Building a Community that Fuels Growth: Strategies and Insights from Notion

Apr 12, 2024

The digital age, amplified by advancements in AI, has brought a significant shift in the value of hard skills versus soft skills. Hard skills, while still essential, are increasingly being supplemented by AI and technology in areas such as programming and business analytics, reducing their exclusivity as a competitive edge. In contrast, soft skills, particularly those facilitating interpersonal relationships, are gaining prominence. This shift is further emphasized by the changing dynamics of work environment, where smaller teams are on the rise, as Sam Altman said “There'll soon be a one-person billion dollar company — which would've been unimaginable without AI — but now will happen”, alongside the growing prevalence of remote/hybrid work settings. In this context, people crave authentic connections and communities where they feel they belong. Cocurrently, the technical advantages between companies are shrinking. The importance of community around a product or service becomes apparent not only as a means of building connections and fostering a sense of belonging but also as a critical differentiator in business growth and success. Notion, a unicorn known for its customizable productivity and note-taking tool, has achieved remarkable growth by focusing on community development. As of March 2024, 76% of its traffic comes from Direct, indicating strong brand awareness. Here, I will explore Notion’s journey towards community-led expansion as a case in point.

Outline:

What is Community?
Why Does Community Matter to a Business?
When does Community Make Sense?
How to Build a Community that Drives Growth?
How to Apply Community-Led Growth in Your Product?
Metrics for Community Impact
Takeaways

1. What is Community?

A community in the business context goes beyond a simple group of people with common interests. It represents an active ecosystem where users, customers, and enthusiasts engage, share, and contribute, creating a self-sustaining loop of feedback, advocacy, and support. According to Corinne Riley, Principal at Greylock, there are two primary types of company-created communities:

Community of Product

This community is built specifically around the product the company is selling.
Members of this community often share product tips and tricks with each other, and report bugs or submit queries to the company's support team.

Community of Practice

This community revolves around a generalized concept, rather than a product or service specific to any one company.
It unites people who share the same specialization or interest, regardless of the companies they are associated with.

The key distinction between these two is the focus. A community of product is centered around a specific product, while a community of practice is centered around a shared area of expertise or interest. Both types of communities can be valuable for companies, as they foster engagement, support, and advocacy among their users and customers.

2. Why Does Community Matter to a Business?

The key benefits of a community include:

Increased Retention and User Engagement: Engaged customers who participate in communities tend to use the product more frequently and explore its features more thoroughly, likely fostering a deeper emotional connection with the brand and other users. This engagement and emotional bond can lead to higher retention rates and enhanced loyalty as users gain more value from both the product and the community itself.
Feedback and Innovation: Communities provide a valuable channel for active user engagement. Users can give feedback about your product, suggest improvements, and even help you identify new pain points. This feedback loop can lead to improvements and innovations that directly address customer needs, ensuring the product remains relevant and valuable.
Brand Advocacy: Community members who feel a strong connection to a brand are more likely to become brand advocates, willingly promoting the product or service within their networks. This word-of-mouth marketing is highly effective and cost-efficient, as it comes from a place of genuine endorsement.
Market Differentiation: A vibrant community can serve as a key differentiator in crowded markets. The sense of belonging and mutual support that a community provides can be a compelling reason for new customers to choose your product over competitors.
Scalable User Education: Communities enable scalable, ongoing user education through shared knowledge bases, tutorials, webinars, and Q&A sessions. This collective learning environment can help users maximize the value they get from the product or service, leading to higher satisfaction.

3. When does Community Make Sense?

Camille Ricketts, former Marketing Head at Notion, discussed in Lenny Rachitsky's podcast that investing in community makes the most sense when there is a clear path to leveraging organic growth, word-of-mouth, and user engagement to propel the product's success.

For freemium and prosumer products, community-led growth can be highly effective. These types of products naturally benefit from organic growth mechanisms like sharing and word-of-mouth, which are facilitated by an engaged community of users.

