Inside Saalt’s Playbook for High-Converting TikTok LIVE Sessions With Cherie Hoeger

Cherie Hoeger is the Co-Founder and CEO of Saalt, a woman-owned period care brand known for its sustainable, reusable cups, discs, and leakproof underwear. With expertise in leveraging education-driven customer engagement and innovative sales channels, Cherie has led the company to become the #1 period care brand on TikTok Shop. Before Saalt, she worked as a technical writer for over a decade and launched multiple ecommerce ventures. As a social entrepreneur, she has steered Saalt’s mission to donate tens of thousands of cups and underwear globally to fight period poverty.

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

• [1:58] Cherie Hoeger explains why TikTok LIVE selling aligns with Saalt’s educational brand strategy
• [4:11] Steps to set up and run a successful TikTok LIVE selling session
• [5:17] Tips on timing and frequency for effective live events
• [6:35] Handling repeat customer questions and keeping sessions engaging
• [8:02] How Saalt recruits and trains team members to host live sessions
• [11:56] Using live session feedback to improve products and the customer experience
• [16:07] The strategy behind offering complementary products to increase customer lifetime value

In this episode…

Turning prospects into buyers is a challenge for many ecommerce brands — especially for products that need extra explanation before customers commit. How can brands build trust quickly and address FAQs in real time? Learn how a sustainable period care company engaged both loyal fans and first-time shoppers by employing live events. What strategies, team dynamics, and content secrets contributed to its rapid increase in sales?

Cherie Hoeger, an expert in sustainable period care products and live social selling, illustrates how live commerce can cut long buying journeys from months to minutes. Cherie shares how her team at Saalt used TikTok LIVE sessions to answer questions on the spot, educate new audiences, and drive over $100,000 in sales in just 90 days. She delves into the ideal product price point for success, how to find and train team members to host live events, and why pairing hero products into a branded routine increases customer lifetime value.

In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Cherie Hoeger, Co-founder and CEO of Saalt, about leveraging TikTok LIVE selling to fuel rapid ecommerce growth. Cherie discusses gathering customer feedback during live sessions, how to combine daily organic content with live events, and strategies for creating complementary products that boost average order value and build long-term brand loyalty.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle: LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Cherie Hoeger on LinkedIn
• Saalt: Website | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok
• ”Scaling Brand Loyalty Through Social Impact: Lessons From Barefoot Wine With Michael Houlihan” on Minds of Ecommerce

Quotable Moments:

• "Word-of-mouth is so powerful for us, and TikTok LIVE selling lends itself to education."
• "In our first 90 days, we were able to go from zero to 100,000 in sales."
• "Anytime you have any customer questions that are asked frequently, I think live selling is great."
• "You’re really shortening that customer journey, and that’s really impactful for us, because a customer journey could take six months."
• "It’s not about who’s smartest and who has the best educational credentials; it’s about hustle.”

Action Steps:

1. Start live selling on TikTok early: Testing this strategy from day one quickly builds brand awareness and sales.
2. Hire and train team members for live sessions: Knowledgeable, camera-friendly staff can answer questions in real time and drive conversions.
3. Pair live selling with daily organic content: Regular viral posts attract viewers and increase the live event audience.
4. Focus on hero products during live events: Highlighting best sellers captures interest and simplifies the purchase decision for new customers.
5. Collect and apply customer feedback from live sessions: Insights gained can refine product offerings and strengthen marketing messages across all channels.

