always the most obvious when entrepreneurs like yourself not only come up with a great idea, but it's an idea that helps a lot of people and is obviously, clearly also a hole in the market. But outside of that, you're also, I believe you're also a B Corp, correct?

Cherie Hoeger 04:14
That's right, we're certified B Corp, which is a certification given by B LAB out of California, and it just measures the social, environmental performance of a company, make sure that you're not greenwashing, right?

Andrew Maff 04:33
Interesting. So what made you kind of go that route?

Cherie Hoeger 04:33
Yeah, it's something that we wanted to do from the get go. So we certified in our second year business. We knew that's what the route we wanted to go on, and that's because we really wanted to walk the walk. And you know, what better way to do that than to actually have that validated by a third party, and so really trying to lean into sustainable, ethical practices in everything that we do. And then we also have our 1% give back mission to end period poverty across the world. So we donate 1% of our revenue in three major pillars, and that's to donate our products to women and girls with the most need around the world, and then also fund scholarships for girls and then focus on environmental sustainability efforts.

Andrew Maff 05:04
Wow. Okay, that makes it's really interesting. Why do you think that more businesses don't do that? Because it seems like that to me. That would be like a no brainer.

Cherie Hoeger 05:20
Well, it is costly, and then you do have to go through a pretty extensive audit process. I mean, the you can earn up to 200 points, but you have to have a passing grade of 80 in order to be able to be certified B Corp, and that's difficult to get. Like we had 93 in our previous certification. We've certified three times now, this last one, I think, was 83 or 85 and that's what we're doing, right? So it's, it's a tough, it's a tough certification.

Andrew Maff 05:44
Still pretty cool that you guys have been consistently certified. That's awesome. So tell me, let's, let's talk a bit about the business where, obviously you have your own website. Where else are you selling besides your own website right now?

Cherie Hoeger 05:56
Yeah, we really started omnichannel from the get go, and I think that people, people originally thought, okay, that's maybe, you know, spreading out your strategies too much, and it's funny, because now it's the go to like, everybody needs to be omnichannel. So we're glad that we started out that way when that, when a lot of E commerce is just focused on D to C only, and that has really shifted. So we are on our website, and that leads our revenues, and then we have Amazon, and then we're also in retail, and that kind of splits evenly, 50-50, or so. We have those three different pillars, and it's great, you know, Amazon is a really great discovery channel. Amazon is also there's a lot of pros and cons, as anyone who's on Amazon knows, very difficult to work with, but great discovery channel. And then also we consider retail that as well. So we are in Walmart stores. We've been in all Target stores nationwide with our cup. We've expanded into, you know, Walgreens and Nordstrom and Whole Foods and all these places, because that's where people are buying their feminine hygiene right now. And so it's, it's like a billboard, right shelf, billboard for your brand. So we were able to get into all Target stores nationwide in our second year business. It was a huge win for us, and really put us on the map early on.

Andrew Maff 07:08
Nice. I love everything you just said. I am such a big omni channel fan. I get annoyed when I talk to people. They're like, Oh, we just focus, like, here. Like, why? That's such a bad move. So, so many questions about it. And, oh, also, I have to say, love that you stated, Amazon is a great discovery channel. I agree, great for new customer acquisition. Outside of that, not fantastic. So on the journey, right, you can't exactly, you don't know anything. Repeat, I know they won't let you so you're so the omni channel approach, one of the biggest things I always have a question, because I feel like every entrepreneur likes to look at it differently from a marketing perspective. When you're selling on so many different channels, especially when you're retail, you know you can't really control foot traffic. You can't really have, like, be able to paint that picture. So at what point, from your marketing perspective, are you evaluating what's actually working and what's not? Because, you know, you could be running ads on a Tiktok, and they go to Amazon, or they go to store, and so it's like, it's kind of difficult to look at it. You have to look at a little bit more traditionally, like people used to do, like, back in the day when it was just TV and radio. So what's, what's your approach to it?

Cherie Hoeger 08:25
Yeah, I mean, we do run ads directly on Amazon. We went through a lot of agencies and finally landed on an incredible agency who has just grown us year over year. And it's been, it's been amazing. So what we have found, generally, attribution is hard, right? It's really tough. And what I think most brands find is you should be doing something on all platform, and all of that has a halo effect. On Amazon, it has a halo effect for all your other platforms. It's like we do lives on Tiktok, and we can talk about that later on too. Or we get into new retail store, or, you know, we have a really great days on social with a big campaign, and we see those halo effects everywhere. But, yeah, attribution is is one of the most difficult things we deal with in our business, especially when you're running campaigns. And it can be on your website, it could be all across the board.

