When you think of merch, what might come to mind first are band t-shirts, sports memorabilia, or maybe stickers of your favorite anime characters.
But there is a whole world of podcast merch too — some of which might be of real interest to someone podcasting for their business.
Today I’m talking to Marz, the CEO of Certified Crucial, a podcast merchandise and distribution company that is doing some very interesting things in the industry. There are a lot more possibilities than there used to be, many of them more interesting and more sustainable than traditional Print on Demand services
This was an interesting conversation, and of course, Marz brought the data!
Listen to the episode below or continue reading the blog post!
Tune in to the full episode to learn about:
- How Certified Crucial is uplifting the creator economy
- What podcast merch really means
- The untapped potential of podcasts on vinyl
- Can smaller shows leverage merchandise?
- Crafting merch that resonates with your audience
- Merch as a tool for guest engagement and brand integrity
- ROI and pricing for sustainable and ethical merch in podcasting
The Podcasting for Business Conference is happening this November — learn more about it here!
Uplifting the Creator Economy with Certified Crucial
Marz: “I recently founded Certified Crucial just this year, 2024, and we are a merchandising company that really specifically targets and works on podcasts. We also work with brands for podcasts as well.
But Certified Crucial, we are here for all things merchandising. We are an LGBT- owned podcast merch company. We also believe in sustainable practices, so we do donate 1% of our profit to sustainable efforts. But first and foremost, we are a merch company that is also looking to uplift the entire creator community.
When it comes to the creator economy, what we’re looking at is yes, the digital side on the podcast side of things — but then we’re also looking at the actual physical makers, independent creators who actually create physical products.
What we’re doing here is we’re looking to uplift both sides of the creator economy and be able to pair these physical makers with these digital creators as well, to be able to have both sides really uplift each other.
I just want to point that out because there are a lot of merchandise companies and Certified Crucial is one of them that you can work with and really we’re here to make sure that we bring more attention to merch in the podcast landscape.
Merch is something that you can DIY. There are print on demand companies that you can also utilize if you’d like to go that route. There are certain things that we’re going to offer you that you might not get from some of those companies in terms of quality, in terms of working with creators, independent creators.
But really, merchandise is something that is just an additional revenue stream that’s not being approached as much in the podcast landscape and I here at Certified Crucial, we just want to make sure that we’re giving podcasters and creators from both sides of the coin of the economy a chance to really shine, especially as things within the podcast industry continue to grow, we want to make sure that it’s a healthy, sustainable economy.”
Certified Crucial’s Creator Program
Marz: “We have the Certified Crucial Creator Program. This is for independent makers, and we work with local, independent, small businesses to be able to create these products.
We have creators in the Certified Crucial Creator Program who have screen printers, who can make plushies, who can make swords, who can make dice, who can make all different types of really interesting merch, that’s what we’re looking at here.
So we are working with independent creators and we are not mass producing things with very large companies. We are working with small businesses to be able to pair them with podcasters. And another part of the ethos and why we started certified Crucial was because yes, not many people are offering merch as an additional revenue stream, which is just money left on the table and it’s really hard to monetize.
But when you get into podcasting, it could take about 18 months, it could take a year, it could take a year and a half before you really start making any type of money, actual money. And in today’s day and age, you can make money sooner than that with an actual physical merch product.
You don’t have to wait to have 5,000, 10,000 downloads or 5,000, 10,000 listeners to do that. You can have a small audience of 500 people, a thousand people, and be able to actually tap into to some level of earning from that.”
Megan: “We definitely have to talk about merch for the Podcasting for Business Conference, which is coming up in just a couple of weeks, and at which you will be participating answering questions about merch.”
What Podcast Merch Really Means
Marz: “When it comes to podcasting, it’s all about community.
At the end of the day, that’s what we’re here for and that’s what we’re tapping into these niche communities. One thing about podcast merch that sets it apart a little bit is being able to really tap into that community.
Merch is not necessarily something, and I’ve talked to people who don’t necessarily want to beg their listeners for money. They don’t want to have to beg them to buy these shirts or whatever we’re looking at here.
Podcast merch is different because podcast fans want it. And I think across the board, fans want it, but podcasters do feel this sense of community with one another. And so when we do have a physical, tangible way to actually have that experience from the digital landscape, to actually come into a physical, tangible community experience, it really changes the game.