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 ecommerce 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 get to learn and grow your online sales. In the last episode, I had a chat with Michael Houlihan, the founder of Barefoot Wine, one of one of America's largest wine brands, and we talked about unconventional growth strategies. Super interesting conversation. Highly recommend you listen now today on episode number 67 get ready. Cherie Hoeger is the CEO and co-founder of Saalt, a sustainable period care brand, and today, well, we're going to be talking about TikTok Shop Live selling, what to do, what to avoid doing, and how to win. I'm your host, Raphael Paulin-Daigle, and I'm the founder of SplitBase. This is Mindsof Ecommerce. Now this episode is brought to you by SplitBase. At SplitBase, we help leading eight and nine figure brands such as Dr. Squatch, Amica, Hyperice, and Once Upon a Farm grow through customer-focused conversion optimization programs, we find out exactly where your store is losing the most money, and then, well, we help you fix it. The result you get increased conversion rates, higher AOV, and, of course, more money, which then allows you to scale advertising profitably. We've been at it for actually over a decade now, and we can help you manage the entire process from A to Z so if you want to learn more and if you want to increase your conversions, go to splitbase.com today to book your free discovery call and find out how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. All right, Cherie, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show. Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. Raphael, yeah, so I'm so excited for today's conversation, because we haven't had anyone talk about TikTok Shop LIVE selling so far and well, you guys have found some success with it. And I think the angle as well in which you guys approach it is very interesting, like the why it makes sense for your brand, how you do it. I'd love to dive, to dive deep into this, but maybe just like to give some context to our listeners. Can you, you know, within 30 seconds, tell us a bit more about what is Saalt? Why and why does it make sense to do TikTok LIVE?

Cherie Hoeger  2:37  

Yeah, so we are a reusable period care brand, so we have things like cups and discs and underwear that, you know, are all for just absorbing all leaks, includes periods and bladder leaks and so forth. And our brand is a very educational brand. It our customer journey. People look at us and they need to, you know, be persuaded to be able to try something that's new and different for the first time. We're kind of an alternatives category. And so we have a longer customer journey than most, and because of that, word of mouth is our number two when we whenever we do customer surveys, word of mouth is so powerful for us. And TikTok LIVE shout selling happens to be a platform that lends itself really well to education. And so when people have doubt focused, you know, questions and they're able to get on live and ask those questions to somebody from our team member, then suddenly those doubts go away, and they get back to purchase behavior. And so it's been really, really successful for us. In fact, we've always been on the channel from the get go. So our website is our leading sales channel. You know, we have 45% that we sell on our website, and then we have Amazon and wholesale and the other two splits. And, you know, we think that's been a great strategy. From the get go, but we've been always looking for another growth channel, you know, and tried it in different areas. And TikTok Shop has actually been, you know, one of our, our best experiments that we've tried. We've had some great success. I'd love to talk about it.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  3:55  

I love it, awesome. Well, well, let's explore this, because I have so many questions for you. I think, to begin like, let's just start, for people who are not familiar with TikTok Shop LIVE selling. How does it work? Let's start with that, and then we're gonna dive pretty

Cherie Hoeger  4:10  

deep. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you basically go on for an hour to two hours, and people are joining at any time, you just go live on TikTok. And we've actually hired two live selling team members, along with our social team that'll go so we'll do several lives a week. And the goal is simply to answer questions and to have people make purchases on TikTok Shop right away. So through lifesell, we become the number one period care brand on TikTok Shop. And, you know, and this just, we are able to just achieve this in 2024 so in our first 90 days, we're able to go from zero to 100,000 in sales, and sometimes we'll make a couple of 1000 a pop every time we do a live selling session. And so, you know, brands that are doing this well and that have an educational component, it really, really is a powerful strategy for them, because you can answer those questions right away that are keeping them from purchase, and then they're like, Okay, I've got all those answers. So. I can push forward.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  5:01  

I love that. Now, I think the first step for brands that are looking to get into this, they're gonna have quite a lot of questions around setup. First, I think, is, how often do you do this? And when is the right time for a brand to start doing this?

