Latest / Community Marketing with Fexingo: Discord, Slack Groups, and Brand Communities / How Notion Built a Template Community That Markets Itself
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about a company that essentially outsourced its entire marketing department to its users. Not the content team — the actual go to market motion. Luna: You mean Notion? Because I feel like every time I open Twitter, someone's showing off their second-brain setup or their startup's wiki. Lucas: Exactly. Notion is the poster child for what I call the 'template economy.' The company has over 10,000 community-created templates in its gallery, and those templates drive millions of monthly visits — directly from search, from social shares, from word of mouth. And Notion didn't build most of them. Luna: Right, they built the platform and the templates are basically user-generated content. But how did that become their primary marketing channel? I mean, they don't run traditional ad campaigns. Lucas: They barely run any paid ads. In 2021, they raised $10 billion valuation on a Series C, and their marketing spend was almost negligible compared to SaaS peers. Instead, they invested in what they call the 'Notion Champions' program — a community of power users who create templates, host workshops, and essentially evangelize the product. Luna: So it's like a formalized ambassador program, but with a twist — the ambassadors aren't just posting on social, they're building actual products inside Notion. Lucas: That's the key. A template is a functional piece of content. Someone searching for 'project management dashboard' finds a Notion template, tries it, signs up, maybe tweaks it, and shares their own version. Each template becomes a lead generation asset that keeps working long after it's created. Luna: And Notion doesn't pay for those leads. The creator gets visibility, sometimes a small stipend or early access, but the cost per acquisition for Notion is effectively zero. Lucas: Right. Compare that to a company like Asana or Monday.com, which spend heavily on search ads for terms like 'project management software.' Notion outranks them organically for long-tail queries — 'freelance invoice template,' 'startup pitch deck template' — because their community has seeded the web with thousands of pages. Luna: There's a psychological layer too. When you download a template from another user, you feel like you're joining a tribe. It's more personal than a company's marketing site. Lucas: That's the community marketing flywheel. The template creates trust, the trust drives adoption, adoption drives more templates. Notion's head of community, Camille Ricketts, once said their goal isn't to sell software — it's to help people build systems that make them feel competent. That emotional payoff is what gets shared. Luna: I've seen this play out with Canva too. Their template library is massive, and a lot of it is user-generated. But Canva also pays creators a royalty. Notion doesn't, right? Lucas: Notion's model is more about reciprocity — creators get distribution, followers, sometimes job offers from companies that discover them through their templates. It's a reputation economy. And for Notion, it scales without the cost of a royalty program. Luna: But there's a dark side. If the community creates all the value, what happens if they get upset? In 2022, Notion changed its pricing and the community backlash was loud. Some creators threatened to leave. Lucas: That's the risk of relying on unpaid labor. But Notion handled it by listening — they reversed some changes and doubled down on community feedback loops. The thing is, when your marketing is built on user goodwill, you have to treat users as partners, not just distribution channels. Luna: So for a brand thinking about this model, what's the prerequisite? You need a product that people can customize and show off, right? Lucas: Exactly. Notion works because it's a blank canvas. A CRM or an ERP system doesn't lend itself to templates. But if your product has a creative or organizational component — think Airtable, Figma, even something like Substack — you can foster a template economy. Luna: Airtable has its universe of templates, but I feel like they haven't leaned into the community sharing aspect as much as Notion. Their gallery feels more corporate. Lucas: That's a fair critique. Airtable's templates are mostly built by their own team or by partners. They haven't unlocked the organic peer to peer sharing that Notion has. The difference is culture — Notion's early adopters were productivity enthusiasts who loved to tinker and share. Airtable's early users were more business-focused, less likely to share publicly. Luna: So the community marketing strategy has to match the user persona. You can't force sharing if the users aren't the type to show off. Lucas: Right. And that brings me to the numbers. Notion's template gallery gets over 5 million monthly visits. The top templates have been viewed over 1 million times each. If you convert even 5 percent of those viewers into sign-ups, that's 250,000 new users per month from a single channel. No ad spend. Luna: That's insane. And those users are highly qualified — they came looking for a specific solution, so retention is higher. Lucas: Exactly. So the lesson for marketers is: instead of asking 'what content can we create,' ask 'what tools can we give our users to create value for each other?' Notion didn't build a marketing team — they built a platform that incentivizes marketing. Luna: Honestly, if today's insight was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It keeps these episodes ad-free and independent. Lucas: Yeah, and it lets us dig into these deep case studies without chasing clicks. We really appreciate it. Luna: Alright, so back to Notion's playbook — what about the templates themselves? Are they really that effective as a marketing tool, or is it just a fancy lead magnet? Lucas: They're more than lead magnets because they're functional. A lead magnet is an ebook you download and forget. A Notion template is something you use daily. It integrates into your workflow. So the brand stays top of mind every time you open the tool. Luna: That's the difference between passive and active engagement. And the templates also serve as onboarding tools — they reduce the learning curve. New users don't start from a blank page. Lucas: Exactly. Notion's onboarding used to be a weak point — people felt overwhelmed by the blank canvas. Now, when you sign up, the first thing you see is a gallery of templates. You pick one that matches your need, and you're immediately productive. That's marketing and product working together. Luna: I've also noticed that Notion's templates have a viral loop built in. When you use a template, it often has a credit to the creator. So if you share your workspace, you're also promoting that creator and, by extension, Notion. Lucas: That implicit endorsement is powerful. It's not a 'share this' button — it's just organic usage. And because the templates are actually useful, people share them voluntarily. Notion's entire growth engine is built on that voluntary sharing. Luna: But let's be realistic — not every product can pull this off. You need a certain level of complexity and flexibility. A simple app like a calorie counter doesn't have the same template potential. Lucas: True. But even simpler products can have user-generated content that functions like templates. For instance, Headspace has user-created playlists of meditations. Spotify has collaborative playlists. The principle is the same: give users a way to remix your product and share their version. Luna: So the underlying principle is 'remixability.' The more your product can be customized and shared, the more marketing your users will do for you. Lucas: Exactly. And Notion is the extreme case where the entire marketing funnel is user-generated. From awareness to conversion to retention, it's all driven by templates. That's why I think every CMO should spend a day just studying Notion's template gallery. Luna: I know I will. So next time I need a template, I know where to start — and it's not just Notion's site, it's the community around it. Lucas: And that community is their moat. Competitors can copy features, but they can't copy the thousands of templates built by passionate users. That's the ultimate marketing asset.