How Notion achieves 95% organic traffic through community-led growth

Notion has become synonymous with community and has been pioneering the community-led growth model to further its product adoption. Let us deep dive what makes it work.

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If you’ve been living in a cave, here’s some crazy numbers from Notion’s growth story:

• Notion is now >$2B valuation company and has in total raised funds of $343.2M over 5 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Oct 8, 2021 from a Series C round. Notion is funded by 30 investors, including Sequoia Capital.

• 1M active users (2019) → 4M users (2020) → 20M users (2021) → Estimated to be ~30M users in 2023 and growing.

• Notion’s subreddit community has 280,000+ members, which is 10x of that of Figma and 80-85x that of Canva

How did this happen, and what fuels this kind of growth? In today’s case study, we focus on an important aspect of Notion’s growth story that is community-led, and we break down the case study into:

1. Notion’s journey to product-market fit

2. Notion’s product-led growth (PLG) story

3. Notion’s success in building a community

4. How community-led growth multiplies PLG

5. How you can apply community-led growth in your product

But first here’s something you should not miss:

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For Productify readers, Enterpret is sharing a case study on how Notion utilizes Enterpret to simplify their current manual tagging system (of different customer feedback that comes from different channels, with over 700 unique tags) and supercharges its product feedback loop.

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Now that you have downloaded the Enterpret case study (link above), let us get into the five sections of today’s case on Notion’s Community-led Growth:

Notion’s journey to product-market fit

Notion's product market fit journey is a story that shouts of product-led success. exploring its evolution from a versatile tool to a collaboration powerhouse.

1. The Emergence of Notion: Notion was founded in 2013 by Ivan Zhao, Simon Last, and four other co-founders. It initially aimed to create an all-in-one workspace that blended note-taking, project management, and knowledge organization. This vision resonated with a growing audience looking for a more flexible and customizable alternative to existing productivity tools.

2. Early Challenges and Iterations: In its early days, Notion faced challenges in finding its niche and establishing a clear value proposition. The product underwent several iterations and pivots to refine its features and user experience. By actively listening to user feedback, Notion iteratively improved its product, addressing pain points and incorporating requested features.
   
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3. Expanding the User Base: To achieve product-market fit, Notion focused on expanding its user base across different sectors and use cases. The company adopted a freemium model, allowing users to experience the core functionality for free while offering premium plans with enhanced features for power users and businesses. This approach enabled Notion to attract a wide range of users, from students and freelancers to small teams and enterprises.

4. Harnessing Simplicity and Customization: One of Notion's key differentiators is its simplicity combined with extensive customization options. Notion provides a clean and intuitive interface that allows users to create and organize content using blocks. This block-based system enables users to structure information in a way that suits their unique workflows, making it adaptable to various use cases.

5. Collaboration Features and Team Adoption: Notion recognized the importance of collaboration and teamwork and introduced features to enhance group productivity. Real-time collaboration, comment threads, and task management capabilities were added, making Notion a robust platform for team collaboration. This emphasis on collaboration led to increased adoption by remote teams and distributed organizations seeking a centralized workspace.

6. Seamless Integration Ecosystem: Notion's success can also be attributed to its integration ecosystem. Recognizing that users often rely on multiple tools to manage their work, Notion seamlessly integrates with popular apps like Slack, Google Drive, and Trello, creating a unified and streamlined workflow. These integrations further solidified Notion's position as a powerful hub for knowledge management and project coordination.

7. Community and User Engagement: Notion fostered a vibrant user community, actively engaging with its users through forums, social media, and direct communication channels. Not only did this enable the company to gather valuable feedback and insights, but it also created a sense of belonging and ownership among its users. Notion's transparency and responsiveness to user needs played a pivotal role in building a loyal and passionate user base.

8. Enterprise Focus and Scaling: Recognizing the potential of Notion in the enterprise market, the company introduced features and security measures to cater to larger organizations. Enhanced administrative controls, data governance, and access permissions were added to meet enterprise-grade requirements. Notion also launched team analytics and onboarding resources to support larger teams and facilitate company-wide adoption.

9. Continued Innovation and Expansion: Notion has continued to innovate and expand its feature set. The company regularly releases updates, introducing new functionalities and addressing user requests. This commitment to continuous improvement ensures that Notion remains relevant and competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

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Notion’s product-led growth (PLG) story

Notion's remarkable success in attracting 95% of its website visitors (Direct, Search) through organic traffic can be attributed to several key product-led growth traits.

The top four traits that have contributed to Notion's product success are as follows:

1. Intuitive and Self-Service Onboarding: Notion excels in providing an intuitive and self-service onboarding experience for its users. The product's user interface is designed to be user-friendly and requires minimal guidance for users to get started. Notion's intuitive nature enables users to quickly understand its features and functionality, reducing the need for extensive tutorials or training. This ease of onboarding encourages users to explore the product further, leading to increased adoption and organic growth.

   

2. Seamless and Viral Collaboration: Notion's collaboration features are seamless and highly effective, facilitating viral growth. The platform allows users to collaborate in real-time, comment on content, assign tasks, and share workspaces effortlessly. By making collaboration a core part of its offering, Notion encourages users to invite colleagues, friends, and teammates to join and collaborate on projects. This viral loop of collaboration drives organic growth as more users are exposed to the platform and subsequently become active users themselves.