In contrast, products requiring a long sales cycle or high-touch enterprise sales may not see as direct a benefit from community initiatives. For these products, direct sales efforts may be more effective than relying on community-driven growth. However, there can be exceptions. An example is Notion's strategic use of community to penetrate the enterprise market, as discussed by Camille in the podcast. The widespread community-driven dialogue about Notion and the sharing of user-created content helps de-risk Notion for companies, leading to increased adoption among businesses. Notion then cultivated communities specifically for enterprise clients, known as consultants or champions, to foster strong relations and provide customized services timely. This illustrates that enterprise products that have a 2C or single-player mode can potentially benefit from building a community.

Moreover, when a product has stronger network effect, the more effective a community will be in spreading awareness and attracting discoveries. For example, community is beneficial for Notion because as new customers join all users can benefit from a wider option of templates that further simplify their adoption and enhance their experience with Notion. On another hand, Mem.ai, an AI-powered note-taking app, doesn't have much network effect as current users have little gain from the influx of new customers - users adopt it mainly to organize ideas and build their own personal knowledge base.

Overall, the decision to invest in community should be evaluated based on the specific product, its target market, the sales model, and network effect potential. While community can be a powerful growth driver for some products, it may not be the optimal strategy for all businesses, particularly those focused on enterprise-level sales.

😃 2C product, self-serve, freemium model, bottom-up and low-touch sales, good network effect, single-player mode

🙁 2B product, full-service, paid-only model, top-down and high-touch sales, no/low network effect, multi-player mode

4. How to Build a Community that Drives Growth?

Step 1: Build the “MVP” of Your Community - a small group of super fans

Identify your biggest fans and most vocal users across social media platforms who are already enthusiastically sharing about your product. Notion noticed early on that there were "super fans" on social media who were organizing meetups, creating YouTube channels, and starting their own Notion-focused communities. Notion reached out to connect with these individuals and turned it into an "ambassador program". Ambassadors drove much of the community growth by starting groups, hosting events, creating content, monitoring online and offline community groups and events. They follow best practices for moderating these groups and adhere to a strong code of conduct. Notion sends appreciative videos to build strong relationships with ambassadors.
Start small. Camille emphasizes starting small with communities and focusing on truly engaging the members rather than just growing numbers rapidly. She advises picking the right audience segments that are already showing organic traction with your product. For Notion, they started with just 20 ambassadors who were their most vocal users on Twitter and other platforms.
Incentivize ambassadors through value-added Programs. Notion’s value package to ambassadors include:
- Early Access and Feedback: Offer ambassadors early access to new features and direct feedback channels to the product team.
- Exclusive Rights: Provide ambassadors with a "proprietary space" through special events and AMAs (Ask Me Anything) with company leaders.
- Promotion and Amplification: Extensively promote ambassadors' work across Notion's social channels and website, highlighting templates and businesses they’ve built around Notion.
- Community Support: Subsidize and support ambassadors in hosting local in-person community meetup events. Provide templates to help organize and manage these events, fostering engagement.
By offering these value-added benefits, Notion has created a compelling ambassador program that incentivizes and empowers its brand advocates, leading to increased engagement, loyalty, and advocacy.
Make onboarding easy. Notion has a simple application process for potential ambassadors with effective questions such as how Notion has changed their lives to help gauge the interest level of candidates and thus select the best fits. It welcomes around 20 new ambassadors each month to allow existing members to integrate the new folks gradually.
Choose the community collaboration tool/platform. Notion understands the importance of collaboration in growing its community and utilizes its platform as a hub for this purpose:
- Individual Notion workspaces: Enable members of the community program to work together efficiently.
- Slack and Circle: Manage different Notion-run programs and ambassadors.
- SwagUp: Distribute branded merchandise widely, fostering community engagement.