So when we’re talking about merch, yes, we are talking about T-shirts, we are talking about mugs, tote bags. We’re talking about all of those little swag items and we’re talking about vinyl, we’re talking about podcasts on vinyl. We’re talking about swords. I want a sword from every podcast. See me with 12 swords in the back now.
That’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about work merch. We’re talking about diving into your audience, what your audience is looking for, and being able to provide that for them.
It doesn’t have to be a shirt, shirts aren’t going to work across the board. Again, I think we’ll probably get into a little bit more about some of what works and what doesn’t in the merch landscape for podcasts, and I just wanted to put it out there that merch is another way to connect with your audience.
So having an authentic piece of merch, not just necessarily merch with your logo, but just merch that really resonates with your listener and what they think of and what they feel when they listen to your podcast — that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about podcast merch.”
The Untapped Potential of Podcasts on Vinyl
Marz: “I have to circle back to vinyl. I am so excited about podcasts on vinyl. There’s so many reasons why I’m obsessed with podcasts on vinyl.
One is money. First and foremost, I love stats, I love data, and I do enjoy having a little bit of cash. Part of that is, looking at vinyl, I looked at who was buying it in terms of demographic, and then I looked at the music industry because the music industry is where we’re seeing really a huge surge in terms of vinyl production and purchasing habits.
So when we look at the music industry, about $1.9 billion is being produced in the physical music sales. So 1.9. Billion in physical sales from the music landscape. 1.3 of that 1.9 come from vinyl. That is a very large amount of physical product to be pushing for that entire industry.
That’s more than 80% of physical sales are happening in the vinyl landscape.
Now, let’s dive a little bit deeper into that. When we look at people who are buying music on vinyl, only 50% of people who buy vinyl actually listen to the vinyl. So a lot of people are buying vinyl just for that nostalgia. Just for that community, just for that connection to the artist and to that community.
So having that perspective, looking at the podcast landscape, there’s a huge collectible market within the podcast industry that is just not being engaged in, not being tapped into very much.”
Creating Tangible Experiences for Fans
Marz: “I went to a live show and I was so excited. I told the person that I was going with, I’m buying two of everything, so if you want something, you have to let me know so I can buy three because I love this podcast so much.
I want one for myself to play with and wear, and then I also want one to frame and just memorialize forever. Then I got to the show and I got to the merch booth, they only had a hat, which was fine. I bought two, but I would’ve bought three.
I would’ve bought two of the hats. Two of the shirts I would’ve bought. I absolutely would’ve bought some vinyl. I would’ve bought everything. Think about when you go to a live show. Yes, a podcast show, but think when you go to a music event or a conference, you wanna have that moment. You wanna memorialize it. You want that tangible experience.
So, I come back to vinyl as one of the really cool things that I love working on right now because the data backs it, which is really exciting for me. And then also, let’s think about who listens to podcasts.
Just think of your typical podcast listener avatar. That person’s listening to vinyl, and the data does back it. I lightly jest in saying that, but it does. When you look at who is primarily listening to podcasts, that’s the same age demographic. It’s the same type of job, the same type of career.
It’s the same people who are listening to vinyl, they’re also listening to podcasts. So it’s just a natural fit.”
Exploring Podcast Vinyl
Marz: “We could do a bunch of different things.
There’s a project that I’m working on right now, still waiting on some ink to dry before I can talk about it. But what I will say is they have taken some of their episodes, they have some five minute episodes and they’ve put a few five minute episodes on one vinyl. So having a different catalog of voices on one album is really, really interesting.
But what we have been doing by far and large is really a lot of these live events, if you look at podcasts, and they sometimes have that best episode, that best episode is something that we’re looking at on vinyl, and then also the live events to be able to have your city live that show memorialized again on vinyl.
That’s something we’re looking at, so we can do it a couple ways. There is limited amount of space on vinyl.
Also, there are different sizes of vinyl. Do you want 45s or an LP? What are we looking for? So it depends on how much size, what type of record you want to go forward with. We could do a myriad of different things in terms of splicing it up or just going with a full long episode.”
Can Smaller Shows Leverage Merchandise?
Megan: “I think about this, and there are different kinds of podcasts, as you well know, and there are podcasts that are built to be agents of community and they’re built to engage in audience and they often will have sponsors and they’re really outwardly focused.