   

3. Robust Free Plan with Upgrade Incentives: Notion's freemium business model, coupled with a robust free plan, plays a crucial role in driving product-led growth. The free plan provides users with access to a significant portion of Notion's core features, allowing them to fully experience and appreciate the product's value. This generous offering encourages users to organically share Notion with others, as they can easily collaborate and share workspaces with non-paying users. Additionally, Notion strategically places limitations on the free plan that incentivize users to upgrade to premium plans, unlocking additional features and advanced functionality. Notion has four membership types:

   

4. Customer-Centric Product Development: Notion's focus on customer feedback and iterative product development is instrumental in its product-led growth. The company actively listens to its users, soliciting feedback, and incorporating user suggestions into its product roadmap. By prioritizing customer needs and preferences, Notion continuously improves and refines its product to better serve its user base. This customer-centric approach not only enhances user satisfaction but also fosters a strong sense of loyalty and advocacy among Notion's users, leading to organic growth through word-of-mouth recommendations.

Download the case study: How Notion is supercharging its product feedback loop with Enterpret.

Notion’s success in building a community

Community building is never a one-dimension game. You have to diversify to multiple platforms, geographical regions and more while understanding how communities thrive on their own. Let us visit some aspects of how Notion built its community.

Firstly, Notion built its community on Reddit by actively engaging with users, providing valuable content, and fostering discussions. They created an official subreddit (/r/Notion) where users could share tips, ask questions, and showcase their use cases. Notion's team actively participated in the subreddit, responding to user queries, sharing updates, and addressing concerns. They also organized Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions to directly interact with the community. Additionally, they encouraged users to share their Notion templates and workflows, fostering a collaborative environment. This approach helped cultivate a vibrant and supportive community around Notion on Reddit.

Secondly, Localized communities facilitated networking opportunities, collaboration on projects, and even offline meetups or events. By catering to the diverse needs and interests of users in different regions, Notion was able to expand its user base and build a stronger and more engaged community overall.

Become a Notion Ambassador program: These ambassadors were incentivized with beta features, active participation in new features, and goodies.Notion kept the entry bar for the program high, and only enrolled voluntary users (the program has no monetary incentives), ensuring they only got the most passionate users in the program. They did provide support to these ambassadors to create online courses teaching Notion, which in turn spreads the word about Notion and brings more users. (viral loop!)

Basically, Notion created a community-based guerilla marketing campaign out of the most passionate Notion users.

How community-led growth multiplies PLG

Notion’s growth loop is fueled by Notion’s thriving community, and at the core of the growth loop is ‘Templates’. Users can submit new templates and use existing templates from a big library available on many public platforms, including the one of Notion’s own website:

The more users explore templates, the more they explore Notion’s features. Also, many users first time sign-up to Notion because they discovered a template that solves their pain point (Example ‘I want to create a PRD’)

Notion still remais a Product-led growth company but having a healthy community multiplies and accelerates product-led growth.

Notion’s Growth Loop, Source: NoGood.io

Let us understand this through a story: Once upon a time, there was a passionate entrepreneur named Sarah who came across Notion while browsing an online forum. She was thrilled to find a template specifically designed for managing startup projects, and it piqued her interest.

Eager to get started, Sarah quickly signed up for a Notion account and began using the startup project template. As she explored the platform, she discovered that Notion had a vast collection of templates available.

During her onboarding journey, Notion intelligently recommended five additional templates aligned with Sarah's interests and goals. Impressed by the personalized suggestions, Sarah decided to incorporate one of the recommended templates into her workflow.

As Sarah continued to use Notion, she realized the immense value templates brought to her entrepreneurial endeavors. They helped her organize tasks, track progress, and collaborate effectively. Excited by the possibilities, she delved deeper into the Notion community to find more templates that could enhance her workspace.

Motivated by the positive impact Notion had on her productivity, Sarah started using the platform daily. She actively engaged with the Notion community, seeking advice and sharing her experiences.

With time, Sarah gained a comprehensive understanding of Notion's capabilities and became proficient in creating her own templates. She crafted templates tailored to various business processes and use cases, ensuring they were intuitive and visually appealing.

Recognizing the generosity and knowledge-sharing spirit of the Notion community, Sarah decided to give back. She began sharing her meticulously designed templates within the community, sparking inspiration and helping others achieve their goals.

One day, three ambitious individuals—Mark, Emily, and James—came across Sarah's template shared in a popular Notion Facebook group. Impressed by its practicality and aesthetic appeal, they eagerly signed up for Notion to experience its benefits firsthand.

As Mark, Emily, and James started exploring Notion and utilizing Sarah's template, they realized the power and versatility of the platform. Intrigued by its potential, they too began exploring other templates within the community, leading to the expansion of Notion's user base.

And thus, the growth loop of Notion templates continued, with more users discovering and leveraging the platform's immense potential through the sharing, creation, and adoption of templates within the vibrant Notion community.

How you can apply community-led growth in your product

As shared by Olivia Nottebohm (CRO, Notion), there are three stages of community-led growth funnel:

The first stage is about awareness. You first need to create enough awareness that such a tool exists and then allow your target community to tell their own stories using your tool.

The second stage is about distribution channels because others want to build their business on top of your product-led company. So, how do you bring in community members to share their content in a way that it also furthers your goal (Templates is a great example)

Third stage is letting them go about telling the story as fluidly as possible. You company should engage with ambassadors and champions inside companies.

Also, as a product builder, you should not look out for same community as others (or try to copy Notion). Every product company is on their own journey and their own stages. So find your audience.

And to find out your target community, you should try below exercise to answer two main questions:

1. Who are you planning to sell to? (B2C or Large Enterprises)

2. At what stage is your company (pre or post PMF?)

Based on answers to above you should try to create a community.

• Pre-PMF + B2C/SMB focus: Engage with Focus Groups

• Pre-PMF + Enterprise focus: Start /Participate in customer advisory boards

• Post-PMF + B2C/SMB focus: Start ambassador program and engage with creators

• Post-PMF + Enterprise focus: Engage with Consultants and create your product champtions