Step 2: Scale Up Your Community

Identify scale levers. A key lever Notion has used to grow their community is working with influencers. Notion reached out to YouTubers and TikTokers who were already creating content about Notion and set up a sponsorship program to have them create more Notion-focused content. This has helped spread Notion virally through these influencers' platforms.
Related reading: How we unlocked influencer marketing in the early days of Notion to drive millions of signups by Ben Lang, former Community Head at Notion.
Design different initiatives to support different user segments as the community sizes up. Besides ambassador program, Notion has added other initiatives such as template gallery, certification program, champions program, and influencer partnerships.
- Template Gallery: Notion offers a template gallery where users can discover, share, and monetize templates, easing adoption and improving customer experience. So far, there are over 10,000 templates customizable for professional and personal use.
- Certification Program: Notion created a Certification Program to help users become experts in Notion tools and monetize their such knowledge. Certified users can work as consultants, assisting companies with Notion onboarding and training.
- Champions Program: Notion built a champions community for enterprise plan users to lead and support their workplaces, exchange resources, share knowledge, and inspire each other.
- Influencer Partnerships: Notion initiated an influencer program, now known as the Affiliate Program, to collaborate with influencers for content creation, driving traffic and attracting new users.
Decentralize community management. Instead of creating a centralized community hub, Notion allowed users to create their own community groups in different languages and interests. Notion encourages community members to form their own groups. These groups can focus on specific topics, industries, or interests. The platform provides tools to support these community-led initiatives.
Allocate resources. To scale, Notion hired community managers, worked with contractors, and spun off some projects to specialized community teams within Notion. For example, it has dedicated team members whose role is constantly communicating and building relationships with ambassadors, created channels/subgroups within the community based on ambassadors' specific interests (events, creating templates/guides, etc.), and made it easy for ambassadors to connect with each other to share learnings and opportunities.

Step 3: Maintain the Community

According to Camille, to maintain a healthy and growing community, it's crucial to manage its size to preserve quality interactions, encourage genuine engagement, and provide members with value that resonates with their interests and needs. Listening to the community and fostering an environment where members feel heard and valued can contribute significantly to its long-term success. Some of Notion’s measures include:

Curate genuine relationships. Notion does not provide direct financial support, but rather carefully selects ambassadors based on their demonstrated passion and engagement with the product. It supports ambassadors with resources, early access to features, and sometimes promotional opportunities to help them successfully share and promote Notion. The selection process is designed to ensure ambassadors are genuinely interested and can authentically represent the brand.
Drive engagement. Notion has developed various community events and communication channels to engage with members. Additionally, it has created an annual event series called "Block by Block," a virtual conference with interactive workshops to bring the community together in a more centralized way.
Implement Community Protocols. Notion has established Community Protocols to ensure that any behaviors deemed unwanted or against the community's values are excluded. These protocols help maintain a positive and constructive environment where members feel safe and respected.
Build Transparency and Trust. Notion has a dedicated page that lists all ways users can get involved, including community events, ambassadorship, location/interest groups, and other programs. This centralized hub makes it easy for community members to stay informed and engaged with the various opportunities available to them, fostering a sense of belonging and loyalty among its members.

5. How to Apply Community-Led Growth in Your Product?

Olivia Nottebohm, the former CRO at Notion, shared a community-led growth funnel that gives insights into utilizing community not just for drawing attention but across the entire customer journey—from acquisition and conversion to retention and achieving customer success.

Top of Funnel: Raising Awareness

The first stage is about creating awareness, ensuring the target market knows the product exists. The key is to identify early passionate users and let them share their own stories using your product. Notion’s approach involves:

Identifying early supporters on social media and forums like Twitter, Reddit, and Product Hunt, and empowering them as brand ambassadors.
Enabling these ambassadors to tell their own stories about using Notion in their own way, by giving them support (i.e., customizable templates and workshops), resources (i.e., event funding), and guidance.
Making them feel connected to Notion through AMAs, early access to features, feedback taking, and direct engagement with the founders/team.