Then there are podcasts, which I produce a lot more of, which are more inwardly focused around the business and they’re smaller and they’re not going to have communities quite as large.
Do you think there’s a role for having this kind of merchandise for a show that is smaller and is less kind of focused on, making a really big external impact? What are your thoughts on this as the merch expert?”
Marz: “Honestly this is a much larger conversation as well because as we talk about merch, we’re going to get deeper into it, and that’s where there’s a lot of opportunity for co-branding as well, which is something that, again, the way I relate to it as well is podcast guesting, but let’s come back to that.
I want to acknowledge the niche aspect of it. And that is actually why we started certified Crucial, was to be able to work with, again, podcasters who are really niche. We’re not talking about the millions of listeners, hundreds of thousands of listeners — really this very, very niche audience.
Is there a way to use merch to incentivize them or to foster some type of community? Absolutely.
One group that I want to point to, and I have no affiliation with this group, but I will shout them out, DTC. Direct to Consumer. I’m not sure if you follow them but I do get their newsletter, and they’re a pretty niche group when it comes to what they talk about and the type of information that they parse out.
They also incentivize their newsletter with merch. So if you subscribe and you send this to five other people, you get some swag from them. You get a mug or you get a hat. Different tiers of merch are given to you based on how many people you refer to the newsletter.
As a business, this gets more people to subscribe to the newsletter and it also incentivizes you to talk about, who’s going to subscribe to this newsletter or want this merch? It has to be the right type of person. It’s a very targeted approach at doing that.
I also want mention that merch is good for all podcasts. I will say I have a white whale. I have been kind of shy about saying this, Megan but I’ll tell you because we’re close — my white whale in the podcast industry for merch is gonna be a minimalist podcast.
I think we can do it. They’re my white whale, but I think we can do it.”
Megan: “Oh, you consider it. No one buys more stuff than minimalists. They’ve got to cut down. Have to get your usable straws and everything.”
Marz: “So we’re going to work together offline, and we’re going to find me a minimal podcast.”
Crafting Merch that Resonates with Your Audience
Marz: “It really is about tapping into your audience.
As much as I joke about the minimalist podcast, there is something there for them if we really whittled it down. Something that I like to talk about, and one way that my brain works is that when we talk about podcasting, the main way to grow your show is through ad sponsorships and through podcast guest booking.
In podcast guest booking, we do that because it’s easy to get somebody to listen to your show if they’re already listening to podcasts. You may have heard this trope or this saying before, but the saying goes, if you are listening to zero podcasts and we want you to convert to listening to one podcast, that’s really, really difficult.
But if you’re already listening to four or five, we could become your sixth podcast with that same mindset across the board. And in today’s society, most people are consumers, I would gander. I don’t have this stat readily available, but I would say 99% off the top of my head of people are consumers.
In today’s modern age, somebody doesn’t necessarily have to listen to the podcast to even be interested in the niche or be interested in buying your merch. Now that aside, as we do look at your audience, because it is important that we do that, merch isn’t going to be a one size fits all.
I had somebody actually reach out to me on LinkedIn just this week, and they wanted me to check out their merch store because they couldn’t figure out why things weren’t moving.
They have a true crime show and their target audience is middle-aged women, and the main thing that they had when I looked at their merch store was black T-shirts, just regular black T-shirts. Crew cut and they had the logo and that was it.
Now the question was, with so much purchasing power and with this highly enticing show, because it did have a large listenership, why wasn’t the merch selling?
Again, if we really look at who is listening, and we actually go into the merch, this particular demographic isn’t necessarily looking for black T-shirts, and this was a true crime podcast. If we could put some of that true crime on maybe a tote bag that has proven to move a little bit more.
If we do want to do apparel for this age demographic, again, when we look more into the purchasing habits and the consumer habits of that age demographic, the quality of the T-shirt is going to matter. The type of material being used, the fabric being used, what’s trending in terms of style?
So merch is not necessarily a one size fits all. I say all of this to say merch is absolutely for small podcasts and for niche podcasts with a very particular focus and interest. That could absolutely be brands, that could absolutely be you looking to upskill with fellow industry peers.
Another quick merch aside is a legal podcast. What could I do as a legal podcast? Maybe you would think, what would they want? Well, let’s look at T-shirts. Maybe there’s something on this legal podcast where we talk about some of the jargon.