Andrew Maff 09:11
Let's talk about the live on Tiktok now. Let's have at it. We don't have to wait. What? How's that working for you? So many, I hear, so many pros and cons. And like, some people love it, others hate it. How is it? It sounds like it's working well, for you, what's your approach to it?

Cherie Hoeger 09:27
Yeah, no, it has. So we do run ads on Tiktok shop. That's a little bit hit or miss. We're on Tiktok shop. It took us a while to get there because we were a period care company with underwear, and, you know, we're talking about anatomies and so forth, and we were banned for some time. So we're really, really glad that Tiktok was able to look at us as a viable business and then actually leaned into us. We're very excited about launching as one of the first period care brands on Tiktok shop, and right now, we are the best selling period care brand on Tiktok shop, and there's a few reasons why, and that's mostly because we lean into live selling. So we, you know, our Tiktok numbers, as far as engagement, are pretty standard across the board with others, but our live selling has really just gone through the roof, and that's because people have a lot of doubts in their customer journey. Our customer journey is a lot longer than others. For impulse buys, right? They're usually hearing it from a friend. Word of mouth is huge for us, so they hear it on social they hear from a friend. It from a friend, it takes like, seven touch points for people to finally make the jump to do some behavior change and try a reusable product. That's scary for people, you know, they look at something like this, and they're like, how's that going to fit? How do I use that? You know, is that going to get stuck inside me that looks so big? And I always tease, well, it's not as big as a baby's head, so, yeah, it fits in there and it works. But it's all these questions that people have, right? And the beauty of live selling is that we can answer all those questions in real time. And you take somebody from, you know, discovery or exploration to purchase behavior in, you know, just one question or two questions. And so when we, as we started exploring those platforms, and we were exploring all sorts of platforms, like what's working, and it's been one of our biggest wins, and and as we started to see success there, we actually hired part timers to come in and just focus on live selling and do it in the evening hours, which is our best time. And so we'll have, you know, one to two hour sessions of just live selling. And you know, we can make a couple $1,000 in a session, which is great, and then you just duplicate that over and over.

Narrator 11:18
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Andrew Maff 11:51
And are you so obviously, from your perspective? Well, actually, this is interesting question. They're not technically marketed as a reusable product. But I imagine you have repeat purchasers that come back and purchase multiple other things. Am I right?

Cherie Hoeger 12:07
Yeah, they do. And we are, do we do? Technically? Yes, market them as Reusables for sure. So like, these can be marked. These can be reused for 10 years. They can last 10 years, which is incredible, like for people who are buying tampons, who are looking at affordability, it's an incredible play to, you know, be in the $30 price range for something like this, that saves you 1000s of dollars over the lifespan. I don't know if I answered your question.

Andrew Maff 12:30
You did. So, yeah, if you're doing lives, or obviously, you mentioned, you know, Amazon's a great discovery channel. So how are you focusing more on, obviously, like the LTV as opposed to just because, like, a couple $1,000 to do live in a matter of an hour or two. If those are all net new customers, that's awesome, because then I imagine if they're coming back over and over again, that compounds over time. So how are you kind of looking at that?

Cherie Hoeger 12:55
Yeah, over 90% of them are new customers. So it's a great customer channel, and so much cheaper than running ads, right? So much cheaper than meta. I think all of us, since the iOS updates have all had a lot of woes there. How expensive it is, you know, for that cap and so, so, yeah, so we've seen some really great ROI there, but our repeat is about 33% where that's one of the difficulties for our business, is that we're actually too sustainable and too good for the planet. We're not consumable enough, because we have these products, like our underwear, that can last, you know, several years and replaces pads. But however, where there's a lot of white spaces, we have a really big, you know, addressable market, and that's because you're talking about 50% of the population that menstruate, or will menstruate at some point? And then our underwear can be used for all phases of life, so not just periods, but for bladder leaks, for daily wetness, you know, the sweat, for working out, and then even for postpartum bleeding. And so you look at the phases of a woman's life, from puberty all the way through post menopause, and our products solve that. And so it is what we, you know, lack and repeat, we make up for in market size. I'd say.