Mid of Funnel: Boosting Conversion and Adoption

The second stage focuses on enhancing conversion and encouraging product adoption. Recognizing your brand is just the beginning; if people to your site can't quickly grasp the value of your product, they're going to churn and unlikely to return. The community can play a significant role in facilitating value delivery, which is particularly true when your product has a wide range of target users, generates variations of “content/deliverables” (highly customizable), and involves efforts to build from ground up (i.e., Figma, Notion, WordPress). The key is to find a way that aligns distribution of your content with goals of your passionate users, thus motivating them to create tutorials, templates, and guides to educate new users on your behalf. Notion’s approach involves:

Acknowledging and sharing user-generated content across its social media platforms. This not only shows appreciation but also gives creators exposure to a broader audience, encouraging them to create high-quality content using Notion.
Launching Template Gallery to drive value delivery to new users, which in return supports the community to get compensated for crafting beautiful templates.

Bottom of Funnel: Driving Expansion and Retention

The final stage is about using the community to drive expansion within existing customers and retain them over the long-term. The goal is to get more users from the same company or the same team or adopt your another product that has higher value. Notion’s approach involves:

Empowering "teachers of the product" within the community to help onboard and train new users. Such as August Bradley, who had 6 followers on YouTube when Notion first met him and now has 42,000 followers, sold out a master class on Notion and has made $200K on that two-week course.
Forging a network of Notion consultants. Notion identified and brought together a group of community members who had organically built businesses and expertise around using Notion. Notion then created a directory of these "Notion Consultants" spanning different countries and industries. This allowed Notion to leverage these community experts as an extension of their own customer success team, providing responsive, authentic, and localized support and training to customers.
Building a community of "Champions" who are power users and advocates from different companies all working with Notion. They are given special access to Notion's product team and thought leaders and encouraged to directly exchange ideas, best practices, and feedback with Notion, making them truly representing Notion within their companies.
Blurring the line between Community and Company. Notion took a very fluid, collaborative approach to manage its community as an integral part of its team, allowing it to engage directly with its customer success and product teams. This in return empowers the community to better advocate the product and create value for the product and support users.

6. Metrics for Community Impact

Notion has found that measuring the success of their community efforts can be challenging, but they have adopted a targeted approach. Rather than relying on a single overarching metric, they set specific goals for each community program, focusing on two high-level objectives: top-of-funnel growth and user education.

In Notion's early stages, they closely tracked the month-over-month increase in individuals visiting the site for the first time from ambassador and influencer marketing as a key measure of success. They also saw geographical expansions and discoveries being attributed to their community efforts.

Camille advises founders to prioritize long-term community value over immediate returns. Organic growth and member engagement should guide the pace of development. The key is to cultivate a community that provides genuine value and fosters positive interactions. By actively listening to members' feedback and adapting strategies to their evolving needs, founders can build a loyal and sustainable community that fuels their business.

More readings on Metrics: Top 10 Metrics to Measure the Strength of Your Brand Community

7. Takeaways

Community is more than just a group of users - it represents an active ecosystem where users, customers, and enthusiasts engage, share, and contribute to the product and each other.
Community-led growth makes the most sense for freemium and prosumer products. However, even enterprise products can benefit from community in certain cases.
There is a three-step approach to build a successful community: 1. starting with a small group of super fans, 2. scaling up with various initiatives, programs and partnerships, and 3. maintaining the community by curating genuine relationships, driving engagement, implementing protocols, and building transparency and trust.
The community drives growth in three ways, spreading the brand name for acquisition, educating for conversion, and serving as customer success for retention and expansion.
Measuring community impact can be complex, as different community initiatives may require different metrics. It’s important to focus on long-term community value rather than merely immediate returns and actively refine strategies based on member feedback to ensure sustained engagement and effectiveness.

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