Cherie Hoeger  5:17  

Oh well, the right time is yesterday, right? Everyone should be doing, everyone should be testing, live selling. I think that it does lend itself to specific product. And it could be, you know, like I said, a product that requires an education price point also generally, TikTok Shop does better in the $30 price point or below. So our AOV, and TikTok Shop is about that $30 AOV, whereas on our website, it's more like, you know, 100 plus. And then we've tested different times of day we go, you know, different times of the week. Generally for us, people are purchasing in the evening times, probably because we're in the period care category. Maybe people don't want them up on their computers, and so they want to do it after work. But it's just important to test which times work for you. But you know, 50% of our gross product that we, you know, get through the TikTok shop that we move through, it comes from those live selling sessions, interesting. So it's been really vital for us as a brand.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  6:07  

Now, you said that those sessions last between one and two hours, and I know there was no real limit. I have a client, I think that they did like a 24 48 hours one, my question to me is even in the one-hour range, what do you talk about? How do you decide what to talk about? What is the flow? What is the structure? Because an hour or two of period care, you know, selling sounds like, hey, you know, we have, we need to have a lot of content, yeah.

Cherie Hoeger  6:35  

And I'm not the expert at this. Our team members are, but I've seen them in action, doing, doing what they do well. And they literally are teaching about our product, how to use it, answering questions over and over again. And so they'll see somebody new, come on, and they'll repeat the same questions over and over. And people, it's very common for us to have, you know, similar customer questions, how do you use this? You know, how do you insert it? How do you remove it? How do you clean it? And so they're answering again and again, and then they're getting comments, live comments, right during during the sale, and they're answering those questions in real time. And so it's such a powerful tool. And like you said, there's no limit. Doesn't have to be one to two hours. You know, though, that generally is a sweet spot for us in time frames. But specific, for instance, for Black Friday, we had a 24 hour marathon just going during the Black Friday time. We've tried it at other times that are unique or specific to our industry, like Menstrual Hygiene Day or so forth. But there can be so powerful,

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  7:30  

amazing now, how at the end of the day? Okay? A couple questions in terms of who's doing it right? Like, how do you find people that will go and do those TikTok LIVE selling videos, because, you know, that's not something that is very common or conventional at this point. So what type of people do you typically look for? Are those people that are employees of the company, who know the product very well? Do you work with agencies. What's the method here?

Cherie Hoeger  8:02  

Yeah, that's exactly. It's our team members that know about our products really well who are good in front of the camera. They just need to be approachable in answering questions. So our customer service team often goes on live, our social team, that's already great in front of the camera, but we specifically, as we started ramping up and seeing the success with TikTok Shop, then we actually hire two team members who work part-time, and they'll come in and they'll just do live sessions. I mean, what? What's really important is that it's an intimate conversation with your customer, so much data can be gleaned from that, and then you have this education-first approach, and then they literally get this support in real time. So whatever their questions are, whatever they're troubleshooting, they could be existing customers asking questions. Just being able to have access to our team members and have them have ads all their questions answered in real time is so important for existing customers. But the primary reason we do it is it's a great discovery channel. So I mean, our viewership is just amazing. 92 to 99% of the viewers are non-followers, and then they start to follow after that. So we have grown to over 20,000 followers since we've done our live sessions. It's like you said, it's been a powerful strategy for us. Amazing.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  9:12  

Are there any strategies or anything that you guys do to get more viewership when it comes to those videos? Or do you just let the algorithm do the magic? What's the philosophy and the strategy here?

Cherie Hoeger  9:25  

Yeah, so I think it's two-prong. So it's live selling. Plus, you know what we're already doing on TikTok, just posting every day, you know, posting viral content. One of our funniest videos is just a peach ring. I wish I had one right now, but we're just taking one of our discs and we're just putting it through the peach ring to show how small I can get. So this is what the cup is, but imagine this going through a peach ring, right? But it's that type of content that was actually been mimicked by a lot of our competitors, that'll draw people in, and they'll come and they'll follow our account, and then they'll say, oh, there's a live selling session, because then they're able to, you know, see it once they followed, or they discover it, or they discover. Because they've been looking at some of our content and are not followers, and then are able to see the live selling and get some of their questions answered. So you really have to have both strategies. We have tried TikTok ads as well. Haven't seen the ROAs with TikTok ads like we've seen in Meta. So it's primarily organic content that's really working.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  10:19  

Got it? Now, do you think this is a strategy? Obviously, you've said that TikTok is something that you've been doing for a while, then live selling was an option that opened up one day. Do you think you know if you were to start all over again, you could start with life selling, or do you need to have a bit of a brand presence and a bit of a following already in your account in order to succeed with live selling?