Andrew Maff 14:05
Yeah, what would you say is working the best for you right now? Is it? Is it Tiktok, or is it a different channel?

Cherie Hoeger 14:12
Tiktok works well, Meta, you know, we still see efficiency there. We always want to drive that efficiency up. But overall, it's word of mouth. It's anything we can do to push on social media, or we've always been huge on social we are, you know, 80% of our traffic is on mobile, and so it's, it's just the organic word of mouth traffic. Anything we can do to push that always drive this forward.

Andrew Maff 14:34
Are you leaning in on anything else organic, like from an SEO perspective, anything along those lines?

Cherie Hoeger 14:40
Oh, I should mention SEO. SEO has been a huge win for us. We used to pay an agency the big bucks right to to drive up our SEO, and then we brought it in house. We really learned that skill. We utilize AI. We utilize a lot of AI with SEO, and we're also focusing on SEO within AI, and it's been working well for us. We've, we've, I think increased our keyword rankings by, I can't say the percentage, but we are. We have increased drafts a lot of keywords. I know, I know my marketing director was right here. He would give us but, but that's been a huge win for us. It saved us money and bring it in house. I think that anything that you have as a core competency needs to be brought in house. The other thing working is that we established from the beginning that to be successful, we had to have real humans who could help people with success with their products that were here US based, we have a very stellar Customer Experience team who just gets rave reviews. We have a really high NPS score, and it's one of our biggest superpowers is that we're known in the reasonable industry as the leader, the market leader, and the one to turn to with questions other brands customers will actually turn to Saalt to ask their questions about products, because they know that we have real humans, and we know that we that we are very, very helpful, and that we truly want to see their success. So customer experience is another area.

Andrew Maff 16:01
Yeah, it's that one, to me, is such an obvious no brainer. Of like, the businesses that really invest in customer service are always the ones that are so much further ahead of the curve that their customers love, and then they just start talking about it all the time, and that's really what brings it in? So that doesn't surprise me at all. Anything? Did anything not work? Like, do you try anything and you're like, this just didn't work for us.

Cherie Hoeger 16:29
Influencers.

Andrew Maff 16:31
Really?

Cherie Hoeger 16:31
Influencers well, and you think that with word of mouth, like influencers would be huge. So affiliates work for us. So pay to play that works well for us. But the times where we've paid influencers to do campaigns, it has been so hit and miss. Like I said, we'll pay 1000s of dollars for posts and see nothing on it, and then, you know, a micro influencer who just posts and all we do is piggyback with the coupon code, you know, to their followers and so forth. Posting organically, that works. So we focus more on gifting than paying influencers. We've never seen direct ROI from anything that we pay for?

Andrew Maff 17:00
Yeah, bummer, yeah. I hear that's not wildly uncommon either. I know it's interesting on how well they do. Were you primarily just doing the ones where you're just, like, paying the influencers, or do you doing like seating, or both?

Cherie Hoeger 17:15
It was, well, it was paying the influencers. That's what we did in the past, and we stopped that strategy, and instead that we just do gifting, and then we have, we do have a strong affiliate program. So anytime we have affiliates, like I said, pay to play works well for us. Anytime we do that, you know, listicles, whether it's coming from PR outlets or whether it's coming from individuals, you know, that has ROI.

Andrew Maff 17:36
I'll drop all the marketing stuff now, so we don't have to bother your marketing director.

Cherie Hoeger 17:40
I love it. I love marketing.

Andrew Maff 17:41
So everyone who is on the show, everyone who listens, knows that, like we kind of ask you a little bit about yourself ahead of time, so we've got some information. And one of the things that you provided us, you said that you don't believe in a work life balance, and that you practice work life, work life integration. And I was just like, oh, I have to, I've got to hear this out, because this is, this is always really interesting, right? Because we get to talk about the business, but then it's also just the entrepreneur approach of how you decide to live your life, because it's always a slog. It's a very interesting choice that we all made here. So tell me about that, because I'm sure a lot of people wildly disagree.

