Had a really poor experience with SoarâŠ
Had a really poor experience with Soar With Us/For You Advertising. You can't find any other reviews from either company, anywhere online.
Reached out to them after seeing promising ad videos, of them claiming to be make companies lots of money. Our business makes stickers, and do pretty well across many channels, so thought we would start using TikTok marketing, via them to promote our products.
Initially we received a bit questionnaire, info regarding our margins, competitors, income etc, which is standard for a marketing agency.
After passing the initial checks, they said they'd like to work with us. We had an onboarding call which laster quite some time, getting more info from us and the business etc. We were told to get ready for a "influx" of orders, and if we can produce an influx/increase of orders. They checked with us if we were happy to send out 200-300 samples, as they wanted to be aggressive - which we agreed to.
When the campaign kicked off,they set up some bots and then loads of influencers on TikTok, requested samples, so they could make videos. We were waiting for some more stuff to be done, but this is literally all they seemed to do. Go onto affiliate center and then accept the influencer sample requests. YOu could even click bulk accept, so it took them no longer than 5 minutes to accept the first batch of influencers. This was a repeated process, when the next batch of influencers requested and so on. As on TikTok shop you have limits. The longer and more you ship out, the more TTS raise your influencer request limits.
As our poructs were personalised, they set up a excell document, to supply the names the influencers wanted on their stickers. This was often updated too late, so we ened up having to ship blank stickers. If not, TTS penalise you for shipping samples late. This caused many influencers to complain they didn't get the name on their stickers. This was the first problem we faced.
After paying £3500 - £4500 per month for their services, which is a huge amount of money for any small business, we didn't see this reflected in the work load completed. They set up a GMV max campaign, which is literrally a toggle clikc of a button, and TikTok shop literally do all the work for you. Using AI to place your ads infornt of the best audiences. So this click of a button and accepting sample requests, they believed warranted over £4000 a month.
We were constantly having to reach out to them, regarding updates and ideas, as we were just losing 10's of £1000s per month. We voiced our concerns early on, stating that we are losing £1-£2 per order. they just brushed it off and then told us it takes around 6 months to "work out". We were never told this upfront in the call or emails when signing up!
We constantly gave ideas of things to do. It seemed like we were trying to do their job for them. The staff int he team were nice people, an friendly. Our issue is that we were completely overcharged for this service. We could have literally done this ourselves! The affiliate ceter - the affiliates are all infront of you and send requests. You just click accept, then send the sample. The ads were 1 click of a button. Apart from changing the pricing and altering the ROI number settings, nothing else was done in the campaign.
We'd go for 2-3 days without hearing anything. We would constantly message them saying this isn't working, we are losing money and didn't think it was right for us.
When we really knuckled down to opt out of this contract, we were met with denial from the owner of the company. He was trying to bill us over £4500 for 2 months! I said to him, I would pay the 5% GMV charges and wanted to opt out. But he was shutting the door on us, saying they can't. Eventually with alot of back and forth, they agreed to this.
I don't doubt their expertise, but for what we paid and the work we received, just wasn't worth it at all. We ended up £20,000 in the red. This was the worst business investment we've ever made, and a harsh lesson! We just run it on our own now, at our own pace. It takes us 5-10 minutes a day tops and we are saving almost £5,000 compared to their rip off prices.
When we said we wanted to leave, the owner said he would lower the price. This just told me instantly, that we were overcharged in the first place.
The most annoying part, is that the owners were in the chats from the start. They could see all our concerns and messages saying we are losing money, and are very worried etc. They didn't reach out once to try and help. Poor service and disregard to paying customers. I wouldn't recommend using them. Maybe for ad graphics and designs, but to run TTS. You could just do this yourself and save lots of money.