Cherie Hoeger  10:42  

I think brands should start live selling from day one, as soon as they can. They should experiment with it. Like I said, it may not be perfect for your brand. It depends on price point, you know, depends on the educational aspect, but anytime you have any customer questions that are asked frequently, I think that live selling is a great strategy. And you know, we've been such a success case for TikTok that they invite us out to conferences. They'll pay for our flights and meals. Amazing. You know, have us, have us speak about what's what's working, because it has worked well for our category.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  11:11  

Specifically, yeah, you're talking about, kind of all the questions that you're capturing right in that session, or however you call it. I think something for our audience to note is this is just fantastic customer feedback that you can use beyond TikTok, right, especially as a brand that focuses so much on product education, I'm seeing possibilities here of taking the most frequently asked questions and testing those on landing pages, testing that on the website, making sure you're improving FAQs, right? Or they can even become entire angles for entire campaigns. I don't know if this is something you've experienced, you've experimented with a little bit. I'm curious to know how you think about that, because you seem to value customer feedback a lot.

Cherie Hoeger 11:56  

We do, and especially when you have 90% of viewers on TikTok LIVE selling. You know that making a purchase is new customers, and so you get so much good, new customer data. We send out surveys routinely to our customers to ask, you know, what kind of products we know they want us to innovate and so forth. But to be able to have all those questions, all those common questions, answered, and then plug them into our AI model, we have a whole coach guide. It's called our Saalt Coach Guide that has all the most frequently asked questions, and then you're able to add to it, you know, and add, you know, the insights that you get from them. It's, it is. So it's, it's, it's amazing to be able to see. So, yeah, you're right. You can glean so much good customer data from it, you know. And I was going to share also that in those two-hour lives, you're really shortening that customer journey that's really impactful for us, because a customer journey for us could take six months, right? It's seeing products and hearing it from word of mouth. But if you're able to shorten that, and then, you know, our most successful live, we're able to make, you know, almost four grand in two hours, amazing, right? So it's, it's, it can be a really powerful tool for new brands, especially for discovery, for answering questions, and, you know, a great test channel as well.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  13:10  

Yeah. What is the product strategy when it comes to those sessions? Do you focus on one of your hero products? Do you focus on multiple products and talk about an entire range, because I know you do sell quite a few things. So yeah, what's the strategy here?

Cherie Hoeger 13:27  

Yeah, so we have two core product lines. We have our silicone cups and discs, and then we also have our leak-proof underwear, and we've absolutely been very deliberate with that strategy of what we put in front of them, our seamless collection and our thongs do really well as a hero product for the underwear and then for our core product offering. On our hard good side, it's our discs, and it's just because, I mean, the disc can be used for mastery period sex, which lends itself to all sorts of viral campaigns. And they're kind of the next trend in terms of cups, a lot of cup users are now switching to discs, and they're a very, very popular option. And you know, can make for some really good fodder. So yeah, we do have our hero products there, and we try to push those more, and then we have our other offerings on TikTok Shop, but less on accessory products, but more on the core product offering.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  14:15  

Got it would those usually separate sessions, like, even though you talk about the discs the majority of the time. Would you do a session that's only focused on underwear when focused on discs? Or do you just talk a little bit about both of them?