Cherie Hoeger 18:24
Yeah, so I'm a mom of six kids, and I was pregnant right running this business for the past seven years, and pregnant with my last one. So I was a pregnant CEO at one time, and so this is an area where I've had to be really, really deliberate and be really good at being managing my time. Because, you know, when we first started the business, I was mostly an at home mom, you know, doing freelance work. I was a technical writer, so I would help write textbooks, and I would do these, you know, e commerce ventures. But I was never at the forefront of the company like I am now, and so I went through a period where I failed, right, failed at the work life balance, and had to figure out, okay, how can I make this work so it doesn't, doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from experience, and that failure is the best teacher. And I would just feel so much mom guilt, because I believed in this principle of work life balance, which, which is, to me, it's a myth, because it conveys that you can have equal balance in work and personal life. And it kind of, I think, just by the nature of the term and the nature but how people talk about it, you know, it encourages people to try to find the equal balance, where they kind of turn off work and then focus on personal and that just doesn't work as an entrepreneur. And I remembered, I had this pivotal moment when I went to a women's conference. I was feeling a lot of mom guilt because I was in the office a lot more, and I wasn't really sure, you know, how I had young children and wasn't giving them the time they deserved. And I had somebody in the audience was asked about work life balance, and they said something similar, like, oh, you know, I don't believe in work life balance. But they said, also, your kids are the luckiest kids in the world to be seen a mom who's an entrepreneur. They all have to learn how to manage their careers and manage their home life if they want to be a career woman, and you're exemplifying that for them that's so lucky. And I was like, oh. And that completely shifted the perspective for me. I was like, wow, they are lucky. I need to figure this out. I need to model this behavior for my children, because if not, they're going to experience the same mom guilt that I was experiencing. And so what I think about work life integration is making work work for your life and integrating it fully. So there's examples of how we do that. So the first thing that I've done is I have a very strong morning routine. I just did it this morning, but I give the first 90 minutes of my day to just invest in myself having a full cup, right? And I I'm a strong Christian as well, so strong relationship with God, and I've really outlined what are the most important things to be well, it's my relationship with God, it's my health, it's my family, it's my contribution to the world, and then it's, you know, my talents and things that I like. And I deliberately put together morning routine, and I have a whole checklist on a spreadsheet of what I do each day to find fulfillment in those areas. And I start my day with a full cup before I even touch work. And then the next thing that I do is, when I do touch work. I devote my first two hours of the day, I call my power hours, to the most important things that are going to help my work progress forward. And don't look at anything reactive. Don't look at email, right? It's only you know those most important goals that you're pushing forward for the business. And what that does is that it creates this. It's just incredible steps forward every single day in all of the most important things. And you start your day with your cup filled, and then it doesn't matter how the rest of the day goes. There's so many fires that go out with when you're an entrepreneur, right? The buck stops with you and the crazy things you'll know that happened. I could tell you stories, but, but then it doesn't matter how that goes, because you've already accomplished the most important things and in other ways, work, life integration shows up. We went to Sri Lanka to go visit our underwear manufacturer, and we remember, we said, well, we could go low and my husband and I and have to find babysitters, or we could take our kids and give them an incredible experience. And the manufacturers thought we were nuts. You're like, you're bringing I was pregnant too, five kids with you. And I'm like, Yeah, we're going to go take them to ride elephants. We're going to go surfing, you know, we're going to go have them try all these new foods. It was an incredible experience. We've taken them to Taiwan. They went to Nepal with me to go teach about cups, you know, to awesome for our impact mission. And they have had the most incredible upbringing because of that, because we've integrated them into our life and said, This is how we're going to make it work so that we don't have any regrets.

Andrew Maff 22:23
Yeah, so cool. I love the morning routine thing really got me. I was like, Oh, that makes so much more sense, and I should probably start doing that. That makes a ton of sense. I love it.

Cherie Hoeger 22:37
There's a really good book called Miracle Morning, really simple book, like the simplest book you can read, and that was game changing for me. Another book that helps you in that process is called essentialism, by Greg McKeown. Those two books, I think helped me more in my shaping my morning routine than anything else.

Andrew Maff 22:52
I'm checking them out. This was eye opening, Cherie, I really appreciate everything. This was awesome. I'd love to give you the floor tell everyone where they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about Saalt.

Cherie Hoeger 23:03
Yeah, so we're at salt.com that's salt with two A's. You can also find us on Amazon. You can find us in Target stores, and you can find us on all social media at Saalt.co

Andrew Maff 23:12
Love it.Cherie. Thank you so much for being on the show. Everyone else who tuned in, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff, whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to the Ecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us. See you next. Have a good one

Narrator 23:30
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show. Head over to Ecomm show.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the Bluetuskr YouTube channel. The E comm show is brought to you by BlueTusker, a full service digital marketing company specifically for E commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of the E comm show!