Maybe there’s a fun segment that you do, regardless, it all comes back to diving into your show, what people like about it, and just putting that into the merch. So there is not only a way, but there is a need and a want for it from your community, especially these niche communities.”
Merch as a Tool for Guest Engagement and Brand Integrity
Megan: “Getting so many ideas talking to you, which is one of the reasons I love our conversation so much.
But I think even as a guest nurturing strategy, merch could be amazing if your guest says something really brilliant, well, that quote could go on a T-shirt that could go into a merch store. How great would your guest feel to be like, Hey, well this was so smart. We’ve got you on this T-shirt quoting you.”
Marz: “Exactly. Merch really just takes the collaboration to that next level.”
Megan: “I love the focus of the smaller, more quality oriented businesses because I know one of my hesitations has always been, I don’t really want to get mass market T-shirts from sources that I don’t know I can fully trust.
That’s a buying consideration for me when it comes to making that kind of purchase. So I think it’s a great angle.”
Marz: “I’m glad that you said that as well. There are a few shows that I’ve talked to. The main reason that they don’t do merch is because they don’t want to work with some fast fashion or fast print on demand type of company.
But that is something that we are working on here at Certified Crucial, where we do only work with independent creators across the country. So that is something that I’m glad that you mentioned because when we talk about merch, it is a reflection of you and your brand first and foremost.
Again, there’s data to back this — when you put out merch, it’ll influence people’s thoughts on you and your brand and the quality of you and your brand. So to make sure that as a brand you have a quality product to reflect that is really important because yes, we want to engage our listeners. Yes, we want to give them something and we also want to make sure that we uphold our integrity and our image as a brand as well.”
Understanding ROI for Sustainable and Ethical Merch in Podcasting
Megan: “Let’s talk about ROI little, because when you make the decision to invest in quality and sustainability and ethical business practices, you’re going to pay more. That’s just the reality, because we don’t pay nearly as much as we should for like the things that we wear or the things that we buy, for the most part in North America.
But when you do start making that change conscientiously and you do go with perhaps a more expensive, higher quality, more sustainable item, what does ROI look like for that? Is there a certain amount of scale that you need to reach for it to really be workable? Are one-offs profitable?
How does kind of the financial math work out?”
Marz: “So we have two models that we have set up at certified Crucial for pricing.
The first one is really, again, this is what we started with because our main concern when launching was how do we make this work for small podcasts? Because there’s also an equation that we’re looking at here when we look at podcasts and their success.
We look at CPM for how we monetize podcasts, and so that is typically how many podcast listeners do you have, and we make our equation based off of that. That’s something that we wanted to tackle because again, I’ve worked on many podcasts, especially on the guest booking side. That’s something that in a former life, I did a lot of, and I was able to get big brands booked on small podcasts, and they received large returns.
I’m talking podcasts with 2000, 3000 listeners, and they were still able to make a large amount of money off of their guest appearance, which was an earned opportunity. So that was a free opportunity for the big brand. And tapping into this audience, they made thousands of dollars.
I really wanted to be able to bring that back to that small podcast. I wanted to be able to make sure that these smaller podcasts are leveraging that audience.
Coming back to your question about how do we look at ROI, there are two pricing plans or models that we look at.”
Pre-Order Model
Marz: “Pre-order is really, really exciting. This isn’t necessarily a new concept, but it is something that we have really whittled down to make sure that we are uplifting and making sure that there is profit to be made.
One of the things about merch too, is you don’t want to buy a bunch of merch and then just be sitting on it. You’re trying to guesstimate, maybe 200 people will buy this, and then all of a sudden, only 50. Now you have 150 T-shirts in the back and you’re just, I don’t know what to do. You’re giving them out for the holidays.
When you have a pre-order model, we take away the guessing work. We take away a lot of the risk associated as well. When we talk about the pre-order, you’re not going to get charged until you meet your minimum threshold. So we will look at what type of merch you want put out.
If you’re going to put out T-shirts, that’s great. If you want to look at the swords, that’s great. When we look at swords though, and we look at vinyl, those will have a different price point than t-shirts, especially because they are a little bit more custom and they’re just a different, different animal, if you will.
What we do is we put together how much the cost is going to be and then how much we want to get you to profit. So that is where we enter in with limited edition.
Limited Edition
Marz: “Now, you don’t have to do limited edition merch, but again, for the pre-order, it is pretty important that we talk about limited edition so that we can cap it.