Cherie Hoeger  14:29  

We do all of it, got it, and that's because our products really do need to be used in tandem. So part of that educational aspect is you might have people interested in cups and discs, and don't realize that cell also makes underwear and vice versa. When you think about how people use their period products, oftentimes they'll use tampons and they'll use pads together. So they're using them in tandem. And they need to understand that our products are best used in tandem too, or you have a cup or disc that's backed up with the underwear, and they don't often know that the underwear can be used for other leaks as well. So every opportunity we can, we always talk about how they're. Use in tandem and really teach people how to use our products in a fully sustainable period care regimen. So a lot of that, you have to kind of create the aha moments for people when it's such a new product, like ours. You know, it's still still very nascent category as a whole. When you look at the entire US and how many are using our products, it's, I would be surprised if we hit 20% for reusable products right now, right?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  15:22  

I love, I know this was a conscious decision on your end as well, to create products that go in tandem. Now, I think this is a good note for listeners as well, that you know, having those products that go well together, it kind of creates a routine, right? A branded routine in a way that helps increase AOV, that helps people get even more value out of each individual products, and that, at the end of the day, helps them achieve their desired outcome even more efficiently. And I think this is the right type of combo, or routine, or however we want to call it, because it's not just, you know, let's combine things to increase AOV. It's really something that's also more helpful to the customer.

Cherie Hoeger  16:06  

Oh, 100% I love that you brought this up because we have received a fair amount of criticism for playing in too many lanes, for having these two product offerings. I mean, if you think about it, we have a liquid silicone injection product, and then we have apparel, very, very different, especially when you're looking at retailers, and they both happen to be CPG products, but you know, the way that they're packaged and you know, the way they're made up, is very different. But a lot of people, a lot of the companies in our category, either have the hard goods, it's what we call it, silicone products, or they have the underwear, and they specialize in one or the other. It's very hard to specialize in both, but we took a very customer-centric approach from the very get go and said, No, this is how they use them. We need to be able to create both products together. And it's been really good strategy for us, and, you know, been something that has set us apart in the competition, because people can bundle our products and can use them together, and they can see us a once, see us as a one-stop shop. When they see us on the shelf, also at retailers, and they have that brand recognition, they say, Oh, they're playing in the pad space and the tampon space. That's really important, but it is really unique to our category, and it's a gamble that we took in ones that people didn't know, that, you know, you know, potential investors, or those looking at our company, looking at our strategy, thought, well, maybe we should have two different companies, and we had to push quite hard to keep them together. And it's now playing out to be the right strategy.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  17:30  

Yeah, totally. I mean, played out correctly. This is totally something that can enhance LTV over time as well. So they're smart, fantastic. Now we only have about a minute left, but I'm curious about one thing, and it's if you had to start the business all over again, is there anything you would do differently?

Cherie Hoeger  17:50  

Yeah, you know, you learn so much from the failures and the ups and downs that I probably wouldn't do anything differently, except for maybe just move faster and trust myself more, I would say. And then when it comes to team members, you know, hire slow, fire, fast. Get people who are aligned, get people who are excited. I probably spent too much, too much time maybe, maybe, with a little bit too much team drama as you're going from growth phase to growth phase. So my biggest advice, really, for you know, anyone jumping into the game and operating is just jump in and just hustle. It's all about hustle and grit. When it comes to entrepreneurship, when it comes to operation, it's not about who's smartest and who has the best educational credentials. It really is just about who's working and who is consistently working and consistently progressing every single day. And that's what I focus on, who we've been building for seven years now, and you know, kind of finally seen the fruits of those labors,

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  18:45  

Amazing, very, very true. Now we've been talking to Cherie Hoeger, CEO and co-founder of Saalt. Now, Cherie, if people want to learn more about you, about the brand, and want to watch the TikTok sessions, where should they go?

Cherie Hoeger 19:00  

Yeah, so saalt.com Saalt with two A's, and you can find us @Saaltco on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, and you know, all the social platforms.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  19:10  

Amazing. Thank you so much for all this, all these insights, and those little peeks inside what's working. And thanks for coming on the show.

Cherie Hoeger 19:21  

Thank you, Raphael.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 19:27

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 at @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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