What we want to do is look at how many sales you need to make to get to the amount that we’re looking to make. Let’s say vinyl, you might want to get to a minimum of 100 so that you can actually feel good about making some of this money.
So we’ll set the threshold to 100 then you send all of your podcast listeners to the store to pre-order the merch. They won’t be charged until we hit the minimum threshold, so we only got 75 people in there. People aren’t getting charged yet. Once we get to 100 people will be charged, and that’s when we can start actually fulfilling orders.
This minimizes the risk so that you have an actual quantifiable amount of merch that you need to produce without all of that guessing work and then you aren’t charging people before that happens. And then you, as a podcaster, aren’t putting any money into this, aside from the split that you would be putting in based on the purchasing amount, you as a podcaster really wouldn’t be putting up any money.
It would all come from the money that the audience member is putting forward. Just a cut of that would go towards the actual production and distribution of that merch. So the pre-order is really important and a really great model for podcasters that really are a little bit smaller and don’t have the capital to back maybe a big marketing purchase.
Now, if you are a brand and you do have some marketing dollars, a little bit of capital that you can put towards merch, pre-order is still a great model for you. I just wanna put that out there. Pre-order is still a great model for you to really. Gauge your listener interest and not have this overhead hanging over you.
And maybe you do want to have some merch on hand because you want to give some to your guests or you just want it for promo. There’s a convention coming up and you know you want to be able to be prepared at the convention. That’s another great place for you to order merch. And if you want, there is the other model where we can do bulk as well.
Here at Certified Crucial though, I just want to put that out, we do offer the distribution piece. If you do want to do bulk purchasing and do that on your own, we can do that for you. But I do want to put out there, we want to make this a turnkey solution as seamless as possible for small podcasters to be able to add this additional revenue stream to their wheelhouse.”
Megan: “This has been so cool. I feel so inspired. I’m sure everyone listening has got tons of ideas for how they want to go.”
Connect with Marz
Marz: “I keep talking about community. I’m here for free consultations as well.
If you’re interested in podcasting and podcast merch, it’s great if we can work together on a larger project, but as it pertains to merch, I have to say only 13% of people are utilizing merch in the podcast landscape.
There is a lot of room left on that table for you to monetize your brand, your podcast. So even if you just have some general questions, feel free to contact me, MARZ on LinkedIn. You can also find me at certifiedcrucial.com and Certified Crucial on all of your major social media platforms.”
Final Thoughts
I love the possibilities of merchandise for extending the community building around your podcast. It won’t be a fit for every company podcast, but there are some very cool use cases for engaging your audience, gifting your guests and increasing your brand awareness.
Checkout certifiedcrucial.com to see what kind of possibilities might be a good match for your business.
Mars is also going to be joining us at the Podcasting for Business Conference for a Coffee and Q&A session on the morning of Thursday, November 14th. If you’ve got merch-related questions, this will be a session to catch!
Get your ticket at PFBCon.com, and prepare to spend three days learning from industry leading experts, networking with fellow podcasters and getting the tools and strategies you need to podcast more effectively (which means profitably!) for your business.
You’ll also get access to the On-Demand content library right away — and we’re adding to it every couple of weeks between now and the conference. I hope we see you there!
Podcasting for Business – The Book
In case you haven’t gotten it yet, my book Podcasting for Business: How to Create a Show That Makes a Bottom Line Difference for Your Company, is available now!
If you think your podcast should be a little bit more profitable (or a lot more profitable), I highly recommend that you check it out.
There’s going to be some great information there for you.
Podcasting for Business Conference 2024
We’ve got over a dozen expert presentations, expert Q&A, panel discussions, workshops, and lots and lots of networking opportunities.
It’s happening from November 13th to 15th this year. Learn more about PFBCon here.
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We’d love to have you here for an episode like this one!
Need A Podcast?
As always, this is Megan Dougherty, and The Company Show was made possible by the team at One Stone Creative.
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Key Quotes
“Yes, we want to engage our listeners. Yes, we want to give them something, and we also want to make sure that we uphold our integrity and our image as a brand as well.” – Marz
Resources
One Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
- Pre-order the book, Podcasting for Business
- Pre-ordering will get you a free ticket to PFBCon 2024
Learn about what other business podcasters are doing:
Marz | Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram